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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.

19 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. And In Other News... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Funny

    Joseph Goebbels has been named Ambassador to Israel, and Karl Marx has been named an FCC commissioner.

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    1. Re:And In Other News... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Funny

      Fact of the matter that coal still exists and provides many jobs and lively hoods for thousands of Americans.

      Oh the irony.

      live-li-hoods n. 1. Jobs that pay a living wage.

      live-ly hoods n. 1. Energetic, active criminals. 2. Transferred epithet for head and face covering bobbing up and down (e.g., at a KKK rally.)

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    2. Re:And In Other News... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Fact of the matter that coal still exists and provides many jobs and lively hoods for thousands of Americans.

      You could make the same argument for crystal meth.

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      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:And In Other News... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It would be nice if no matter who got elected, things basically stayed the same. But if we can't have that, don't complain when the guys you don't like do things you don't like when elected.

      Don't complain? In a democracy, it's a citizen's right (perhaps even her/his duty) to complain.

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    4. Re:And In Other News... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      How many jobs does crystal meth provide for Americans?

      Well, let's see: In one year alone (2012), the DEA raided and closed 11,210 meth labs in the US. Now, let's assume that the DEA shuts down maybe one in four meth labs (I would bet that it's much less than that). So, we can say that there are probably about 50,000 meth labs operating at any given time in the US. Let's also assume that not all of those meth labs are one-man operations, so we have at least 50,000 jobs for Americans.

      Let's further assume that the guys running the labs are not the same as the guys dealing the meth on the street. Even if we assume that for every meth lab, there is one person who actually deals the drugs, we're up to over 100,000 jobs.

      That 100,000 jobs. Not counting the thousands of law enforcement jobs for people to try to stop the meth labs. The lawyers like Saul Goodman who represent the meth chemists, and on and on.

      In 2013, there were 80,209 coal jobs in the US. So we can easily say that more people are working in the crystal meth industry than in the coal industry.

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  2. Agency name change? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Environmental Pillaging Agency

  3. Fox meet by CodeHog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    hen house

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  4. This is what people voted for by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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    1. Re:This is what people voted for by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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....

      I do get that dying slowly and killing a lot of others slowly becomes an attractive option when the alternative is dying pretty fast. It is still something that people should be prevented from doing. They need to be given an alternative that does actually not do this incredible amount of damage.

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  5. Re:Senate = non representative corrupt dictators by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Making America Great Again by Macdude · · Score: 4, Informative

    Andrew Wheeler is helping Make America Great Again by bringing back those glory days when rivers routinely caught fire.

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    1. Re:Making America Great Again by jeff4747 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why do the politicos always pitch a fit about an appointee, even before they have a chance to do anything good or bad?

      Because time did not start today.

  7. Re:So ... by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  8. Re:So ... by gweihir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  9. Re:Donald Trump is going to prison for TREASON by greythax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. Re:Coal and Cops.... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Those meth jobs are filthy liberal Democrat jobs, without enough toil and supporting hedonistic lifestyles that go against God's teachings.

    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....

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
  11. Re:Senate = non representative corrupt dictators by edwdig · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  12. Re:Fuck coal by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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  13. Re:Donald Trump is going to prison for TREASON by greythax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)