FILE – In this July 27, 2018, file photo, the Dave Johnson coal-fired power plant is silhouetted against the morning sun in Glenrock, Wyo.
This is an update on the earlier NYTimes article/post from September. There are so many areas to fight back and resist this President’s actions against the environment. If you choose one fight against this administration, make it this one.
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, AP News, December 29, 2018
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has targeted an Obama-era regulation credited with helping dramatically reduce toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, saying the benefits to human health and the environment may not be worth the cost of the regulation.
The 2011 Obama administration rule, called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, led to what electric utilities say was an $18 billion clean-up of mercury and other toxins from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants.
Overall, environmental groups say, federal and state efforts have cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 85 percent in roughly the last decade.
Mercury causes brain damage, learning disabilities and other birth defects in children, among other harm. Coal power plants in this country are the largest single manmade source of mercury pollutants, which enters the food chain through fish and other items that people consume.
The proposal Friday from the Environmental Protection Agency challenges the basis for the Obama regulation. It calculates that the crackdown on mercury and other toxins from coal plants produced only a few million dollars a year in measurable health benefits and was not “appropriate and necessary” — a legal benchmark under the country’s landmark Clean Air Act.
The proposal, which now goes up for public comment before any final administration approval, would leave the current mercury regulation in place.
However, the EPA said it will seek comment during a 60-day public-review period on whether “we would be obligated to rescind” the Obama-era rule if the agency adopts Friday’s finding that the regulation was not appropriate and necessary. Any such change would trigger new rounds in what have already been years of court battles over regulating mercury pollution from coal plants.
This move is the latest by the Trump administration that changes estimates of the costs and payoffs of regulations as part of an overhaul of Obama-era environmental protections.
It’s also the administration’s latest proposed move on behalf of the U.S. coal industry, which has been struggling in the face of competition from natural gas and other cheaper, cleaner forms of energy. The Trump administration in August proposed an overhaul for another Obama-era regulation that would have prodded electricity providers to get less of their energy from dirtier-burning coal plants.
In a statement, the EPA said Friday the administration was “providing regulatory certainty” by more accurately estimating the costs and benefits of the Obama administration crackdown on mercury and other toxic emissions from smokestacks.
Hal Quinn, head of the National Mining Association, charged in a statement Friday that the Obama administration had carried out “perhaps the largest regulatory accounting fraud perpetrated on American consumers” when it calculated that the broad health benefits to Americans would outweigh the cost of equipment upgrades by power providers.
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, condemned the Trump administration’s move.
The EPA has “decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” after the successful clean-up of toxins from the country’s coal-plant smokestacks, Carper said.
He and other opponents of the move said the Trump administration was playing with numbers, ignoring what Carper said were clear health, environmental and economic benefits to come up with a bottom line that suited the administration’s deregulatory aims.
Janet McCabe, a former air-quality official in the Obama administration’s EPA, called the proposal part of “the quiet dismantling of the regulatory framework” for the federal government’s environmental protections.
Coming one week into a government shutdown, and in the lull between Christmas and New Year, “this low-key announcement shouldn’t fool anyone — it is a big deal, with significant implications,” McCabe said.
I don’t wonder too much why this is the case. The U.S is famous for getting tied up by corporate lobbyists, stifling bureaucracy, and a wholly inefficient, meek FDA. Further insult to public health is the plain greed of sellouts to corporations rich enough to pay for whatever they want.
This small list is a trifle of the much larger list of banned foods, chemical, and agri products that are banned, not only in Europe, but here in our own California, stateside.
Want to know what’s likely safe for public health, and what’s likely not? Don’t look at our federal regulations. Look at Europe, and then look at California.
The European Union prohibits many food additives and various drugs that are widely used in American foods.
By Roni Caryn Rabin, NYTimes
Q. What foods are banned in Europe that are not banned in the United States, and what are the implications of eating those foods?
A. The European Union prohibits or severely restricts many food additives that have been linked to cancer that are still used in American-made bread, cookies, soft drinks and other processed foods. Europe also bars the use of several drugs that are used in farm animals in the United States, and many European countries limit the cultivation and import of genetically modified foods.
“In some cases, food-processing companies will reformulate a food product for sale in Europe” but continue to sell the product with the additives in the United States, said Lisa Y. Lefferts, senior scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy organization.
A 1958 amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act prohibits the Food and Drug Administration from approving food additives that are linked to cancer, but an agency spokeswoman said that many substances that were in use before passage of the amendment, known as the Delaney amendment, are considered to have had prior approval and “therefore are not regulated as food additives.”
In October, the F.D.A. agreed to ban six artificial flavoring substances shown to cause cancer in animals, following petitions and a lawsuit filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and other organizations. The F.D.A. insists the six artificial flavors “do not pose a risk to public health,” but concedes that the law requires it not approve the food additives. Food companies will have at least two years to remove them from their products.
Here’s a short list of some of the food additives restricted by the European Union but allowed in American foods. Most must be listed as ingredients on the labels, though information about drugs used to increase the yield in farm animals is generally not provided.
Potassium bromate and azodicarbonamide (ADA)
These additives are commonly added to baked goods, but neither is required, and both are banned in Europe because they may cause cancer. In recent years, some American restaurant chains have responded to consumer pressure and removed them from their food.
Potassium bromate is often added to flour used in bread, rolls, cookies, buns, pastry dough, pizza dough and other items to make the dough rise higher and give it a white glow. The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers it a possible human carcinogen, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the F.D.A. to ban it nearly 20 years ago. The F.D.A. says potassium bromate has been in use since before the Delaney amendment on carcinogenic food additives was passed.
Azodicarbonamide, or ADA, which is used as a whitening agent in cereal flour and as a dough conditioner, breaks down during baking into chemicals that cause cancer in lab animals. It is used by many chain restaurants that serve sandwiches and buns. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has urged the F.D.A. to bar its use. The F.D.A. says it is safe in limited amounts.
BHA and BHT
The flavor enhancers and preservatives BHA and BHT are subject to severe restrictions in Europe but are widely used in American food products. While evidence on BHT is mixed, BHA is listed in a United States government report on carcinogens as “reasonably anticipated” to be a human carcinogen.
Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO)
BVO is used in some citrus-flavored soft drinks like Mountain Dew and in some sports drinks to prevent separation of ingredients, but it is banned in Europe. It contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, and studies suggest it can build up in the body and can potentially lead to memory loss and skin and nerve problems. An F.D.A. spokeswoman said it is safe in limited amounts, and that the agency would take action “should new safety studies become available that raise questions about the safety of BVO.”
Yellow food dyes No. 5 and No. 6, and Red Dye No. 40
These dyes can be used in foods sold in Europe, but the products must carry a warning saying the coloring agents “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” No such warning is required in the United States, though the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the F.D.A. in 2008 to ban the dyes. Consumers can try to avoid the dyes by reading lists of ingredients on labels, “but they’re used in so many things you wouldn’t even think of, not just candy and icing and cereal, but things like mustard and ketchup,” marshmallows, chocolate, and breakfast bars that appear to contain fruit, Ms. Lefferts, the food safety scientist, said.
The F.D.A.’s website says reactions to food coloring are rare, but acknowledges that yellow dye No. 5, used widely in drinks, desserts, processed vegetables and drugs, may cause itching and hives.
Farm Animal Drugs
The European Union also bans some drugs that are used on farm animals in the United States, citing health concerns. These drugs include bovine growth hormone, which the United States dairy industry uses to increase milk production. The European Union also does not allow the drug ractopamine, used in the United States to increase weight gain in pigs, cattle and turkeys before slaughter, saying that “risks to human health cannot be ruled out.” An F.D.A. spokeswoman said the drugs are safe.
Everyone is entitled to their own definition. Some may abide by more liberal views. Some are more constrained. Some of us put weight in demonstrative actions. Others treasure words, and expressions.
The ways we develop, recognize, and show romantic love, may differ in ways among the billions of people on this planet, but I believe there are qualities, and behaviors that are universal within all of us. The universal qualities are the things I hold dearest, and most deeply, when I define romantic love, and what it means to me.
To love someone. To really love someone, is to make them the center of your universe. I add the word, “really”, to emphasize this emotional state, because there are too many cases of this word, “love”, being used to describe other states of attraction, and attachment that are not the deep and committed love I’m sharing here.
Making someone the center of your universe, is as huge as it sounds. It is a tremendous magnetic pull on your life, that not only bathes you in its warmth and sunlight, but also shades parts of your life, that otherwise would exist, if not thrive, autonomously. This is the part of love that has no finish line. There’s no immediate reward that can be calculated. It’s a philosophical acceptance that requires sacrifice of the one, for the greater good of the two.
This is not to say that sacrifices should abound, and autonomy forsaken. Quite the contrary. A deeply committed love should always accommodate deep individual needs. What are we to each other, if we are nothing to ourselves?
But we are not all dovetailed parts that fit nicely into one another. We all have rough edges that need sanding, odd sizes, and shapes that need work because they don’t match up. Skilled carpenters get paid to make beautiful custom furniture. An alliance of true love, requires no less. We must be willing to be carpenters.
Thinking, about this headline. Thinking, I agree. Thinking, that one, one of the key issues for my distaste of Trump, may very well have been his association with the Right side of government, and it’s ideology. In this regard, the question to all of us left of center and beyond, is how we’d have been, would be, with a left sided Trump? I know my answer. What’s yours?
Thing is, Trump’s problem, mostly, is that he’s… hmmm… an imbecile.
For me, being politically incorrect is generally more of a good thing, than bad. For that, Trump gets decent marks. The country, humanity even, deserves, needs, a departure from the old line boilerplate politician that essentially took over this country after the WWII.
This isn’t the place for that longish essay. It’s just a shortcut sentence to my point, and this article below.
Again, the issue with Trump… he’s an imbecile. We don’t need that.
Heading into the 2020 Democratic primaries, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll has a warning for Democrats: Americans are largely against the country becoming more politically correct.
Fifty-two percent of Americans, including a majority of independents, said they are against the country becoming more politically correct and are upset that there are too many things people can’t say anymore. About a third said they are in favor of the country becoming more politically correct and like when people are being more sensitive in their comments about others.
It certainly is true that Brexit, and the relationship with the EU is complicated. But, the reasons why this leave/don’t leave conflict has become a two year long fiasco mess that it is today, is not as complicated.
The general public, the voting masses of citizens, the vast electorate, the rank and file, the mainstream who hold ordinary jobs, many who struggle to provide, survive, and most importantly, do not own a life of politics, all too often fail to study a societal problem to the depths it requires.
Ignorance, naïveté, laziness, misguided trust, or, even given proper analysis, just flawed reasoning, all fill the bucket of excuses that explains these events.
Combine these habitual very human shortfalls with millions of impassioned, clashing opinions, and you get a vortex of downward spiraling conflicts that drags everything into it.
Politicians, government legislators, for all their flaws, their corruption, their weaknesses, their lies, and their greed, are genuinely driven, dedicated individuals, who have a very specific job to do. Research, study, and analyze a problem or situation, and form an informed opinion of action to address that situation or problem. Whether their ultimate position serves them, or their constituents selfishly, or with a measure of greater good thinking, is besides the point.
The definition, or outcome, of right or wrong is not relevant. The point is, there was a very specific, step by step process that is undertaken to help make a decision, take a stand, or propose a solution to the situation or problem.
In the UK, as in the U.S., and increasingly, around the world, the citizenry aggregate, is unwilling, uncommitted, to put the same work into understanding and executing this same process before they present their own opinions.
Until this changes, there will be more crisis and havoc before there is resolution and stability.
MB
Theresa May Survives Leadership Challenge, but Brexit Plan Is Still in Peril
Two and a half years after Britain’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union, the country remains divided. We met with voters on both sides of the debate — those who voted to leave and now feel betrayed, and those campaigning for a second referendum
By Stephen Castle, NYTimes
LONDON — Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, survived the gravest threat yet to her embattled leadership on Wednesday, winning a party confidence vote and averting a leadership battle that threatened to plunge the country into prolonged crisis.
But the victory celebration, if any, is likely to be short-lived.
While Mrs. May survived to fight another day, the future of her stalled plan to leave the European Union looked bleaker than ever.
She still lacks the votes in Parliament to pass it. She stands little chance of winning the concessions from Europe that she needs to break the logjam.
And the surprisingly strong vote against her within her own party underscores the difficulty she faces in winning approval for any plan for Britain to leave Europe, or Brexit, as the deadline for withdrawal looms.
For one moment, however, after a week of humiliating setbacks, the prime minister could savor her win.
Prime Minister Theresa May outside 10 Downing Street after she survived a confidence vote on Wednesday.
“Here is our renewed mission,” she said outside her offices at 10 Downing Street after the vote on Wednesday. “Delivering the Brexit that people voted for, bringing the country back together and building a country that truly works for everyone.”
But even that moment was tempered by loss.
Mrs. May won the vote only after promising that she would step aside soon after the Brexit agonies were over, according to reports from a meeting of Conservative Party lawmakers preceding the vote. That pledge removed the generally unwelcome possibility that she would stand as party leader in the next general election.
Mrs. May, said George Freeman, a Conservative lawmaker, had made clear “that she has listened, heard and respects the will of the party that once she has delivered an orderly Brexit, she will step aside for the election of a new leader.”
In the vote on Wednesday, on a confidence motion called by her own Conservative Party, Mrs. May won the support of 200 Conservative lawmakers, while 117 voted against her. The protest vote exceeded many forecasts, and is expected to compound her difficulties in Parliament, where her enemies were already pressuring her.
“This was a terrible result for the prime minister,” said Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leader of the hard-line pro-Brexit faction.
The vote does give her some breathing room. Under the Conservative Party’s rules, she cannot be challenged again by her own lawmakers for another year, which at least offers some stability for moving the Brexit plan forward. Had she lost, the Conservatives would have been thrust into a divisive, drawn-out process that would have stretched well into the next month.
Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee, the body that represents Conservative backbenchers, announcing that Theresa May survived the confidence vote.
The delay would have threatened the country’s ability to reach a deal by the March deadline, potentially resulting in the messy prospect of a no-deal Brexit.
Nevertheless the victory came at a price, laying bare the opposition within her own party ranks to Mrs. May, who leads a government that has no parliamentary majority.
The confidence vote was called after weeks of discord when at least 48 Conservative lawmakers submitted the letters of protest required to force it. Mrs. May canceled a trip to Dublin where she had hoped to talk to her Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, about changes that might help build support in the British Parliament for her Brexit proposals.
But it had already been clear that she was in deep political trouble, battered from multiple directions by her management of the European Union withdrawal. In particular, many hard-line Brexit supporters within her party believed she was not making a complete enough break with the bloc.
In recent days, she suffered two embarrassing setbacks. Last week, the House of Commons voted her government in contempt of Parliament — the first time any prime minister had been censured in that way — for failing to release the advice her government’s lawyers had given on Brexit.
And on Monday, she postponed a vote on the Brexit agreement she had negotiated with the European Union, acknowledging that it stood to be defeated by “a significant margin.” In fact, lawmakers say, views on the topic, which has dominated British politics for nearly three years, are so fragmented that no approach has majority support in Parliament, and probably not even among Conservatives.
May’s Brexit Deal Is Probably Still Going to Fail. What Happens Then?
Nobody knows, really. But these are the likeliest scenarios.
Mrs. May argued Wednesday morning that the only beneficiaries of a vote of no confidence would be the opposition Labour Party.
Having survived it, she now faces an uphill task to garner sufficient support for her withdrawal agreement with the European Union, a lengthy legal document that Brussels has warned is the only deal on the table.
John Springford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research institute, said that the size of the vote against her “is an even clearer signal that she won’t be able to get her deal through Parliament, and makes it even more likely that when she puts the deal to the vote she will lose that.”
On Thursday she is scheduled to travel to Brussels to meet leaders of the 27 other European Union countries to try to secure some reassurances that might help her win a vote on the Brexit plans. She has promised to allow lawmakers to decide the matter by Jan. 21. If there is no agreement then, Britain could be facing a chaotic departure on March 29.
Or not. There could be a second referendum, a mutually agreed extension of the negotiating period or even, as Mrs. May has warned her party, no Brexit at all. What does not seem to be in the cards, for now, at least, is the general election that the opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been angling for throughout the Brexit process.
While Mrs. May has maintained a public face of optimism over securing some pledges from the European Union intended to reassure her own lawmakers, she is unlikely to win any game-changing concessions.
Mrs. May in the House of Commons on Wednesday
Her strategy appears to be to delay the critical vote — now probably in the middle of January — and to hope that the growing risk of a disorderly departure brings some lawmakers back into line. But many doubt that will work.
“Clearly, her last throw of the dice is count down the clock and try to bounce people into voting for it,” Mr. Springford said. “But I am not convinced she will win that vote. I don’t think that she can get meaningful concessions from the European Union that would be enough to get her over the line.
“The best hope is that everybody calms down over Christmas, that they start to really worry about no deal, and that some more moderate people signal that they will support her. But everyone is now so high up their pole that I am not sure they can climb down.”
In Brussels, diplomats said they could see little benefit from Mrs. May’s travails, and that no new British leader would be able to change the fundamentals of the 585-page divorce agreement negotiated so painfully.
That applies to the so-called backstop that the pro-Brexit lawmakers are particularly incensed about. That provision would insure the free movement of goods over the Irish border in the event that a free-trade agreement is not reached in the two-year transition period after Brexit. What is especially galling for the Brexiteers is that it would continue indefinitely, or until the European Union decides it is no longer needed.
The main fear is that there is no majority in Parliament for any kind of Brexit deal, one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity according to diplomatic protocol.
“Even the funny elements of this are actually tragic,” said another diplomat. “I still hope Beckett, Kafka and Havel are not those who will finish writing this piece.”
Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Brussels.
