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Senate Confirms Former Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler To Lead EPA (cnn.com)
The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Andrew Wheeler as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, ratifying President Trump's choice of a former advocate for business interests to lead the agency. From a report: Wheeler, also a former Republican Senate aide on environmental issues, has been acting administrator since July, when former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned amid a host of ethics controversies. Since Wheeler began leading the agency, he has continued work on many of the same priorities as his predecessor, including looking to roll back Obama-era air and water pollution regulations. But Wheeler has brought a level of stability to the agency that didn't exist under Pruitt, keeping a relatively low profile while continuing to make progress towards meeting the Trump administration's policy goals for the agency. He has met often with industry representatives. Wheeler attended or held more than 50 meetings with representatives of companies or industry groups regulated by the EPA between April and August of 2018, a CNN review of his internal schedules found.
Joseph Goebbels has been named Ambassador to Israel, and Karl Marx has been named an FCC commissioner.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Environmental Pillaging Agency
hen house
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Actually, Cohen said exactly the opposite. He had no direct evidence or knowledge of any Russian collusion during the campaign and said so under questioning yesterday.
Cohen said a lot of nasty things about Trump, but on that specific point he clearly has no direct evidence to provide. If he had, I doubt he'd be heading to jail right now, but would have been charged by Mueller and given a immunity deal for his testimony.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Until the flow of lobbying money into election funds stops they represent an "electorate" of corporate donors, not the people, and they do serve their electorate.
if you want coal to come back you'll need somebody in charge who wants it to come back and wants it at any cost. Natural gas is just too competitive (let alone Solar and Wind). You're gonna have to start loosening environmental regs around coal.
One of the key reasons for the "Green New Deal" (the "New Deal" part) is jobs for ex coal miners. These folks are clustered in critical voting districts where there is literally no work outside of Walmart, the mines and a handful of service jobs (doctors to treat black lung, police to lock up the occasional drunk miner, etc).
Folks are confused why these guys would fight so hard to mine coal given the health and safety risks. Folks who wonder that have never been without a job for 12 months and counting....
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Senate = non representative corrupt dictators. They don't represent the people.
You are a moron. Senators are representatives of their state. If you want representatives of the people you go to the House.
This is by design, for good reason.
I propose a novel approach to fight global warming. We'll remove all the filters from coal power stations and emit all that marvelous dust into the atmosphere so we can block out the sun's rays and hence reduce global temperature.
Andrew Wheeler is helping Make America Great Again by bringing back those glory days when rivers routinely caught fire.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Tell us again how great your democracy is , how wonderful your freedom is.
Because countries with real democracies and greater freedoms are laughing hard at you.
Its obvious to the rest of us that your politicians are bought and paid for by industry, it is industry that actually runs the USA now, and you can NOT vote them out.
It might help if we went back to having the state legislatures appoint the senators, rather than having them elected by the general vote.
This would make them more answerable to the state (the state legislatures voted in by the state people)....and it would take out all the $$$$$ involved in buying general senate elections, and end the influence of lobbying.
I think they had it right the first time around.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In the same way that a lobbyist for buggywhip manufacturers might "know" about cars when crafting regulations. He'll have a skewed view that will favor old, out of date technology because that's what makes his former employers rich and will work against newer, cleaner technologies because those take business away from his old employers.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I guess Chinese do as well because their not ramping down on coal plants either.
I see "clueless" is still cool in come circles. A "lobbyist" is not an "engineer" or a "scientist". (You may want to look these words up....) His expertise is pushing what he gets told to push, not to understand anything except the pushing itself.
I once heard a talk by a US lobbyist about his work given to an expert audience. (Don't ask me how they got the guy to do that, but there were some pretty high-powered people in the audience...) Extremely interesting, extremely smart and capable guy, extremely disillusioning about the mental capabilities of politicians. Lobbyists do not explain things or create understanding in their targets, they use every trick in the book to create the illusion of understanding. That is why they do not actually need any facts or any expert knowledge to do their work.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, you know as in the unofficial US motto: "Maintaining world LEADership." I see Trump is finally starting to make good on his promises.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"He had no direct evidence or knowledge of any Russian collusion during the campaign and said so under questioning yesterday." - Wrong, his testimony IS evidence. He said Jr. told Trump about that meeting beforehand.
Which is .... hearsay, and thus inadmissible as actual evidence... You cannot testify to what you *think* somebody else said to somebody else, especially when that somebody is available to testify as to what was said. ALSO... IF you are talking about the "Trump Tower Meeting" during the campaign, it is FAR from established that anything unseemly or unethical took place at that meeting, in fact, everybody who was at that meeting says that the topic being discussed was some obscure adoption rules and had nothing to do with coordinating electioneering activities. But don't let the lack of actual evidence dissuade you from believing something else happened.
When he was questioned about "Russian Collusion" Cohen says the following... Transcript excerpt follows from NBC none the less...
Was there collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?
"Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions," Cohen said.
Suspicions are not "direct evidence" so Cohen knows nothing of importance about this subject.
I'm making no judgment here about what Trump may or may not be guilty of, I'm just pointing out that Cohen doesn't have any direct evidence of Russian collusion to share with us. That Cohen suspects something he cannot prove may mean something to you, but to a court of law, it's meaningless.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It would be more surprising if the Wheeler _wasn't_ a kakistocrat.
I think so too, but I seriously doubt we'd be able to make the case to amend the constitution. I actually think making a senate seat a state wide election was a HUGE mistake and we've only started to see the problems it's causing us. The lobbying cash and having expensive elections ever 6 years for every seat has made the whole process one of "follow the money" if you can.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
as in "Pb"
Nope, as in Pitcher OK. (If you don't know, Look it up..)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I see "clueless" is still cool in come circles.
How's that working for you? When attempting to teach someone something new, starting out by telling them they are an idiot?
I presume he is talking about the representatives, where those states have badly gerrymandered districts.
Not particularly relevant to senate though.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Well I guess historians will have to add 'rise in cancer deaths' to the ever-growing list of shit Trump and his administration will inflict on us. Maybe the next president in 2020 will be able to get some of these assholes out and mitigate at least some of the damage.
Mod up please. I mean, how bad is the pollution if the river is catching fire -- let alone the long-term damage to the fish (very likely no longer edible) and other wildlife?
Hearsay is when the person testifying wasn't in the room and is relying on 3rd party info. He was in the room, he heard what he heard, he testified under oath. That's evidence, it's testimony. Fact. You're a moron.
for that alternative. Folks are laughing off the Green New Deal as "Pie In the Sky" or just plain crazy, but I haven't heard a single solution to the widespread unemployment that grips the rust belt.
That's what made Trump win. He listened to what folks like those coal miners were saying and promised them their jobs back. Heck, he even tried (a little) by trying to declare coal a national emergency so he could divert subsidies to them. Now, odds are most of that would have gone to the mine owners, but there'd at least be jobs in the meantime.
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so that's not the best analogy... The need an entirely new type of work, but also one that they're capable of doing. "Learn to Code" is not an answer. I've worked with ex-miners who tried that. One one ever lasted more than 6 months, and that guy quit after 18 or so.
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ALSO... IF you are talking about the "Trump Tower Meeting" during the campaign, it is FAR from established that anything unseemly or unethical took place at that meeting, in fact, everybody who was at that meeting says that the topic being discussed was some obscure adoption rules and had nothing to do with coordinating electioneering activities. But don't let the lack of actual evidence dissuade you from believing something else happened.
The US passed the Magnitsky Act December 14, 2012. This applied financial sanctions to Russia, particularly some Russian billionaires and high level officials. As a direct response, on December 19, 2012, Russia voted to ban the adoption of Russian children by US citizens. Russia has publicly stated that they would only lift the ban on adoptions if the Magnitsky sanctions were lifted. So when the say the 2016 meeting was about "adoptions", that directly translates to "sanctions" as the two are directly linked and you can't talk about one without the other.
Don Jr has publicly admitted that the meeting between the campaign and with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya took place. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the sanctions (using the codeword adoptions). And Veselnitskaya was offereing damaging information on Clinton as incentive, which from emails we have was described as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” An email to which Don Jr. replied, “If it’s what you say I love it.”.
The Trump campaign knowingly met with Russians about a quid pro quo deal exchanging dirt on Clinton for lifting sanctions on Russia.
I listened to the whole testimony yesterday and I have got to say, I keep seeing some QUALITY cherry picking going on today.
Comey testifies that a convicted russian mobster had a rent free office basically across the hall from Trump's, nothing.
He says he has no evidence that Trump colluded, but basically everything Trump ever said or did points in that direction, and all of the MAGA crowd start shouting "See, no collusion!"
And even better, the spin is, "He's a liar, you can't trust anything he said, except that no collusion thing."
Ya gotta laugh at it to keep from crying.
Nobody cares about Hillary Clinton except failing right-wing talk show hosts.
Most of the states with the most meth labs are Republican, and the state with the most meth labs is Vice-President Pence's very own Indiana.
https://www.realclearpolitics....
You are welcome on my lawn.
I assume he's talking about the power grabs the state senates did in those two states. When the Republican governors lost their elections, the Republican state senates passed a bunch laws transferring a bunch of power from the governor to the senate. The outgoing governors were happy to sign the bills into law on their last days in office.
That's so cute how you to try to turn a statement of 'probably, but I don't have recordings or paperwork of it', into a 'nope didn't do it'.
You really should include the entire question and reply in that, otherwise you're just twisting what was said.
I've been trying to locate the exact clip I saw of it, but there's way too much noise to the signal at this time. I also tried going through the entire testimony but I keep falling asleep trying to listen to that horribly long video, and as to a transcript, I still haven't found a full transcript that doesn't want me to pay them for a subscription to their site. (Found transcripts from previous testimony, and tons of the opening statement, but none of the actual testimony yet that I can get ahold of.)
I prefer transcripts over video since it's easy to do a search for keywords, and easy to skip over the really stupid grandstanding by the idiots that aren't even on topic just by skimming. Not really things that video or audio recordings allow.
So if someone else is lucky enough to know the exact and entire clip (or a link to the exact timing of the question in the full video), or can locate it somehow that would be great.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lung infection and have to take a breathing treatment now, and have already wasted enough time on this anyway.
Thanks for reading.
And even better, the spin is, "He's a liar, you can't trust anything he said, except that no collusion thing."
Unfortunately, all this testimony from these various people is all suspect, because they're all liars and generally terrible people. Manafort, Cohen, Stone, Papadopoulos, Flynn, on and on. Far from bringing in "the best people," he has surrounded himself with the worst people, which unfortunately means when they're cast off you have no idea if the tell-alls that they tell are in any way accurate or just new lies to save their own miserable skins.
In other words, "yeah, I know, I lied for years for this guy, but now I'm telling the truth, honest" makes for witnesses that are easily dismissed. Now, if they can provide hard proof, like the 12 years of checks that Cohen said he had, then that makes for something.
And fuck coal miners. Leave that poison in the ground.
Let me remind you Hillary Clinton said the same thing and she was left in the dust. No pun intended.
No, she did not say "the same thing."
She said that the coal industry was dying (true) and that she wanted to offer opportunities for coal workers to train and transfer to other industries. That does not sound like "fucking" coal miners.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I find that you have two classes of people: Those that want to learn and those that do not. The second class is lost anyways, no way to reach them. May at least get some entertainment out of them. The first class is something else and I either do not insult them or apologize when I realize the mistake. That approach is working pretty well, thank you.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I take your point, but shouldn't that same standard apply to Trump, given how frequent and well documented his lying is? How do you dismiss liars while believing whole heartedly their king?
(I'm using the impersonal you of course, it doesn't seem like you are defending him.)
There is also the ongoing controversy over absentee ballot fraud in NC. Some ex-con was paid for his super duper skills at turning out votes via absentee ballots. Turns out he had people illegally collecting ballots, illegally filling in votes in races which hadn't been marked yet on the ballots, witnessing the ballots illegally, and then sealing the ballots and mailing them in from different post offices to deliberately conceal the illegal activities. Only one race so far has been announced as needing a redo, however more may follow.
his former and future employers rich
FTFY
"No, he said Jr. was in the room, went around his desk, and said what he testified."
Read it again. Jr. told Trump the meeting was on. He didn't say which meeting or anything like that. Do you think that Trump had only ONE meeting that year?!? Cohen *assumed* they were talking about the meeting with the Russians. Assumptions are not evidence.
I think they had it right the first time around.
I went back and looked to see why they changed it, as usually, when things get changed, there is a reason and unless that has changed, those reasons will just pop back up again. Turns out a major reason for the change was partisan bickering at the state level, where one party would sabotage another party's choice for the senate to the point of forgoing that senate seat. This was causing a disfunctional senate. Since partisan bickering probably hasn't stopped, Id' say we'd just run into the same issues that caused us to change it the first time.
I do think the senate is broken as is, but wouldn't that just make it easier for the lobbyists to select favorable senators? They would only have to convince(or bribe) the state legislators, not the whole populace.
horror vacui
Well, I believe we'd have to have an amendment to turn it back, and during that we could think it out and have some rules mandated, etc...to try to avoid the problems of old.
I shouldn't think it would too tough....you have one party in majority in the state legislatures, they'd likely pick senators of their own party and thinking.....but, this way they'd be more beholden to the states, and therefore, more beholden to the people of the state.
It would also likely keep anyone from being there in the senate over 40 years.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You seem to have a reading problem. Or you just want so desperately to be right you ignore what is right in front of your eyes.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Furthermore Trump has never had the balls/spine/brains combo to go under oath himself to refute ANY of this, because he's so cowardly and afraid of being instantaneously proven a liar and perjurer. He's a pussy.
This is incorrect. Whether you are innocent or guilty it is best to make no statement at all.
Google 'Don't Talk to the Police', a lecture by James Duane,Regent University Law Professor.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"went back to having the state legislatures appoint the senators" No, unless they fix the gerrymandering in almost every state first. The nice thing about popular election of Senators is that the state legislature can't directly gerrymander the whole state. The state legislatures are NOT answerable to the state's voters, because of the gerrymandering. -- they are more answerable to the power brokers behind the state government, not even close to the same thing.
You just made that that up she did not say that. She said "We're gonna put a lot of coal miners and coal companies outta business". I'll translate that for you "Fuck coal miners.". What a lying prick you are.
Here's the full context, from this article.
Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around politics that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these under-served poor communities. So, for example, I’m the only candidate who has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim [Ryan (D-OH)]?
And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce energy that we relied on.
Per the article, Clinton regretted the way she said the above. (From her book What Happened: “The point I had wanted to make was the exact opposite of how it came out. ... [I] felt absolutely sick about the whole thing.” But the full context shows she was not trying to "fuck" coal miners. Quite the opposite.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I think they had it right the first time around.
The problem was that politicians couldn't help but play politics with it. Some states were going years without Senators because minority parties in some states weren't allowing votes to happen. If it could be arranged such that the vote happened on a normal ballot, on election day, and not during a state legislative session, I could see it possibly working then.
What exactly are we supposed to do about this?
The guys with the guns don't seem to think that there's a problem, and the ones who think there's a problem are too chickenshit to get up and fight. Meanwhile, the corporate owners of the Republicratic Party (and therefore the government) are laughing their asses off at both sides.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
who took a coal mining course at his local community college. The interview asked him why he'd do that when there were other courses and very few mining jobs.
His answer was pretty sound. The only jobs in his town were at the mine and at Walmart. He could take another course, but then he'd have to move. That meant leaving friends and family behind, the town he grew up in, and coming up with the money to move a long distance and get an apartment in an unfamiliar city.
Basically, we've backed these kids into a corner where all their choices are bad.
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You seem to have a reading problem. Or you just want so desperately to be right you ignore what is right in front of your eyes.
Nah I'm good. You're the one with nothing better to do than hurl insults. I agree though, it's very hard to rationalize that behavior, and even harder when someone calls you on it.
Also, where there are actual lies, Trump lies about stupid, irrelevant stuff...crowd size and the like.
Trump lies about everything, big or little. It just seems to be how he does things.
So "adoption" is a code word? You are kidding right...
You DO understand that you are basically making a conspiracy theory out of that assumption, a theory for which you have to make all sorts of assumptions to support because there are no facts to back up your claims.
The problem for your theory here is *everybody* in the room is saying the same things, that nobody was coordinating Russian efforts with Trump's campaign and besides this meeting there is nothing ,else really to discuss as evidence. This whole thing fails on it's face, legally speaking, unless you have actual evidence and not supposition and innuendo to actually back up your claims. Just meeting a Russian is NOT proof of anything unethical or illegal took place, not even close. You need some kind of actual evidence.... Something more than Hillary lost that is..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
there are people dying because of the border situation. I think that kind of justifies the emergency declaration.
But the point here is what's the LAW say about this. If you read the law, the president is given very wide latitude in making this decision, and Congress may disagree by passing legislation to undo the president's action, then override his veto if he chooses to stick with the declaration he's made.
So... Suck it up. Take your case to the courts and fight it there. But you won't get this overturned in the end, so I suggest you get used to the idea.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
As much as it says about the folks who hired and paid Dennis Raider for the two plus decades he was on the lamb.. Or what does it say about the local hardware stores that sold the Uni-bomber the stuff for his bombs.. Nothing.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101