dereg 2 bak
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">deregII318</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">deregII318</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see deregulation 1/17</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">also free marketeer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see 4 horses, eg pvtization related</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see REINS</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">619 new</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/deregulating-the-us-toward-disaster/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/deregulating-the-us-toward-disaster/</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">Deregulating the US toward disaster</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by John Buell / Common Dreams<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>June 26, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Trump’s xenophobic and protectionist agenda, thankfully often blocked by the courts, has received the lion’s share of media attention, his henchmen have enacted a whole series of game changing initiatives in the area of federal regulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deregulating such domestic concerns as transportation, occupational health and safety, the environment is hardly new. At least since the Reagan Administration every Republican President has promised to remove regulations. What is unusual if not literally unique about the Trump presidency is the scope of the deregulatory initiatives, the willingness to expand federal power in behalf of its deregulatory agenda, and the explicit, emphasis on profits as the goal of deregulation. One little corner of the regulatory universe illustrates the logic—and the dangers—of the deregulatory agenda. The Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration has repealed one of the last Obama era regulations still on the book, a requirement that freight and passenger trains have two engineers on each.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justin Mikulka, DeSmoog Blog reported that freight rail corporations, along with the American Petroleum Institute argued that the companies running the trains are in the best position to assess safety requirements and should be given the flexibility to do so. Worker, safety, and environmental advocates maintain that modern technology makes the engineer’s job more stressful and that fatigue is a major risk factor for long distance shipments, making a second engineer indispensible Freight corporations did concede that in the event of a crash, the second engineer would be helpful. Nonetheless they countered that first responders could fill any vacuum there.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The communities in the path of these potentially lethal “train bombs” are not enthusiastic about this responsibility. They are being charged with an extremely costly response in an era that—compliments of the neoliberal deregulators—places a premium on austerity and small government. As for the rail companies’ interest in a grass roots approach to safety, the fate, usually firing, of employees’ reporting significant safety issues is not reassuring.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nor should we take seriously the deregulators hostility to big government. Many state and local governments have been worried about the extreme risks embodied by these trains and have enacted their own regulations. Unfortunately the corporate deregulators have asserted the right of federal legislation to preempt state statutes and the courts have reaffirmed this right. An assertion of the right to preempt is a blow not only to this particular policy agenda but to one of the major sources of reform. In federal systems state governments have led to way for reform. Witness the role of California in air and vehicle regulations or Saskatchewan’s contribution to Canadian healthcare.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That these steps will make our rails safer seems very unlikely. On occasion the deregulators make their motives explicit. Mikulk quotes Rep. Bill Shuster, who championed finding ways to “allow the railroad industry to keep more of their profits” at a hearing on pipeline and rail regulations.</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">Mikulka adds:”With rail companies now comfortably positioned to self-regulate under the Trump administration, the industry can continue its long (and, at times, bloody) history of putting profits over safety.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In effect DOT has made Milton Friedman’s commandment that the central task of corporate leadership is to maximize shareholder value. Public policy scholar Marshall Auerbach and pilot Gregory Travis provide a concise summary of Friedan’s political economy and its implications.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Milton Friedman “shareholders, being the owners and the main risk-bearing participants, ought therefore to receive the biggest rewards. Profits therefore should be generated first and foremost with a view toward maximizing the interests of shareholders, not the executives or managers who (according to the theory) were spending too much…time worrying about employees, customers, and the community at large. Institutional investors devised solutions to ensure the primacy of enhancing shareholder value, via the advocacy of hostile takeovers, the promotion of massive stock buybacks… (which increased the stock value), higher dividend payouts and, most importantly, the introduction of stock-based pay for top executives in order to align their interests to those of the shareholders. These ideas were influenced by the idea that corporate efficiency and profitability were impinged upon by archaic regulation and unionization…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When maximizing shareholder value and volatile stock markets are combined, dangerous consequences often follow. Journalists studying Boeing’s disaster have compared a good design that would have avoided with Boeing’s dangerous shortcuts. Lambert Strether of the blog Naked Capitalism reports that the bad 737 design “yielded Boeing a profit margin of 21 percent per aircraft sold. By contrast, a “good” design, which properly incorporated better safety features, yielded a profit of 19 percent per aircraft. That doesn’t sound like that much of a decrease….But it represents a 2 percent reduction in profit margins. When you evaluate that against the fact that the 737 program accounts for nearly half of all of Boeing’s profits and [corporate financial officers] have told Wall Street that they can conjure 1 percent to 1.5 percent annual profit increases, company-wide, the actions undertaken by Boeing’s senior management begin to make sense…. Boeing wouldn’t have met its profit forecasts, which may have affected the stock price.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What conclusions can we draw from these tales of transit political economy?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A. These are not unusual. Deregulation, spurred by and in turn reinforcing a faith in shareholder value drives the urge to open the arctic wildlife regulation to drilling and to build a pipeline to bring the crude to market. On the other end of the petro pipeline deregulatory and shareholder enthusiasm propel the demand to relax fuel economy standards.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">B. Talk about big government versus little is misleading. Federal deregulation of freight rail is impossible without federal government restrictions of local initiatives. Police power will also be key to completion of many of these projects, and federal aid will be essential in the likely event of accidents. Boeing would not exist without massive military spending and probably will not survive without some form of federal bailout/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">C. Why do congressional committees and high- level civil servants in effect cede their power to corporate leaders? Follow the money. This is not merely a matter of campaign contributions. Money is spent on lobbying and the revolving door creates opportunities for eager deregulators. But more even than these inducements is the disproportionate presence of these corporations in the corporate media. When Exxon and Koch industries can routinely and without challenge portray themselves as friends of the climate something is amiss.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">D. Ideas matter There was money to be made in the post New Deal welfare state and many grasped those opportunities. But ideas like Friedman’s also energized and gave purpose to a whole generation. Opposing deregulation is necessary but not sufficient. How can markets, government at all levels, and corporations be restructured so that they can respond to evolving community needs?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">E. One specific example. Environmental and workplace regulation, though necessary, is often not very nimble. How does policy address this limitation without falling into the deregulation pit. One can imagine requiring a safety committee composed of workers, outside experts protected against firing and having access to all production standard. This committee would have the right to stop production.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">F. Money can move but plants and factories not so easily. Direct action, including plant and warehouse seizures are an increasing possibility and would reshape the regulatory environment.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060076559</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">also lamar smith </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lorraine Chow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">21h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pruitt to Restrict Use of Scientific Data in EPA PolicymakingIn the coming weeks, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is expected to announce a proposal that would limit the type of scientific studies and data the agency can use in crafting public health and environmental regulations ...The idea has long been championed by House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). The prominent climate change denier proposed a bill last year called the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment (HONEST) Act, formerly known as The Secret Science Reform Act, that prohibits any future regulations from taking effect unless the underlying scientific data is public.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Smith's legislation, which is widely criticized by scientific organizations, passed in the House last March but hasn't left the Senate Environment And Public Works Committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pruitt indicated at a closed-door meeting at the conservative Heritage Foundation last week that he would adopt elements of Smith's stalled bill, E&E News reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also, in a recent interview with The Daily Caller, the EPA boss said his latest proposal was a transparency measure against what he and his Republican colleagues consider "secret science."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record," Pruitt told the conservative news site. "Otherwise, it's not transparent. It's not objectively measured, and that's important."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, the EPA head controversially announced a policy that would limit the presence of researchers who have received EPA research grants on the agency's Scientific Advisory Board.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those in opposition to Pruitt's latest policy move say it would undermine the essential mission of the EPA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out that the proposed changes would prohibit the use of personal health data such as private medial records, and confidential business information from even being considered in EPA policymaking.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Companies could evade accountability for the pollution they create by declaring information about that pollution a 'trade secret,'" Rosenberg said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Fortunately, this nonsensical and dangerous proposal has never been able to make it out of Congress, but Pruitt seems intent on imposing it anyway."... The center, tasked with distributing “grants to test the effects of chemical exposure on adults and children,” will be shuttered amid a reorganization at the agency as part of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s goal of creating more efficiency at the agency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...omg?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most of the EPA’s grants come out of the NCER, a division of the agency’s Office of Research and Development. Last October, Pruitt ordered that scientists who have received EPA grants from the NCER and other programs at the agency won’t be allowed to serve on the agency’s advisory boards. Critics of the policy change denounced the move as a poorly disguised attempt to push out experts at odds with industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The NCER’s most prominent program is called Science to Achieve Results, or STAR, which was created in 1995. The STAR program has distributed grants to the Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Centers. The two centers have been “successful in advancing our scientific understanding and ability do address the ways that environmental chemicals can impact children’s health,” a former EPA senior scientist told The Hill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A recent report issued by the National Academies of Sciences concluded that through the STAR program, EPA has created a vehicle that fosters collaboration and knowledge-sharing in a way that “may reduce the cost of regulations, protect public health, and save lives.” About eight years after STAR’s creation, a National Research Council committee reviewed the program and strongly endorsed it as an integral part of EPA’s research program.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration, however, has singled out the STAR program for elimination in its budget proposals. The STAR program’s budget allocation has varied over the years, peaking at around $138 million in 2001 and 2002 and reaching its lowest point in 2016 at about $39 million. Between 2001 and 2015, the program awarded nearly 1,500 grants and fellowships in total, according to the National Academies of Sciences report.</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">https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-pipelines-dakota-keystone-2540819277.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch Network Took Credit for Dakota Access, Keystone XL and REINS Act, Leaked Memo Shows</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Steve Horn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A leaked memorandum published by The Intercept and Documented Investigations shows that a Koch Industries' donors network, known as the Seminar Network, has taken credit for Donald Trump approving the permits for both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines during the first months of his presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The memo also applauded efforts by the Koch network's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) chapter in Wisconsin to pass a deregulatory measure there known as the REINS Act. The Seminar Network, which meets secretly twice a year, is made up of donors who give at least $100,000 toward Koch-led political and philanthropic efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch Industries has a business interest in both pipelines, though their approval has not been something its funded network has widely discussed. Quietly, though, Koch has advocated for the pair of pipelines in regulatory hearings in both Iowa for Dakota Access—as previously reported by DeSmog—as well as in Canada, as reported in 2012 by InsideClimate News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act, which GOP officials have been pushing in Congress since Obama's first term, passed as state law in Wisconsin in 2017. The law, long considered crown jewel legislation by the Koch front group AFP, gives legislative bodies full veto authority over regulations proposed by executive agencies. Conservative groups in Wisconsin already are using the law to sue the top state public education officer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"State legislatures, particularly in states with a strong Network presence, have also made significant progress toward removing harmful and unnecessary regulations. For example, Wisconsin this year went so far as to enact the nation's first REINS Act, which will require legislative approval of any issued regulation that has an impact above a certain cost threshold," reads the Koch Seminar Network document.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded group of mostly Republican Party state legislators, has a REINS Act model resolution on the books, which supports the federal version of this legislation. In 2017, six states introduced pro-REINS Act resolutions: Kansas, Montana, Missouri, Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina. ALEC—which brings corporate lobbyists and state legislators together at annual meetings for networking, seminars and voting on what it dubs "model policies" —maintains close connections with the Koch network.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch, KXL, DAPL Business Ties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch Industries also owns assets in a tar sands reservoir located in Alberta, Canada, both in the form of lease holdings for land and as a company with a drilling interest. For the latter, Koch owns Koch Oil Sands Operating, which has a drilling interest in both the Gemini and Muskwa tar sands fields in Alberta.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It also owns 1-2 million acres' worth of land (the exact number is contested) in the tar sands for prospective future leasing, according to a 2013 report published by the International Forum on Globalization. Keystone XL, the pipeline owned by TransCanada and approved by Trump and his U.S. Department of State in March 2017, would bring around 500,000 currently-booked barrels per day of tar sands oil from Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma, where the pipeline connects with TransCanada's Gulf Coast Pipeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gulf Coast, which was approved by President Barack Obama in a 2012 election season executive order, sends the tar sands bitumen down to Port Arthur, Texas, where the substance is refined into products and then sent to market.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[map]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch Industries even nearly testified at a 2012 hearing in support of its development of tar sands, before backing out after signing confidentiality agreements with impacted landowners. Much of the tar sands extracted in Alberta is refined at Koch's refinery in Pine Bend, Minnesota, which is owned by its subsidiary Flint Hills Resources and is the top refiner of tar sands in the U.S. at 223,000 barrels per day, as of 2013.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Dakota Access, Koch also quietly came out in support of the pipeline via its front group, the 60 Plus Association, which purports to be a conservative alternative to the American Association of Retired Persons for seniors. Through intermediary groups, 60 Plus had received tens of millions of dollars from the Koch network.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch Industries has a direct tie to Dakota Access, through a storage terminal part-owned by its subsidiary Flint Resources and located in North Dakota's Bakken Shale basin. As DeSmog previously reported, this terminal, called the COLT Hub, feeds oil into the Dakota Access pipeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 2015 when the pipeline was hotly contested in Iowa, a representative for 60 Plus testified on behalf of Dakota Access in front of the Iowa Utilities Board.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Dakota Access Pipeline Project is important to seniors for several reasons. High energy prices are disproportionately impacting America's low and fixed-income senior citizens today—citizens that often have limited financial resources with which to meet their needs," the 60 Plus representative testified in September 2015. "By helping the United States to better capitalize upon its growing domestic energy resources—and affordably transport these resources to market—the Dakota Access Pipeline will help to foster stability within energy markets nationwide, and improve the availability of affordable American produced crude oil."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">60 Plus also began lobbying and campaigning on behalf of the Dakota Access as the protest movement grew against the pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Around the same time those protests began in September 2016, 60 Plus deployed its chairman, Jim Martin, to begin lobbying Congressabout Dakota Access. Martin also wrote an opinion piece that month supporting the pipeline for the publication Morning Consult.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Whether it's heating or cooling your home or putting gas in your car, the cheaper the energy, the more economically stable your checkbook will be," wrote Martin. "The 60 Plus Association's 5.5 million members know this all too well. This is why as an organization that champions free enterprise and who have championed energy issues for seniors before, we strongly support the Dakota Access pipeline."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Whole New Level'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 2018 election cycle, the Koch network plans to spend up to $400 million to keep the Republican majority in Congress and GOP control over statehouses nationwide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We've made more progress in the last five years than I had in the last 50," Charles Koch, one of the infamous petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers, said in January at a private Seminar Network meeting held in Indian Wells, California. "The capabilities we have now can take us to a whole new level."</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">smart history overview populism to now:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaug-2016/populism-with-a-brain/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">djt boasts he has had all industries in, massive" dereg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SHAIKH: We’re speaking to David Cay Johnston, author of the new book, It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America. Let’s go back to February. This is President Trump speaking a month after he took office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re cutting regulations big league. We are really cutting them by massive amounts. The auto industry just left a week ago. They were here in the same room. And they are very happy with what—what we’re doing. And everyone is. I think just about everyone. The financial industry—we’re having a lot of the different industries in. And we’re cutting regulations in just about every industry. In fact, I can’t think of any that we’re not.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NERMEEN SHAIKH: So that’s President Trump speaking in February. So, could you talk about what Trump has done to different agencies? In your book, you talk about several, but let’s start with the EPA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, EPA is run by Scott Pruitt, who hopes to become a U.S. senator in Oklahoma, who has vowed to destroy the agency. So, staff members are not allowed to use certain words. They’re not being allowed to go to scientific conferences. So, once again, the investment the taxpayers have made in expertise and knowledge is being wasted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the regulatory environment, they are basically allowing polluters to get away with all sorts of stuff. There was a move by the Obama administration to stop taking the toxic residue, the coal ash, from power plants, turning it into a slurry, with water, and then you put it into a pond next to a river. And as we know, in South Carolina, I think it was, and several other places, some of these old dikes broke and ruined the drinking water, for weeks or months, and killed all the wildlife. The Trump administration basically is saying to polluters, “Go ahead and pollute.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Well, what is pollution? Not only is it a threat to your health and safety, but it’s a way to jack up profits, by taking costs you should endure to clean up your mess and spewing them onto everybody else. So, of course, profits for companies like that will go up, because they’re being allowed to make you or your children get asthma or have other illnesses because of the pollution. How does that make us better off? That makes us worse off. The problem is, you’re not going to get asthma tomorrow. He’ll be out of office, even if he had two terms, before you get sick and die.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AMY GOODMAN: We had the headline today about the former photographer with the Department of Energy seeking whistleblower protection, saying he was fired for documenting collusion between the Trump administration and a coal company executive. Simon Edelman says he was fired after he leaked photographs of a March 29th meeting between Energy Secretary Rick Perry and coal magnate Robert Murray, showing the two embracing at a meeting. Murray said he played no role in drafting a Department of Energy rule subsidizing coal and nuclear power plants. But a photo clearly shows a letter drafted by Murray and addressed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry touting an “action plan.” And then you have the whole story of FERC, the Trump-appointed panel, that actually ruled against Trump in his subsidizing of coal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, they did, in this particular case. But there is a chapter in my book about how the electricity markets in America, which, by design, raise prices and don’t lower them, are going to continue to worsen. Now, this example that comes from the leaked photographs is very revealing of the fact that truth is a very fungible issue in this administration. And when it comes to electricity prices in this country, I mean, everybody pays for electricity. It’s the one—one of the common things we have, like the weather. This is an administration that is all out for the people who make profits. It isn’t interested in consumers. It isn’t interested in businesses whose profits are diminished if they have to pay excessive electricity prices....</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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/senate-finance-committee-advances-alex-azars-nomination-to-head-hhs/2018/01/17/db4928c8-fb96-11e7-ad8c-ecbb62019393_story.html?utm_term=.7d898d47f471</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Finance Committee approved Alex Azar as the next health and human services secretary on Wednesday, voting 15-12 to send his nomination to the Senate floor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The vote followed party lines, with the exception of Democratic Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), who supported the nomination.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If approved by the full Senate, Azar, a former executive for the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company, would succeed President Trump’s first HHS secretary, Tom Price. The former congressman from Georgia resigned under pressure in September during an investigation of his use of private charter planes at taxpayer expense to attend official events.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. Azar is well-credentialed to lead such a critical department at a time America’s health care system is facing difficult challenges,” Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a written statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He continues to demonstrate that he has what it takes to help alleviate problems caused by Obamacare, all while bolstering and improving Medicare and Medicaid.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Azar told Finance members during the Jan. 9 hearing on his nomination that prescription drug prices cost too much but that he was not in favor of broad government action to curb prices. His other priorities, he said, would be making health care more affordable, rewarding Medicare providers for promoting good health and combating the opioid epidemic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), again criticized Azar Wednesday for his “documented history of raising drug prices” while he worked at Lilly. He said that Azar didn’t offer “a single example” of the company lowering prices during Azar’s tenure, which included five years as president of its largest affiliate, Lilly USA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carper explained his vote in a statement late Wednesday afternoon. “I am still evaluating Mr. Azar’s nomination,” he said, “and, while I am concerned about his perspective on Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and his knowledge on women’s health issues, I believe he is qualified for consideration by the full Senate.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Azar served in the agency during George W. Bush’s administration as both the department’s general counsel and deputy secretary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He left Lilly in early 2017 and formed a consulting firm. He told a different Senate committee in late November that he no longer owned Lilly stock.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate Finance Committee evaluates AlexAzar to be the next HHS secretary</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump picks Alex Azar to lead Health and Human Services</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pharm, under attack for drug prices, started an industry war</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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see dudley GWU in DC kochademia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_Impact_Analysis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first RIA are generally considered to be the "Inflation Impact Assessments" required by the Carter Administration in the United States from 1978. The RIA requirement was broadened during the Reagan administration, with Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) becoming the required methodological approach. Another early adopter of a RIA requirement was Australia (1985). By the mid-1990s approximately 12 OECD countries had implemented RIA requirements of some form, although the scope of the required analysis varied considerably. By 2000, 20 of 28 OECD countries had implemented RIA requirements.[1] Currently, virtually all OECD countries use RIA. RIA requirements had also begun to be strongly promoted to its client countries by the World Bank. As a result, an increasing number of developing countries have now adopted RIA requirements.[2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RIA requirements have broadened in scope over time in many countries in which they have been adopted. Conversely, few if any countries have abandoned the use of RIA after having adopted it.[3]</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">NB all GWU or GMU</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perspectives on U.S. Regulation and Regulatory Impact Analysis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.gwu.edu/clai/training.../Regulatory...2011/Apr_2011_Jerry_Ellig.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">•Nixon (1971): Quality of Life review. •Ford (1974): Economic analysis if impact > $100 million. •Carter (1978): Regulatory Analysis Review Group. •Reagan (1981): E.O. 12291. •Establishes comprehensive criteria for regulatory analysis. •Gives OIRA review authority over “major” rules. •Bush I: ContinuedReagan executive ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[PDF]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US Experience With Regulatory Oversight: History and use of RIA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www2.gwu.edu/...Regulatory.../US_Experience_with_Regulatory_Oversight_2...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mar 16, 2010 - ?President Ford: Required, for the first time, regulatory impact analysis. (RIA) requirement for major regulations (over $100 million in impact). ?President Carter: Established the Regulatory Analysis Review Group. ?President Reagan: Solidified regulatory oversight authority within the. White House, issuing ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Role of Regulatory Impact Analysis in Federal Rulemaking ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mercatus.org/.../role-regulatory-impact-analysis-federal-rulemaking</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Apr 10, 2014 - Regulatory impact analysis (RIA) is a tool regulators use to help guide them through the decision-making process when promulgating regulations. ... These RIAs, in turn, are to be reviewed by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a statutory office located within the Office of Management ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: soft/stealth dereg via budget cut, often of enforcement:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(NB crypto cover of responsible budget cutting (starve the beast that is strangling the economy)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-employees-leaving-2519323571.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">700+ Employees Have Left the EPA Under Trump: Loss of Scientists, Staffers Undermines Agency's Purpose</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hundreds of people have quit, retired or taken buyouts from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ever since President Trump and his EPA head Scott Pruitt took office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That figure includes more than 200 scientists and 96 are environmental protection specialists that investigate important issues such as pollution levels, according to a new report from the New York Times and ProPublica. Others that have left include nine department directors and dozens of attorneys and program managers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There has been a drop of employees of 770 between April and December. While several hundred of those are buyouts, the rest of those are either people that are retiring or quitting in disgust," Kyla Bennett, director of New England Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told ThinkProgress earlier this month. “Is that number higher than it would normally be? I think it is."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most of these positions will not be replaced, leaving the agency depleted of vital knowledge about protecting our environment and ultimately public health.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Rolling back enforcement is very troubling—it essentially means that people are going to breathe dirtier air and drink dirtier water," Judith Enck, who served as Regional Director for EPA Region 2 during the Obama administration, explained to ThinkProgress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EPA had employed about 15,000 people at the end of President Obama's term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But President Trump has proposed a drastic 31 percent cut to the EPA's budget—the largest cut to any federal agency. In June, the EPA unveiled a buyout program in an overall effort to remove 3,200 positions from the EPA, roughly 20 percent of its workforce.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We're proud to report that we're reducing the size of government, protecting taxpayer dollars and staying true to our core mission of protecting the environment and American jobs," Pruitt said about the staff reduction program.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pruitt has been criticized by environmentalists for leading an agency he was actively trying to undermine as Oklahoma's former attorney general. The known climate change denier has close ties to the fossil fuel industry and has sued the EPA more than a dozen times over safeguards designed to protect the the country's air and water.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under his watch, the words climate" and "climate change" have been removed across several EPA websites. Pruitt has also issued rules that block anyone who receives an EPA grant from serving on science panels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This mass exit of staffers comes amid a New York Times report that Republican campaign operatives were using the Freedom of Information Act to investigate agency employees critical of the Trump administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">50+ Interviews With EPA Staff: Trump Poses 'Greatest Threat' to ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former EPA Employees Are So Worried About Trump's Plans, They ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-deregulation-2519132059.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Vows to Kill 50 Years of Federal Health and Safety Protections</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Elliott Negin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump wants to set the regulatory clock back to 1960, and last week he acted it out for the cameras.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wielding a pair of golden scissors at a White House photo op, he cut red tape strung around two stacks of paper. One was a small pile of some 20,000 pages representing the amount of regulations in 1960; the other a mound of more than 185,000 pages representing those of today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're getting back below the 1960 level," Trump declared, "and we'll be there fairly quickly."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's only one problem. That mountain of paper Trump used as a prop symbolizes hard-won measures that protect us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To refresh the president's memory, back in the 1960s, smog in major U.S. cities was so thick it blocked the sun. Rivers ran brown with raw sewage and toxic chemicals. Cleveland's Cuyahoga River and at least two other urban waterways were so polluted they caught on fire. Lead-laced paint and gasoline poisoned children, damaging their brains and nervous systems. Cars without seatbelts, air bags or safety glass were unsafe at any speed. And hazardous working conditions killed an average of 14,000 workers annually, nearly three times the number today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response, Congress enacted the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and other landmark pieces of legislation to protect public health and safety. Some of those laws also created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other federal agencies to write and enforce safeguards.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">None of those laws, or the regulations they spawned, existed in 1960.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Grew Up on Dirty Air</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump should remember quite well what it was like in the 1960s. After all, he lived in New York, at the time one of the dirtiest cities in the country. Garbage incinerators routinely rained ash on city streets, while coal- and oil-fired power plants spewed a noxious mix of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and toxic metals. John V. Lindsay, the city's mayor from 1966 to 1973, famously quipped, "I never trust air I can't see," but it was no laughing matter. On Thanksgiving weekend the year Lindsay took office, the smog was so bad it killed some 200 people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The waterways coursing around the city's boroughs, especially the Hudson River, were just as filthy. In 1965, then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller accurately called the Hudson "one great septic tank." Indeed, 170 million gallons of raw sewage fouled the river daily while factories along its banks treated it as a waste pit. A General Motors plant in Sleepy Hollow, 27 miles north of New York City, poured its paint sludge directly into the river. Even worse, General Electric manufacturing plants in Fort Edwards and Hudson Falls dumped about 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a probable human carcinogen, into the river over a 30-year period ending in 1977. Since 1984, a 200-mile stretch of the river from Hudson Falls to Manhattan's southern tip has been on the EPA's Superfund program list of the country's most hazardous waste sites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protections Prevent Disease and Save Lives</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fast forward to today. By and large, the environmental laws Congress began passing in the 1970s have been remarkably successful.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thanks to the Clean Water Act, for example, tens of billions of pounds of sewage, chemicals and trash have been kept out of U.S. waterways since it was enacted 45 years ago. In New York City, harbor water quality has improved so much that humpback whales have returned for the first time in a century.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thanks to the Clean Air Act, nationwide emissions of six common pollutants—carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter (soot) and sulfur dioxide—plunged 70 percent on average between 1970 and 2015.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Yorkers are breathing easier, too. On Earth Day last April, the city's health department released a reportannouncing that air pollution in the Big Apple is at the lowest level ever recorded. Between 2008 and 2015, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter declined 23 percent and 18 percent, respectively, while sulfur dioxide levels plummeted 84 percent after the city and state tightened heating oil rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That's all good news for public health. In 2010 alone, according to an EPA study, Clean Air Act programs that reduced levels of fine particulate matter and ground-level ozone prevented an estimated 160,000 premature deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, and 1.7 million asthma attacks across the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These accomplishments, however, do not mean it's time to eliminate or weaken environmental safeguards. There is still much left to do. Consider that in just one year—2015—polluters dumped more than 190 million tonsof toxic chemicals into waterways nationwide; at least 5,000 community drinking water systems violated federal lead regulations; and some 116 million Americans lived in counties with harmful levels of ozone or particulate matter pollution, which have been linked to lung cancer, asthma, cardiovascular damage, reproductive problems and premature death.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If You Can't Kill 'Em, Just Don't Enforce 'Em</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fortunately, it will be very difficult for the Trump administration to roll back 50 years' worth of congressionally mandated rules protecting the public from industrial poisons, harmful drugs, adulterated food and defective products. Trump's regulation czar conceded the point immediately after the December 14 White House photo op.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I think returning to 1960s levels would likely require legislation. It's hard for me to know what that looks like," said Neomi Rao, director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. "Deregulation also takes time. If we're doing something consistent with the law, it takes time to reduce rules."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the meantime, the Trump administration is resorting to the next best—or worst—thing, depending on your perspective: It has cut back dramatically on enforcing environmental laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A recent New York Times investigative report compared the number of enforcement actions filed in the first nine months of the Trump EPA with what the two previous administrations did over the same time period. Under Scott Pruitt, the EPA initiated about 1,900 cases, about a third fewer than under Lisa Jackson, President Obama's first EPA administrator, and about a quarter fewer than under Christine Todd Whitman, who directed the agency under President George W. Bush and was not known for aggressive enforcement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times also found that the Trump EPA is reluctant to seek civil penalties. In its first nine months, the agency tagged polluters for about $50.4 million for violations. Adjusted for inflation, that amounts to roughly 70 percent of what the Bush EPA levied and only about 39 percent of what the Obama EPA sought over the same time frame.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To make matters worse, Pruitt is threatening to cut off funding for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, which files lawsuits on behalf of the EPA's Superfund program to force polluters to cover the cost of cleaning up contaminated sites. In recent years, the EPA has reimbursed the division more than $20 million annually.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an apparent attempt to blunt criticism, Trump acknowledged at last week's photo op that purging a half century of protections could have an adverse impact, and he assured Americans that he would not let that happen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We know that some of the rules contained in these pages have been beneficial to our nation, and we're going to keep them," he said. "We want to protect our workers, our safety, our health, and we want to protect our water, we want to protect our air, and our country's natural beauty."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Somehow, I'm not convinced. Given the president's penchant for lying, his administration's abysmal track record, and now his avowed intention to kill nearly 90 percent of federal regulations, the smoke Trump is blowing is as thick as 1960s New York smog.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump promises to reduce federal regulations to pre-1960 level ›</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">fcc sinclair</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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.dcreport.org/2017/11/20/how-trump-and-congress-are-erasing-the-last-20-years/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They’re Using an Obscure 1990s Law to Wipe Out Regulations Protecting Citizens and the Environment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Jillian S. Ambroz</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republicans of the 115th Congress and Trump have not accomplished much in the way of landmark legislation this year, unless you count overturning President Barack Obama’s achievements. And on that front, they’ve been prolific.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Trump’s first four months of office, he and Congress have completely eliminated 14 rules issued by Obama—rules ranging from things like protecting Americans from coal waste in drinking water to blocking individuals with severe mental illness from buying firearms—using the Congressional Review Act.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And lest you think that headache of a legislation that had only been wielded once in 21 years before now might be going away anytime soon, think again.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congress has targeted at least 31 rules in just 11 months, including the ones that have been nullified already, according to a report prepared by former senior staff member of the Congressional Research Service, Curtis W. Copeland. Those that have not been disapproved have been introduced to the House and await further action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not enough to just remove the rules, this Republican-led Congress and Trump want to nullify these acts completely, as if they never took place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To do that requires a joint resolution by a simple majority in each house of Congress, which is easy for this current legislative branch. After 60 legislative days, Trump can sign the resolution into law and nullify the previous rule.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But once undone, it’s not easy to reinstate a rule removed by the Congressional Review Act, which is written so that essentially a new law is required to reinstate a new or similar rule like the one that was removed by it. And that is how people like influential ex-White House strategist Steve Bannon and pollution advocate Myron Ebell, who was in charge of the blueprint for the transition and transformation of the Environmental Protection Agency, crafted this deregulation regime that could take years to undo once Trump leaves office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon once said the goal of the Trump presidency is the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ACTION BOX/What You Can Do About It</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contact the White House and tell Trump using the Congressional Review Act and undoing these regulations is harmful to the American people. Call 202-456-1111, reach him on Twitter or email.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contact Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) by phone at 202-225-3031, email, Facebook or Twitter. Contact Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)by phone at 202-224-2541, email, Facebook or Twitter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As always, contact your representatives and senators and ask them to stop using the CRA to roll back safeguards for the American public.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Congressional Review Act was part of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America and signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before Trump took office, the Congressional Review Act was only used once before when the 107th Congress overturned a rule by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The rule addressed ergonomic injuries in the workplace.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here are just a few of the rules Congress and Trump have overturned:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil Company Foreign Payment Disclosure Rule: Forced oil companies to disclose payments to foreign governments.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Stream Protection Rule: Enforced regulations on coal mine operators to protect streams and other water sources from coal waste.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Workplace Injuries Rule: Required employers to maintain accurate records of serious workplace injuries and illnesses for up to five years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gun Control Amendment: Required the Social Security Administration to provide instant information to the National Instant Criminal History Background Check System on individuals meeting certain criteria, including severe mental health issues, that would prevent them from being able to purchase a firearm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Time and time again, Republicans have abused the Congressional Review Act to appease the extreme right wing of their party and ensure giveaways to corporate special interests,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a Politicoarticle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was thought there was a finite window for the Congress and Trump to employ the Congressional Review Act, which was previously considered a vehicle to undo so-called “Midnight Regulations” of an outgoing administration. The consensus was Obama actions only back to 2016 could be undone. That may not be the case. Technically, Congress can go back over unsubmitted agency rules, too—all the way back to 1996—and belatedly submit them for disapproval. Thousands of rules and regulations could be up for disapproval.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In May, Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) introduced a bill to repeal the Congressional Review Act. It’s unlikely the Republican-led Congress will give up its most powerful tool anytime soon. At least not before the 116thCongress is sworn in.</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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-energy-sector-2501855523.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pruitt, Zinke and Perry Target Clean Air and Water Rules to Curb 'Burdens' on Energy Sector</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At a speech in North Dakota last month, President Trump boasted that his administration is refocusing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to its "core mission: clean air and clean water."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That's what I want—clean air," he continued. "Think of it. We talk about the—I want beautiful clean air, and I want crystal-clean water, right? That's what we want."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That statement—based on Trump's nine months of environmental rollbacks, from approving the Dakota Accessand Keystone pipelines to gutting the Clean Power Plan—could not be further from the truth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a shocking report from Reuters, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Sec. Rick Perry and Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke have each announced separate steps on how they will carry out President Trump's "energy independence" executive order in March to ease regulatory burdens on energy development.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the most environmentally consequential steps comes from Pruitt's EPA, which will try to pinpoint how the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act affects energy sectors jobs. (Earth to Mr. President: these landmark laws are designed to give us "clean air" and "crystal-clean water.")</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We are working to curb unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens that do not serve the American people," Pruitt said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here are the other steps that Trump's agencies will be taking to boost the energy sector, as detailed by Reuters:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The EPA will also create a task force to simplify the permit process for building new polluting facilities, weigh options to revamp national ambient air quality standards and launch a "smart sectors" program to engage with industries as it crafts regulations.</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">The Energy Department said it will focus on streamlining natural gas exports, review its national laboratory policies, review National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations for approving major infrastructure projects and reviewing the agency's popular household appliance standards program.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Interior Department submitted what it called an 'energy burdens' report to the president, which outlines some Obama-era regulations it has started to reverse or reform, or has plans to.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This includes lifting the moratorium on coal leases on federal land, reviewing regulations on fracking on federal and tribal land, developing a five-year plan for offshore drilling and streamlining the federal leasing program and permitting process."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the administration claims that boosting jobs and the economy are the end goal, a new feature in TIMEquestions if Pruitt's actions—and Trump's by extension—are serving industry interests instead: </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Since [Pruitt] took office, more than a dozen EPA regulations have been killed or put under review, from fuel-efficiency standards to regulations on the disposal of coal ash to restrictions on toxic metals like arsenic in waterways," the magazine noted. "Moreover, the Trump Administration has proposed slashing funding for the agency's law-enforcement branch, which identifies polluters under existing regulations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"All this has aided businesses, propping up the declining coal industry, ensuring profit margins for chemical makers and reducing compliance costs for farmers. But the change has also weakened an agency designed to save lives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"'They're trying to deconstruct and dismantle the basic protections,' says Mustafa Ali, a career EPA official who resigned in March after 24 years. 'They're creating situations where more folks are going to get sick, some folks are going to die, more folks are going to be put in harm's way.'"</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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-undermine-food-safety-2492082082.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/white-house-deregulations-2492421745.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While White House Touts Deregulations, Critics Denounce 'Craven' Pro-Corporate Policies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Julia Conley</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public interest groups spoke out Monday about a White House event at which Vice President Mike Pence touted the Trump administration's deregulation efforts. President Donald Trump did not attend the "Cut the Red Tape" event due to the attack in Las Vegas, but the meeting went on as planned with the White House barring the press from the room.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The administration has demonstrated repeatedly since Trump took office in January that it aims to roll back safeguards put in place by the Obama administration in a number of areas. The president announced early in his term that he would offset any new regulation by scrapping two existing regulations. According to an analysis by Reuters, federal agencies have so far taken 25 deregulatory steps, affecting infrastructure projects, the environment and workers in a wide variety of sectors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Regarding the climate, in addition to withdrawing from the Paris agreement on climate change, Trump has rolled back President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, scrapped his rules limiting water pollution from coal-fired power plants, and reversed a policy banning national parks from selling bottled water.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Union of Concerned Scientists released a statement on the need for environmental protections like the one Trump has been eliminating. "These critical safeguards were created based on the best available science and public input, but now they're being quickly and carelessly deleted," said Andrew Rosenberg of the group's Center for Science and Democracy. "They've ignored the evidence and put the interests of industry lobbyists over public health and safety. These changes will put Americans at risk, yet the president and vice president see this as an opportunity to take a victory lap."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pointing to the recent example of a chemical plant explosion in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, Rosenberg added, "The rush to undo these rules has real, damaging consequences. Communities near chemical facilities will have less information about the risks they face—raising the danger to families and first responders in the case of accidents like the recent Arkema explosion in Houston ... The vice president may tout it as an accomplishment that the administration has derailed so many public health and safety protections. For the rest of us, though—particularly for low-income neighborhoods and communities of color—this is no victory. It's a willful failure by the administration to do its job protecting Americans."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American Sustainable Business Council was among those pushing back against the familiar Republican argument that deregulating industries is somehow a cost-saving maneuver.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Over-regulation was not the problem that led to banks creating the mortgage crisis, that in turn resulted in the loss of 200,000 small businesses and 8.7 million jobs throughout the United States," pointed out Richard Eidlin, co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council. "The Trump administration's deregulation approach based on the arbitrary benchmark of eliminating 'two existing regulations for every one new regulation' is ill-conceived and will not achieve meaningful regulatory reform. Placing focus solely on the costs of compliance instead of the benefits to society contradicts the goals of many of the laws that enable these regulations."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The government watchdog group Public Citizen called Trump's deregulation agenda a "craven attempt at self-enrichment and payback to corporate donors," adding, "in fact, robust regulation and enforcement are essential to economic prosperity."</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">AN 817</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On August 15, this “infrastructure of fascism” came into clear focus in a bizarre and tragic way. Donald Trump marched into a conference room in Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in Manhattan to hold a hastily arranged press briefing on the first formal unveiling of his “Infrastructure” plan. He had key members of his economic team in tow—most notably, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, head of Trump’s National Economic Council—both former Goldman Sachs bankers—and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former Bank of America and Citicorp banker. This announcement of Trump’s “infrastructure plan,” which took only a few minutes, presented even less of a true infrastructure plan than he had floated during the election campaign. This was simply yet another de-regulation plan dressed up as a plan for infrastructure investment. Effectively, this “executive order” served-up a wish list that would have been compiled by any real estate mogul who doesn’t want any government agency or public group to come between him, his building, and his bottom line. In the name of building more useful infrastructure and generating more jobs, Trump’s executive order is designed to let developers skirt environmental regulations, and most likely, labor, health, and safety regulations as well. The Executive Order will make it a lot easier to build more Trump towers in flood plains, but do little or nothing for the country’s true infrastructure needs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But this roll-out of a fake infrastructure plan was not the most interesting or surprising thing about this event. It was the press conference Trump held afterwards. Using hisJewish and Asian-American economic team as a photo-op backdrop and the creation of infrastructure and jobs as his bait, Trump took the occasion to assure his neo-fascist, white supremacist and nationalist base that, yes, he was still their man. The reporters at hand, having little interest in infrastructure, wanted to hear a clear statement from Trump decrying the violent and deadly acts committed over the weekend by Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. But instead Trump used his infrastructure plan and his promise of “millions of jobs” to rally his base supporters, all the while demonizing the counter-protestors (calling them violent members of “the alt-left” who were “at least” as responsible for the violence and mayhem as those on the right).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This event, then, tied, in a sinister but clear way, Trump’s infrastructure plan with the racist, anti-Semitic, and neo-fascist members of Trump’s base movement and linked them, in turn, to the bankers and policy makers like Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin who have so much to gain from the tax subsidies and privatization that are the essence of these plans. Gary Cohn was reportedly “furious” about what Trump said and did. But according to reporters, Cohn, like so many Republicans in Congress, will most likely remain quiet, and soldier on, presumably in the hope of getting a big payoff down the road. (Cohn reportedly wants to succeed Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve; and his friends have millions to gain from the privatization schemes.)</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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-teams-rolling-back-regulations-led-by-hires-with-deep-industry-ties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the effort — a signature theme in Trump’s populist campaign for the White House — is being conducted in large part out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most government agencies have declined to disclose information about their deregulation teams. But ProPublica and The New York Times identified 71 appointees, including 28 with potential conflicts, through interviews, public records and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some appointees are reviewing rules their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and at least two may be positioned to profit if certain regulations are undone.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The appointees include lawyers who have represented businesses in cases against government regulators, staff members of political dark money groups, employees of industry-funded organizations opposed to environmental rules and at least three people who were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Education Department alone, two members of the deregulation team were most recently employed by pro-charter advocacy groups or operators, and one appointee was an executive handling regulatory issues at a for-profit college operator.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So far, the process has been scattershot. Some agencies have been soliciting public feedback, while others refuse even to disclose who is in charge of the review. In many cases, responses to public records requests have been denied, delayed or severely redacted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Interior Department has not disclosed the correspondence and calendars for its team. But a review of more than 1,300 pages of handwritten sign-in sheets for guests visiting the agency’s headquarters in Washington found that appointees had met regularly with industry representatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over a four-month period, from February through May, at least 58 representatives of the oil and gas industry signed their names on the agency’s visitor logs before meeting with appointees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EPA also rejected requests to release the appointment calendar of the official leading its team — a former top executive for an industry-funded political group — even as she met privately with industry representatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security provided the titles for most appointees to their review teams, but not names.</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">Meghan Burris, a spokeswoman there, said: “As previous administrations have recognized, it’s good government to periodically reassess existing regulations. Past regulatory review efforts, however, have not taken a consistent enough look at regulations on the books.”When asked for comment about the activities of the deregulation teams, the White House referred reporters to the Office of Management and Budget.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With billions of dollars at stake in the push to deregulate, corporations and other industry groups are hiring lawyers, lobbyists and economists to help navigate this new avenue for influence. Getting to the front of the line is crucial, as it can take years to effect regulatory changes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Competition will be fierce,” the law firm Clark Hill, which represents businesses pitching the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a marketing memo. “In all likelihood, interested parties will need to develop a multi-pronged strategy to expand support and win pre-eminence over competing regulatory rollback candidates.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jane Luxton, a lawyer at the firm, said she advised clients to pay for economic and legal analyses that government agencies, short on staff, could use to expedite changes. She declined to identify the clients.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You may say this is an agency’s job, but the agencies are totally overloaded,” Luxton said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On a cloudy, humid day in March, Laura Peterson, a top lobbyist for Syngenta, arrived at the headquarters for the Interior Department. She looped the letter “L” across the agency’s sign-in sheet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Her company, a top pesticide maker based in Switzerland, had spent eight years and millions of dollars lobbying the Obama administration on environmental rules, with limited success.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Peterson had an in with the new administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scott Cameron, newly installed at the Interior Department and a member of its deregulation team, had just left a nonprofit he had founded. He had advocated getting pesticides approved and out to market faster. His group counted Syngenta as a financial partner.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The meeting with Peterson was one of the first Cameron took as a new government official.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neither side would reveal what was discussed. “I’m not sure that’s reporting information I have to give you,” Peterson said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But lobbying records offered clues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Syngenta has been one of several pesticide manufacturers pushing for changes to the Endangered Species Act. When federal agencies take actions that may jeopardize endangered animals or plants, they are generally supposed to consult with the Interior Department, which could raise objections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For decades, the EPA largely ignored this provision when approving new pesticides. But recently, a legal challenge from environmental groups forced its hand — a change that affected Syngenta.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pesticide lobbyists have been working behind the scenes at agencies and on Capitol Hill to change the provision. Companies have argued that they should be exempt from consulting with the Interior Department because they already undergo EPA approval.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with spending millions of dollars on lobbying, they have funded advocacy groups aligned with their cause. Cameron’s nonprofit, the Reduce Risks From Invasive Species Coalition, was one such group for Syngenta.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The organization says on its website that its goals include reducing “the regulatory burden of the Endangered Species Act on American society by addressing invasive species.” One way to do that is to use pesticides. The nonprofit’s mission includes creating “business opportunities for commercial products and services used to control invasive species.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because donations are not publicly reported, it is unclear how much Syngenta has contributed to Cameron’s organization, but his group has called the pesticide company one of its “generous sponsors.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cameron also served on a committee of experts and stakeholders, including Syngenta, that advised the federal government on decisions related to invasive species. At a committee event last July, he said that one of his priorities was “getting biocontrol agents to market faster,” according to meeting minutes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Minehart, a Syngenta spokesman, said: “Employees regularly engage with those in government that relate to agriculture and our business. Our purpose is to balance serving the public health and environment with enabling farmers’ access to innovation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokeswoman for the Interior Department did not respond to questions about how Cameron’s relationship with Syngenta might influence his review of regulations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under the law, members of the Trump administration can seek ethics waivers to work on issues that overlap with their past business careers. They can also formally recuse themselves when potential conflicts arise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In many cases, the administration has refused to say whether appointees to Trump’s deregulation teams have done either.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One such appointee is Samantha Dravis, the chairwoman of the deregulation team at the EPA, who was a top official at the Republican Attorneys General Association. Dravis was also president of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, which brought together energy companies and Republican attorneys general to file lawsuits against the federal government over Obama-era environmental regulations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican association’s work has been criticized as a vehicle for corporate donors to gain the credibility and expertise of state attorneys general in fighting federal regulations. Donors include the American Petroleum Institute, the energy company ConocoPhillips and the coal giant Alpha Natural Resources.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican association also received funding from Freedom Partners, backed by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch. Dravis worked for that group as well, which recently identified regulations it wants eliminated. Among them are EPA rules relating to clean-water protections and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Liz Bowman, an EPA spokeswoman, declined to say whether Dravis had recused herself from issues dealing with previous employers or their backers, or had discussed regulations with any of them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As you will find when you receive Samantha’s calendar, she has met with a range of stakeholders, including nonprofits, industry groups and others, on a wide range of issues,” Bowman said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bowman said the calendar could be obtained through a public records request. ProPublica and The Times had already filed a request for records including calendars, but the agency’s response did not include those documents. (An appeal was filed, but the calendar has not yet been released.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We take our ethics responsibilities seriously,” Bowman said. “All political staff have had an ethics briefing and know their obligations.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Addressing the agency’s regulatory efforts, she said, “We are here to enact a positive environmental agenda that provides real results to the American people, without unnecessarily hamstringing our economy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Agriculture Department, the only known appointee to the deregulation team is Rebeckah Adcock. She previously lobbied the department as a top executive both at CropLife America, a trade association for pesticide makers, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group for farmers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The department deals with many issues involving farmers, including crop insurance and land conservation rules, but it would not disclose whether Adcock had recused herself from discussions affecting her past employers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Energy Department, a member of the deregulation team is Brian McCormack, who formerly handled political and external affairs for Edison Electric Institute, a trade association representing investor-owned electrical utilities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While there, McCormack worked with the American Legislative Exchange Council, an industry-funded group. Both organizations fought against rooftop solar policies in statehouses across the country. Utility companies lose money when customers generate their own power, even more so when they are required to pay consumers who send surplus energy back into the grid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though the Energy Department does not directly regulate electrical utilities, it does help oversee international electricity trade, the promotion of renewable energy and the security of domestic energy production. After joining the department, McCormack helped start a review of the nation’s electrical grid, according to an agency memo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clean-energy advocates fear the inquiry will cast solar energy, which can fluctuate, as a threat to grid reliability. Such a finding could scare off state public utility commissions considering solar policies and serve as a boon for electrical utilities, said Matt Kasper, research director at the Energy and Policy Institute, an environmental group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Disclosure records show that while McCormack was at Edison, the trade group lobbied the federal government, including the Energy Department, on issues including grid reliability.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The department would not answer questions about McCormack’s involvement with those issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Across the government, at least two appointees to deregulation teams have been granted waivers from ethics rules related to prior jobs, and at least nine others have pledged to recuse themselves from issues related to former employers or clients.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of the recusals involve appointees at the Small Business Administration and the Education Department, including Bob Eitel, who leads the education team and was vice president for regulatory legal services at an operator of for-profit colleges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another recusal involves Byron Brown, an EPA appointee who is married to a senior government affairs manager for the Hess Corporation, the oil and gas company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hess was fined and ordered to spend more than $45 million on pollution controls by the EPA during the Obama administration because of alleged Clean Air Act violations at its refinery in Port Reading, N.J. Disclosure records show that Brown’s wife, Lesley Schaaff, lobbied the EPA last year on behalf of the company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An EPA spokeswoman declined to say whether Brown or Schaaff owned Hess stock, though an agency ethics official said Brown had recused himself from evaluating regulations affecting the company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The agency declined to say whether Brown would also recuse himself from issues affecting the American Petroleum Institute, where his wife’s company is a member. The association has lobbied to ease Obama-era natural gas rules, complaining in a recent letter to Brown’s team about an “unprecedented level of federal regulatory actions targeting our industry.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before being selected to lead the deregulation team at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Maren Kasper was a director at Roofstock, an online marketplace for investors in single-family rental properties. Financial disclosure records show Kasper owned a stake in the company worth up to $50,000.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Changes at HUD could increase investor interest in rental homes, affecting a company like Roofstock. The agency, for example, oversees the federal government’s Section 8 subsidies program for low-income renters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ethics officials allowed Kasper to keep her stake, but she pledged not to take actions that would affect it. (A spokesman for HUD said Kasper’s tenure on the deregulation task force has since ended.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One by one, scientists, educators and environmental activists approached the microphone and urged government officials not to weaken regulations intended to protect children from lead.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The forum, run by the EPA in a drab basement meeting room in Washington, was part of the agency’s push to identify regulations that were excessive and burdensome to businesses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Few businesspeople showed up. As public hearings on regulations have played out in recent weeks, many industry and corporate representatives have instead met with Trump administration officials behind closed doors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, the EPA has asked for written comments and held about a dozen public meetings. The agency has received more than 467,000 comments, many of them critical of potential rollbacks, but also some from businesses large and small pleading for relief from regulatory costs or confusion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After a quiet moment at the meeting to discuss lead regulations, the owner of a local painting company, Brian McCracken, moved to the microphone.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McCracken was frustrated by what he described as costly rules that forced him to test for lead-based paint in homes before he could begin painting. Each test kit costs about $2, and he may need six per room. If a family then declines to hire him, those costs come out of his pocket.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I don’t think anyone is sitting here saying that lead-based dust does not hurt children,” he said. “That’s not what we are talking about. What the contractor needs is a better way to test.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His voice quavered: “Why do I have to educate the general public about the hazards that generations before me created? It doesn’t make sense at all.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump is not the first president to take on such frustrations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Bill Clinton declared the federal government was failing to regulate “without imposing unacceptable or unreasonable costs on society.” He assigned Vice President Al Gore to collect agencies’ suggestions for rules that should go. One rule dictated how to measure the consistency of grits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President George W. Bush’s regulatory overhaul focused more on how new regulations were created. The administration installed a political appointee inside each agency who generally had to sign off before any significant new rule could be initiated. At the EPA for a time, that official came from an industry-funded think tank.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Barack Obama ordered regular updates from each agency about the effectiveness of rules already on the books.</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">Like Bush, Trump has empowered political appointees. Though some agencies have included career staff members on their review teams, an executive order from Trump creating the teams does not require it — nonpolitical employees are generally believed to be more wedded to existing rules. And like Obama, Trump has imposed regular reporting requirements.“When you raise the profile, when it’s clearly an executive priority, it gets attention,” said Heather Krause, director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office, the main auditor of the federal government. According to the auditor’s analysis, the effect under Obama was mostly to clarify and streamline rules, not eliminate them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Trump, who spent his business career on the other side of government regulations, has put an emphasis on cutting old rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same day he signed the executive order initiating the review, he addressed a large crowd of conservative activists at a Maryland convention center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We have begun a historic program to reduce the regulations that are crushing our economy — crushing,” Trump said. “We’re going to put the regulations industry out of work and out of business.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amit Narang, a regulatory expert at the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen, said Trump’s decision to create teams of political appointees — formally known as regulatory reform task forces — should make it easier for the White House to overcome bureaucratic resistance to his rollback plans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“To the extent there’s a deep state effect in this administration,” Narang said, “the task force will be more effective in trying to get the agenda in place.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New York Times’ Kitty Bennett contributed reporting to this story.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you know anything about these task forces, contact us at taskforce@propublica.org or via Signal at 213–271–7217. See who we know about and who we don’t.</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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/06/09/house_republicans_voted_to_gut_dodd_frank_for_no_good_reason.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Republicans’ Vote to Gut Dodd-Frank Is the Wall Street Giveaway That Wall Street Doesn’t Need</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Daniel Gross</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">On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the Financial Choice Act, which is aimed at reducing the regulatory burden on banks imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. As the Wall Street Journal noted, the Financial Choice Act would “subject new financial rules to cost-benefit analysis, boost penalties for financial wrongdoers and repeal the Volcker rule restricting banks from speculative trading.” The general thrust is to free banks from oversight. Some banks would be exempt from the federal stress tests, and the legislation would scale back the ability of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ride herd on abusive bank practices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, it’s only the House. Similar legislation in the Senate would have to beat a filibuster, and hence require some Democratic votes. So it’s not likely the Choice Act will become law in its current form. Which is a good thing. The idea that banks and the broader financial system need relief from today’s regulatory regime is belied by reality, including their balance sheets. The case for repeal of Dodd-Frank would be more compelling if banks were suffering—failing to make money, failing to attract deposits, failing in general. But they’re not.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which highlights an important historical truth. Sure, deregulating an industry can supercharge growth for a few years. But it often ends up in a crash. That’s what happened with the savings and loan industry in the 1980s, and with Wall Street in the 2000s. Setting and enforcing standards, on the other hand, is actually quite good for a sector’s long-term health. Wall Street and the banking system only got back on their feet in the 1930s after the passage of sweeping New Deal reforms. Insurers and many areas of the health care economy have thrived under the Affordable Care Act. Just so, the U.S. banking system—which was in shambles in 2009—has thrived since the passage of Dodd-Frank. In fact, it’s hard to recall a point in recent history when banks were as safe and as profitable as they are right now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation provides a handy reading of the sector’s health with its voluminous Quarterly Banking Profile. Dodd-Frank became law on July 27, 2010. In the quarter before its passage, the banking industry was licking its wounds and getting back on its feet after the financial crash, the housing bust, and the credit crisis. Twenty percent of the nation’s 7,830 banks were losing money, and 45 banks failed that quarter. The nation’s insured banks collectively charged off $49 billion in bad debt—loans they had made but now concluded they had no hope of collecting. Some 829 banks, with total assets of $403 billion, were on the FDIC’s “problem list.” Collectively, the industry eked out a profit of $21 billion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The successive quarterly reports tell a tale of recovery and profitable growth—with vastly lower rates of failure and significantly higher profits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, Dodd-Frank contained a lot of regulations. And while it did explicitly ban some practices—like using government-insured deposits to engage in proprietary trading—the most important thing it did was to set higher standards. Want to be part of the Federal Deposit Insurance program? Then you’ve got to hold more capital, you have to submit to annual stress tests, and you must operate with the knowledge that the CFPB is going to be watching you to make sure you aren’t abusing your customers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While banks grumbled and lobbied for changes, they generally complied with Dodd-Frank. As a result, they became more careful and choosy about how they lent. Many smaller institutions that were struggling to survive decided it made more sense to merge or being acquired. Thanks to consolidation and failure, there were 5,856 banks in the first quarter of 2017, 25 percent fewer than in early 2010.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The pace of lending abated from the frenzied tempo of the bubble years. But lending today is far more effective—and profitable—than it was before Dodd-Frank. It helps that the economy and jobs have been expanding consecutively for the last several years. But we haven’t seen the type of reckless lending from banks that tend to take place as expansion lengthen.</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">Bank failures have fallen virtually every year. Last year, only five small banks failed. The number of banks on the problem list has fallen to 112, and they’re mostly very small. The combined assets of today’s troubled banks is $24 billion—a decline of 94 percent from before the passage of Dodd-Frank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Fund, which was $20 billion in the hole in the spring of 2010, is at a record high of $83 billion. Only 3 percent of the banks in the U.S. reported a less in the most recent quarter. Banks charged off $11.5 billion in bad loans in the quarter—a decline of 75 percent from the second quarter of 2010. After making a combined—and record—$170 billion in profits in 2016, banks regulated by the FDIC earned $44 billion in the first quarter of 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Does this really look like an industry that is struggling mightily in the face of zealous regulation?</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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sometimes, the general public is completely unaware of very important decisions government makes because they are shrouded in technicalities. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that could crippled the ability of government to regulate private industry.</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">The bill modifies the Administrative Procedure Act, which was passed in 1946, and represented a compromise between New Deal Democrats and free-market Republicans. It sanctioned the power of government agencies like the National Labor Relations Board or the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the private market, but required public hearings on proposed rulings and court suits to overturn regulations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the courts could only overturn rulings that were “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion.” In other words, the courts would have to defer to the regulatory agencies in finding whether a ruling was justified. But the Republicans in the House passed a law that would allow the courts to rule without giving deference to the regulatory agencies. A Republican court could, for instance, overrule decisions of the Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency on concocted Constitutional grounds – say, by arguing that it violated the “takings” clause of the Constitution. That could cripple the regulatory agencies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Martin Lobel, a Washington lawyer and expert in tax and regulatory policy, sent me an email explaining the Republican action:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On January 11, while everyone’s attention was focused on confirmation hearings and attempts to repeal Obamacare, the House passed The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017 (H.R. 5) which would amend the Administrative Procedures Act to overturn the deference courts have given to administrative agency decisions by a vote of 238-183. I was told the Republican leadership was confident, since there are 114 judicial vacancies that they expect will be filled by “conservatives,” this change will significantly help to end “big government,” as will the new Administration’s appointees to the various regulatory bodies. BEWARE.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marty’s admonition, “Beware,” should be taken very seriously. If the Senate passes this act, and President Trump signs it, federal agencies entrusted with enforcing the Clean Air Act or other landmark legislation, will no longer be able to do their job.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Update: We’ve gotten two interesting responses to my analysis of the Regulatory Accountability Act that House Republicans passed this week. Reader DP agrees with the “overall thrust of the article,” but says that I didn’t explain well how the courts could now overturn agency rulings. NP says that what is at issue is not whether the court can introduce Constitutional considerations, but whether it must accept an agency’s ruling on the basis of whether its decision-making process is “rational,” or whether it can substitute a new process of its own. NP writes,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under the current deferential APA standards, such determinations are to be affirmed if they are rational or reasonable — the court is not empowered to decide what decision or approach is best, only whether the agency was rational. If such deference is removed by Congress, the court can then “substitute its own judgment” for that of the agency. That would be a big deal, a big change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reader DB doesn’t accept the thrust of my article and accuses me of echoing “what comes out of Trump’s mouth.” DB says he says agencies on behalf of public interest groups that want to enforce, say, the Endangered Species Act. He says the Republican law would make it “potentially easier for citizens to enforce these laws.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If one sees the regulatory agencies as the problem, and if most of the suits brought against them were by public interest organizations, then DB would have a point. But what the law – passed by a party-line Republican vote – would do is to make it easer for businesses and their lobbies like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a leading backer of the legislation) to overturn applications of major legislation like the Clean Air Act. That’s why Public Citizen and all but five Democrats opposed the law. Thanks to both NP and DB for their responses.</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">goodlatte sponsor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">co:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Peterson, Collin C. [D-MN-7]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/03/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Chabot, Steve [R-OH-1]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/03/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Marino, Tom [R-PA-10]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/03/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Ratcliffe, John [R-TX-4]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/03/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Luetkemeyer, Blaine [R-MO-3]*<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/03/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Smith, Lamar [R-TX-21]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Sessions, Pete [R-TX-32]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Young, David [R-IA-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Collins, Doug [R-GA-9]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Franks, Trent [R-AZ-8]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Labrador, Raul R. [R-ID-1]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Huizenga, Bill [R-MI-2]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Jenkins, Evan H. [R-WV-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Tipton, Scott R. [R-CO-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Hultgren, Randy [R-IL-14]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Wagner, Ann [R-MO-2]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Byrne, Bradley [R-AL-1]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Walters, Mimi [R-CA-45]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/09/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Bishop, Mike [R-MI-8]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/09/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Holding, George [R-NC-13]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/09/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Arrington, Jodey C. [R-TX-19]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/09/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Radewagen, Aumua Amata Coleman [R-AS-At Large]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/09/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Higgins, Clay [R-LA-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/10/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Rokita, Todd [R-IN-4]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/10/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Harris, Andy [R-MD-1]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/10/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24022017/donald-trump-executive-order-regulations-climate-change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every federal agency will set up a task force dedicated to quickly finding regulations to eliminate, as mandated by an executive order signed Friday by President Donald Trump. It is one of a series of moves the White House believes will free U.S. businesses from the bonds of health, safety, consumer and environmental protections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Surrounded by executives from some of the nation's largest corporations, Trump made clear his anti-regulatory drive is a large part of his jobs-creation plan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Trump did not mention climate change in the order, this step to rein in the regulators is intended, among other things, to constrain their actions to control emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Every regulation should pass a simple test," Trump said as he signed the order. "Does it make life better or safer for American workers or consumers? If the answer is no, we will be getting rid of it and getting rid of it quickly."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The regulatory reform task forces will be required to report on their progress within 90 days.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The White House issued a statement saying that the Obama administration had finalized more than 3,000 regulations, at a total cost to the American taxpayer of $873 billion. The White House has said the figure was from the American Action Forum, a conservative advocacy group run by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003-5. But the White House did not mention that American Action Forum's figures also show that the calculated benefits of the Obama era regulations outstrip the costs by more than 3-to-1 ($458 billion annually in benefits to $139 billion annually in costs.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In taking up the cause of "regulatory reform," Trump is following in the footsteps of virtually every one of his predecessors. It was a central theme of President Ronald Reagan's domestic policy, and President George H.W. Bush established a "Council on Competitiveness" in the White House to cut red tape. In President Bill Clinton's administration, the effort was called "Reinventing Government," and was headed by Vice President Al Gore. President George W. Bush kept in place an executive order his predecessor had penned, but his White House rejected more agency-written rules during his first year than were sent back to agencies in all eight years of the Clinton administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Obama, too, issued an executive order calling for a government-wide review of regulations to reduce costs and to get rid of "absurd and unnecessary paperwork requirements that waste time and money."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump executive order cites the previous orders by Clinton and Obama—keeping them in place and directing the new task forces to carry out regulatory reform "consistent with the law."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although each administration was able to count successes in reforming regulation—whether in number of pages of eliminated from the Federal Code, or bureaucracies trimmed—each also added to the federal rule book, often responding to new laws written by Congress or new policy imperatives. Under the second Bush administration, a large number of regulations were written for the new Homeland Security agencies. President Obama's administration for the first time finalized regulations to address climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmental groups were quick to warn that Trump's executive order would be used to weaken protections at the behest of polluters. "President Trump is rigging the system so corporate lobbyists can lower standards that protect the public health and safety of all people in this country," Tiernan Sittenfeld, vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters said in a statement. "These task forces will attempt to roll back commonsense protections for the air we breathe, the water we drink and the lands we cherish."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Said Greenpeace spokesman Travis Nichols, "The Trump administration wants less government, except when it wants more to carry out its oil and gas industry agenda."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American Petroleum Institute's president, Jack Gerard, applauded Trump's order, citing 145 new rules and regulations affecting the industry in recent years. "Today's action by President Trump will unleash innovation across the nation, and it will allow our economy to grow, help lower energy costs for consumers, and help American workers," he said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump said he was aiming to create jobs by reducing regulatory burden. "Excessive regulation is killing jobs and driving companies out of our country like never before," Trump said. "[It's] reducing wages and raising prices. I've listened to American companies and American workers complain, and I've been listening to them for a long time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The regulatory burden for these big companies and for small companies is an impossible situation, and we're going to solve it very quickly."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new edict follows Trump's first executive order on regulation that required two rules be eliminated for every one an agency finalizes. That order already faces a legal challenge by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the watchdog group Public Citizen. They argue that Trump exceeded his Constitutional authority by interfering with the authority vested in Congress, preventing federal agencies from carrying out the law as Congress mandated. The Trump administration has until the beginning of April to respond to that suit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the Trump administration's earliest actions upon taking office was to impose a regulatory freeze on federal agencies. Such a move is typical in a transition to a new administration, but observers said the Trump freeze was broader than usual, even halting new rules that had already been published in the Federal Register.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The administration is expected to issue more executive orders to rein in regulations in the days ahead, including one aimed specifically at repealing the Obama administration's signature climate initiative, the Clean Power Plan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the chief executives who appeared with Trump at Friday's signing were Ken Frazier of the pharmaceutical giant Merck; Marillyn Hewson of the aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin; Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical; and Juan Ricardo Luciano of Archer Daniels Midland.</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">A growing number of constitutional challenges to reasonable regulations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent years, large corporations have been emboldened to argue that corporate speech rights entitle them to strike down state health care prescription information laws — those forbidding pharmaceutical companies from selling information about the prescribing patterns of individual doctors, for example. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrell_v._IMS_Health_Inc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have argued that speech rights forbid certain securities regulations — specifically, those requiring investigation and disclosure of whether a company sells “conflict minerals” from the Democratic Republic of Congo. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.fedregsadvisor.com/2014/04/14/d-c-circuit-vacates-dodd-frank-conflict-minerals-provision-sec-rule-as-violating-first-amendment-free-speech/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have said that the First Amendment gives them a right to decline to say on product labels that the meat they sell comes from foreign countries, or that food products contain genetically modified ingredients.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.ibtimes.com/food-labeling-laws-could-be-undermined-first-amendment-court-challenge-1587213</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">death star;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kind of like anti-kyoto, prop 23 does not go straight at regulations (that most ppl wpuld approve of, like clean air) but neurtralizes if hurts economy, or in reins, req second step to implement thus kills</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it's not just the transition team that's looking for help from Koch minions—it's Trump himself. As Steve Horn reported in DeSmog, the only person Trump spoke to on the record about a big anti-regulatory act that's been on the Kochs' agenda for years was Phil Kerpen, former vice president of policy for Americans for Prosperity. The REINS Act just passed the House on Jan. 5.</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">115th retry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allow Congress to Block Major Regulations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is a little-known bill that could bring the entire regulatory process to a standstill. It’s called the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act and would require any regulation costing the economy over $100 million a year to also pass an up-or-down vote in Congress. If Congress doesn’t hold a vote within 70 days, the regulation dies. This gives a Republican Congress direct control of regulations that are all well within the EPA’s authority to enact—thanks to Congress’ own Clean Air and Water Acts. Mitch McConnell hasn’t hinted what his plans might be on this bill, which already passed the House of Representatives last year. Kentucky’s junior Senator Rand Paul already supports it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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