You have to give the squatter in the Oval Office credit for brazenness. An honest leader with his record on the environment wouldn’t dare deliver the speech Donald Trump did Monday praising his regime’s record in that realm. But then past presidents didn’t rack up 11,000 lies in their first two-and-a-half years in office the way the current one has. Brazen lying is the paramount item on the man’s résumé.
What would be ironic if irony hadn’t been obliterated by the Trump team, the our-record-on-the-environment-is-the-greatest-ever speech was in part a celebration of destroying President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan designed to cut carbon emissions from coal-fueled power plants and replacing it with Trump’s phony Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. ACE seeks to keep such coal plants operating well into future instead of being shuttered and exchanged for plants running on clean energy sources.
Accompanied in the East Room of the White House by a clique of climate science deniers—Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler—Trump’s entourage for the speech included only one top official who actually accepts at least some of what scientists are saying about the climate crisis, Cheryl Neumayr, who heads the Council on Environmental Quality. But her record and her congressional testimony shows that while she’s not an outright denier she’s far from a staunch supporter of policies crafted to ameliorate the impacts of climate change.
Trump said Monday: “A strong economy is vital to maintaining a healthy environment. Punishing Americans is never the right way to produce a better environment or a better economy. We have rejected this failed approach and we are seeing great results. [...] From day one my administration has made it a top priority to ensure that America is among the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet.” Kate Grumke reported:
But during his time in office, Trump has also worked to roll back air and water pollution regulations, many of them put in place by his predecessor. The New York Times found at least 14 air and water pollution rollbacks under Trump. His administration reversed the Stream Protection Rule, for example, which regulated pollution from surface coal mining. In 2017, he ended a requirement that oil and gas producers report methane emissions.
CNN fact-checked a number of claims Trump made in the speech, finding him … mistaken … on several points.
Kim Cook of the Environmental Working Group called Trump’s speech “utter fantasy.” Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists said: "Is this a joke? It's like an arsonist talking about how valuable his work is to the fire department." Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted, “We don't have time for more lies. We must address the climate crisis now.” Valerie Volcovici reports:
EPA data show huge improvements in air quality in recent decades since the imposition of landmark environmental regulations like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. But they also show some increases since Trump took office, in fine particulate matter emissions like soot and smoke from the combustion of coal and oil.
The United States also slipped in the global environmental rankings to No. 27 in 2018 from 26th during the last year of the Obama administration, according to the Environmental Performance Index epi.envirocenter.yale.edu, a project by Yale and Columbia universities to measure national performance on air, water, forestry and other metrics.
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“We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.”
~~Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, And Other Sex Offenders (2003)
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—Federal Court Holds DOMA Unconstitutional:
In a pair of opinions issued this afternoon (Gill, Commonwealth), The Hon. Joseph L. Tauro agreed with Gill and the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] and held Section 3 of DOMA—the part forbidding federal benefits to same-sex couples—to be unconstitutional.
DOMA fails to pass constitutional muster even under the highly deferential rational basis test. As set forth in detail below, this court is convinced that "there exists no fairly conceivable set of facts that could ground a rational relationship" between DOMA and a legitimate government objective. DOMA, therefore, violates core constitutional principles of equal protection.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Helluva weekend for Greg Dworkin to round up! US Soccer wins! Epstein arrested! Dems need to be afraid of something! DOJ swaps out census case team! Alternative theories on why that happened! Leaked UK diplomatic reports say Trump sucks!
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