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Public Comment regs

320 massively belated, dunno how many time i read that period was limited in some way, and even more that massive (even record) numbers of comments ignored

also astroturf spam goes back to EBH?

see also CEA energy4us --> 2ndary (evil/crypto)

eg

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{fERC Fast-Tracks Requests for Regulatory Relief}_{}With {a stated goal of}_ ensuring the "reliability of the nation's energy infrastructure" during the COVID-19 emergency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has shortened the review period for requests and petitions to waive some regulations or extend deadlines for meeting them. FERC regulates the nation's electricity and natural gas suppliers, as well as oil pipelines.Status: Effective April 7, 2020.

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an 11 23

in a time of historic distrust in government, the United States Postal Service has accomplished something extraordinary: it remains a universally beloved federal agency. Second only to the Parks Service in public favorability (a jaw-dropping 77% approval rating, per Gallup), USPS is arguably also the most frequently-interacted-with component of the federal government: packages and letters are delivered to Americans’ mailboxes six days per week. But these warm feelings – already under threat by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s continued destructive leadership – could quickly chill if the Postal Board of Governors has its way.

At least four times per year, the Board (the governing body that votes on DeJoy’s agenda and has the sole power to fire him) holds an open session meeting, its sole formal contact with the public. In recent years, these meetings have concluded with a well-attended public comment period, where in-person and virtual attendees have excoriated DeJoy for embracing a privatization-friendly agenda. Just this year alone, public commenters at Board meetings have decried the mail slow downs and price hikes, demanded changes to DeJoy’s gas-guzzling and union-busting fleet plan, raised serious concerns about transparency of DeJoy’s facility consolidation plans, and pushed DeJoy to expand community services offered at the post office.

The future of the people’s most treasured public institution depends on public participation and feedback

But when the Postal Board of Governors met this week for their final open session of the year, there was one major difference from its previous quarterly meetings: virtual and remote public comments were, without explanation, banned. This abrupt new barrier to public accessibility led the number of public commenters – which in recent meetings has been a double-digit tally – to drop to 4. The decline in attendance was also likely compounded by an unexplained shift in the meeting time: whereas past meetings have been held at 4:00pm ET, Tuesday’s session was held at noon – the middle of the workday.

The Board’s decision to not allow virtual comments at the November 14th meeting follows another alarming recent attempt to suppress public input. At the August 2023 meeting, each public commenter was allotted only 25 seconds to speak, in sharp contrast to the typical 3 minute time limit. And past meetings were not beacons of accountability, either. The Postal Governors never responded to any comments raised by the public, and the comment period itself was always excluded from the official publicly available USPS recording of the formal session.

But next year, the Postal Board’s accountability problem will get even worse. During Tuesday’s meeting, Postal Board Deputy Secretary Lucy Trout explained, starting next year, the Postal Board will only hear public comments once per year in November. In other words, though the next three Postal Board meetings (February, May, and August 2024) are ostensibly “public sessions,” members of the public will have no opportunity to inform the Postal Board about their concerns until a year from now.

And it’s not as if postal workers, customers, and public advocates don’t have anything pressing to alert the Board about. On the contrary, DeJoy has continued to advance a destructive agenda that includes:

President Biden has utterly failed to hold DeJoy to account for any of this, instead inviting him to White House stamp ceremonies and staying silent as the Postmaster General laughably reinvents himself as a “Biden ally” to credulous reporters. This is particularly egregious given the President’s power to nominate members of the Postal Board of Governors:

The Postal Board’s restrictions on public comment are unacceptable. They must reverse course by allowing both in-person AND virtual public comments at ALL open sessions next year, and take further steps to improve accountability by responding to public comments and posting recorded comment sessions to the USPS website. Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration must publicly call out this shameful barrier to transparent government and fast-track filling the Moak and Zollars Postal Board seats with anti-DeJoy, pro-accountability reformers.

The future of the people’s most treasured public institution depends on public participation and feedback–that’s how public service works.

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weaponize  = evil?

6 22 an tom b raw story

With Republicans believing they will reclaim both houses of Congress in the November midterms --with the House the most likely going from a Democratic majority to a GOP majority -- the Washington Examiner is reporting that conservatives hope to make rule changes that will keep President Joe Biden from using a key presidential tool to effect change.

According to the Examiner's Haisten Willis, Republicans are not only being encouraged to limit Biden's ability to implement executive orders, but they are also getting help from the far-right lobbying group Heritage Action with proposed rule changes.

The day after Biden addressed executive orders in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, telling the late-night host, "I have issued executive orders within the power of the presidency to be able to deal with everything having to do with guns, gun ownership… all of the things that are within my power. But what I don’t want to do, and I’m not being facetious, I don’t want to emulate Trump’s abuse of the constitution and constitutional authority," the Examiner is reporting Republicans hope to derail any attempts he does make to use them.

The Examiner report states, "Biden has already attempted many unilateral actions through executive orders or executive branch agencies," before adding, "In preparation for this and to fight current executive proposals, conservatives are sharpening their advocacy tools to make sure their voices are heard within the White House. Many of the proposed rule changes require a public comment process, during which they can be slowed down or even defeated by popular backlash."

According to Heritage Action's Executive Director Jessica Anderson, "What I hear so much while I’m on the road is: ‘What can we do to impact the Bidenregime?’ There’s a lot of frustration where people feel like they’re calling a member of Congress and nothing happens because Republicans don’t have control.”

According to the Examiner's Willis, demanding a pause for public comments has previously worked well for conservatives, with the report pointing out that "Heritage Action's first big push came last summer when the Department of Education proposed plans to fund grants for programs based oncritical race theory. Heritage pushed a toolkit and sent activists to the Federal Register. More than 35,000 public commentswere sent in on the proposed rule ahead of the deadline, and the Education Department later walked back its plans."

According to Anderson, "By us engaging more forcefully and strategically in their rulemaking process, we'll be in the position to point out when the Biden administration is trying to circumvent and prevent Americans from weighing in."

She then added, "We should have been doing this a long time ago."

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AP seattle times

The Office of the New York Attorney General said in a new report that a campaign funded by the broadband industry submitted millions of fake comments supporting the 2017 repeal of net neutrality.

The Federal Communications Commission’s contentious 2017 repeal undid Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from slowing or blocking websites and apps or charging companies more for faster speeds to consumers. The industry had sued to stop these rules during the Obama administration but lost.

The proceeding generated a record-breaking number of comments — more than 22 million — and nearly 18 million were fake, the attorney general’s office found. It has long been known that the tally included fake comments.

One 19-year-old in California submitted more than 7.7 million pro-net neutrality comments. The attorney general’s office did not identify the origins of another “distinct group” of more than 1.6 million pro-net neutrality comments, many of which used mailing addresses outside the U.S.

A broadband industry group, called Broadband for America, spent $4.2 million generating more than 8.5 million of the fake FCC comments. Half a million fake letters were also sent to Congress.

The goal of the broadband industry campaign, according to internal documents the attorney general’s office received, was to make it seem like there was “widespread grassroots support” for the repeal of net neutrality that could give the FCC chairman at the time, Ajit Pai, “volume and intellectual cover” for the repeal.

The agency is supposed to use the comments it receives, from industry and public-industry groups and the public, to shape how it makes its rules.

The FCC did not immediately answer how or if it has changed its commenting process, but the acting chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, said in a prepared statement that “widespread problems with the record” of the 2017 proceedings “was troubling at the time” and the agency has to learn and improve the commenting process.

The fake comments had high-profile victims. In 2018, two senators, Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, said their identities were stolen to file fake comments for the net neutrality proceeding. “We were among those whose identities were misused to express viewpoints we do not hold,” they wrote to the FCC’s then-chairman, Pai, asking him to investigate the fake comments.

Many expect the FCC to try to reinstate net neutrality rules once a third Democratic commissioner is appointed. The agency is currently split half Democrat and Republican, which makes undoing the repeal unlikely.

Broadband for America’s website says its members include AT&T and Comcast as well as major trade groups for the wireless, cable and telecom industries.

The campaign hired companies known as lead generators which created the fake comments, but that the attorney general’s office had not found evidence that the broadband companies had “direct knowledge of fraud” and thus they had not violated New York law, according to the report.

Still, the report criticized the broadband industry group’s behavior as “troubling,” saying the campaign organizers ignored red flags and hid the broadband industry’s involvement.

The lead generators copied names and addresses they had already collected and said those people had agreed to join the campaign against net neutrality, the report said. One company copied information that had been stolen in a data breach and posted online.

The attorney general, Letitia James, also announced agreements with three of the companies that were responsible for millions of the fake comments, Fluent Inc., Opt-Intelligence Inc. and React2Media Inc., that require them to change practices in future advocacy campaigns and pay $4.4 million in fines. The companies did not reply to requests for comment.

The attorney general’s office and other law enforcement agencies are still investigating ″other responsible parties,” according to the report.

AT&T, Comcast and industry trade groups NCTA and USTelecom did not respond to questions.

Tali Arbel

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desmog afpm 4k of 12k comment were astro?

Thefirst and second blog posts at the Energy4US website reaffirm that Energy4US.org grew from CEA‘s SecureOurFuels campaign. [4],[5]

Before SecureOurFuels (SOF) began redirecting to the Energy4US website in 2015, contact information at the SOF website listed names of CEA staff members Casey O’Shea, Michael Whatley and David Holt. Michael Whatley and David Holt are two of the three founders and partners listed at HBW Resources. [6]

The Energy4Us.org website features CEA vice president Michael Whatley’s work on low carbon fuel standards repeatedly. Referring to Whatley as a “leading low-carbon fuel expert,” the website also features Whatley’s talking points on its “Gettin’ the facts out” page. [7], [8]

American Fuel & Petrochemical Alliance (AFPM)

According to old WHOIS website registration information, Energy4US was formerly registered to Victor Adams, head of websites and marketing at the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). Other deviations of energy4us.com and .org were also registered to Victor Adams. [9], [10]

American Petroleum Institute (API)

Paul Hartman, a senior policy advisor at API, introduced himself as “Coalition Advisor to Energy4US” in an email to a Rhode Island building and trade group. In the email, published at RI Future.org,Hartman described how “a few comments on Facebook” were suggesting that “Energy4US is ‘only a big Oil’ entity’.”[10], [11]...

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https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/7/headlines/new_york_ag_says_18_million_fake_comments_were_posted_in_support_of_2017_fcc_net_neutrality_repeal

new York’s attorney general says the nation’s largest broadband companies funded a secret campaign to influence the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules. Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday an investigation by her office found that in 2017, “The broadband industry hired marketing companies that co-opted and created identities and filed nearly 18 million fake comments with the FCC and sent over half a million fake letters to Congress in support of the repeal.” Supporters of net neutrality say protections are needed to preserve an open internet and to bar internet service providers from stopping or slowing down the delivery of websites.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/tennessee/

no lnx twt

Trump administration approves Tennessee's 'reckless' plan to slash Medicaid as pandemic rages

Portrait of Seema Verma, President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator

Andrea Germanos and Common Dreams January 10, 2021

Healthcare advocates are criticizing the Trump administration's approval—amid overwhelming opposition, a global pandemic, and as the number of uninsured Americans grows—of Tennessee's plan to overhaul funding of its Medicaid program, calling the decision "reckless" and "irresponsible."

Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, called it "a radical waiver that puts Tennessee's Medicaid beneficiaries at risk."

The state's Medicaid program, TennCare, covers 1.5 million people, or about one in five of the state's residents. The proposal would "fundamentally" transform how TennCare is managed and funded, The Tennessean reported. When Republican Gov. Bill Lee rolled out the plan in fall, the outlet added, the state received 1,800 written comments, of which just 11 were in support.

Kaiser Health News reported:

With just a dozen days left in power, the Trump administration on Friday approved a radically different Medicaid financing system in Tennessee that for the first time would give the state broader authority in running the health insurance program for the poor in exchange for capping its annual federal funding.

The approval is a 10-year "experiment." Instead of the open-ended federal funding that rises with higher enrollment and health costs, Tennessee will instead get an annual block grant. The approach has been pushed for decades by conservatives who say states too often chafe under strict federal guidelines about enrollment and coverage and can find ways to provide care more efficiently.

But under the agreement, Tennessee's annual funding cap will increase if enrollment grows. What's different is that unlike other states, federal Medicaid funding in Tennessee won't automatically keep up with rising per-person Medicaid expenses.

The approval, however, faces an uncertain future because the incoming Biden administration is likely to oppose such a move. But to unravel it, officials would need to set up a review that includes a public hearing.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the approval Friday. "It's no exaggeration to say that this carefully crafted demonstration could be a national model moving forward," said CMS Administrator Seema Verma—a Trump appointed official who's pushed attacks on Medicaid and has been described as "the architect of Indiana's punitive restrictions on Medicaid patients."

Michele Johnson, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, said in response to the approval that "no other state has sought a block grant, and for good reason," and warned of its impacts to those "in nursing homes, those struggling with mental illness, diabetes, cancer, and countless other complex conditions."

"Tennessee is one of a handful of states still denying Medicaid to its working uninsured, and the block grant is just another example of putting politics ahead of healthcare during this pandemic," said Johnson. "It's a political gimmick that jeopardizes access to healthcare for hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans by creating a state budget booby trap."

"State officials have an abysmal record of mismanaging programs that help those in need. The block grant will allow these same state officials to inflict further damage on Tennessee's healthcare system," she said.

The approval also drew outrage from a coalition of 21 patient and consumer groups including the American Lung Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and National Alliance on Mental Illness. They called the plan's approval "a reckless move that would reduce Tennesseans' ability to get needed healthcare" and urged the incoming Biden administration to halt its implementation.

"Our organizations have clearly and repeatedly voiced our deep concerns with Tennessee's proposal, as well as our strong opposition to block grants in Medicaid in general," the groups said Friday in a joint statement. "Per capita caps and block grants are designed to cap or limit the amount of federal funding provided to states, forcing them to either make up the difference with their own funds or make cuts to their programs reducing access to care for the patients we represent."

Such cuts, they warned, "will likely result in enrollment limits, benefit reductions, reductions in provider payments, or increased out-of-pocket cost-sharing for Medicaid enrollees. The approval specifically includes authority to limit prescription drug coverage, a dangerous proposal for patients."

Referencing the coronavirus pandemic, the groups added, "It is irresponsible to approve this waiver during this public health crisis, and especially to do so for an unprecedented 10-year period." Implementation of the plan stands to "limit Tennessee's flexibility in responding to recessions, pandemics, new treatments, and natural disasters," and thus "moves in the opposite direction of the lessons learned from 2020."

The Tennessean further noted:

The block grant approval, negotiated over about a year with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, still must get final approval from state lawmakers before it can be implemented. Lee now intends to present a joint resolution on the plan for the General Assembly's "immediate consideration," according to a news release.

The Tennessee Justice Center is urging its supporters to pressure lawmakers to block the plan.

"We are not surprised but are unsettled by this eleventh-hour action by the federal government during the height of the pandemic," said Jane Perkins, legal director for the National Health Law Program. "The approval raises so many issues," she said, "from the process the government used to approve this project to the specifics of how the government has cut into the healthcare safety net. Our legal team is investigating the enforcement and litigation options at this time."

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, also sounded alarm.

"This is an illegal move that could threaten access to healthcare for vulnerable people in the middle of a pandemic," Pallone tweeted Friday. He also expressed hope the incoming Biden administration would "move quickly to roll back this harmful policy as soon as possible."

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secret sci BS jammed thru

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23032020/trump-epa-health-secret-science-coronavirus

With the nation in a state of emergency over the coronavirus and Americans confronting a pandemic, the Trump administration has moved to expand and fast-track a proposal to limit the use of human health science in environmental decision-making.

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The move by the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday has prompted an outcry from public health officials and environmental activists. California's top environmental official, the chair of the House Science Committee, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others have called for the EPA either to abandon the potentially far-reaching proposal or to extend the public comment period on the plan.

The Trump EPA's proposal, called the "Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science" rule, would restrict the agency's use of studies that rely on confidential human health data, including some of the seminal studies linking air pollution to premature death. The effort has been in the works for two years, but the Trump EPA published a "supplemental" notice last week that substantially extends the rule's scope—and then gave the public only until April 18 to comment.

Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists'Center for Science and Democracy, called for the EPA to schedule at least three virtual public hearings and extend the comment period at least 30 days beyond when the federal government lifts the national emergency. Although agencies are not always required to hold public hearings on regulatory proposals, the EPA must do so for proposals related to the Clean Air Act—a mandate some agency critics cited in their call for more time.

"Bringing this extensive proposal forward during the COVID-19 pandemic is reckless and would divert critical public health expertise from the singular mission of protecting the public and controlling the pandemic," Rosenberg wrote in a letter to the agency. "The supplemental greatly expands the scope of the draft rule and the researchers whose work would be subject to it."

California Secretary of Environment Jared Blumenfeld also requested in a letterthat the comment period be extended at least 90 days: "A comment period that short would be inadequate for such a complex and consequential rule even in ordinary circumstances and is especially so in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic," Blumenfeld wrote.

Dena Adler, legal fellow for theEnvironmental Defense Fund,in a letter of protest to the agency, wrote, "It is unconscionable, dangerous and in contravention of due process under our nation's laws, that you would take this action today and require the public—including public health experts on the front lines of saving lives imperiled by the coronavirus, and the millions of Americans heeding government and private sector responses to prevent harm by sheltering in place, closing schools and working remotely—to comment" by the proposed deadline.

An EPA spokeswoman said in an email that the agency is considering all public comments it received on its original 2018 proposal, which numbered some 600,000. The agency said it will also consider the comments received in response to the recently published supplement notice. The spokeswoman noted that after the rule is finalized, there will be additional scientific review; Congress, in approving the agency's budget for the current fiscal year, directed that the EPA commission a National Academy of Sciences assessment of how the rule alters the agency's ability to use publicly available peer-reviewed scientific and medical studies.

"These additions and clarifications to the proposed rule will ensure that the science supporting the agency's decisions is transparent and available for independent validation while still maintaining protection of confidential and personally identifiable information," said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, in a statement earlier this month announcing his plan to amend the proposed rule.

In one sense, the amendments acknowledge the problems that were raised in the wake of its original 2018 proposal—including the logistical andethical issues in making public raw data from all studies used by the EPA in decision-making. The new EPA proposal calls for a "tiered" approach, laying out a process for the regulated industry ("stakeholders," in the words of the proposal) to obtain access to health science data for reanalysis, even if it cannot be made available to the general public.

But Gretchen Goldman, research director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Center for Science and Democracy, argued that this provision lays bare the Trump administration's motive in advancing the proposal.

"This was never about promoting transparency," she wrotein a blog last week. "It was always about finding ways for those outside of the scientific community to undercut the science supporting EPA decisions."

In its effort to restrict the EPA's use of health science, the Trump administration is taking up a cause that the fossil fuel industry and its allies have been championingfor two decades, ever since studies by the American Cancer Society and researchers at Harvard University established the connection between exposure to particulate matter pollution and premature death.

If the Trump administration succeeds in pushing the regulation through and barring the EPA from using those two studies, it will make it more difficult for the agency to show that the benefits of air pollution regulations outweigh the costs. Without the data to show that reducing air pollution saves lives, the EPA would be more vulnerable to fossil fuel industry challenges of its actions on the basis that they impose unreasonable costs. 

When Republicans led the House, it passed legislation three times seeking to restrict the EPA's use of health science based on confidential data, but the Senate never took up any of the bills. 

After the Trump EPA published its original proposal in 2018, the agency received an unprecedented response from the academic and scientific community. The editors of four major scientific journals published a rare joint statement in opposition to the move, and Harvard President Lawrence Bacow signed a letter on behalf of nearly 100 other administrators and researchers—the first time such an array of Harvard's most prestigious faculty joined in opposition to any EPA proposal.

The agency's Science Advisory Board requested an opportunity to weigh in, but the board is still working on its final advice to the agency after a contentious public teleconference in January. That advice is not expected to be complete until some time in April, making it unlikely that the board will have an opportunity to weigh in on the revised proposal before the April 18 deadline. An EPA spokeswoman said that the agency expects to receive and consider the SAB's advice before finalizing the rule.

Public comments are a key part of U.S. regulatory decision-making, and the feedback that agencies receive during the comment period can make or break rules in the almost inevitable litigation that follows any major agency decision.

Agencies must catalog and respond to all of the comments that they receive in their final actions on proposed rules. Not doing so would bolster the case that opponents of those rules could muster in federal court to have an agency's actions overturned as "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act.

A shorter comment period could mean that the EPA will have fewer public comments to address on the new aspects of its proposal. That could prove important in Wheeler's effort to finalize the rule by the end of this year.

Editor's Note: The story has been updated to add additional comment from the EPA.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

REGULATION

CORONAVIRUS

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS

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oct 09 ce and inhofe forced extend comment period b/c of data destruction (nope) mann bk?

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