Sunday, March 4, 2018

Regulatory Capture Par Excellence


Trump's nomination for the Environmental Protection Agency's Assistant Administrator for Land and Emergency Management comes directly from Dow Chemical, where he has worked since 1999:
Trump picks Dow Chemical lawyer for key role at EPA (March 3, 2018). Mainichi Japan,  https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180303/p2g/00m/0in/045000c

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump on Friday tapped a chemical industry insider to run the Environmental Protection Agency office that oversees emergency response to hazardous spills and cleanups of the nation's most toxic sites.

The White House announced that Trump has nominated Peter C. Wright to serve as EPA's assistant administrator for Land and Emergency Management. Wright has worked as a corporate lawyer at Dow Chemical Co. since 1999.Political appointments to key regulatory agencies compromise agency integrity. This is a well-established fact.
Trump's blatant move to place the biggest polluters as regulators of powerful agencies overtly disavows these agencies' public mission.

Trump has been pursuing a policy of deregulation that begins by asking elite corporations in finance, energy, transportation, and chemicals, among other fields, what rules they would like to see disappear.

Hard won protections in finance and energy have been shed as Dodd Frank is disemboweled and methane and mercury protections lifted. See this article on environmental rollbacks:

Michael Greshko, Laura Parker, and Brian Clark Howard (2018, February 28). National Geographic, Available  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/

The Trump administration's de-regulatory fervor and political appointments to regulatory agencies together represent a violent assault against the regulatory apparatus.

I have critiqued this apparatus for failing to act virtuously in the past, but those lapses will be nothing compared to what we are going to experience in the near future.

The trend toward centralization of power and wealth has accelerated at an alarming rate, and not just in the US but globally as well, as illustrated most recently in China.

Early today, Trump applauded China's consolidation of executive power, suggesting that the US also might someday follow suite:
AP (2018, March 4). Trump says maybe US will have a president for life someday. Yahoo, available, https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-maybe-us-president-life-someday-013540040--politics.html

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently consolidated power. Trump told the gathering: "He's now president for life. President for life. And he's great." Trump added, "I think it's great. Maybe we'll give that a shot someday."
If  you aren't worried, then you aren't paying attention.

We are headed toward neo-feudalism, defined in terms of the dispossession of liberal rights ranging from habeas corpus to health and social-welfare protections.

Soon there will be no accountability to the general welfare of humanity anywhere.

The dream of democracy and humanity itself will die then.



9 comments:

  1. A few nuclear meltdowns and, nuclear fuel fires are what is in store for this hopeless fuked up, society in the next couple of years.
    When they do melt and burn, this shithole will be uninhabitable no matter what the alex jone, trump trolls say
     

    https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/nearly-2-million-homes-businesses-without-power-after-east-coast-storm-status-of-nuclear-power-stations/


    Most kids in their 20s, cant even make enough for rent in this awful, meatgrinder, radioactive-sewer 

    You lead a sheltered life majia. It was beyond, neofeudal a while ago. Many people here, are worse off than, shithole india's untouchables. Living in chemical and radioactive garbage and, sewer. Many homeless, hopeless people.

    http://people.com/crime/california-parents-allegedly-kept-children-box-shelter-people-explains/amp/

    200,000 is real number but at least it acknowledges 200,000 will go through it in la 
    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-murray-city-homelessness-20180116-story.html

    Shantytowns in sacramento and the central valley over to the imperial valley.. Tent cities, people in cars, cluttering sidewalks transit stations rampant. Like the great depression, senseless violence with assault weapons is outta control too. Only then it was gangsters and bankrobbers. Now it is bloody, school-massaces of children by kids, and public massacresby the dispossesed.

     
     Guess college professors like politicians, computer engineers, the like off in lala land. When they do melt and burn, this shithole will be uninhabitable no matter what the alex jone, trump trolls say. As things get worse in a nuclear , militarist, authoritarion fascist shithole like the crappy ol usa, they move down exponentially. At least in crappy china, people have shelter and they try to do something about population and.out of control pollution. Most people in america , especially young people, are in terrible shape from low wages, unaffordable housing. Half the people, buying homes and behind on their mortgages again.

    Ya have to ask yuself howmany kids today are fuked over by 70 years of massive genotoxic garbage and chemical pollution. We all see and know people and kids that, it has happened too.

    https://www.naturalblaze.com/2018/03/71-percent-military-age-americans-too-sick-join.html?utm_source=Natural+Blaze+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=e9578e1e2a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b73c66b129-e9578e1e2a-388079081


    Most people want to hear the truth when they go to a doctor. Not americans. Our scientists are captured by money and nucleoapes. So are most of our doctors. Our prognosis sucks and goes well beyond. 







    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Goes well beyond shit government and no democracy

      Delete
  2. Excellent article on pronuclear propaganda techniques

    http://www.nonukes.it/rna/news326.html

    Thorium church

    ReplyDelete
  3. Trump Administration Apparently Agreed To Give America’s Latest Nuclear Propulsion Technology To Russia In September 2017
    05MondayMar 2018

    "The Trump Administration (NASA) signed an agreement with Russia (Roscosmos) in September 2017. This would appear to include giving America’s latest nuclear propulsion technology to them. Is that what Putin was bragging about?

    “NASA has already engaged industry partners in gateway concept studies. Roscosmos and other space station partner agencies are preparing to do the same.“.

    Notice that NASA is already working on this and Roscosmos is “preparing” – but gee, they won’t have to, it seems, for the US taxpayer will give it all to them with Trump’s help. The US, Norway and some European countries paid to help secure and clean-up Russia’s old nuclear waste, enabling Russia to use its money to build more nuclear submarines, a floating nuclear reactor (first invented by the US govt.), etc. Russia has benefitted from tech transfer before – Ford (1929) who created GAZ and the father of the Koch brothers, who taught them to make gasoline, spring to mind. More recently DaimlerChrysler sold an entire old assembly line to (now Deripaska owned) GAZ in 2006. There were many other examples – Anthony Sutton listed many of them. Cummins engines started doing business with the USSR-Russia during the Cold War. US Vice President Pence’s brother was VP at Cummins (until Dec. 2017), and started working for them in 1981. Russia and the US both got military related technology from Nazi scientists after WWII, too. It is worth noting that this is effectively the Executive (Trump) overriding the will of the legislative branch (US Congress), which voted sanctions against Russia, albeit weak ones."https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/trump-administration-apparently-agreed-to-give-americas-latest-nuclear-propulsion-technology-to-russia-in-september-2017/

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is the real america. While yrump gives away free weapons of mass destruction to russia, our children and teachers starve to death astrump dismantles public ed which was supported by ben franklyn and john adams. Good riddance to the fascist trolls who ran enenews in the end, and support trump the most pronuclear nucleoape president ever!
    Barbara Ehrenreich
    @B_Ehrenreich
    ·
    20h
    A lot of children depend on free school lunches, so the West Virginia teachers made food packages for them before going on strike and have continued to try to feed them. This is our dystopian welfare state: severely underpaid teachers trying to keep poverty-stricken kids alive.
    542
    27.6K
    66.7K
    Jeffrey St. Clair Retweeted

    Mark Ames
    @MarkAmesExiled
    ·
    23h
    Oklahoma is arguably the most reactionary petrostate in the Union, these righteous teachers are incredibly brave . Teachers in Oklahoma are treated like dogshit bately have living wage

    ReplyDelete
  5. When ayn Rand collected social security and Medicare after Years of Opposing Benefits Programs. 


    "A robust social safety net can benefit both the individuals in a society and the society itself. Free of the fear of total impoverishment and able to meet their basic needs, people have a better opportunity to pursue long-term goals, to invent, create, and innovate. Of course, there are many who believe otherwise. And there are some, including the acolytes of Ayn Rand, who believe as Rand did: that those who rely on social systems are---to use her ugly term---“parasites,” and those who amass large amounts of private wealth are heroic supermen."

    This ugly old hag fascist did not believe in libraries or public schools, though madison, adams, franklyn explicitly supported them. Her greatest hero was a convicted serial killer. Her obsession with cold war insanity and her nucleoape acolytes contributed to the great nuclear nightmare we are still in. Psychopathic politicians wh support the psychotic cult of objectivism like paul ryan, and rand paul expilictly support trumpputins reclear power and nuclear weapon plans
    http://www.openculture.com/2016/12/when-ayn-rand-collected-social-security-medicare.html



    ReplyDelete
  6. Ayn Rand: Sociopath Who Admired a Serial Killer?


    C_cile Kielar/Eyeem/Getty Images
    by Austin Cline
    Updated March 08, 2017
    If you've ever had the feeling that there was something fundamentally sociopathic about Ayn Rand's philosophy, you may have been on to something. Apparently one of Ayn Rand's early "heroes" was a serial killer named William Edward Hickman.



    https://www.thoughtco.com/ayn-rand-sociopath-who-admired-serial-killer-3975225


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ayn Rand?

      One disturbing thing to me (Iv'e never read any of her books and don't know her or her agenda so this is a fresh perspective).

      Look at her eye movements in the interview right here:

      https://youtu.be/s7zwO88nRH8?t=2m47s

      Training says watch eye movement.

      Up and to the left? Up and to the right?

      Down and to the right????

      This is a way to detect a truth or a lie...

      She obviously knows this and it's evident her eye movements are a conscious effort.

      Is it to cover up? Is she self conscious already knowing that eye movements are a giveaway to a trained person?

      Her motives are unknown but she is definitely aware of these rules and is making a conscience effort to avoid detection.

      She is hiding behind something and she has studied this for sure. True or false? Cover for a lie or cover for the truth?

      Are these eye movements a concerted effort from a concise mind to keep her intentions hidden? Yes...

      Is it simply a self conscious person on the political "hot seat"?

      Definitely interesting and worth further study.

      Delete
  7. Say it's something? Or is it nothin at all...

    https://youtu.be/8MPbR6Cbwi4

    ReplyDelete

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