obama2bak
<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">818 bak margins</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see OBAMA 3 220</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">220 has not stepped up on gerry as promised w/ eric h (also lame after gaff?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/">https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/</a></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, authors of the classic 2010 book <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2010/06/10/oreskes-conway-exposing-merchants-doubt/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming</span></a>, have released a new book placing that doubt machine into a longer arc of U.S. business and political history. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market</span></a> explores an even more ambitious history dating from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The book documents how today’s prevailing anti-regulatory and anti-government postures that deride Big Government and cheer for Big Business did not arise simply from grassroots demands. Instead, they arose from well-funded industry campaigns creating what Oreskes and Conway have called a manufactured consensus “quasi-religious belief” in deregulated markets and an accompanying diehard opposition to governmental solutions to public policy problems. </font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fighting Public Utilities, Child Labor Laws</font></span></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the first campaigns in that spirit occurred within the electricity utility industry via an organization which eventually became known as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/edison-electric-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Edison Electric Institute</a>. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is now colloquially called<b> EEI, was launched in 1885 as the National Electric Light Association, or NELA</b>. At the time, it “represented more than five hundred of the largest privately owned electrical utilities, accounting for more than 90 percent of U.S. kilowatt output,” according to the book. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the 1920s, according to Oreskes and Conway, “electricity industry leaders organized one of the largest propaganda campaigns in the history of the United States.” The campaign aimed to persuade the public that<b> municipal-owned electricity was a bad thing,</b> advocating instead for investor-owned utilities. In the end, though, it resulted in higher rates for homeowners and small businesses and bigger profits for company owners and their bankrollers. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The initially unpopular campaign framed its activities under the guise of freedom and market efficiency. NELA’s influence operation — involving rewriting K-12 and university textbooks, courting and funding industry-friendly professors, utilizing astroturf campaigns, deploying sophisticated lobbying techniques to facilitate regulatory and legislative capture, and other deceptive practices — <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/12/28/miracle-american-oil-continental-resources-corporate-media-oil-exports/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">resembles</a> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/10/29/lng-exports-comments-copy-paste/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">much</a> of the fossil fuel industry’s <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/13/exxon-shell-bp-api-concerns-carbon-capture/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">political pressure</a> that DeSmog has <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/01/31/three-states-pushing-alec-bill-climate-change-denial-schools/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">covered</a> and <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/09/16/frackademia-people-money-behind-edf-fracking-methane-emissions-study/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">uncovered</a> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/06/14/your-energy-america-ddc-advocacy-atlantic-coast-pipeline/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">week-in</a> and <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2019/06/06/enbridge-minnesotans-line-3-front-group-oil-pipeline/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">week-out</a> for <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dyyx/how-a-small-blog-became-a-thorn-in-the-side-of-corporate-climate-denial" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">over a decade and a half</a>. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the time, it was th<b>e first of its kind industrial-scale full-court press, and it provided a roadmap for other corporate hegemons in subsequent decades. And NELA’s goal went far beyond merely winning a PR campaign, Oreskes and Conway conclude; it had much deeper ideological underpinnings.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“[U]nlike conventional PR, the aim was not simply to create a positive impression of a particular business or even of the whole industry,” they write. “Rather, the goal—expressed outright in numerous documents—was to change the way Americans thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation” altogether.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Core to NELA’s campaign, Oreskes and Conway wrote, was the idea “that free-market capitalism was the embodiment of freedom, writ large, and that any restriction on the freedom of any business would put us on a slippery slope to tyranny.” </b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Private ownership of the electricity industry was, up until then, relatively rare in the United States and even more so throughout the industrializing world. But as of 2017, <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">72 percent </a>of U.S. electricity customers got their power from investor-owned utilities. NELA’s campaign, in other words, changed history as we know it. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, its successor EEI and its member companies continue to <a href="https://www.energyandpolicy.org/eei-campaign-institute/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">wage</a> <a href="https://www.energyandpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ratepayers-funding-Edison-Electric-Institute-and-other-organizations.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">deceptive</a> PR campaigns to fight renewable energy and <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2018/05/23/koch-edison-electric-institute-wooing-interior-department-vincent-devito/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">bolster</a> the <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/07/12553/utility-trade-group-funds-alec-attack-americans-who-use-solar" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">continued consumption</a> of fossil fuels.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The NELA campaign’s legacy, however, goes far beyond its sector alone, according to Oreskes and Conway. “Perhaps most importantly, NELA pioneered a strategy of insisting that these claims were true, regardless of the facts,” they wrote.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Broadening their view beyond the fossil fuel industry, Oreskes and Conway also detail how the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/national-association-manufacturers/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a> (NAM) propelled similar efforts across other industries during the same era. Like EEI, fast-forwarding to the present-day, NAM has served as a key node of climate denialism</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But in its earliest days,<b> NAM maintained a different sinister focus, according to <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>: advocating against child labor laws amid what the authors described as a “pandemic” of workplace deaths both among young workers and the adult workforce. </b>The sheer volume of such deaths served as one of the first major wakeup calls in the need for a more active regulatory state, the book maps out.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In making its case for child labor and against regulations protecting children, NAM espoused “that the federal government had no business interfering in business” and called such a notion “socialistic in its origin, philosophy and associations.”</font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Libertarian Fringe to (Neo)Liberal Mainstream</font></span></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While both NELA and NAM laid the groundwork for a paradigm that’s alive and well today, their ideas were not adopted globally until the formation of the<b> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/mont-pelerin-society/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Mont Pelerin Society</a>, </b>a group created in 1947 that like EEI and NAM has received close scrutiny from DeSmog for years. Oreskes and Conway devote a whole chapter of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em> to Mont Pelerin. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like NELA and NAM, Mont Pelerin’s roots lay in anti-regulatory and business-funded ideology. <b>But unlike them, Mont Pelerin came out of academia a</b>nd via professors committed to the now globally pervasive neoliberal ideology they created. Mont Pelerin inspired similar groups that are, like it, still active today, such as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-industries-inc/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Industries</a>-funded <a href="https://www.desmog.com/institute-humane-studies-george-mason-university/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Institute for Humane Studies</a> at <a href="https://www.desmog.com/george-mason-university/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">George Mason University</a> and the University of Chicago’s free market-oriented Economics Department. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oreskes and Conway point to a legion of like-minded groups arising by the 1970s, riding the momentum of an academic community devoted to neoliberal ideology, and reacting to the gains made in environmental protection and other areas. Formation of these groups accelerated after the metaphorical call-to-arms made in a memo written to the<b> U.S. Chamber of Commerce by the then-tobacco industry attorney and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. </b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Known today as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2011/08/23/40th-anniversary-lewis-powell-memo-launching-corporate-propaganda-infrastructure/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Powell Memo</a>, the 1972 letter called for Big Business to undergo “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Powell Memo, Oreskes and Conway concluded, spearheaded free market fundamentalist groups such as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/cato-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Cato Institute</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-family-foundations//#!/stream" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Family Foundations</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/scaife-family-foundations/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Scaife Family Foundations</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/21/beyond-koch-brothers-scaife-olin-bradley-jane-mayer-dark-money/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Olin Foundation</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/heritage-foundation/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Heritage Foundation</a>, and the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/federalist-society-law-and-public-policy-studies/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Federalist Society</a>, among others. All of these entities, and the groups they fund or work alongside in coalitions, remain powerful forces within U.S. and global politics. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> further highlights how those think tanks and companies also played a</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> key role in defeating the 2009 and 2010 congressional push, led by then-</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">President Barack Obama, to pass a federal, market-oriented climate bill known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">. </span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Critics would charge that the policy approach taken in the bill, emblematically, embodies the very “market fundamentalist” ethos reigning over U.S. politics for the past 100-plus years. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the congressional debate over a bill that would have<b> enshrined the policy lever of cap-and-trade, the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/02/11/study-confirms-tea-party-was-created-big-tobacco-and-billionaires/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch-funded Tea Party network</a> also ascended</b>[</font><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">vid]</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">previous congressional pushes in the 2000s for what was ultimately a business-friendly climate policy, had enjoyed bipartisan support. But <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em> explains how as the <b>Tea Party</b> network took flight, Republican Party support for the climate bill — and broader climate action — eroded to a near-zero level. It has mostly remained there since.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the same time, the reality of climate change had and has continued to become all the more clear. That reality though, Oreskes and Conway wrote, clashes with the <b>religion of market fundamentalism. </b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“[H]ad the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market-place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale?” the authors asked of the legion of climate-change deniers who helped to kill the bill. “To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but now.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Although this “quasi-religious belief” in the power of the market holds the greatest sway with conservatives, Oreskes and Conway argue that belief in the “magic of the marketplace” has become an intoxicating ideology within<b> liberal circles too, including within climate policy debates.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Even in supposedly liberal enclaves like Cambridge, Massachusetts,” where <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Oreskes teaches at Harvard</a>, “many people think climate change will be best addressed by technological innovation in the marketplace,” the co-authors surmise, perhaps in alluding to the prototypical <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2020/05/24/ernest-moniz-labor-fracking-clean-coal-geoengineering/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">industry-friendly</a> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/18/doe-moniz-blueprint-carbon-capture-pipelines/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">policies</a> pushed by former Obama Administration U.S. Secretary of Energy <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/04/09/ernest-moniz-keystone-xl-contractor-american-petroleum-institute-fracked-gas-exports/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ernest Moniz</a> — a professor at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The rise of right-wing think tanks helped spread the pro-market, antigovernment gospel across the country and insert what had been decidedly niche views into the mainstream,” the authors explained of the ideology’s spread. Other scholars have referred to this as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/21/beyond-koch-brothers-scaife-olin-bradley-jane-mayer-dark-money/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">“force field” effect</a>, moving the gravitational pull of what’s possible within U.S. politics further and further toward right-wing, corporate-created policy solutions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ideological roots of anti-democracy, anti-environmental, and anti-regulatory campaigning explored in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em> also serve as the heart and soul of the book <a href="https://www.desmog.com/climate-cover-up/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming</span></a>, written by DeSmog co-founders James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you have learned from DeSmog’s reporting shedding light on the climate change denial machine, you’ll love <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>, an excerpt from which follows below. The book is a must-read for all students of the sordid history of public relations and governmental capture. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Go <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">grab a copy</a> and <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">check</a><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/widening-the-lens-of-accountability-with/id1439735906?i=1000581948495" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> out</a> some <a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-november-16-2022/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">recent</a> interviews on the book, as well, for further background. A <a href="https://vimeo.com/727392720" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">video</a> of Professor Oreskes discussing the book can also be seen below.</font></p><h2 id="h-excerpt-from-the-big-myth" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Excerpt from <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</span></font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">In the 1990s,</span> as capitalism was being declared triumphant in many quarters, scientists had proved that man-made climate change was under way.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="1" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">1</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Climate change was textbook market failure. It arose from everyday economic activity— using fossil fuels—but was about to impose a huge external cost, inundating major coastal cities around the globe, making hurricanes and cyclones even more deadly than they already were, and dislocating tens or even hundreds of millions of people. It was also textbook environmental injustice, as poor people would almost certainly bear the brunt of a problem created by the rich.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But it also had a textbook answer: putting a price on carbon</b>. Economists called this solution a “Pigouvian tax”—after the Cambridge economist Arthur Pigou, who in the early twentieth century had helped develop the concept of negative externalities. (Pigou also suggested it would be reasonable for governments to subsidize activities that had “positive externalities,” such as education.) The idea of pricing social and environmental costs of carbon was hardly radical; Pigou was firmly mainstream, a respected scholar at Cambridge University, a leading figure in what came to be known as the Cambridge school of economics.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="2" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">2</a></span> The obvious benefit of the Pigouvian approach was that it remedied the market failure directly by embedding information—in this case scientific information—into the price of fossil fuels. Then consumers could decide for themselves whether or not to buy more expensive fossil fuels, and producers of alternatives could compete on a level playing field.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The Clinton administration proposed to address climate change through a Pigouvian tax, the so-called “BTU” tax</b> (referring to the heat content of fuels as measured in British Thermal Units).<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="3" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">3</a></span> But it was opposed—indeed, ridiculed—by a broad coalition of conservatives, including, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and virtually every right-wing think tank in Americ</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">a.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="4" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">4</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The notorious Global Climate Coalition, a network of fossil fuel producers and users that in the 1990s successfully prevented the U.S. Congress from ratifying the Kyoto protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, was originally established as a committee of the National Association of Manufacturers. Even though the idea of putting a price on carbon was a mainstream economic approach to market failure, Republicans framed it as just another example of Democrats’ penchant to “tax and spend.” The Wall Street Journal mocked it as Al Gore’s “favorite tax</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.”</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="5" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">5</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In his 1979 paper on nonmarket failure, economist Charles Wolf had slipped into his conclusion the idea that one cause of nonmarket failure was “premature but politically effective demands for government action.”</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="6" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">6</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> In the 1990s, many Republicans picked up on this theme, arguing that it was premature to act on climate change. Even at the time, that was wrong: scientists already had a consensus that man-made climate change was under way and likely to be very costly.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="7" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">7</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> To act in the 1990s would have been appropriate. It would have been timely. But Clinton was unable to generate congressional support for action; Republican opposition made it clear that any proposal to put a price on carbon would be dead on arrival. In 1999, when </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Vice President Al Gore ran for president on a platform prioritizing climate change, journalist Gregg Easterbrook (brother of Judge Frank Easterbrook) embarrassed him on the campaign trail with a false story that his mentor—climate champion Roger Revelle—had experienced a deathbed conversion and died thinking climate change was not a serious problem.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="8" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">8</a></span> (He had not.)</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As the 1990s became the 2000s—and scientists declared the evidence “unequivocal”—market fundamentalist did not adjust their views. To the contrary, their opposition hardened.</b><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="9" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">9</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2006, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, concluded on behalf of the UK government that, yes, fixing climate change would be expensive—perhaps as much as 1 percent of global GDP per annum—but not fixing it would cost much more: at least 5 percent and perhaps as much as 20 percent.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="10" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">1</a><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">0</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Here was a solid argument from a man who could scarcely be accused of being any kind of -ist other than an economist. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In response, conservatives dug in deeper. Senator Ted Cruz promoted the canard that global warming had stopped; Senator James Inhofe called it a liberal conspiracy to bring down capitalism.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="11" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">11</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> No matter what solutions were proposed—market-friendly or not—the right wing found reasons to oppose them. The science wasn’t settled (they claimed). It would be too expensive to fix. We could just adapt. It was all a hoax. Often these claims were couched in libertarian terms, as when in 2011 former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed the push to address climate change “the newest excuse to take control of lives.”</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="12" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">12</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The singular exception to climate denial in Republican Party leadership was Senator John McCain. He and conservative Democrat Joe Lieberman introduced Climate Stewardship acts in 2003, 2005, and 2007 to address the carbon dioxide emissions </b>that drive climate change by creating an emissions trading system—a proven mechanism, albeit more complicated than a Pigouvian tax. But when given the chance to use it to address climate change, Republicans refused.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="13" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">13</a></span> The 2003 bill failed on mostly party lines, with a few Democrats and nearly all Republicans in opposition. But it was a closer call than many expected, and soon Congress faced intense lobbying pressure against climate legislation, <b>particularly from NAM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce</b>. The 2005 version came to a vote and failed 60–38, with only a handful of Republicans voting yea.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="14" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">14</a></span> Two years after that, McCain could not even persuade Republican leaders to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="15" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">15</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2009, Congress tried once more, with the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as <b>Waxman-Markey, </b>for its primary sponsors, Massachusetts representative Ed Markey and California representative Henry Waxman). For the fourth time in a decade, Congress had the opportunity to address climate change using a market mechanism, and for the fourth time rejected it.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> The bill barely passed the Democratic-led House; nearly all Republicans voted against, as did Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states (and a few Democrats who found the bill too weak). The Senate never brought it to a vote. Democrats concluded they could not overcome the “wall of opposition” they faced from their Republican colleagues, opposition fortified by fierce lobbying.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="16" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">16</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> One analysis concluded that, in the eighteen months between January 2009 and June 2010, electric utilities, oil and gas companies, trade associations, and think tanks spent at least $500 million against climate change legislation.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="17" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">17</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Another study tracing anti-climate lobbying back to 2003 places the figure at closer to $1 billion.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="18" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">18</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">The fossil fuel</span> industry’s economic interests in preventing climate action have always been obvious; less understood is how it has camouflaged those interests. No one ever said, “I am denying climate change to protect corporate profits.” They said they were protecting jobs, protecting the economy, and protecting free markets from government “encroachment.” They said they were <b>fighting for capitalism and freedom</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But historically, capitalism has never been just one thing: Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century vision of a democratic, distributed marketplace populated by small bankers and businessmen was a far cry from the industrial capitalism that developed in early nineteenth-century England and Germany—with its cruel “Satanic mills”—or the monopolies and managerial capitalism that came to dominate America in the late nineteenth century, much less the globally financed capitalism that emerged at the end of the twentieth century</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. China has liberalized its markets while continuing to oppress and even murder its ethnic and religious minorities. There are many capitalisms. American market fundamentalists fight for a form of capitalism that is both brutal and ignorant: that brushes aside market failure, anticompetitive practices, and external costs, in part by denying the facts of science, the facts of history, and the necessary role of government in making capitalism work.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="19" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">19</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question is not whether government should set limits that prevent individual autonomy from producing collective harm, the question is where we draw the lines. That is not an economic question, it is a political one. Market fundamentalists have managed to distract from the political aspects of these decisions and frame them as questions of “economic freedom.” Thus, a reasonable response to climate change is rejected as unreasonable “government encroachment.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All this may make one wonder: was this ever <b><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">really</span> </b>about capitalism? Or freedom? Or was it all just one long, semi-continuous, shape-shifting defense of the prerogatives of big business? Of freedom for capital and capitalists? Or had the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market- place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale? To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but<b> <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">now.</span></b></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ref bib...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">crop d detat not kind to clinton or BO, mere extension of b2? djt //?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">----</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/how-the-cowardice-of-the-obama-administration-foreshadowed-the-impunity-of-trump/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/how-the-cowardice-of-the-obama-administration-foreshadowed-the-impunity-of-trump/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How the cowardice of the Obama administration foreshadowed the impunity of Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President-elect Donald J. Trump arrives with U.S. President Barack Obama at the Capitol for the 58th Presidential Inauguration in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2017. More than 5,000 military members from across all branches of the armed forces of the United States, including reserve and National Guard components, provided ceremonial support and Defense Support of Civil Authorities during the inaugural period. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Rebecca Gordon / Tom Dispatch February 18, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On February 5th, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald J. Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In other words, Trump’s pre-election boast that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters” proved something more than high-flown hyperbole. (To be fair, he did lose one Republican “voter” in the Senate — Mitt Romney — but it wasn’t enough to matter.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate’s failure to convict the president will only confirm his conception of his office as a seat of absolute power (which, as we’ve been told, “corrupts absolutely”). This is the man, after all, who told a convention of student activists, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president. But I don’t even talk about that.” Except, of course, he does.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The day after the Senate vote, a decidedly unchastened Trump spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast, brandishing a copy of USA Today whose banner headline contained a single word: “Acquitted.” After disagreeing with the prayerful suggestion offered by Arthur Brooks, former head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (and a couple of millennia earlier by one Jesus of Nazareth), that we should love our enemies, the president promptly accused both Mitt Romney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of inadequate prayerfulness. He lumped Romney in with people “who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong” and accused Pelosi, not for the first time, of lying when she says she prays for him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s endless boasting about his invulnerability can certainly be blamed on the dismal swamp of his own psyche, but there’s another at least partial explanation for it — and it lies in the country’s collective failure to hold anyone responsible for crimes committed since 2001 in the “war on terror.” If one administration can get away with confining detainees in coffinlike boxes and torturing them in myriad other ways, why shouldn’t a later one go unpunished for, to take but one example, putting migrant children in cages?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forward, Not Backwards</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2009, Barack Obama prepared to enter the Oval Office promising to end the worst excesses of the previous administration’s war on terror. Although he did close the CIA’s detention centers and prohibit torture, he also quickly signaled that no one would be held accountable for the already well-documented practice of torture promoted by the administration of George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney. A week or so before Obama’s inauguration, the president-elect was already assuring ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that, although there would be prosecutions if “somebody has blatantly broken the law,” on the whole he believed “that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In particular, Obama was concerned that government operatives should not be hampered in the future by fear of prosecution for past acts sanctioned by top officials:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“And part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As it turned out, they need not have worried. On April 17, 2009, as Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate reported in the Washington Post, “President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reassured CIA employees anew yesterday that interrogators would not face criminal prosecution so long as they followed legal advice.” As Holder put it, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The legal advice in question had been contained in a series of infamous memos written by that department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) between 2002 and 2005. In them, the legal definition of torture was “clarified” for a nervous attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, and the CIA. One memo, drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and signed by Assistant Attorney General for the OLC Jay Bybee, explained that to “constitute torture” under the law, physical pain “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” To meet the legal definition of psychological torture, mental suffering “must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not surprisingly, despite the previous administration’s stamp of approval on what were euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a three-year investigation by the Obama Justice Department into CIA interrogation practices came to a whimpering end in August 2012, when Holder announced that the only two remaining torture cases, both of which involved deaths in U.S. custody, would be dropped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A year earlier, as Glenn Greenwald reported in the Guardian, Holder had decided not to prosecute anyone in 99 other cases of “severe detainee abuse.” The two remaining cases concerned the death by torture and hypothermia of Gul Rahman in the CIA’s notorious Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan in 2002 and that of “Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in CIA custody after he was beaten, stripped, had cold water poured on him, and then [was] shackled to the wall” at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among those Holder presumably chose not to charge were the men responsible for designing and implementing the protocols that led to Rahman’s death, along with tortures like waterboarding and “walling” (the slamming of the back of a prisoner’s head repeatedly into a wall). Thus ended any hope of holding torturers legally accountable in the United States of America, early proof of the kind of impunity that has, in the Trump years, spread elsewhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Torturer Redux</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shortly before Donald Trump’s recent triumph in the Senate, one of those “extraordinarily talented people” hailed by President Obama resurfaced in a courtroom not as a defendant, but as a hostile witness. James Mitchell was called to the stand by the defense at pre-trial hearings at the Guantánamo detention facility in Cuba, the offshore prison for detainees in the war on terror set up by the Bush administration in 2002. In the dock almost 18 years later are five men, long held there, who have been accused of involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The most notorious is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, often described as 9/11’s “mastermind.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitchell is one of the two psychologists — the other being John “Bruce” Jessen — who designed the CIA’s main torture program. He has the honor of being considered the inventor of waterboarding, a series of techniques aimed at producing water-induced suffering that have formed part of the armamentarium of torturers for centuries. (Perhaps “reinventor” would be the more accurate term.) Mitchell was, in fact, the first person to perform waterboarding in the war on terror, as well as being the architect of walling, of confining victims in tiny boxes, and of a variety of other grim “enhanced interrogation techniques” first employed at CIA “black sites” set up around the world in those years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Called by defense attorneys to describe the torture their clients endured, a “defiant” Mitchell told the courtroom, “I’d get up today and do it again.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg explained, Mitchell was not actually talking about what he did to any of the five defendants in the dock at Guantánamo, although he did torture some of them. He was referring to the first prisoner to be waterboarded under the CIA torture program, Saudi national Abu Zubaydah who was waterboarded a total of 83 times over the course of a single month. President George W. Bush’s secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, claimed (falsely, as it turned out) that he was “if not the number two, very close to the number-two person in” al-Qaeda and that he had run an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, as the Obama administration acknowledged in 2010, Abu Zubaydah was never even a member of that group, let alone one of its key lieutenants. Captured in a joint CIA-FBI operation in Pakistan in 2002, he would be shuffled between CIA black sites for the next four-and-a-half years, including the Agency’s secret “Strawberry Fields” site at Guantánamo. In part because of what the CIA did to him, Abu Zubaydah remains imprisoned there to this day. According to CIA recommendations, he is never to be “placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevertheless, Mitchell oversaw the 83 times Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded in a single month at a CIA black site in Thailand, during which he came close to death by drowning. On one of those occasions, as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report on CIA torture revealed, he was observed to be “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not unlike our president, Mitchell seems to be deeply hurt by what he perceives as unfair criticism. “You folks have been saying untrue and malicious things about me and Dr. Jessen for years,” he complained to defense attorneys at the Guantánamo hearing. People may have said mean things about him, but in reality, far from being held accountable for torture, James Mitchell has luxuriated in his impunity, earning royalties from his book Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying To Destroy America and giving speeches arranged through the Worldwide Speakers Group (which advertises him as “psychologist, CIA interrogator, author”) at $15,000 to $25,000 a pop.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nor did Mitchell fare poorly while employed by the CIA. In fact, the Agency paid the company Mitchell and Jessen formed $81 million for their work. In addition, their contract included language guaranteeing that the U.S. government would cover any legal costs they incurred as a result of that work through the year 2021. This would turn out to come in handy when, in 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the two of them on behalf of three of their victims: Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, the detainee who had died of exposure to cold at the Salt Pit. Mitchell and Jessen settled the case in 2017 for an undisclosed sum, also paid by the U.S. government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It Never Gets Easier</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You’d think it would get easier over time. For almost two decades, I’ve been writing about torture. By now, you might imagine that I’d be at least somewhat desensitized to details about and descriptions of it. Instead, each time I dive into that cesspool, it appears even more disgusting and frightening.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If it’s hard for me, someone who has never been tortured and has spoken face-to-face with only a few torture survivors, imagine what it must be like for those who have survived the Bush-era torture programs, which went on for an unknown number of years. Actually, you don’t have to do too much imagining, since their testimony about how such abuse affected some of them and how lasting those effects were is available. In 2016, New York Times reporters Matt Apuzzo, Sheri Fink, and James Risen published a series of articles under the title “How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of those profiled was Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a plaintiff in the ACLU suit against Mitchell and Jessen. A Tanzanian native, Salim was picked up in Mogadishu, Somalia, and turned over to U.S. operatives for reasons that remain murky. It’s most likely he was a victim of mistaken identity (and he wouldn’t have been the only such prisoner in the war on terror). We know, at least, that the Americans who bundled him onto a plane were expecting a Yemeni Arab and someone with much lighter skin. He ended up in Afghanistan at a black site he recalls as “the Darkness,” which was, in fact, the Salt Pit. There he was beaten, walled, shackled in complete darkness, exposed to relentless loud music, confined in a coffinlike box, repeatedly hung by the wrists — once for 48 hours straight — and drenched at times with ice water until he feared he was drowning.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eventually, the CIA moved Salim to a prison at Bagram Airbase outside the Afghan capital, Kabul. In 2008, he was turned loose in Afghanistan with only the clothes he was wearing. The International Red Cross arranged a flight home to Zanzibar, Tanzania, where he still lives, haunted by the Darkness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2010, the Times‘ Risen wrote, “Dr. Sondra Crosby of the Boston University School of Medicine, a physician, a Navy reservist and an expert on torture, was asked by Physicians for Human Rights, a New York-based group, to evaluate Mr. Salim.” She found that he was emaciated “like a skeleton” and “plagued by profound distress, inability to eat, and inability to sleep.” Risen’s report continues:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“‘He describes himself as a ghost walking around the town,’ she added. She noted other symptoms: flashbacks, short- and long-term memory loss, distress at seeing anyone in a military uniform, hopelessness about the future and a strong avoidance of noise. ‘He reports that his head feels empty — like an empty box,’ she said.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times series also chronicled the suffering of another plaintiff in the case against Mitchell and Jessen: Mohamed ben Soud. He, too, was held at the Salt Pit, where his ordeal involved many of the same torture methods Salim had endured. Today, he has full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder. “He is racked with self-doubt and struggles to make simple decisions. His moods swing dramatically,” reported the Times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, Do No Harm?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo have also revealed the rarely discussed role of doctors and other medical workers in the U.S. torture program. Apparently the reason we know that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times is that, as James Mitchell testified in January, a doctor was indeed present inside the torture chamber and used a little metal click-counter to keep track. According to the Times’s Rosenberg, however, doctors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“did more than count waterboarding sessions. Government investigations and evidence in the pretrial hearings of the men… show doctors conducted ‘rectal rehydration,’ carried out rectal cavity searches, and examined swollen feet and legs of captives who were sleep deprived for days by being shackled in painful positions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is undoubtedly more to be uncovered about the role of medical personnel at the CIA’s global black sites. Indeed, there is more to be uncovered about all the ways in which detainees were stripped not only of their human rights but, at least in the minds of their tormentors, of their very humanity. At one point in his testimony, for instance, Mitchell turned to the attorney for Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the five 9/11 defendants. Speaking of Charlie Wise, the CIA interrogation chief and the rest of his crew, Mitchell said, “Looks like they used your client as a training prop.” According to the Guardian’s Julian Borger, in fact, under Wise’s leadership, “trainees had to use each of their techniques on Baluchi and other inmates in order to earn certification.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Mitchell himself used Abu Zubaydah as a demonstration prop, so bigwigs at the CIA would be implicated in what he was doing. Borger reports that “he waterboarded Abu Zubaydah even though he was quite sure the detainee had no actionable intelligence to surrender. It was done purely as a demonstration for the agency VIPs.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Price of Impunity</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thanks to the cowardice of the Obama administration, no CIA officer or any higher official in the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, no psychologist, no doctor, no one at all has yet been held accountable for the years of torture practiced on a global scale in the war on terror. Donald Trump himself, of course, got elected while publicly proclaiming about waterboarding that “I like it a lot” and he reportedly considered Gina Haspel’s black-site torture experiences a positive part of her resume when considering her for CIA director. Mitchell, of course, continues to make speeches and collect his royalties. George W. Bush has been rehabilitated as a kindly portrait painter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is it really so surprising, then, that we now have a man in the Oval Office who believes he has “the right to do whatever I want as president”? The history of the twenty-first-century war on terror suggests that, if he doesn’t have the right, he certainly appears to have the power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author most recently of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes and is now at work on a new book on the history of torture in the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Copyright 2020 Rebecca Gordon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-why-trumps-incessant-vendetta-against-obama-is-a-losing-proposition/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-why-trumps-incessant-vendetta-against-obama-is-a-losing-proposition/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Here’s why Trump’s incessant vendetta against Obama is a losing proposition</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly February 19, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barack Obama took advantage of an anniversary on Monday to poke at one of the lies being repeated by his successor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barack Obama</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@BarackObama</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since his administration began, Trump has attacked Obama’s record of job creation and touted his own. Perhaps long-time readers here at the Washington Monthly will enjoy the fact that I intend to expose that lie based on information provided by Steve Benen and Kevin Drum. Here’s Benen:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we discussed after the release of the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump has now been in office for three full years (36 months), and during that time, the economy has created 6.56 million jobs. In the final full three years of Obama’s presidency, the economy created 8.08 million jobs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, Drum put the specifics into a chart.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It will surprise no one that data means nothing to Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Did you hear the latest con job? President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration. He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing. NOW, best jobs numbers....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the saying goes, Obama has taken up residence in Trump’s head—rent-free.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jonathan Chait recently documented another way that Trump’s efforts to undo Obama’s legacy are failing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the Obama administration’s most effective climate initiatives was tightened regulations of auto emissions, which will reduce carbon emissions by billions of tons. Trump, of course, is trying to roll it back. The good news is that he is almost certainly too incompetent to pull it off in his first term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When regulatory agencies write new rules, they have to follow some fairly complicated legal procedures, which often have to hold up under judicial scrutiny. Historically, agencies win about 80 percent of the time against legal challenges. But Trump’s regulations lose about 90 percent of the time, because his administration is staffed with incompetent hacks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The courts will soon be fighting over Trump’s plan to weaken auto-emission standards. Trump is highly likely to lose, because, as two new reports show, the incompetence of his regulators reached almost mind-boggling proportions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reports Chait referred to come from an article by Robinson Meyer that details how the Trump administration’s attempt to kill the auto-emission standards has been a “complete debacle” and one from Coral Davenport predicting a dead end for Trump’s efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What also caught my eye was the fact that Trump’s regulations (or attempts to roll back Obama’s regulations) have failed in court about 90 percent of the time. That number comes from the Institute for Policy Integrity, which has been tracking this administration’s record in the courts. Of the 70 cases they have followed, Trump has won four and lost 66. As Chait points out, typically federal agencies have won about 80 percent of the time, so this administration’s record is worse than abysmal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In writing about the effort to roll back Obama’s fuel-efficiency standards, Davenport identified the problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In January, administration staff members appointed by President Trump sent a draft of the scaled-back fuel economy standards to the White House, but six people familiar with the documents described them as “Swiss cheese,” sprinkled with glaring numerical and spelling errors (such as “Massachusettes”), with 111 sections marked “text forthcoming.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The cost-benefit analysis showed that consumers would lose more money than they would gain. And, because the new auto pollution rule lacks the detailed technical analyses required by law, the regulations would be unlikely to withstand court challenges…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More basic issues holding up the regulations point to another problem: the skeleton crew of inexperienced political appointees who are heading the drafting process may not be up to a job that would usually be handled by career federal workers with decades of expertise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Chait rightfully suggested, Trump’s actual goal of humiliating Obama can’t be included in the analysis. So his incompetent staff are left with trying to manipulate the numbers and the science, which don’t support the president’s goals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Trump, things like math, science, and expertise are anathema. His only concern is to prop up his own narcissistic ego and demean anyone he views as a threat. That is why Trump’s vendetta against Obama’s legacy will always be a losing proposition. His incompetence overshadows his malevolence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">obama2 816</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/us/politics/obama-era-legacy-regulation.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/us/politics/obama-era-legacy-regulation.html</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Mr. Obama entered office in January 2009 determined to make his mark by passing bold new laws, not by tinkering with rules. Rahm Emanuel, his first chief of staff, and other top aides mapped out an ambitious two-year agenda that included a health care overhaul, new banking laws, a remake of the federal student loan program, infrastructure spending and stricter limits on pollution.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The new president had a skeptical streak when it came to the value of regulation, influenced by his friend Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who had long argued that the government should more rigorously assess the benefits of new regulations. Mr. Obama liked that idea so much that he named Mr. Sunstein to lead the White House office that oversees rule-making.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“The president is not somebody who is intuitively or inherently a regulator,” said Howard Shelanski, who followed Mr. Sunstein in that role in mid-2013. He said Mr. Obama conveyed a simple message: “‘If we can get a good result without regulating, let’s do that.’”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But after eight years of a Republican administration, many Democrats were eager for the government to lean more forcefully on the levers of regulatory power, and officials within the federal bureaucracy felt emboldened.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The White House did resist some ideas. It shut down efforts by Lisa Jackson, Mr. Obama’s first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to increase the regulation of ozone, a decision that environmentalists viewed as a betrayal.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Betsey Stevenson, a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, took the lead in building a case that contractors who paid higher wages would attract and retain better workers, increasing their productivity.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The theory holds, for example, that if the lunch lines at a federal office building moved a little more quickly because of more competent, motivated cafeteria workers, every employee in those lines would save a few minutes a day and have more time to work, thus increasing productivity.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The idea has its roots in work by George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and his wife, Janet Yellen, now chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, who decided in the early 1980s to pay their babysitter above-market wages as motivation.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">With the president’s blessing, the E.P.A. also became more aggressive. The agency asserted federal authority to protect thousands of waterways and wetlands, proposed to cap carbon emissions at new and existing power plants, raised emissions standards for trucks and airplanes, and called for new limits on methane, mercury and ozone.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“He has been much more ambitious and aggressive on environmental regulation than any other president we’ve had,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a lawyer pursuing legal challenges to some of Mr. Obama’s signature environmental rules.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Courts have now temporarily blocked the administration’s water rules and delayed the power plant limits on carbon dioxide emissions. The next administration will also have considerable leeway to determine how quickly new rules are carried out, and how strictly enforced.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">attack:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>Obama’s Special Brand of Climate Doomsaying Obama speaks to the media in Paris, December 1, 2015. </div><div>
</div><div>CHARLES C. W. COOKE<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>December 1, 2015 4:35 PM @CHARLESCWCOOKE </div><div>
</div><div>In Paris yesterday morning, President Obama suggested rather dramatically that unchecked “climate change” would mean “submerged countries, abandoned cities, and fields that no longer grow.” Almost immediately, social media was set alight by mockery and the rolling of eyes. And with good reason. For decades now, Americans have become accustomed to hearing tales of imminent destruction, and to finding themselves very much alive after that vaunted seventh seal has been opened. Whatever power the environmentalists’ admonitions may once have had over the national psyche, they seem now to be received with a dull disinterest — or, worse, laughter. The Boy Who Cried Wolf was a warning, not an instruction manual. Do our doomsayers know this? Perhaps they do not. Over the past 15 years or so, the residents of these United States have been subjected to an almost endless stream of hysterical, green-tinged hype. In 2009, we were told by Al Gore that “the entire north-polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.” (It wasn’t, and the disaster date has been recalibrated for the middle of the 21 century.) A year earlier, we were told by ABC that, come June 2015, New York City would be underwater, gas would cost over $9 a gallon, and a carton of milk would set consumers back almost thirteen bucks. (Instead, the price of gas has been cut in half, milk has remained as cheap as ever, and New York has managed just fine.) And a year before that, we were told by the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, that “if there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.” (It’s a claim that his successor is now repeating over and over again in Paris, with different years serving as the point of no return each time, natch.) Oddly enough, nobody seems to have learned anything from these mistakes. As I write, the sillier among America’s progressive commentariat are trying desperately to blame the rise of ISIS on excessive Western carbon emissions. It won’t end well. It’s hard work selling radicalism when people can’t see the ill you’re attempting to fix. Given that he seems to occupy a similar space within the system, it may be tempting to cast Barack Obama as just another cog in this long line of whirring Malthusian doomsayers. In truth, though, the president’s approach is a touch more sophisticated than most, and deserves to be treated as such. Unlike, say, serial embarrassment Paul Erlich, Obama generally tries to avoid making things up from whole cloth or extrapolating beyond all defensible reason. Instead, he prefers to play a clever linguistic shuttle-game, in which the same carefully selected words are used to defend two dramatically different positions. When intending to make a dramatic impact on the international stage, Obama and his team speak in the heady language of Armageddon, referring liberally to submerged countries and swallowed cities and fields that just won’t grow. But when challenged on the specifics, they run backward and hide behind the nitpicking analysts at PolitiFact and the Washington Post. This, I’d venture, is no accident.</div><div>
</div><div>Instead, Obama has noticed just how much meaning is contingent upon context. When he shifts into Doomsayer Mode, the president intends his audience to hear “submerged countries” and think of Denmark; to hear “abandoned cities” and think of Los Angeles; to hear “fields that no longer grow” and think of the Dordogne. Later on, when he is back in his usual Detached Professor Mode, his inner lawyer comes out to parse the claims more critically. At this point, the images of Valhalla fade into the background and the pedantry begins. “This terrible storm was the product of climate change” becomes, “Actually, some storms may be getting a little worse.” “This lovely country will sink” becomes, “Actually, one waterlogged island is now a bit deeper underwater than it was before.” “The world will struggle to grow food” becomes “Actually, there are some fallow fields in California . . . ” Provided that the “Yes, Obama Was Right” headlines can be written without a complete abandonment of standards, the president wins. Why did he say this morning that, “You go down to Miami and when it’s flooding at high tide on a sunny day, the fish are swimming through the middle of the streets”? We’ll know soon enough, I’m sure. EDITORIAL: The Climate-Change Distraction in Paris It’s hard work selling radicalism when people can’t see the ill you’re attempting to fix. It’s even harder work transmuting the modest proposition that “Mankind is having an impact on the climate” into the alarming claim that “Mankind is irrevocably destroying the earth.” Both tasks become a good deal easier when you know how to bend your language to suit each and every occasion, and goodness knows Barack Obama is a past master at that. — Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review. </div><div>
</div><div>Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427838/paris-climate-talks-obama-rhetoric?target=topic&tid=1916</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>ANDREW STUTTAFORD<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>May 21, 2016 5:45 PM From the Portland Tribune: In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools. “Eliminating doubt”. Unanimously, naturally. To teach the science of climate change is, of course, fine. To teach the cult of climate change is not. To quote Richard Feynman, a man who knew a bit about what being a scientist involved: “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt”. Back to the Portland Tribune: The resolution passed Tuesday evening calls for the school district to get rid of textbooks or other materials that cast doubt on whether climate change is occurring and that the activity of human beings is responsible. The resolution also directs the superintendent and staff to develop an implementation plan for “curriculum and educational opportunities that address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools. Get rid of the wrong books. Teach “climate justice”. Sounds like the spirit of free inquiry and open debate is alive and well in Portland. Bill Bigelow, a former PPS teacher and current curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a magazine devoted to education issues, worked with 350PDX and other environmental groups to present the resolution. Rethinking Schools looks to me like a magazine of the hard left (but perhaps that’s just me, check out its website and judge for yourself). Its curriculum editor is not, I would think, the most convincing advocate of objectivity in the classroom… Bigelow is also the co-author of a textbook on environmental education, A People’s Curriculum for the Earth. Asked if this resolution will cause the district to buy new textbooks, such as his book, Bigelow said Rethinking Schools is a nonprofit, not a money-maker. OK. Bigelow said the district already has climate-change literacy curriculum, such as at Sunnyside Environmental School, and he wants that knowledge to spread. Set the controls for the heart of Sunnyside’s website, and discover this: Our school community and students are taught to critically examine dominant culture norms, seek multiple perspectives and counter stories… Some doubts are more equal than others, it seem</div><div>
</div><div>Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/435701/climate-change-heating-fahrenheit-451</div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">tag BO 12/15</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">...In a weekly address to the nation, Obama said his administration will roll out new measures, including fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty vehicles and will work towards meeting the goal of 50 percent clean energy across North America by 2025.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Here's the transcript of his weekly address:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Hi, everybody. One of the most urgent challenges of our time is climate change. We know that 2015 surpassed 2014 as the warmest year on record—and 2016 is on pace to be even hotter.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When I took office, I said this was something we couldn't kick down the road any longer—that our children's future depended on our action. So we got to work, and over the past seven-and-a-half years, we've made ambitious investments in clean energy, and ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions. We've multiplied wind power threefold. We've multiplied solar power more than thirtyfold. In parts of America, these clean power sources are finally cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. And carbon pollution from our energy sector is at its lowest level in 25 years, even as we're continuing to grow our economy.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">We've invested in energy efficiency, and we're slashing carbon emissions from appliances, homes, and businesses—saving families money on their energy bills. We're reforming how we manage federal coal resources, which supply roughly 40 percent of America's coal. We've set the first-ever national standards limiting the amount of carbon pollution power plants can release into the sky.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">We also set standards to increase the distance our cars and light trucks can go on a gallon of gas every year through 2025. And they're working. At a time when we've seen auto sales surge, manufacturers are innovating and bringing new technology to market faster than expected. Over 100 cars, SUVs, and pick-up trucks on the market today already meet our vehicles standards ahead of schedule. And we've seen a boom in the plug-in electric vehicle market—with more models, lower battery costs, and more than 16,000 charging stations.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But we're not done yet. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll release a second round of fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty vehicles. We'll take steps to meet the goal we set with Canada and Mexico to achieve 50 percent clean power across North America by 2025. And we'll continue to protect our lands and waters so that our kids and grandkids can enjoy our most beautiful spaces for generations.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">There's still much more to do. But there's no doubt that America has become a global leader in the fight against climate change. Last year, that leadership helped us bring nearly 200 nations together in Paris around the most ambitious agreement in history to save the one planet we've got. That's not something to tear up—it's something to build upon. And if we keep pushing, and leading the world in the right direction, there's no doubt that, together, we can leave a better, cleaner, safer future for our children.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For a deeper dive:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">News: The Hill, IB Times, CBS News, VOA News</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Commentary: New York Times, Binyamin Appelbaum & Michael D. Shear analysis</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.ecowatch.com/obama-climate-change-1973638586.html</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ref</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Mr. Obama entered office in January 2009 determined to make his mark by passing bold new laws, not by tinkering with rules. Rahm Emanuel, his first chief of staff, and other top aides mapped out an ambitious two-year agenda that included a health care overhaul, new banking laws, a remake of the federal student loan program, infrastructure spending and stricter limits on pollution.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The new president had a skeptical streak when it came to the value of regulation, influenced by his friend Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who had long argued that the government should more rigorously assess the benefits of new regulations. Mr. Obama liked that idea so much that he named Mr. Sunstein to lead the White House office that oversees rule-making.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“The president is not somebody who is intuitively or inherently a regulator,” said Howard Shelanski, who followed Mr. Sunstein in that role in mid-2013. He said Mr. Obama conveyed a simple message: “‘If we can get a good result without regulating, let’s do that.’”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But after eight years of a Republican administration, many Democrats were eager for the government to lean more forcefully on the levers of regulatory power, and officials within the federal bureaucracy felt emboldened.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The White House did resist some ideas. It shut down efforts by Lisa Jackson, Mr. Obama’s first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to increase the regulation of ozone, a decision that environmentalists viewed as a betrayal.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Continue reading the main story</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But other rules were allowed to proceed. Kate Hanni, an advocate from Napa, Calif., for the rights of airline passengers, had tried for years to persuade the government to address a series of incidents in which flight delays left passengers trapped for hours on planes that had already left the gate, often in cabins with stinking toilets, weak air-conditioning and no food. The Bush administration put Ms. Hanni on a task force consisting mostly of airline executives, which concluded in the fall of 2008 — over her forceful and repeated objections — that the public was best served by allowing the airlines to make their own decisions.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Weeks after the task force released its report, Ms. Hanni was invited to Washington in December 2008 to meet with Robert S. Rivkin, the head of Mr. Obama’s transportation transition team. Democrats in Congress had introduced legislation to address the issue, but Mr. Rivkin asked Ms. Hanni if she would support new regulations instead. She would back anything enforceable, Ms. Hanni said...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Value of Regulation</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As the Obama administration turned toward regulation, it sought to strengthen its hand by changing the estimates of what a life is worth. Those estimates allowed the administration to argue that the benefits of many regulations were greater than previously appreciated. This push was particularly important as a justification for stronger environmental protections.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A White House push to pass a sweeping climate change bill in 2009 failed to pass in Congress, but almost from the outset some of Mr. Obama’s aides were working on a Plan B. Mr. Sunstein and Michael Greenstone, the first head of Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, created an internal task force to put a dollar figure on the cost of carbon emissions.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The government does not try to quantify all the benefits of proposed regulations. When it came to environmental regulations, the calculation was particularly limited. Analysts often assigned a dollar figure to just one kind of damage — emissions of “small particles” — and then stacked up the costs of the proposal against the benefits of fewer particles.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Quantifying a second kind of damage, from carbon emissions, would broaden the assessed benefits of new regulations — potentially justifying new and stronger restrictions. In 2010, the administration issued a report that estimated the economic impact of global warming, including agricultural disruptions, increased flooding and health problems. It pegged the cost of carbon emissions at $21 per ton. An updated assessment in 2013 raised the price tag to $33.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When the administration announced stricter standards for automobile fuel efficiency in 2011, it cited the reduction in carbon emissions as a key benefit. Those benefits have since been cited in several dozen new regulations, including the hotly debated 2015 rule seeking to restrict emissions from new power plants.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Regulators also revisited a more fundamental concept: the value of life. Not just a theological or philosophical abstraction, that figure is used to assess how much spending the government should require to prevent death or injury.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Department of Transportation, for example, increased the estimated value of preventing one death from $6.6 million in 2009 to $9.4 million last year, adjusting for inflation. The department made an even larger adjustment for preventing injuries, for example raising the value of averting a broken arm from $103,000 in 2009 to $442,000 in 2015, also adjusting for inflation. The increases have helped to justify new requirements for stronger roofs and rearview cameras on automobiles and seatbelts on buses.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The new carbon cost estimate, in particular, has drawn fire from industry groups who regard it as an arbitrary assessment intended to further an environmental agenda.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Environmentalists, however, argue that the government is still significantly understating the actual impact. A 2014 analysis by economists at Stanford University, published in the science journal Nature, estimated that the cost of carbon was actually $220 per ton, far above the government’s official estimate.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Mr. Greenstone, in a recent interview, defended the government’s number as a result of a technocratic process that was not influenced by political pressures.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Our job as faceless bureaucrats sitting in windowless rooms was not to do science but to summarize the frontier of science,” he said. “ And I feel that we were faithful to that.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Cashing in on All of the Above: U.S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Shakuntala Makhijani, July 9, 2014</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Cashing in on All of the Above: U.S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Oil Change International</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">July 2014</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A new report by Oil Change International, Cashing in on All of the Above: U.S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama, demonstrates the huge and growing amount of subsidies going to the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. every year. In 2013, the U.S. federal and state governments gave away $21.6 billion in subsidies for oil, gas, and coal exploration and production.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The value of fossil fuel exploration and production subsidies from the federal government have increased by 45 percent since President Obama took office in 2009 – from $12.7 billion to a current total of $18.5 billion – a side effect of his Administration’s “All of the Above” energy policy that promotes the U.S. oil and gas boom and amounts to nothing less than climate denial. President Obama has repeatedly tried to repeal some of the most egregious of these subsidies, but these attempts have been blocked by a U.S. Congress that has been bought out by campaign finance and lobbying expenditures from the fossil fuel industry.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://priceofoil.org/2014/07/09/cashing-in-on-all-of-the-above-u-s-fossil-fuel-production-subsidies-under-obama/</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama to Limit Arctic, Atlantic Offshore Oil Drilling as Part of New Five-Year Plan</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Virtually all of the Arctic and much of the Atlantic coast of the U.S. will become...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">exec order but gop congr did not fight?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://insideclimatenews.org/news/11012016/congress-climate-change-omnibus-budget-bill-flood-standard-obama</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">President Obama's plan to safeguard the nation from increasing flood risk due to climate change was quietly green-lighted by Congress last month in the 2016 omnibus budget bill.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It marks one of the only actions Congress took on global warming in all of 2015, and it came as a surprise considering the longstanding opposition from Republicans. And it is a critical one, several policy experts said. It will impact billions of dollars of federally funded construction projects across the country, from highways and bridges to hospitals and housing complexes, at a time when flooding in the U.S. is getting worse every year because of climate change.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"The policy illustrates the awareness that we should not build things that are vulnerable to flooding now or in the future," said Rob Moore, a policy analyst and director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Water and Climate Team. "That may not seem like a revolutionary idea, but unfortunately it is. We have a long history of building things that easily get soggy."</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama's plan, executive order No. 13690, mandates that all federally funded projects located in a floodplain be built higher and stronger than previously required. It is the first update to the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard since the policy was created 38 years ago. It applies to both new construction and rebuilding following a disaster.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Under the old standards, enacted by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, buildings in the floodplain had to be elevated to the 100-year flood level. Under Obama's executive order, buildings must now be elevated 2 or 3 feet above the 100-year flood level (the higher standard is for "critical" infrastructure, like hospitals), or at the 500-year flood level. A third option is for federal agencies to analyze future climate change scenarios and build according to those projections, such as for sea level rise or expected heavier rain events....</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BREAKING: Minutes ago, the White House announced a temporary pause to new coal mining leases on public lands, effectively stopping production of at least 3.5 billion tons of coal!</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">but...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.alternet.org/environment/during-paris-climate-summit-obama-signed-exxon-koch-backed-bill-expediting-pipeline</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Despite dozens of failed attempts by one of the most anti-environmental Congresses in history to roll back conservation laws, the Obama administration and lawmakers were able to secure several victories for America’s public lands in 2015. Below are the top 5 biggest wins for conservation:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The creation of six new national monuments</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In 2015, President Obama protected more land as national monuments than any year in his presidency -– more than 1 million acres. Using the Antiquities Act, the president this year designated six new national monuments: Basin and Range in Nevada, Berryessa Snow Mountain in California, Waco Mammoth in Texas, Pullman in Chicago, Browns Canyon in Colorado, and Honouliuli in Hawaii. Many national monuments have over the years become some of our most iconic national parks, such as Grand Canyon, Arches, Acadia, and Petrified Forest. Despite efforts by some Republicans to auction off public lands or transfer them to state control, public support for national public lands remains high and President Obama’s efforts to conserve public lands for future generations has been well-received by local communities, sportsmen, conservationists, and business leaders.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">An international climate agreement in Paris</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The December 12th international climate agreement in Paris is a clear win for the climate, the clean energy industry, and the President’s Clean Power Plan. But it is also a win for America’s public lands, which are affected by both the impacts of climate change and the sprawling footprint of fossil fuel development. The agreement in Paris will help the United States and the rest of the world cut pollution and spur a transition to more renewable fuels.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Saving America’s best parks program and other conservation laws from congressional attack</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">During their frenetic December negotiations over the year’s must-pass omnibus spending bill, lawmakers were able to reach an agreement that kept dozens of anti-conservation and public lands riders out of the final legislation. As part of this agreement, Congress also managed to prevent America’s best parks program, theLand and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), from disappearing. Though many would have liked to see the LWCF, which is the country’s largest funding source for land, water, and wildlife conservation, fully funded and permanently extended, the bill was given a three-year extension and firm funding for 2016.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Conservation measures for the greater sage grouse</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In September, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that the greater sage grouse — an iconic ground-dwelling bird in the West –- will not need the protection of the Endangered Species Act to survive. The decision to not list the bird as an endangered species reflected the success of partnerships between private landholders and state and federal agencies to implement voluntary conservation measures to protect the species. The federal government, for example, implemented several scientifically-based land use management plans that collectively set aside more than 60 million acres of habitat for the bird.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Sage grouse are not the only wildlife that benefit from the plans; at least 250 other species depend on the sagebrush steppe habitat. “Together, we have shown that voluntary efforts joining the resources of private landowners, federal and state agencies, and partner organizations can help drive landscape-level conservation that is good for sage grouse, ranching operations, and rural communities,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The plan is regarded as one of the largest and most complex land conservation successes in recent history.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The protection of the Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In August, Congress unanimously passed the “Sawtooth National Recreation Area and Jerry Peak Wilderness Additions Act,” which established three new wilderness areas in the Boulder-White Clouds region of Idaho. The new wilderness areas together permanently protect nearly 280,000 acres of public lands.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“This is a remarkable area,” said President Obama when he signed the bill. “It is used by fishermen, hunters, rafters, people taking hikes. It is not only beautiful, but it’s also an important economic engine for the state — attracting tourism, creating jobs.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The designation — the only major wilderness bill that Congress passed in 2015 — benefits wildlife ranging from bighorn sheep to mule deer and native cutthroat trout by providing undisturbed habitat. The designation also guarantees permanent public access to tens of thousands of acres to hikers, campers, hunters, anglers, and others outdoor enthusiasts.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Jenny Rowland is the Research and Advocacy Associate for the Public Lands Project at Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter @jennyhrowland</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/wave-of-regulation-looms-in-2016/</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama is preparing to unleash a wave of new regulations in 2016 as he looks to shore up his legacy on public protection issues during his final year in office.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Labor are all expected to finalize major federal rules that critics say are long overdue. The regulations include a final rule from the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that will force companies to compare the paychecks of their top executives with company performance, final rules for cigars and electronic cigarettes proposed well over a year ago, and a final regulation to protect constructions workers from deadly silica dust.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Here’s a look at the top regulations expected to come from the administration in 2016.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Pay for performance</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to finalize its “pay for performance” rule that will require publicly traded corporations to disclose how much their top executives are paid and compare that to the companies’ overall financial performance.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The agency, which first proposed the rule in May, set an October 2016 deadline for the final rule last month. The SEC contends it will allow shareholders to make more informed decisions when electing directors.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Arbitration</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Regulatory experts are expecting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to propose new rules in 2016 to protect consumers’ right to file or join a class-action lawsuit against a financial company.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">More and more companies are adding arbitration clauses to contracts that prevent consumers from resolving a dispute through the court system. Instead, the language, which can often be found in credit card and cellphone contracts, typically states that disputes about a product can only be resolved by privately appointed individuals or arbitrators.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Dodd-Frank directed the CFPB to do a study of arbitration agreements and issue a report of its findings to Congress. After the agency completed the report in March, it announced plans to proceed with a rulemaking.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">E-cigarettes</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Industry and health groups may not agree on the rules, but both are exasperated by the delay in first-ever regulations from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for cigars and electronic cigarettes.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Health groups were frantic in the days leading up to the release of the $1.1 trillion government spending deal earlier this month, fearing that industry had successfully lobbied for a change that would have exempted many e-cigarette and cigar products from the restrictions.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Industry groups, however, came up empty-handed and will now wait to see if attempts to lobby the White House for last-minute changes paid off. Those organizations are most concerned about a provision in the proposed rule that would require all products that hit store shelves after Feb. 15, 2007, to apply retroactively for approval, a process that companies say would put them out of business.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The FDA originally said the final rules would be out last summer but changed the deadline to November. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is reviewing the final rule, was still meeting with industry and health groups last week.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Silica dust</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Department of Labor is in the process of finalizing a years-in-the-making rule to protect workers from silica dust.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO’s safety and health director, said the labor group has been awaiting the rule since 1997. Exposure to silica dust, common at construction worksites and shipyards, can cause an irreversible lung disease known as silicosis.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Labor Department sent the final rule to the OMB last week for final review, a process that can take up to 90 days.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“I’m sure they will give it a thorough review and it’ll be issued sometime, we hope, in the first quarter of the year,” Seminario said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Workplace injuries</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The DOL is gearing up for a busy year, with plans to also finalize a rule that will require employers to report and keep records of workplace injuries and illnesses. Seminario said the draft of the final rule went to OMB in October. Labor groups are hoping to see a final rule in the first quarter.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Overtime pay</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Perhaps the most sweeping action to in the new year will be a final rule to extend overtime pay to nearly 5 millions white-collar workers. The Labor Department proposed the rule in June as a result of an executive order President Obama issued in May. Under the rule, any worker earning up to $50,000 annually would be eligible for overtime.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Department spokesman Jason Surbey said the agency is reviewing the more than 270,000 comments it received.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“We’re on track to issue a final rule by July 2016, with an effective date sometime after that,” he said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Predatory lending</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The CFPB is planning a February rollout of its proposed rules to crack down on predatory payday lenders.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The agency released a framework for the rules in March that considered forcing lenders to ensure a borrower’s ability to repay a loan, limiting short-term credits to 45 days or less and establishing a 60-day “cooling-off” period for borrowers who take out three loans in a row.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Payday lenders have already balked at the rules, calling them unnecessary and damaging for consumers who have nowhere else to turn for their short-term lending needs.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Food safety</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The FDA is expected to issue final requirements in March for the sanitary transportation of animal and human food.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The rules, which were are mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, establish requirements for shippers, carriers and receivers to use sanitary practices to ensure that that food does not become contaminated when being transported. The final rules were originally expected to be released in April 2015.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Financial advisers ?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Labor Department is also expected to issue a final rule in 2016 that would require financial advisers to disclose more information to their clients about the compensation they receive. ??In October, under mounting pressure from business groups, Labor Secretary Tom Perez said the department planned to make some changes to the contentious regulations — commonly called the “fiduciary rule” — but would not detail what those changes would be.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Methane</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to finalize new rules to limit methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. The rule would require drillers to use new technologies to track and block both accidental and purposeful leaks when producing and transmitting oil and gas. The EPA has set a June deadline for the release of this final rule.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-how-bad-america-could-get-if-1-loving-republican-won-2016</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> Krugman now has some official numbers on his side to make the case that having Obama in the White House instead of Mitt Romney has made a serious difference to the country. In Monday's column, Krugman looks at the I.R.S.’s tax tables for 2013, which were released last week, and concludes that elections have real consequences. His argument is directed to people on the left, who are disappointed with what Obama has been able to accomplish and argue that there is no major difference between the two parties—except Bernie Sanders—and that the wealthy will always dominate.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Well, yes, but there has been some measurable progress, Krugman argues. </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For one of the important consequences of the 2012 election was that Mr. Obama was able to go through with a significant rise in taxes on high incomes. Partly this was achieved by allowing the upper end of the Bush tax cuts to expire; there were also new taxes on high incomes passed along with the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">If Mitt Romney had won, we can be sure that Republicans would have found a way to prevent these tax hikes. And we can now see what happened because he didn’t. According to the new tables, the average income tax rate for 99 percent of Americans barely changed from 2012 to 2013, but the tax rate for the top 1 percent rose by more than four percentage points. The tax rise was even bigger for very high incomes: 6.5 percentage points for the top 0.01 percent.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">These numbers aren’t enough to give us a full picture of taxes at the top, which requires taking account of other taxes, especially taxes on corporate profits that indirectly affect the income of stockholders. But the available numbers are consistent with Congressional Budget Office projections of the effects of the 2013 tax increases — projections which said that the effective federal tax rate on the 1 percent would rise roughly back to its pre-Reagan level. No, really: for top incomes, Mr. Obama has effectively rolled back not just the Bush tax cuts but Ronald Reagan’s as well.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The point, of course, was not to punish the rich but to raise money for progressive priorities, and while the 2013 tax hike wasn’t gigantic, it was significant. Those higher rates on the 1 percent correspond to about $70 billion a year in revenue. This happens to be in the same ballpark as bothfood stamps and budget office estimates of this year’s net outlays on Obamacare. So we’re not talking about something trivial.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And, of course, Obamacare would have been killed if Romney had won, meaning the 17 million Americans insured since 2012 and rising would remain uninsured.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://ecowatch.com/2015/12/28/obama-gifts-to-big-oil</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">whoohoo http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/obama-rejects-keystone-xl-pipeline-victory-environmental-activists</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">keep fed land ocean assets in gnd</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/25/obama-climate-legacy/</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see epa clean power wins</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">8/15 http://www.alternet.org/environment/obama-just-created-carbon-cap-and-trade-program</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">715</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> least five Republican governors, including two presidential hopefuls — Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana — have indicated they may defy new federal rules that are part of President Obama's climate change agenda. The rules — which are meant to reduce the nation's carbon emissions and speed the transition to renewable energy and a low-carbon economy — require existing power plants to reduce their carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030 (from 2005 levels). This goal is to be achieved by federally-enforceable state plans submitted to the EPA.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The gubernatorial response follows Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell's campaign, launched earlier this year, to get state governors to refuse to carry out the new regulations, which are slated to be finalized this summer.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">RELATED: EPA Moves to Regulate Airplane Emissions Under Clean Air Act, Citing Danger to Human Health</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In a March letter to the nation's governors, Sen. McConnell issued a warning:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">[S]ubmitting a plan exposes states to the real danger— allowing the EPA to wrest control of a state’s energy policy if they or any other federal agency becomes dissatisfied with a state’s progress in reaching federal emissions goals. As both the EPA and other environmental groups have noted, a state plan must be “federally enforceable.” The meaning of this language is clear: as the EPA sees it, a state-issued plan would give the agency broad new authority to control that state’s energy future — not to mention the ability to place the blame for future consequences squarely on the state itself.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He also quoted Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, who called the EPA’s plan “constitutionally reckless”, saying it “usurp[s] the prerogatives of the States, Congress and the Federal Courts — all at once.” Tribe, a long venerated legal scholar and Constitutional lawyer who was Barack Obama's mentor, has lately been the target of criticism for his representation of Peabody Energy, a coal company, in its fight against the EPA's carbon emissions rules....</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">President Obama's climate change action plan is set to be the cornerstone of his climate and environmental legacy. It includes:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Carbon pollution standards</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A solar job training program for veterans</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Five utility-scale renewables projects on public lands</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Partnerships with industry to phase down HFCs</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Advancing solar deployment and energy efficiency</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Reducing methane emissions</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“EPA has an obligation under the Clean Air Act to develop a model federal plan, something that many states have asked EPA to do so it can provide an example for states developing their own plans,” said Thomas Reynolds, a spokesman for the agency. “EPA’s strong preference is to approve state plans, but we know that setting out a federal plan is an important step to ensure that our Clean Air Act requirements are fulfilled.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On June 24, House Republicans advanced a bill that seeks to allow states to opt out of the EPA rule, requiring states to limit their carbon emission from existing power plants. The bill, introduced by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), was passed in a 247-180 vote. It would essentially allow governors to ignore the federal regulation, which is a centerpiece of Obama's climate agenda.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“The EPA’s latest attempt at imposing burdensome regulations represents an unprecedented meddling with Texas in order to push the Obama administration’s liberal climate change agenda,” said Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.alternet.org/environment/gop-governors-line-defy-obamas-new-climate-rules</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072015/solar-breakthrough-could-be-way-renters</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Solar Breakthrough Could Be on the Way for Renters</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama administration strategy would funnel $520 million into community or shared solar farms, where renters can buy shares or memberships into projects.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">White House Approves EPA's Plan to Regulate Airplane Emissions (The Hill)</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama Administration Bans Offshore Oil Drilling Along New Stretch of California Coast (San Jose Mercury News)</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://grist.org/climate-energy/obama-climate-change-poses-immediate-risk-to-national-security/</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.alternet.org/environment/4-main-arguments-president-obama-tying-climate-change-national-security</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">U.S. Makes Historic Climate Pledge Ahead of Paris Talks, Joins EU, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The U.S. released its plan today, putting it ahead of such major countries as...4/15</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Climate change is an example of the hardest problems to solve,” said Obama. “The hardest thing to do in politics and in government is to make sacrifices now for a long-term payoff.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He asserted his determination to push in the right direction, given the influence his office offers him.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“I can have as much of an impact on the things that are important to people as anybody on the planet,” said Obama. “If I can change how the country thinks about [climate change] as a serious immediate threat, not some distant vague thing, if I can encourage and gain commitments from the Chinese to put forward a serious plan to start curbing their greenhouse gases, and that allows us to leverage the entire world for the conference that will be taking place later this year in Paris, and if I’m able to double fuel efficiency standards and if I’m able to make appliances more efficient and to double the production of clean energy—if I’m able to do all those things now, when I’m done, we’re still going to have a heck of a problem. But we will have made enough progress that the next President and the next generation can start building on it and you start getting some momentum.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When Smith brought up Sen. James Inhofe’s recent stunt of throwing a snowball on the floor of the Senate to “prove” climate change isn’t happening, saying “that would be funny if he were’t the chairman of the environment committee,” Obama responded, “That’s disturbing.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But he said he thinks the upcoming generation will be nurturing fewer Inhofes.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Here’s what makes me optimistic,” he said. “You take Sasha and Malia—16 and 13 —and the sophistication and awareness that they have about environmental issues, compared to my generation or yours —they’re way ahead of the game.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">That’s reflected in a recent poll taken by Ipsos that found 90 percent of 8th graders believe climate change is real and caused by human activity, while in the Senate close to 50 percent are somewhere on the climate-denier spectrum.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“There’s always going to be resistance to change and some of that is going to be generational,” said Obama. “I guarantee you that the Republican party will have to change its approach to climate change because voters will insist upon it. The challenge on something like climate change is there comes a point of no return and you do have to make sure we get at this thing quick enough and with enough force to be able make a difference. On climate change, 90 percent of Democrats agree with me, and 90 percent of Republicans oppose any action on it and a sizable proportion of their party denies it even exists. It’s not both sides arguing and ceasing gridlock, you’ve got one side that is denying the facts.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When Smith asked Obama why he believed there was this resistance and this disconnect, Obama pulled no punches.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“In some cases, you have elected officials who are shills for the oil companies or the fossil fuel industry and there’s a lot of money involved,” he said. “Typically in Congress, the committees of jurisdiction are populated by folks from places that pump a lot of oil and pump a lot of gas.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama Signs Executive Order to Cut Government Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 40 Percent</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"As part of his commitment to lead by example to curb the emissions that are driving climate change, today President Obama...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/19/obama-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions/</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On March 19, President Obama signed a new executive order titled “Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade,” which will guide federal agencies toward more sustainable government operations. From planning for resiliency in the face of natural disasters and climate change to implementing more stringent stormwater management practices, the order addresses many aspects of landscape architecture and community planning. Consequently, reaching the order’s targets will require federal agencies to collaborate with thought leaders in both professions, as well as state and local governments, to seek out and implement industry best practices.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The prominence the new executive order places on sustainable design and management of federal facilities means the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) — as the civilian government’s primary landlord — has not only great responsibility, but also the great opportunity to increase its role as a government leader insustainability.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">GSA has previously proven its appetite for innovation in sustainable building technologies through programs such as The Green Proving Ground, which uses the size and variety of the agency’s real estate portfolio to test nascent technologies for large-scale commercial viability. That same size and variety will be valuable as GSA and other federal agencies tackle challenges, such as the following:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">installing green infrastructure on federal properties to manage stormwater and wastewater;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">reducing the use of water for irrigation and industrial purposes;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ensuring that a percentage of existing federal buildings and all planned federal buildings achieve energy net-zero and strive for water net-zero;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">promoting sustainable commuting through locating federal facilities near public transit; and</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">incorporating climate change preparedness and resilience into planning for new facilities and renovations of existing facilities, and into facility management practices.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Read the full text of the executive order and GSA Acting Administrator Denise Turner Roth’s response to the order.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">cave </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Obama administration has pulled a measure to limit ammunition in assault rifles and handguns under pressure from the gun lobby. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had called for banning the M855 "green tip" ammunition in AR-15s, because it could be used to pierce through police body armor. But the proposal was withdrawn after a campaign by the National Rifle Association and several Republican members of Congress.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/11/12/3591284/us-china-climate-deal</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Just over a month before the United Nations convenes on September 23 in New York City to discuss climate change and activists gather for a week of action, the Obama White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) argued it does not have to offer guidance to federal agencies it coordinates with to consider climate change impacts for energy decisions.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It came just a few weeks before a leaked draft copy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest assessment said climate disruption could cause “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.” CLICK TO READ MORE</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama Opened Floodgates for Offshore Fracking in Recent Gulf of Mexico Lease</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In little-noticed news arising out of a recent Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas lease held by the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the floodgates have opened for Gulf offshore hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">With 21.6 million acres auctioned off by the Obama Administration and 433,822 acres receiving bids, some press accounts have declared BP America a big winner of the auction. CLICK TO READ MORE</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He added that the White House had received about 10,000 postcards from UC Irvine students trying to get him to attend.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The president then shifted his focus and started discussing the environment.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Noting that the 18 warmest years on the planet on record have occurred since the graduates were born, Obama said, “The question is not whether we need to act… The question is whether we have the will to act before it’s too late.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama later stated that UC Irvine was at the forefront of the issue, having created the first Department of Earth System Science in the country.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">but more to do</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Climate change is no longer a distance threat, but has moved into the present,” Obama said.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The president then challenged the students to act on environmental issues, and discussed the various ways they could put their degrees to use in the field.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“We need scientists to design new fuels. We need farmers to help grow them,” he said. “We need engineers to invent new technologies. We need entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. We need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high tech, zero carbon components. We need builders to hammer into place the clean energy age.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Obama added, “We can do this. We can make a difference. You can make a difference. And the sooner you do, the better.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">During the speech, he also announced that a $1 billion competitive fund was being created for communities that were being impacted by severe weather.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Read more: http://ktla.com/2014/06/14/president-obama-in-socal-to-deliver-uc-irvine-commencement-speech-2/#ixzz34pTbJkCQ</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">===</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Continue reading the main story</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But other rules were allowed to proceed. Kate Hanni, an advocate from Napa, Calif., for the rights of airline passengers, had tried for years to persuade the government to address a series of incidents in which flight delays left passengers trapped for hours on planes that had already left the gate, often in cabins with stinking toilets, weak air-conditioning and no food. The Bush administration put Ms. Hanni on a task force consisting mostly of airline executives, which concluded in the fall of 2008 — over her forceful and repeated objections — that the public was best served by allowing the airlines to make their own decisions.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Weeks after the task force released its report, Ms. Hanni was invited to Washington in December 2008 to meet with Robert S. Rivkin, the head of Mr. Obama’s transportation transition team. Democrats in Congress had introduced legislation to address the issue, but Mr. Rivkin asked Ms. Hanni if she would support new regulations instead. She would back anything enforceable, Ms. Hanni said.</font></div></div>