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McCain

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mercer funded flank after hearings in hft see SCL

master plan 11 4 24

montana amicus brief said 2 claims demo BS bullock Raskin w/ mccain

11-1179-Senators-Whitehouse-and-McCain-Cert-Amicus

sep by other reps

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name --> devil term?! 6 22 an texas gop

Tensions within the party at times got personal. Video posted online showed far-right activists physically accosting U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, calling the conservative Republican “eye-patch McCain” over his criticism of Russia. The group included self-identified Proud Boys and Alex Stein, a social media activist from North Texas. A Navy SEAL veteran, Crenshaw lost his right eye to a bomb in Afghanistan.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/state-gop

the attempted Republican coup against our democracy is not over. It is changing form, now that Joe Biden has been formally sworn in as the nation's new president, but not abating. State Republican parties, in particular, are continuing to aggressively embrace the hoaxes, conspiracy theories and cult notions justifying the attempted violent insurrection to reinstall Donald Trump as an illegitimate leader. They are also retaliating against those Republicans who refused to abet those efforts.

Long a extremist hub, the Arizona Republican Party has been moving the swiftest to dole out consequences to anti-fascist Republicans. The party voted yesterday to censure Cindy McCain, Gov. Doug Ducey and ex-Sen. Jeff Flake, while reelecting far-right crackpot Kelli Ward as their state party leader. (All three censured Arizonans attended Joe Biden's inauguration just days before in a show of support for our continuing democracy, which may or may not be coincidental.)

Ducey was condemned for his imposition of pandemic-battling restrictions, as the party continues its obsessions with anti-science, anti-book-learning contrarianism even as the pandemic death toll inches towards a half million souls.McCain, however, was called out not only for her insufficient Trump support but for supporting "globalist policies," a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory supposing that global "elites" are working behind the scenes to undermine national identity. To her credit, McCain responded by telling her state party to pound sand.

Lurching farther rightward still, the Texas Republican Party encouraged its allies to travel to neo-Nazi friendly site Gab while identifying itself with a pro-"Q" conspiracy trope.

After 2016, there was an avalanche of punditry about what Democrats needed to do to rebuild their party — mainly, e… https://t.co/ARCdePG4jU

— Matt McDermott (@Matt McDermott)1611496999.0

"We are the STORM" is, if the symbolism did not give it away already, a Q-ism borrowed directly from the neo-Nazi movement. The "storm" refers to a violent revolution to murder the enemies of the far-right, from antifa to Democratic and social leaders to insufficiently pure neighbors, under the premise that those enemies are secretly murdering children to harvest their blood. Once again, it is the thinnest possible veneer on fringe-right anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have animated neo-Nazi justifications for violence since before they were neo-.

Donald Trump may be gone, left to stew for the moment on his loss and whether he truly wants to form a new far-right party or simply blow it off and go golfing, but the party that chose him as its incompetent, dishonest, blustering, and criminal figurehead has, if anything, only solidified its embrace of fascist techniques and principles. They are redoubling their efforts to radicalize their base, battle truths with hoaxes and to further impede the ability of non-white, non-conservative Americans to cast votes at all.

That they are doing so even after stoking a genuine violent insurrection is not surprising; the intent of the hoaxes to begin with was to overturn the election by any means necessary through the promulgation of hoaxes intended to so inflame the base that the citizenry itself would rise up to demand it. It remains the intent now. Violence is not a side effect of these efforts, but a tool. They will use it when they can.

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920 revive on losers and suckers

an 920

elections expert explains why Trump is in real trouble in Arizona: ‘The revenge of John McCain’Brad Reed / Raw

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an 620

why Trumpism is turning once-red Arizona increasingly blue: Conservative website

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/trump-lovers-gang-up-on-high-profile-freshman-gop-congressman-for-asking-the-president-to-lay-off-john-mccain/

no lnx twit

Sen. John McCain has been dead for seven months. The Arizona senator, Vietnam veteran and self-described “Goldwater Republican” was 81 when he died of brain cancer on August 25, 2018. Yet President Donald J. Trump continues to be obsessed with him, declaring during a speech earlier this week, “I wasn’t a fan of John McCain.” In response, Rep. Dan Crenshaw called Trump out on Twitter,posting, “Mr. President, seriously stop talking about Senator McCain”—and the Texas Republican is being angrily attacked for it by Trump supporters.

As right-wing as McCain was, many figures in the far-right media—from Rush Limbaugh to Ann Coulter—have a long history of denouncing him as a RINO(Republican In Name Only). And the silly notion that McCain wasn’t genuinely right-wing asserted itself in many of the comments attacking Crenshaw on Twitter.

Twitter user CC, who has 286,000 followers on the social media website and has said that her “top priority” on Twitter is “to retweet President Trump’s tweets,” responded to Crenshaw by asserting that “John McCain’s actions were traitorous” and that his opposition to Trump was “vindictive” and “un-American.”

@TheReady1775 was especially venomous, declaring that McCain was “a piece of shit” because he “died a traitor working for Dems.” And @TheReady1775 threatened that Crenshaw could “be a one-term wonder” if he decides to “go RINO on us.”

California-based Trump devotee @steph93065 urged Crenshaw to “shut your damn mouth” about Trump and cited him as an example of “the entire establishment” and “their media…. trashing our president.”

Rep. Dan Crenshaw

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@RepDanCrenshaw

Mr. President, seriously stop talking about Senator McCain.

?? Marine ???? ONE ??

@TheReady1775

Go RINO on us Dan & you’ll be a one-term wonder.

McCain may have had honor in war but he died a traitor working for Dems to stage crimes that never happened. THAT man was a piece of shit.

Wartime service doesn’t give you lifetime immunity against consequences of shit behavior.

Replying to @she_brews11 @RepDanCrenshaw

The problem with Crenshaw is, when the entire establishment & their media is busy trashing our President without even caring WHY the President called out McCain (the reveal of his involvement in the dossier), maybe shut your damn mouth. It's the piling on that pisses me off.

CC

@ChatByCC

What pisses me off is John McCain‘s actions were traitorous. McCain did everything he could to unseat a sitting president. Just because 1 wears the uniform does not mean that we cannot call out there vindictive un-American actions.

Even McCain‘s funeral was a Trump bash session.

A Trump supporter in Los Angeles, @almostjingo, posted, “Mr. Crenshaw, when did you become the ruler of free speech?” And @1AmericanMama, a Trump supporter in Missouri, posted:

Catturd

Replying to @RepDanCrenshaw

If I hear one more person say Trump needs to move on from McCain, I'm going to puke.

This is the biggest treason in our country's history - a sitting President and his corrupt FBI, CIA, and DOJ spied on Trump and are still trying to frame him.

and McCain was knee deep in it

1??????????????????????????

@1AmericanMama

Why does Dan think b/c McCain served in the Military that he should get a free pass for all his evil doings? So, if Hillary served in the military would she also get a pass? This is asinine! Step back Rep. Crenshaw you are out of line! Criminals must be exposed, dead or alive!

The pro-Trump @nelliestirs described McCain as a “vile human being” who “took his hatred” of Trump “to his grave.” And @mystormee insisted that “McCain took every opportunity to stab the American citizen in the back,” while @LoriS09598635 posted that Crenshaw “is looking to be like other Washington elite RINOs ….Romney, McConnell, Ryan, Flake, McCain, Rubio, Hurd, Amash.”

But not all of the conservatives who responded to Crenshaw’s tweet were unfavorable. @LouiseMensch posted, “I like Crenshaw a hell of a lot…. when Mueller has arrested all the traitors infesting the GOP leadership, and I can go back to being a regular person with domestic political views, Crenshaw is the kind of leader I would support in a Presidential primary.”

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McC on liddy's show and attended fundraiser in his home toxic talk p 14

Kert Davies, originally published on ClimateInvestigations.org 

*InsideClimate News*’ Marianne Lavelle published a long piece this weekend, chronicling Senator John McCain’s rise and fall as a climate leader. The story highlights a campaign I worked on in 2000, where we asked all the presidential candidates the simple and still pertinent question, “What’s Your Plan?” on global warming. McCain was one of the only candidates that took it on. He went back to Washington in the middle of 2000, having been defeated by George W. Bush in the primaries, and immediately started holding hearings on climate change science.

As always, there is more to the story.  When McCain emerged as “Captain Climate”in the early 2000s, and introduced the first serious bipartisan legislation to cut emissions, he became the target of a multifaceted attack by anti-regulatory free market organizations.  It turns out, many of these organizations and front groups were quietly being funded by ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers.

This pressure may partly explain why McCain later abandoned climate change when he ran for President in 2008 and attacked his colleagues’ efforts during the 2009 push for climate legislation.  By that point McCain had succumbed to the now standard Republican talking points on climate.  Oh, and lest we forget, he also picked Sarah Palin as a running mate and starting down the “Drill, Baby, Drill” path (the opposite of sane climate policy) and the rest is history.

No one has really explained how this turn away from climate leadership really happened. Most commentators attribute it to political choices McCain himself made, without really analyzing the outside pressure that closed in on McCain from 2000 to 2008.

*InsideClimate News* notes briefly that there was a coordinated effort to oppose McCain’s efforts run by corporate-funded entities.  Climate Investigations Center went back and looked at our records for documentation of thecampaign to the kill the McCain-Lieberman climate legislation as it gained momentum. First introduced in 2001 by the two Senators, The Climate Stewardship Act (S.139) was the first national, bipartisan legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas pollution. This bill eventually became the ground-zero target for climate deniers and corporate interests.

Unfortunately, a month after the first McCain-Lieberman bill was introduced, the attacks on September 11th changed everything. McCain and Lieberman, a neo-con Democrat at the time, were among the first to lead the charge to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, well ahead of the Bush Administration according to many accounts from that time.

By 2003, McCain and Lieberman got back to thinking about climate change together and leveraged the first full Senate vote on their bill by forcing Majority Leader Bill Frist’s handon an energy bill he was trying to pass.

The McCain-Lieberman bill garnered surprising support but lost 43-55, well short of the 60 votes needed to avoid an override under Senate rule.  Corporations saw this as a close call and began a concerted effort to kill the momentum in 2004 (see below). In 2005, the bill was renamed The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, and in McCain style, stubbornly brought up for another vote where it lost by a bigger margin, 38 Yea to 60 Nay votes.

I know for a fact that they got blindsided on this.  They thought they had paved the way for success. In a meeting with a McCain staffer after the second vote, I showed them an ExxonSecrets map (similar to the one below) of the organizations and individuals that worked to kill the bill. The staffer knew there were various organizations and companies lobbying against the bill, but had no idea the level of coordination, nor the ExxonMobil funding channels.

[secrets chart]

Was the Exxon Denial Machine built to fight Sen. McCain?

It has always been interesting that our database of ExxonMobil climate denial funding shows a dramatic increase in spending after 2000, which coincides with McCain emerging as a climate champion.

The graph above shows the yearly totals of ExxonMobil’s grants to climate denying non-profit organizations and breaks out the total grants specifically earmarked for climate change between the years of 1997-2006.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that corporate polluters thought they were off the hook with the Bush-Cheney victory over Gore-Lieberman.  Yet ExxonMobil’s funding of climate denial organizations ballooned to its highest levels between 2000 and 2005 as the McCain-Lieberman legislation gained momentum. Between 2003-2005, Exxon wrote grants totaling more than $3.3 million dollars each year to climate-denying organizations.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the leader of the**Cooler Heads Coalition**(CHC) and recipient of over $2 million dollars total from ExxonMobil between 1997-2005, aggressively fought Sen. McCain’s climate leadership in the early 2000s. Aleaked 2003 email from **Myron Ebell**, Director of Global Warming Policy at CEI, lays out a target list for lobbying against the “McLieberman” bill. FOIAed documents show communications in 2003 between Myron Ebell and the Bush White House Council on Environmental Quality, where Ebell details the campaign against McCain.  CEI also put out press releases against the legislation, held eventsto debate it, and used the CHC network of climate deniers to wage their campaign.

The Exxon-funded groups were also being funded by the Koch brothers and their foundations.  In January 2003, CEI co-authored a letter with the Koch-funded Citizen’s for Sound Economy to the Bush Whitehouse decrying the McCain-Lieberman legislation.  ExxonMobil gave CEI $465,000 that year according to Exxon documents, the largest Exxon haul by CEI in any year.An unredacted CEI IRS 990 for 2003 lists a $100,000 donation from David Koch himself and only $180,000 from ExxonMobil (probably an accounting anomaly).

United 4 Jobs, DCI Group and Exxon cash

[banner] patriotic hard hat

Following the 2003 vote on McCain Lieberman bill, the corporate forces got their act together.  In 2004, a front group coalition was set up called United4Jobs.org, complete with an American Flag and a hard hat.  Here’s some of what we know:

The United for Jobs website in 2004 said it was “a project of” the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), which received $50,000 from ExxonMobil in 2004, and the National Association of Neighborhoods, which also received $50,000 from ExxonMobil Foundation in 2004 (including $25,000 earmarked for “Climate Change Issues.”) along with the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council).

Kochtopus Tentacles Ensnare McCain

Well before the Koch brothers became a household name, they were hard at work influencing our political system.  It is safe to assume that the Koch campaign against climate progress ramped up in the mid-2000s targeted Senator McCain.

There is clearly more to tell. Get in touch with further questions or additional information at info@climateinvestigations.org.

many obits

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/will-john-mccain-be-last-republican-leader-senate-address-reality-climate-change

"He was just doing his job.”

When I asked a longtime staffer to Sen. John McCain why the senator battled to address climate change in the early 2000s, that was his answer.

A simple answer, but one essential to understanding how McCain led those early efforts to combat the challenge when no one else would step forward.

Although others had brought climate change as an issue to the Senate, McCain, a Republican, and Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman were the first to bring climate legislation that aimed to reduce emissions. That attempt was their bipartisan 2003 Climate Stewardship Act. As Lieberman’s counsel for the environment, I helped write this legislation.

Science informed McCain’s policy

In 2000, McCain was the chair of the Senate Committee for Commerce, Science and Transportation, which had jurisdiction over the U.S. Global Climate Research Program. That program, established in 1990, aimed to assist “the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”

McCain wanted to oversee the program’s activities and began a series of hearings on it. He sought out and gained insights from institutions he trusted in the hearings — including the U.S. Navy, McCain’s former professional home and a hub of defining research at the time - to learn more about climate science.

Armed with knowledge of the science, McCain proceeded to “do his job” to take on the challenge posed by climate change.

The hearings he called sparked conversations that led him to develop and co-sponsor, with Lieberman, the first legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by industries across the economy.

The legislation attempted to institute a market-based program to reduce emissions from electricity, manufacturing and transportation sectors of the economy. Those sectors represented 85 percent of U.S. emissions that at that time contributed to climate change.

This legislative step was particularly difficult for McCain as a Republican. Climate change legislation was, and remains, a tough political challenge as it requires regulating the sources of energy that underlie so much of our economy.

In 2000, the only recorded vote in the U.S. Senate on climate change was a 1997 resolution that passed unanimously. It was an effort to stop the U.S. from agreeing to what lawmakers believed to be unfavorable terms in the Kyoto Protocol.

Many key Republican constituencies were at the time particularly resistant to any form of greenhouse gas regulation.

As the senators began to pull together their proposal, building support for the bill required concessions to the political needs of certain senators. But for McCain, who had a history of bipartisan problem-solving, the only prodding he needed was the scientific evidence and his responsibility to respond to it.

Advocating for their bill

Sens. McCain and Lieberman decided that the best way to change the politics of the issue was to force senators to become educated and accountable for their positions.

To do this, they drew on a political strategy that had worked before for them with their bipartisan campaign finance bill. They directed their staff to develop legislation in consultation with all political players and bring it to a vote as soon as possible. The support of a range of interests meant that politicians could more easily support the bill, and the quick vote was designed to force the senators to take a position.

The opportunity for a vote arose in mid-2003 as the Senate turned to comprehensive energy legislation. And in that effort, McCain’s tactical skill and resolve were on display.

The 2003 Senate debate about energy policy was the first major legislation that Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, managed. It represented an important effort to secure the new leader’s authority over his colleagues.

But it did not go well. The bill floundered on the floor. In order to get it passed, Frist engaged in legislative maneuvering that including asking for a rare thing, the Senate’s unanimous vote, or “consent,” to replace the energy legislation with the previous year’s bill that had passed the Senate. It was a legislative “Hail Mary.”

There are few moments of true political leverage in the Senate like a “must pass” request for unanimous consent. The only way for Frist to achieve it was for all 100 senators to sign off. That meant each senator had the power to stop the bill.

McCain recognized this moment of political leverage and seized it to advance the 2003 climate change legislation. He and Lieberman would say no to Frist’s request for unanimous consent, unless Frist would allow a vote on their bill.

After I informed the Senate leadership that McCain and Lieberman might have an objection, I sprinted to the staff phones and called McCain’s office – a Republican was better for holding a bill being managed by a Republican.

Within minutes, McCain was on the floor of the Senate, demanding that his climate bill be scheduled for a vote before anything could move forward. His request was granted, and Sen. Frist promised an up-or-down vote on the bill before the end of the year.

By resisting the political pressure from his own majority leader, Sen. McCain demonstrated his political spine. And in doing so, he showed his tactical skill, negotiating a commitment for a recorded vote on the final passage of the climate bill.

One hundred senators would have to publicly state their position on climate change.

Recharging the climate debate

Three months later, McCain and Lieberman brought their legislation to the floor and secured 43 votes in favor, plus the pledge of support from absent Sen. John Edwards.

It was a loss, but still important as the first step in the McCain-Lieberman strategy to get lawmakers to declare where they stood on climate change.

Forty-four senators were now on the record favoring the bill, and the remaining 56 could be held politically accountable. And it was a far cry from the 95-0 vote count against the Kyoto climate change treaty from 1997 that stood previously as a litmus test on the issue.

Despite its failure to pass, the McCain-Lieberman bill breathed life into legislative efforts to respond to climate change.

The momentum for climate legislation built through the decade, with the development of the 2005 and 2007 Climate Stewardship Innovation Acts, neither of which passed. The 2008 presidential race was significant in that both candidates, Sens. McCain and Obama, supported seriousclimate change measures.

With President Obama’s election, it looked like 2009 marked the moment the nation would finally address climate change concretely. But a combination of political polarization, leadership failures and economic recession conspired to frustrate the climate legislation of 2009-2010.

Since the 2010 midterm elections, climate legislation has not re-emerged.

As a result, we now have arrived at a point not unlike 2001, with political paralysis on Capitol Hill on the issue of climate change. Right now, there is no clear legislative leader who, like McCain, will step up and tackle such a politically risky problem. Perhaps we’ll get the chance to see another bipartisan leader emerge.

Tim Profeta, Director, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Associate Professor of Practice, Duke University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/10/senates-poised-to-repeal-a-final-obama-era-rule-as-soon-as-wednesday/

no link many

Senate unexpectedly rejects bid to repeal a key Obama-era environmental regulation

By Chelsea Harvey and Juliet Eilperin May 10 at 12:10 PM

Oil pumps and natural gas burn off in Watford City, N.D. Methane emissions will likely be the next big environmental issue to face North Dakota’s booming oil industry according to a top official at the state’s Department of Health. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

This story has been updated.

The U.S. Senate narrowly voted down a resolution on Wednesday to repeal an Obama-era rule restricting methane emissions from drilling on public lands — with three Republicans joining every Democrat  to preserve the rule.

The 51 to 49 vote marked the first time since Trump’s election that Republicans have failed in their attempt to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn Obama-era rules.

Thirteen earlier resolutions, based on the 1996 law that allows Congress to overturn rules within 60 days of their adoption,  all succeeded. But the deadline for repealing such regulations through the Congressional Review Act is on Thursday.

The methane emissions rule, issued by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management in November, addresses a potent greenhouse gas that is accelerating climate change.

[Earth could break through a major climate threshold in the next 15 years, scientists warn]

The rule would force oil and gas companies to capture methane that had been previously burned off or “flared” at drilling sites.

The previous administration estimated the rule would prevent roughly 180,000 tons a year of methane from escaping into the atmosphere and would boost federal revenue because firms pay only royalties on the federal resources they capture and contain.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) unexpectedly voted no against a motion to proceed with consideration of the resolution, along with GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.).  Two Democrats who had considered backing the rule’s elimination — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — voted against the motion as well.

In a floor speech after the vote, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), said “the very first victory” lawmakers have had in beating back a Congressional Review Act bill this year came from a combination of Democratic unity and a few Republicans’ willingness to buck their leadership. “Thank you so much for coming forward and seeing the common sense nature of this issue,” Udall said, referring to Collins, Graham and McCain.

Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, praised the lawmakers who supported the rule. “In recent months, thousands of Americans asked the Senate to stand up for clean air and against the oil lobby, and their efforts were successful today,” he said.

Republicans and industry officials said they would now switch their focus to getting the Interior Department to rewrite the rule.

Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said his group “looks forward to working with the Interior Department on a targeted, meaningful solution that will achieve the common goal of ensuring the American taxpayers receive a fair and equitable return in the form of royalties while developing a workable regulation, instead of this one-size-fits-all approach.”

[EPA dismisses half of key board’s scientific advisers; Interior suspends more than 200 advisory panels]

And Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in a statement that Interior should withdraw the regulation outright. “If left in place, this regulation will only discourage energy production, job creation, and economic opportunity across the West.”

Before this year, Congress had only nullified one rule, a regulation on ergonomics Bill Clinton enacted during his final year in office. In less than four months Republicans have wiped away rules covering everything from limits on the dumping of waste from surface mining operations to enlarging states’ power to offer retirement accounts to private-sector workers.

But the move to strike a rule requiring companies to limit the practice of flaring, or leaking, methane from oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land had given some Republicans–who control 52 seats in the Senate–pause.

Senate Press Gallery ? @SenatePress

#senate vote on HJ Res 36, the CRA on the methane rule was NOT agreed to 49-51. Collins, Graham and McCain joined all Dems/IND against.

7:27 AM - 10 May 2017

236 236 Retweets   516 516 likes

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Many Republicans and fossil fuel producers criticized the regulation after it was finalized last year, and a resolution to repeal it passed quickly in the House of Representatives at the end of January. But despite Trump’s support, the repeal measure had been sitting in the Senate for months. It had to pass by Thursday to be eligibleto be signed into law.

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Democrats, as well as environmental and public health groups, ran a months-long campaign to persuade Heitkamp and Manchin not to disclose their position publicly while arguing to centrist Republicans that abolishing the rule would cost taxpayers money as well as harm the environment.

[Trump undertakes the most ambitious regulatory rollback since Reagan]

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Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also remained on the fence until Monday, when he announced in a statement that he would vote to overturn the BLM regulation. Two other wavering Republicans, Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Dean Heller (Nev.), ultimately joined Portman in voting to proceed with the bill’s consideration.

“Unfortunately, the previous administration’s methane rule was not a balanced approach,” Portman said. “As written, it would have hurt our economy and cost jobs in Ohio by forcing small independent operators to close existing wells and slowing responsible energy production on federal lands.  There’s a better way.”

He added that he believes the Interior Department should still work to reduce venting and flaring on public lands. Last week, Portman wrote to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, calling for a commitment that the department would continue to work to reduce methane waste if the Obama rule were reversed. On May 4, Zinke responded, affirming that “the Department is committed to reducing methane waste, and under my leadership, we will take important steps to accomplish this goal.”

Environmentalists urged Portman to reconsider. In a statement on Tuesday, Environmental Defense Action Fund Executive Director Fred Krupp said Zinke’s assurances were “unfounded” and argued that the strategies for reducing methane waste outlined in his letter would have little impact.

A coalition of industry groups have argued they are taking steps to reduce fugitive methane emissions, because they recognize capturing them can yield additional profits. The American Petroleum Institute noted that the Environmental Protection Agency  data, released in March, shows about an 8 percent drop in methane emissions from petroleum production since 2014, largely because of improved gas venting and flaring techniques.

The legislative window for Congressional Review Act resolutions to be considered ends on Thursday, though a handful of conservative analysts believe that agencies’ failure to submit a 2-page report on previous rules to Congress could open the door to reconsideration of dozens of much older rules.

Curtis Copeland, a regulatory expert who specialized in American government at the Congressional Research Service, said in an email that regardless of how many rules this Congress ultimately overturns, “The CRA can no longer be described as ‘obscure’ or ‘little known.’ It now has to be viewed as a substantive tool of congressional oversight regarding an outgoing President’s rules, and it is likely be used again in the future.”

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4/17

http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-political-theater-congress-threatening-science-and-climate

 Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain, R-Ariz., are sponsoring a bill that would require the EPA to offset greenhouse gas emissions regulation costs incurred by other agencies.

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McCain and the Dictator Money Trail

—By Jonathan Stein | Thu May 15, 2008 12:16 AM EDT

John McCain will fire you for lobbying for Burma, but he'll still take your money.

Republican operatives Doug Davenport and Doug Goodyear were both quietly released from their duties with the McCain campaign this week when it was revealed that their Washington lobbying firm, DCI Group, had been paid $348,000 to represent Burma's repressive military junta in 2002. McCain's critics noted that top McCain aide Charlie Black has lobbied for authoritarian regimes as nasty or worse than Burma's, raising the question of whether McCain will cut ties with tainted figures only when it is politically expedient for him to do so.

There are other facts in the situation that may prove controversial. The two lobbyists for Burma were also donors to McCain. Doug Goodyear, DCI Group's chief executive and the man McCain had selected to run the GOP national convention, and his wife Carla donated $4,600 to McCain's presidential campaign and $2,500 to McCain's Straight Talk America PAC. Carla Goodyear also donated $1,000 to McCain's 2004 Senate reelection bid. Doug Davenport, the head of DCI Group's lobbying arm and a former regional campaign manager for McCain, and his wife Kelley contributed $6,900 to McCain's presidential campaign and $3,500 to his PAC.

Other DCI Group employees have donated $2,000 to McCain. All told, DCI Group employees and their spouses have sent $20,500 to McCain. McCain fired the two DCI Group executives from his campaign, but will he return their contributions? We called McCain's press office to ask and have not yet received a response. Can it be that McCain is willing to separate himself from lobbyists working for Burma but will cling to their cash?

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6/15

http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-climate-deniers-are-creating-nightmare-they-most-fear

Recently, the Washington Post reported new data showing something most of us already sense: that increased polarization on Capitol Hill is due to the way the Republican Party has lurched to the right. The authors of the study use Senator John McCain to illustrate the point. McCain's political odyssey is, in some dismaying sense, close to my own heart, since it highlights the Republican turn against science.

As unlikely as it might seem today, in the first half of the twentieth century the Republicans were the party that most strongly supported scientific work, as they recognized the diverse ways in which it could undergird economic activity and national security. The Democrats were more dubious, tending to see science as elitist and worrying that new federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health would concentrate resources in elite East Coast universities.

In recent decades, of course, the Republicans have lurched rightward on many topics and now regularly attack scientific findings that threaten their political platforms. In the 1980s, they generally questioned evidence of acid rain; in the 1990s, they went after ozone science; and in this century, they have launched fierce attacks not just on climate science, but in the most personal fashion imaginable on climate scientists.

While Senator McCain didn’t go directly down the path of attacking science, he, too, shifted in disturbing ways. After all, with Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, he had been a co-sponsor of the Climate Stewardship Acts of 2003, 2005, and 2007, which called for a mandatory cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gas emissions.  These were at the time endorsed by many Democrats and most environmental groups.  By 2010, however, he was retreating fast from support for his own bill and insisting that he had never backed capping carbon emissions “at a certain level.” He now calls for increased offshore oil and gas drilling, claims that important aspects of energy policy should be left to state and local governments, and has criticized both President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry for framing climate change as a national security issue — a position that the Pentagon itself endorses.

Still, compared to many of his colleagues, McCain looks like a moderate. They have dismissed climate change as a fraud and a hoax, while conducting McCarthy-esque inquiries into the research of leading climate scientists. Many of them attack climate science because they fear it will be used as an excuse to expand the reach of government.

In a hearing at which I testified last month, Republican members of the Committee on Natural Resources denounced a wide range of scientific investigations related to the enforcement of existing environmental laws as “government science.” And this, they alleged, meant it was, by definition, corrupt, politically driven, and lacking in accountability. The particular science under attack involved work done by, or on behalf of, federal agencies like the National Parks Service, but climate science came in for its share of insults as well.

On the face of it, the charges were absurd: most agency science is subject to far more scrutiny, accountability, and oversight, including multiple levels of peer review, than research done in academic settings. In contrast, research done under the aegis of industry is often subject to no public accountability at all.

In preparing my testimony, however, I realized that something far larger was at stake: the issue of politically driven science itself.  It’s often claimed that environmental science done in federal agencies is “politically driven” and therefore suspect. It was, I realized, time to challenge the presumption that such science is bad science. While widely held, the idea is demonstrably false. Moreover, the suggestion that “government science” is intrinsically problematic for Republicans who eschew big government ignores the simple fact that most of the major contributions of the twentieth century, at least in the physical sciences, came from just such government science....

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theda s:

With these warm-up steps, cap and trade proponents believed they were inching

toward eventual legislative victory, and certainly looked to be moving closer than health

reform supporters during the 2000s. In October 2003, Democrat Joe Lieberman and

31

Republican John McCain teamed up to maneuver a Senate vote on the “Climate

Stewardship Act,” which garnered 43 votes in favor (from 36 Democrats and six

Republicans) versus 55 votes opposed (including ten from Democrats representing states

dependent on carbon-sourced energy). A modified McCain-Lieberman effort, called the

“Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act” got a less favorable vote in 2005 (losing 60 to

38). Another effort in the same lineage, the “Climate Security Act” of 2008, sponsored by

Lieberman and Republican John Warner went down by the closer margin of 48 to 36. The

2008 vote totals were disappointing, but proponents suggested that at least six Senators

who had to be absent on voting day would have supported the legislation if it had come

close to the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. This was a bit of whistling in the dark,

but cap and trade proponents remained optimistic, because the November 2008 elections

seemed likely to strengthen their hand.

That John McCain was absent as a sponsor during the Lieberman-Warner effort –

and in fact did not even leave the presidential campaign trail to register his vote – did not

much disturb cap and trade proponents. They considered GOP presidential contender still

to be tacitly in their corner; and they were pleased that during the GOP primary campaign

season McCain stuck with his support of cap and trade in principle, even when attacked

by all other GOP contenders (including Mitt Romney, who denounced cap and trade as a

big tax increase on all American families and businesses).31 During the general election

as well, McCain expressed occasional vague support for some kind of cap and trade

legislation. To environmentalists invested in the holy grail of cap and trade, McCain

appeared to be what they wanted to see, the same old GOP maverick determined to play

for the votes of the Republican moderate voters and Independents who, according to

32

polls, wanted the United States.to act on the threat of global warming. “We invested a lot

in John McCain,” one pivotal DC player told me.32

From 2006 on, cap and trade proponents were also creating and working within

the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which was publicly announced in January

  1. USCAP brought together more than two dozen big business CEOs with the leaders

of big environmental organizations – the Environmental Defense Fund, the National

Resources Defense Council, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the World

Resources Institute, and the Nature Conservancy. (Originally, the National Wildlife

Federation was also on board, but it eventually dropped out in early 2009.) USCAP

==

lcv score zero

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/11/101011fa_fact_lizza

challenge in primary by RW talk show host

hmmn cf link to declassified records

McCain's Nazi Connection

by resistk

Fri Oct 17, 2008 at 07:36:12 PM PST

John McCain was on the Board of the World Anti Communist League (WACL) during the 1980's.  The WACL was the subject of two main files at the FBI and nine ancillary files. The WACL that McCain associated himself called for the violent overthrow of the United States government.

The WACL was the continuation of several flagrantly fascist organizations used by the CIA during the Cold War including the the Anti Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN).

McCain was not just paling around, he was on the board of a group of violent fascist thugs and former Nazis who planted bombs on airliners.

This same McCain accuses Obama of the very associations that McCain is guilty of.

Declassified Documents World Anti Communist League

The World Anti Communist league was the Weather Underground of the right wing during the 1970's and 1980's.  John McCain didn't just pal around with the WACL, he was on their Board of Directors. It was no coincidence that the WACL was based in Arizona.  

A few years ago while working a legal case involving the WACL, I asked the FBI for their files on that group and as you can see from the materials posted here, the FBI put up quite a fight and only declassified a small portion of their materials.

Declassfied Documents on WACL

But what was declassfied tells volumes about John McCain's pals:

  1. The WACL called for a military coup in 1974 and 1978 in the United States!
  1. The WACL was financed by a foreign government - which we now know  was Taiwan.
  1. The WACL was involved in at least one bombing of an airliner in Europe according to the FBI source.
  1. The WACL included former Nazis and SS members.

After the WACL was "reformed" by General Singlaub and John McCain it began to take money fromReverend Moon. The same Reverend Moon who was a client of top McCain advisor Charlie Black.  Black arranged the coronation of Moon in a cremony attended by another McCain

 operative Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The question here is why is the press giving McCain a free ride? Are they afraid to open a Pandora's box that will show that some of the media was also on the Moonman's payroll?

Tags: World Anti Communist League, Charlie Black, Reverend Moon, Nazi (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions