> My background: I'm a legal immigrant and I actually researched that stuff before immigration, in case I needed it.
Welcome. I bet you thoroughly researched what you're entitled to, what you're supposed to get. Here's the thing - illegal immigrants are not *allowed* to be in the country, yet they are. What they are *allowed* to do and what they actually do are very different. By the very definition of "illegal immigrant".
Quoting from the State of New York web site:
-----
Whether illegal aliens can obtain state benefits is not clear-cut. The short answer appears to be that they are not legally entitled to most benefits, but do in fact receive them... A fair interpretation of the federal statute and state regulation must result in the conclusion that illegal aliens should not receive any form of state public assistance. However, illegal aliens do, in fact, receive state public benefits. That's because the burden of determining lawful status in the U.S. is on the shoulders of county social services employees who have neither the legal jurisdiction nor the practical ability to determine one's immigration status. Only an immigration official or federal worker whom the Secretary of Homeland Security has authorized may determine the immigration status of a person in the country. ----
> That's up to states, they can't dole out federal money to illegals.
It's unlawful for them to release people who are fugitives from the feds, but they do it. It's official written policy in many places. They "can't" issue cards allowing people to sell illegal drugs, but they do it. It's not lawful to dole out federal money to these same illegal immigrants, but it is common.
Quoting Politifact: -- Cortes said "We have right now ⦠in the state of California, 55 percent of all immigrants are on public assistance." Thatâ(TM)s true of households but not individual immigrants. --
Theoretically illegal aliens aren't supposed to be able to apply on their own, but in fact about 60% do receive public assistance. Certain states with a lot of illegal immigrants, which are known for being liberal and flouting federal law regarding immigration and drugs, go ahead and hand out the money. Also someone who is legal will apply and have six dependents in their household. The six dependents don't have to be legal.
The military has the Reaper and Predator, aircraft that are commonly called "drones". Toys R Us used to sell the very popular DJI Phantom, an rc quadcopter often used for filming, which also commonly called a "drone".
People don't often confuse a toy store RC boat with a US Navy warship (both "boats"), yet for some reason they do confuse toy store quadcopters (drones) with military hardware or something equally dangerous.
I have grabbed a hobby / filming style drone out of the air by putting my fingers right in the prop. It hurt pretty bad for a few minutes. Not as bad as a few weeks later when I shut my front door on my fingers, though. The door definitely did more damage then the drone did.
That's right, in the US you can't be arrested for non-payment of debt per se. If you never intended to pay, that would be theft of services, shoplifting, or another similar crime for which you could be arrested. The crime there is taking the thing without intending to properly pay for it. (Here we assume the taking is from a merchant, who gives you permission to take it, provided that you pay for it).
Tax crimes for which you can be arrested involve the returns you file or fail to file, rather than the amount you pay.
> If you have a competing proposal without mercury that is more cost effective don't let anyone stand in the way of you building consensus for it and having it judged fully on the merits. Don't judge it based on weighted bullshit with no purchase
My proposal is to read the EPA's analysis of the mercury regulation, read their analysis of the particulates regulation, read their analysis of the sulfur dioxide / nitrogen oxides regulation, and do whatever makes sense based on the analysis they are legally required to provide. Fair enough?
> that $1000 device falls from the sky, hits a few spectators on the head, lawsuit 1-2 million.
The $1,000-$2,000 are just a few ounces of plastic, so not a huge deal if it fell on you. Not *desirable*, you don't *want* to drop it on your head, but I'd rather that than a baseball. If you stick your fingers in the prop at full throttle, it hurts pretty bad for several minutes. Guess how I learned that.
However, as I said, I'm guessing NYPD may use one a bit larger, not the popular $1,000-$2,000 ones like the DJ Mavic or Phantom. If they go larger, say a $10,000 device, I hope they use one with more than four props because you definitely don't want a larger device falling if one motor / ESC fails. An octocopter can fly around with a couple of motors dead.
It certainly makes sense to use one, or have one available. The cost is trivial given the scale of the event.
I'm guessing that they want a bit better camera system than the typical hobby "drone" (quadcopter) has, so their craft may be a larger than the 10 inches / 250mm normally used by hobbiest. If so, I'd hope they use a hexacopter or septicopter. Quadcopters don't do well when a motor or prop fails. That's not really a problem if it's a little plastic toy like the big box stores sell, but a malfunctiin could be rather inconvenient if their drone is much larger and heavier.
In this context, it's a debt after the service has been rendered. For your own analysis of your financial situation, you can use whatever definition of "debt" you want.
Think about it this way. After they refuse your cash payment and you walk away, what would be their next step? They could sue you, saying you owe them $40. You'd walk into court with the cash in hand, saying "I tried to pay them" and the judge would have a few words for them about wasting the Court's time. They could refuse service to you next time, saying "you still owe us $40 from the last time" - "owe us", a debt.
I'm still not sure what you're point is. I asked you why, exactly, the EPA should illegally hide their analysis and your reply seems to be a random copy-paste from Lloyd that doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand. Did you "butt dial" that reply? Do you just like saying "the commons" a lot?
> When the regulations are changed, the money will *not* be redirected to other environmental controls. It will go to profits.
So it was impossible for them to be honest and release the analysis that showed which regulations WOULD be effective, and implement *those*? The EPA *has* to be either inept or corrupt? For some reason they *couldn't* regulate the more harmful stuff (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, etc), so they *have* to lie about mercury and issue pointless regulations?
Btw you're conflating organic and inorganic mercury. Organic gets in fish. Coal releases inorganic.
Let's assume that burning coal is really bad. I haven't researched clean coal and probably you haven't either, but for now let's just pretend that doesn't exist. Wouldn't that mean we should focus on burning less coal?
$10 billion / year is enough to build six new 600MW power plants every year. If we're going to spend $10 billion each year on something related to coal power plants, wouldn't we want to spend that money REPLACING them?
> > Therefore it's impossible to reduce particulates (as with a passive filter) without spending $10 billion / year and reducing mercury as a side effect.
> I have no idea what the cost/benefit of different policy formulations that include or don't include mercury are.
I will represent to you that when I typed my earlier reply to you, I was sitting next to a device that greatly reduces particulates in the air. It's known as a "HEPA filter" and doesn't cost $10 billion.
I will further represent to you that a simple filter, which does remove particulates, does NOT remove mercury vapor. Removing mercury vapor is an active process involving the use of bromine to oxidize the mercury vapor, then other equipment to remove the oxidized mercury. This is the process which the EPA says costs $10 billion.
Therefore it's entirely possible to filter out the particulates without removing the mercury, or any other gas or vapor. I'm doing it at my house right now.
Therefore the EPA didn't have to wait for a court order before releasing their analysis of particulate removal (very helpful and also pretty cheap) and also release their analysis of mercury scrubbing (very expensive for limited benefit). No need to artificially combine the analysis of inexpensive particulate filters with the analysis of far more experience mercury scrubbers.
The summary says the owner "stayed down the road at my mother's apartment". If I were renting out my house on New Year's Eve, and I was just down the road, I would probably drive by once or twice myself.
> You're just making up lies because it was Obama, and there is "something" about him that causes you to lie when you see his name. I wonder what it could be?
As I've already said, I don't see any reason to believe Obama had anything to do with it. You're the one bringing up Obama. Are you one of these people who thinks that not only can he do no wrong, but no federal employee could possibly do anything wrong during a time when Obama was President? That's weird, but okay.
> Right here you'd doing a bait-and-switch and trying to imply that if you didn't publish financial numbers about the harms, then that somehow proves that the rule made the air "dirtier" and the emissions "more dangerous."
It's not financial numbers that are at issue. There are two issues. There is the legal issue that the EPA was supposed to release their mercury analysis. Secondly, you mentioned the issue that lying about what will result in clean air and water tends to make our efforts less effective. The first issue, the legal issue, I've covered throughly in other posts, so here I will address the issue you brought up, "made the air dirtier".
Under political pressure the EPA issued a rule saying coal plants had to spend $10 billion on mercury scrubbers. When challenged to produce their analysis of the costs and benefits of the reducing mercury by that amount, they released an analysis saying that spending a fraction of that money to reduce particulates and sulfur dioxide instead would have been far more effective, according to the EPA analysis. Spending it on workplace safety in the coal industry would have been even more effective - saving A HUNDRED TIMES as many lives.
The rule spent limited resources on something that doesn't have much effect INSTEAD OF using that money on something that would make us safer.
Lying to the public doesn't benefit the public - no matter who is president.
> It seems you have a special "thing" for Obama. Gosh, I wonder why. (Looks out window at modern world) Oh, yeah, that's why. You're one of Them.
Actually as I said before, I don't think Obama had anything to do with it. Which is convenient, because that means even if you think Obama can do no wrong, you can still recognize that our government is not supposed to be based on personalities, a specific person having authority ala North Korea, but rather the law is the authority, and federal agencies should follow the law.
> you're upset they didn't publish, now you're talking about non-scientific data.
I'm not upset in the least, I'm letting people know what the Supreme Court and the appeals court ruled - that the EPA has to follow the law and release their analysis. If you find that upsetting, that's all you.
Let me see if I follow your logic / claims. Tell me if I'm missing something.
Are you saying:
1. The measures taken to decrease mercury by 90%, at a cost of $10 billion / year, are the exact same measures required to meet the other rule regarding particulates. Therefore it's impossible to reduce particulates (as with a passive filter) without spending $10 billion / year and reducing mercury as a side effect.
2. Therefore the EPA *had* to combine the particulate analysis with the mercury analysis, because since you can't get rid of particulates without also getting rid of mercury.
3. They couldn't release their analysis of particulates, without first combining it with their mercury analysis, since you can't do one without the other.
Is that your reasoning? If that is not what you're saying, why exactly can't they release both their particulates analysis and their mercury analysis? Btw after the court order, the mercury analysis did in fact get out.
If that IS what you're saying, if you think that in fact reducing particulates with a filter necessarily also reduces mercury by 90%, does that not make the mercury rule redundant and unnecessary, given the particulate rule?
What's "wrong" with Vermont is that they'd like to have more jobs attracting people there. Rather than trying to attract more companies, they've decided to try to attract people like me, who can take our jobs with us wherever we want to go.
That's an interesting idea because they don't have to provide infrastructure for the company headquarters, but they get us spending our money in Vermont. Essentially they would be exporting tech work to the rest of the country. It's an interesting idea. We'll see how it turns out.
You copy-pasted from the document: -- EPA estimates the health benefits associated with reduced exposure to fine particles are --
Mercury is not a particulate. That's the problem.
Thousands of lives would be saved every year if Waffle Monster stopped posting on Slashdot and everyone stopped smoking.
30,000 people would be saved if Waffle Monster was kicked out of his house and there were no car accidents.
The law says they have to publish their cost/benefit analysis for each rule they make. The court ruled the law means what it says - to enforce the mercury rule, they have to publish their analysis of the costs and benefits of the mercury rule. They aren't allowed to hide the outcome of their mercury analysis by saying "if we enact the mercury rule and a particulate rule and a sulfur dioxide rule and a rule for nitrogen oxides...". They did an analysis for mercury, they are required to release their analysis for mercury.
Perhaps your concern is that for whatever reason we MUST spend our time, attention, and money on coal, rather than focusing on things that will save lives. Perhaps you for whatever reason you want coal companies to spend $10 billion / year on safety stuff directly related to coal.
If that's the case, you have a couple options:
A. Ask OSHA to draft regulations for improved safety in the coal industry. Coal mining and handling coal is dangerous just because there's heavy equipment and all that, plus the dangers of coal dust. Studies show for every $million spent complying with OSHA regulations, about 2-10 people are saved. $10 billion would save about 3,500 people every year.
B. Order the EPA to issue regulations on coal which cannot be met at a reasonable cost. If they chose reducing mercury emissions by 90% as the regulation, $10 billion spent will save about 10 lives, according to the EPA analysis.
Personally, I'd rather save 3,500 people than save 10 people. Call me crazy, but I'd rather not kill 3,490 people every year by being vindictive.
You might wonder how the heck one can measure health problems, or "human suffering" as you put it, in dollars. That seems counterintuitive. Yet there's actually a really simple way to convert between dollars and health outcomes, for policy questions.
There are plenty of studies about seatbelts and airbags. We know about how much airbags have reduced traffic deaths, and various injuries. We know how much they cost. Simple division shows that seatbelts and airbags cost $500,000 per life saved. We know that CPC and OSHA regulations cost about $100,000 for every life saved. We've measured the cost and benefits of nutrition education, we know that $X spent on nutrition education reduces diabetes cases by Y%. EPA programs vary from $1 million to $100 million per life saved.
Our country has limited resources, of course. We can't spend $100 trillion / year on safety, because we don't have $100 trillion. So the dollar cost of a life (for policy purposes) is based on how many other people die because we spent the money on one thing and not on the other thing. We can save a life by spending a million on traffic safety, we can save a million dollars by not doing the traffic safety, but we'd lose a life. Dollars and lives are literally interchangeable at the rate of about a million dollars per life.
So the question when making policy is which of these to put our resources toward: Should we spend $10 million of workplace safety through OSHA and save 100 lives? Should we spend that $10 million on traffic safety through DOT and save ten lives? Should we instead spend that $10 million on benzene regulation through the EPA and save only one life?
Common sense says we should save 100 lives by spending our time, attention, and money on workplace safety, rather than wasting our time worrying about benzene emissions. If we spend our time, money, and energy on benzene, that's time, money and energy we aren't being spent on workplace safety, so people die.
As mentioned above, SCOTUS (and the appeals court) decides issues of law. Nobody testifies at the Supreme Court, no evidence is shown. The trial court deals with the facts of a case.
For the factual background, copy-paste the case title from the SCOTUS ruling (linked above) to get the trial court record.
Slashdot Mirror
> My background: I'm a legal immigrant and I actually researched that stuff before immigration, in case I needed it.
Welcome. I bet you thoroughly researched what you're entitled to, what you're supposed to get. Here's the thing - illegal immigrants are not *allowed* to be in the country, yet they are. What they are *allowed* to do and what they actually do are very different. By the very definition of "illegal immigrant".
Quoting from the State of New York web site:
----- ..
Whether illegal aliens can obtain state benefits is not clear-cut. The short answer appears to be that they are not legally entitled to most benefits, but do in fact receive them.
A fair interpretation of the federal statute and state regulation must result in the conclusion that illegal aliens should not receive any form of state public assistance. However, illegal aliens do, in fact, receive state public benefits. That's because the burden of determining lawful status in the U.S. is on the shoulders of county social services employees who have neither the legal jurisdiction nor the practical ability to determine one's immigration status. Only an immigration official or federal worker whom the Secretary of Homeland Security has authorized may determine the immigration status of a person in the country.
----
> That's up to states, they can't dole out federal money to illegals.
It's unlawful for them to release people who are fugitives from the feds, but they do it. It's official written policy in many places. They "can't" issue cards allowing people to sell illegal drugs, but they do it. It's not lawful to dole out federal money to these same illegal immigrants, but it is common.
Quoting Politifact:
--
Cortes said "We have right now ⦠in the state of California, 55 percent of all immigrants are on public assistance."
Thatâ(TM)s true of households but not individual immigrants.
--
Here's an interesting study (not an objective source, but reasonable methodology)
https://cis.org/Report/63-NonC...
Theoretically illegal aliens aren't supposed to be able to apply on their own, but in fact about 60% do receive public assistance. Certain states with a lot of illegal immigrants, which are known for being liberal and flouting federal law regarding immigration and drugs, go ahead and hand out the money. Also someone who is legal will apply and have six dependents in their household. The six dependents don't have to be legal.
The military has the Reaper and Predator, aircraft that are commonly called "drones". Toys R Us used to sell the very popular DJI Phantom, an rc quadcopter often used for filming, which also commonly called a "drone".
People don't often confuse a toy store RC boat with a US Navy warship (both "boats"), yet for some reason they do confuse toy store quadcopters (drones) with military hardware or something equally dangerous.
I have grabbed a hobby / filming style drone out of the air by putting my fingers right in the prop. It hurt pretty bad for a few minutes. Not as bad as a few weeks later when I shut my front door on my fingers, though. The door definitely did more damage then the drone did.
NSFWnet was Gore's one-time boss, Bill Clinton.
That's right, in the US you can't be arrested for non-payment of debt per se. If you never intended to pay, that would be theft of services, shoplifting, or another similar crime for which you could be arrested. The crime there is taking the thing without intending to properly pay for it. (Here we assume the taking is from a merchant, who gives you permission to take it, provided that you pay for it).
Tax crimes for which you can be arrested involve the returns you file or fail to file, rather than the amount you pay.
> If you have a competing proposal without mercury that is more cost effective don't let anyone stand in the way of you building consensus for it and having it judged fully on the merits. Don't judge it based on weighted bullshit with no purchase
My proposal is to read the EPA's analysis of the mercury regulation, read their analysis of the particulates regulation, read their analysis of the sulfur dioxide / nitrogen oxides regulation, and do whatever makes sense based on the analysis they are legally required to provide. Fair enough?
Say hi to Ocasio-Cortez for me at your next hate rally.
> that $1000 device falls from the sky, hits a few spectators on the head, lawsuit 1-2 million.
The $1,000-$2,000 are just a few ounces of plastic, so not a huge deal if it fell on you. Not *desirable*, you don't *want* to drop it on your head, but I'd rather that than a baseball. If you stick your fingers in the prop at full throttle, it hurts pretty bad for several minutes. Guess how I learned that.
However, as I said, I'm guessing NYPD may use one a bit larger, not the popular $1,000-$2,000 ones like the DJ Mavic or Phantom. If they go larger, say a $10,000 device, I hope they use one with more than four props because you definitely don't want a larger device falling if one motor / ESC fails. An octocopter can fly around with a couple of motors dead.
It certainly makes sense to use one, or have one available. The cost is trivial given the scale of the event.
I'm guessing that they want a bit better camera system than the typical hobby "drone" (quadcopter) has, so their craft may be a larger than the 10 inches / 250mm normally used by hobbiest. If so, I'd hope they use a hexacopter or septicopter. Quadcopters don't do well when a motor or prop fails. That's not really a problem if it's a little plastic toy like the big box stores sell, but a malfunctiin could be rather inconvenient if their drone is much larger and heavier.
In this context, it's a debt after the service has been rendered.
For your own analysis of your financial situation, you can use whatever definition of "debt" you want.
Think about it this way. After they refuse your cash payment and you walk away, what would be their next step? They could sue you, saying you owe them $40. You'd walk into court with the cash in hand, saying "I tried to pay them" and the judge would have a few words for them about wasting the Court's time. They could refuse service to you next time, saying "you still owe us $40 from the last time" - "owe us", a debt.
I'm still not sure what you're point is.
I asked you why, exactly, the EPA should illegally hide their analysis and your reply seems to be a random copy-paste from Lloyd that doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand. Did you "butt dial" that reply? Do you just like saying "the commons" a lot?
> When the regulations are changed, the money will *not* be redirected to other environmental controls. It will go to profits.
So it was impossible for them to be honest and release the analysis that showed which regulations WOULD be effective, and implement *those*? The EPA *has* to be either inept or corrupt? For some reason they *couldn't* regulate the more harmful stuff (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, etc), so they *have* to lie about mercury and issue pointless regulations?
Btw you're conflating organic and inorganic mercury. Organic gets in fish. Coal releases inorganic.
I sent you a message via your website. Let me know if you don't get it for some reason.
Well put. Insulting, but a well-phrased insult.
Let's assume that burning coal is really bad. I haven't researched clean coal and probably you haven't either, but for now let's just pretend that doesn't exist. Wouldn't that mean we should focus on burning less coal?
$10 billion / year is enough to build six new 600MW power plants every year. If we're going to spend $10 billion each year on something related to coal power plants, wouldn't we want to spend that money REPLACING them?
> > Therefore it's impossible to reduce particulates (as with a passive filter) without spending $10 billion / year and reducing mercury as a side effect.
> I have no idea what the cost/benefit of different policy formulations that include or don't include mercury are.
I will represent to you that when I typed my earlier reply to you, I was sitting next to a device that greatly reduces particulates in the air. It's known as a "HEPA filter" and doesn't cost $10 billion.
I will further represent to you that a simple filter, which does remove particulates, does NOT remove mercury vapor. Removing mercury vapor is an active process involving the use of bromine to oxidize the mercury vapor, then other equipment to remove the oxidized mercury. This is the process which the EPA says costs $10 billion.
Therefore it's entirely possible to filter out the particulates without removing the mercury, or any other gas or vapor. I'm doing it at my house right now.
Therefore the EPA didn't have to wait for a court order before releasing their analysis of particulate removal (very helpful and also pretty cheap) and also release their analysis of mercury scrubbing (very expensive for limited benefit). No need to artificially combine the analysis of inexpensive particulate filters with the analysis of far more experience mercury scrubbers.
The summary says the owner "stayed down the road at my mother's apartment". If I were renting out my house on New Year's Eve, and I was just down the road, I would probably drive by once or twice myself.
I'm sure they are doing other, probably more traditional things to try to attract companies.
*THIS* program is testing a different approach.
> You're just making up lies because it was Obama, and there is "something" about him that causes you to lie when you see his name. I wonder what it could be?
As I've already said, I don't see any reason to believe Obama had anything to do with it. You're the one bringing up Obama. Are you one of these people who thinks that not only can he do no wrong, but no federal employee could possibly do anything wrong during a time when Obama was President? That's weird, but okay.
> Right here you'd doing a bait-and-switch and trying to imply that if you didn't publish financial numbers about the harms, then that somehow proves that the rule made the air "dirtier" and the emissions "more dangerous."
It's not financial numbers that are at issue. There are two issues. There is the legal issue that the EPA was supposed to release their mercury analysis. Secondly, you mentioned the issue that lying about what will result in clean air and water tends to make our efforts less effective. The first issue, the legal issue, I've covered throughly in other posts, so here I will address the issue you brought up, "made the air dirtier".
Under political pressure the EPA issued a rule saying coal plants had to spend $10 billion on mercury scrubbers. When challenged to produce their analysis of the costs and benefits of the reducing mercury by that amount, they released an analysis saying that spending a fraction of that money to reduce particulates and sulfur dioxide instead would have been far more effective, according to the EPA analysis. Spending it on workplace safety in the coal industry would have been even more effective - saving A HUNDRED TIMES as many lives.
The rule spent limited resources on something that doesn't have much effect INSTEAD OF using that money on something that would make us safer.
Lying to the public doesn't benefit the public - no matter who is president.
> It seems you have a special "thing" for Obama. Gosh, I wonder why. (Looks out window at modern world) Oh, yeah, that's why. You're one of Them.
Actually as I said before, I don't think Obama had anything to do with it. Which is convenient, because that means even if you think Obama can do no wrong, you can still recognize that our government is not supposed to be based on personalities, a specific person having authority ala North Korea, but rather the law is the authority, and federal agencies should follow the law.
> you're upset they didn't publish, now you're talking about non-scientific data.
I'm not upset in the least, I'm letting people know what the Supreme Court and the appeals court ruled - that the EPA has to follow the law and release their analysis. If you find that upsetting, that's all you.
Let me see if I follow your logic / claims. Tell me if I'm missing something.
Are you saying:
1. The measures taken to decrease mercury by 90%, at a cost of $10 billion / year, are the exact same measures required to meet the other rule regarding particulates. Therefore it's impossible to reduce particulates (as with a passive filter) without spending $10 billion / year and reducing mercury as a side effect.
2. Therefore the EPA *had* to combine the particulate analysis with the mercury analysis, because since you can't get rid of particulates without also getting rid of mercury.
3. They couldn't release their analysis of particulates, without first combining it with their mercury analysis, since you can't do one without the other.
Is that your reasoning? If that is not what you're saying, why exactly can't they release both their particulates analysis and their mercury analysis? Btw after the court order, the mercury analysis did in fact get out.
If that IS what you're saying, if you think that in fact reducing particulates with a filter necessarily also reduces mercury by 90%, does that not make the mercury rule redundant and unnecessary, given the particulate rule?
What's "wrong" with Vermont is that they'd like to have more jobs attracting people there. Rather than trying to attract more companies, they've decided to try to attract people like me, who can take our jobs with us wherever we want to go.
That's an interesting idea because they don't have to provide infrastructure for the company headquarters, but they get us spending our money in Vermont. Essentially they would be exporting tech work to the rest of the country. It's an interesting idea. We'll see how it turns out.
You copy-pasted from the document:
--
EPA estimates the health benefits associated with reduced exposure to fine particles are
--
Mercury is not a particulate. That's the problem.
Thousands of lives would be saved every year if Waffle Monster stopped posting on Slashdot and everyone stopped smoking.
30,000 people would be saved if Waffle Monster was kicked out of his house and there were no car accidents.
The law says they have to publish their cost/benefit analysis for each rule they make. The court ruled the law means what it says - to enforce the mercury rule, they have to publish their analysis of the costs and benefits of the mercury rule. They aren't allowed to hide the outcome of their mercury analysis by saying "if we enact the mercury rule and a particulate rule and a sulfur dioxide rule and a rule for nitrogen oxides ...". They did an analysis for mercury, they are required to release their analysis for mercury.
Perhaps your concern is that for whatever reason we MUST spend our time, attention, and money on coal, rather than focusing on things that will save lives. Perhaps you for whatever reason you want coal companies to spend $10 billion / year on safety stuff directly related to coal.
If that's the case, you have a couple options:
A.
Ask OSHA to draft regulations for improved safety in the coal industry. Coal mining and handling coal is dangerous just because there's heavy equipment and all that, plus the dangers of coal dust. Studies show for every $million spent complying with OSHA regulations, about 2-10 people are saved. $10 billion would save about 3,500 people every year.
B.
Order the EPA to issue regulations on coal which cannot be met at a reasonable cost. If they chose reducing mercury emissions by 90% as the regulation, $10 billion spent will save about 10 lives, according to the EPA analysis.
Personally, I'd rather save 3,500 people than save 10 people. Call me crazy, but I'd rather not kill 3,490 people every year by being vindictive.
You might wonder how the heck one can measure health problems, or "human suffering" as you put it, in dollars. That seems counterintuitive. Yet there's actually a really simple way to convert between dollars and health outcomes, for policy questions.
There are plenty of studies about seatbelts and airbags. We know about how much airbags have reduced traffic deaths, and various injuries. We know how much they cost. Simple division shows that seatbelts and airbags cost $500,000 per life saved. We know that CPC and OSHA regulations cost about $100,000 for every life saved. We've measured the cost and benefits of nutrition education, we know that $X spent on nutrition education reduces diabetes cases by Y%. EPA programs vary from $1 million to $100 million per life saved.
Our country has limited resources, of course. We can't spend $100 trillion / year on safety, because we don't have $100 trillion. So the dollar cost of a life (for policy purposes) is based on how many other people die because we spent the money on one thing and not on the other thing. We can save a life by spending a million on traffic safety, we can save a million dollars by not doing the traffic safety, but we'd lose a life. Dollars and lives are literally interchangeable at the rate of about a million dollars per life.
So the question when making policy is which of these to put our resources toward:
Should we spend $10 million of workplace safety through OSHA and save 100 lives?
Should we spend that $10 million on traffic safety through DOT and save ten lives?
Should we instead spend that $10 million on benzene regulation through the EPA and save only one life?
Common sense says we should save 100 lives by spending our time, attention, and money on workplace safety, rather than wasting our time worrying about benzene emissions. If we spend our time, money, and energy on benzene, that's time, money and energy we aren't being spent on workplace safety, so people die.
As mentioned above, SCOTUS (and the appeals court) decides issues of law. Nobody testifies at the Supreme Court, no evidence is shown. The trial court deals with the facts of a case.
For the factual background, copy-paste the case title from the SCOTUS ruling (linked above) to get the trial court record.