Republicans Move to Gut Social Security

Republicans Sneak Bill To GUT Social Security, RAISE Retirement Age & REDUCE Benefits

                     Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas)

Late last Thursday, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), the chair for the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, introduced a bill that would raise the retirement age and reduce benefits as much as a third. The bill, called the the “Social Security Reform Act of 2016,”  is intended to extend the life of the retirement program another 75 years, but the plan favors wealthier retirees and adds no new funding for the program.

According to ABC 10 News, Rep. Johnson introduced the bill labeled as a reform for the program instituted by beloved President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Johnson introduced the legislation just before the end of the congressional session, which is breaking for the holidays. Johnson claims that the bill would “permanently save” social security, but rather than helping to provide better benefits to American retirees, the changes would delay and curtail a dignified retirement.

As reported by CBS News, The Social Security Office of the Actuary estimates that the act would keep the trust fund solvent for another 75 years, but would include a $2 trillion decrease in revenue into the program and a $13.9 trillion decrease in benefits.

Currently, the Social Security system will require a 21 percent reduction in benefits in 2034 if not reformed. But rather than increasing the cap on Social Security pay-ins by workers, as suggested by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Republicans seem determined to dissolve the national pension and force workers to rely more heavily on risky investment plans to secure a dignified retirement.

‘The GOP proposals don’t include any revenue increases to shore up the system. In fact, the proposal overshoots the current funding deficit with net benefit cutbacks of 122 percent of the current deficit in order to fund a tax decrease with a present value of 17.5 percent of the deficit.’

One of the more drastic measures in the Republican bill is raising the retirement age to 69 for those born in 1968 or later. According to Forbes, the changes will also alter the benefit formula:

‘In such a way that benefits are progressively and gradually reduced for roughly the top half of retirees.’

The plan changes also include deleting any cost of living (COLA) increases for retirees with higher incomes: singles over $85,000 and couples making over $170,000. It would also reduce the benefits for spouses of higher-income retirees.

Although this sounds much fairer on the surface, the Republican bill places funding for social security on the middle class and working poor. According to the Los Angeles Times, Johnson’s plan reduces funding coming into the social security program through the elimination of taxes on benefits for high-income retirees that would normally be paid back into the social security system to support it.

Johnson is also proposing cutting the benefits for the spouses and children of retired and disabled workers. Rather than providing dependent benefits based on the actual wages earned by the disabled worker, dependent benefits would be based on “average wages.”

Johnson’s bill contrasts sharply with a plan proposed by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) in June that would add revenue to the program. The BPC program would raise benefits for low-income workers, and widows/widowers, while reducing benefits for wealthier retirees. The BPC program would also increase benefits for older Americans who choose to continue working past retirement age. With increasingly more sedentary occupations and longer, healthier lifespans, those who choose to work past the 35 years estimated would be rewarded with higher benefits after working 40 years. The plan also increases funding into the struggling retirement program by raising social security tax from the 2016 wage cap of $118,500 to $195,000 by 2020.

Nancy Pelosi, house democratic leader, released a statement regarding Johnson’s plan to severely chop benefits for retirees.

‘Apparently, nothing upsets house republicans like the idea of hard-working people getting to enjoy a secure and dignified retirement. While Speaker Ryan sharpens his knives for Medicare, chairman Johnson’s bill is an alarming sign that Republicans are greedily eyeing devastating cuts to Americans’ Social Security benefits as well.

‘The top Republican on the Social Security subcommittee is rolling out legislation that cuts benefits by more than a third, raises the retirement age from 67 to 69, cuts seniors’ cost of living adjustments, and targets benefits for the families of disabled and retired workers.’

Reducing benefits, raising the age of retirement, and cutting funding to social security is only the first step in gutting our national pension fund. Republicans have had it in for Social Security since it was introduced in 1935, calling it “socialism” and an “entitlement,” seemingly unaware that American workers pay a percentage of their gross income into the program every working day of their lives.

Readers who wish to do so can find and contact their House representative and express their opinion regarding the new bill at the House.gov website.

 Social Security Targeted on Day One of New Congress

Members of the new 114th Congress had barely taken their oaths of office today when they passed a proposal threatening millions of Americanswho receive Social Security benefits.  The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities describes the plan:

“Buried in the new rules that the House Republican majority {adopted} for the 114thCongress is a provision that could threaten Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries — a group of severely impaired and vulnerable Americans — with a sudden, one-fifth cut in their benefits by late 2016. The provision bars the House from replenishing the DI trust fund simply by shifting some payroll tax revenues from Social Security’s retirement trust fund.”

As NCPSSM’s Max Richtman explains, this move was pure politics:

“Today’s unprecedented House vote preventing a routine rebalancing of the Social Security Disability Trust Funds puts politics ahead of policy and partisanship ahead of people.  This House Rules change would allow a 20% benefit cut for millions of disabled Americans unless there are broader Social Security benefit cuts or tax increases improving the solvency of the combined trust funds.  It is difficult to believe that there is any purpose to this unprecedented change to House Rules other than to cut benefits for Americans who have worked hard all their lives, paid into Social Security, and rely on their Social Security benefits, including Disability, in order to survive.

A modest and temporary reallocation of part of the 6.2 percent Social Security tax rate to the DI Trust Fund would put the entire Social Security program on an equal footing, with all benefits payable at least until 2033.  Democrats and Republicans have authorized this same strategy eleven times without controversy (including four times during the Reagan administration); however, this new House majority would rather play politics with the livelihoods of millions of Americans than solve this important funding issue.  This sends a clear message to middle-class families about the House majority’s priorities -- targeting Social Security for cuts clearly ranks high on their list.”

We’ve written before about the GOP strategy to force broad Social Security benefit cuts while simultaneously demonizing America’s disabled. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) raised the alarm about attempts to politicize what has always been a routine and non-partisan legislative solution to balance the Social Security Trust Funds:

“Reallocation has never been controversial, but detractors working to privatize Social Security will do anything to manufacture a crisis out of a routine administrative function. Modest reallocation of payroll taxes would ensure solvency of both trust funds until 2033. But if House Republicans block reallocation, insurance for disabled Americans, veterans, and children could face severe cuts once the trust fund is exhausted in 2016.”

Not only does this proposal threaten benefit cuts to people with disabilities but it also creates a false either-or scenario that pits retirees and disabled beneficiaries against each other. That’s a particularly absurd notion since the majority of disability recipients are also older, as CBPP explains:

“A reallocation would have only a tiny effect on the retirement program’s solvency. Reallocating taxes to put the two trust funds on an even footing would prolong the DI trust fund by 17 years (from 2016 to 2033), while advancing the OASI fund’s depletion by just one year (from 2034 to 2033). The reason is simple: OASI is much bigger than DI, so a modest reallocation barely dents OASI. And before then, policymakers will almost surely address Social Security solvency in a comprehensive fashion.

Most DI recipients are older people, so helping DI helps seniors. The risk of disability rises with age, and most DI beneficiaries are older. Seventy percent of disabled workers are age 50 or older, 30 percent are 60 or older, and 20 percent are 62 or older and would actually qualify as early retirees under Social Security.”

Changing the rules of the game to target Social Security in the very first hours of a new Congress sends a clear message to seniors, people with disabilities, survivors and their families – a message that certainly wasn’t shared with voters before Election Day – American families who count on Social Security in any way should beware. 

 After Darkness Fell, Republicans Unveiled Their Sinister Plan To Dismantle Social Security
House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee chair Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) introduced a bill that was disguised as reform but is actually the first step in a sinister Republican plan to dismantle Social Security.

House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee chair Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) introduced a bill that was disguised as reform but is actually the first step in a sinister Republican plan to dismantle Social Security.

The full text of the legislation can be read here, but what Republicans are calling “reform” is actually a planned attack on the foundation of the beloved program.

The Washington Examiner summed up what the bill would do, “The bill put forward by Texas’ Sam Johnson, the chairman of the subcommittee on Social Security, would reduce costs by changing the benefits formula to reduce payments progressively for high earners. It would also gradually raise the full retirement age from 67 to 69 for people who are today 49 or younger. Lastly, it would change the inflation metric used to calculate benefits to one that shows lower inflation, essentially slowing the growth in benefits, and eliminate cost of living adjustments for high earners.”

In other words, the legislation does exactly what Trump and the Republicans promised not to do. It cuts Social Security. However, the bill is even more sinister than a plan cut, because it attacks the fundamental basis of the entire program. The raising of the retirement age and the cutting of benefits opens the door to Social Security being reshaped from a retirement program for all to a program for older Americans while everyone else has their retirement privatized.

House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that Johnson’s bill cuts Social Security benefits by more than one-third, “Cutting Social Security would have devastating consequences for Americans’ retirement security. At a time when Americans are more anxious about their retirement than ever, the top Republican on the Social Security Subcommittee is rolling out legislation that cuts benefits by more than a third, raises the retirement age from 67 to 69, cuts seniors’ cost of living adjustments, and targets benefits for the families of disabled and retired workers.”

There is a reason why this bill was put forward on Thursday night, instead of in the light of day. Republicans are trying to stealthily gut Social Security. They are hoping that the American people won’t notice that the program has been hollowed out until it is too late.

The Republican course of action is both sinister and dishonest. If Trump and the Republican Congressional majority want to cut Social Security, they should look the American people in the eyes and own it.

Republicans in Congress are setting themselves up to dismantle Social Security, and they are hoping that the American people will be too distracted by Trump’s Twitter account to catch on. Social Security will only be saved if the public is informed and ready to fight.

 Bombshell Report Shows FBI Knew About Russia’s DNC Hacking Since 2015

"The low-key approach of the F.B.I. meant that Russian hackers could roam freely through the committee’s network for nearly seven months before top D.N.C. officials were alerted to the attack..."

A new bombshell report from the New York Times shows that the FBI was aware of the Russian cyber attack of the DNC in September of 2015, more than a year before the election.

More from the Times:

When Special Agent Adrian Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the Democratic National Committee in September 2015 to pass along some troubling news about its computer network, he was transferred, naturally, to the help desk.

His message was brief, if alarming. At least one computer system belonging to the D.N.C. had been compromised by hackers federal investigators had named “the Dukes,” a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government.

The New York Times notes that this was the first red flag that the presidential election in the United States was, for the first time ever, being influenced by a foreign government. In this case, it was Russia – a country led by a man, Vladimir Putin, that President-elect Donald Trump has nothing but praise for.

More from the report:

It was the cryptic first sign of a cyberespionage and information-warfare campaign devised to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, the first such attempt by a foreign power in American history. What started as an information-gathering operation, intelligence officials believe, ultimately morphed into an effort to harm one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and tip the election to her opponent, Donald J. Trump.

While Russia’s effort to swing the presidential election toward Trump was bad enough, the lethargic response from the FBI – and the fact that they chose to focus heavily on Hillary Clinton’s emails, instead of foreign involvement in an election – was particularly troubling.

The low-key approach of the F.B.I. meant that Russian hackers could roam freely through the committee’s network for nearly seven months before top D.N.C. officials were alerted to the attack and hired cyberexperts to protect their systems. In the meantime, the hackers moved on to targets outside the D.N.C., including Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, whose private email account was hacked months later.

It is now clear that Russia did influence the presidential election in a way that was decisive given how close the final tally was between the two major candidates. In fact, stats guru Nate Silver pointed out that it likely cost Clinton key battleground states and, ultimately, the presidency:

Nate Silver ✔ @NateSilver538
Clinton lost 4 states (FL, MI, WI, PA) by ~1 point. If not for Comey/Russia, she probably wins them all by ~2 points & strategy looks great.
12:38 PM - 10 Dec 2016
 

While Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes and just about matched Barack Obama’s 2012 vote total, her razor-thin losses in a handful of swing states cost her an Electoral College victory.

It is almost a certainty that the FBI’s hyping of Clinton’s emails combined with their downplaying of Russian meddling was enough to very narrowly swing the election toward Trump.

 U.S. Energy Department balks at Trump request for names on climate change

The U.S. Energy Department said on Tuesday it will not comply with a request from President-elect Donald Trump's Energy Department transition team for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Energy Department said on Tuesday it will not comply with a request from President-elect Donald Trump’s Energy Department transition team for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers.

The Energy Department’s response could signal a rocky transition for the president-elect’s energy team and potential friction between the new leadership and the staffers who remain in place.

The memo sent to the Energy Department on Tuesday and reviewed by Reuters last week contains 74 questions, including a request for a list of all department employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks hosted by the United Nations within the last five years.

Energy Department spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said Tuesday the department will not comply.

“Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of (the Energy Department) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people,” Burnham-Snyder said.

“We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,” he added. “We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.”

He added that the request “left many in our workforce unsettled.”

Andrew Rosenberg, an official at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the Energy Department “made the right choice in refusing this absurd and dangerous request. Federal agencies need the best available science to respond to the growing risk of climate change.”

Reuters reported late Monday that former Texas Governor Rick Perry is expected to be named by Trump to run the Energy Department. The agency employs more than 90,000 people working on nuclear weapons maintenance and research labs, nuclear energy, advanced renewable energy, batteries and climate science.

The memo sought a list of all department employees or contractors who have attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, a measurement that federal agencies use to weigh the costs and benefits of new energy and environmental regulations. It also asked for all publications written by employees at the department’s 17 national laboratories for the past three years.

Trump transition officials declined to comment on the memo.

“This feels like the first draft of an eventual political enemies list,” a Department of Energy employee, who asked not to be identified because he feared a reprisal by the Trump transition team, had told Reuters.

Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said in a news briefing on Tuesday that the queries “could have been an attempt to target civil servants,” including “scientists and lawyers and other experts who are critical to the success of the federal government’s ability to make policy.”

By design, their work transcends the term of any one president, Earnest said.

Trump, a Republican, said during his election campaign that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by China to damage U.S. manufacturing. He said he would rip up last year’s landmark global climate deal struck in Paris that was signed by President Barack Obama.

Since winning the Nov. 8 election, however, Trump has said he will keep an “open mind” about the Paris deal. He also met with former Vice President Al Gore, a strong advocate for action on climate change.

After that meeting, he picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate change skeptic, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

 Why is GOP going after Social Security?

The reason why Republicans are so against Social Security is they don't want the public to know that ,
Regan spent 1.7 trillion
Bush sr. Spent 800 million
Bush Jr. Spent 1.4 trillion
They the Republican Party looted and stole the money from Social Security.  Most of the tax breaks were paid for with funds from Social Security.  If the fund had not been robbed by republican presidents it would have plenty of money for the next 75 years.  Republicans are hoping this does not become public knowledge.

Social Security is often described as "the third rail of American politics" -- touch it and you'll get zapped.

So why do Republicans keep sidling up to it and sticking their fingers out?

There's a brewing controversy in Congress over a small part of the program, which is just the latest version of an old routine that goes like this: Republicans say Social Security is going broke, and they propose changes that would cut benefits or otherwise undermine the program. Democrats shout "Republicans are trying to cut Social Security!" Then the Republicans, scared of a backlash from older voters, back off.

And why do we keep going through this? Republicans will tell you it's because the program is in peril, and if we don't cut it back, it won't be there at all for future generations. Democrats will tell you it's because Republicans never liked the program in the first place, and would love to kill it.

That may be an exaggeration, but the fact is that Republicans hate big government, and government doesn't come any bigger than Social Security.
It's also the most successful and beloved social program in American history. Most of us are too young to remember when growing old in America almost inevitably meant a miserable descent into poverty, but until the middle of the 20th century, that's what it was.

The current controversy revolves around a rule change Republicans made as soon as the new Congress was sworn in this month. Social Security is actually two separate programs, Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI), and the much smaller Disability Insurance program (DI). The disability program will be facing a funding shortfall next year, and to ensure that disabled people continue to get all their benefits, Congress would have to move some money from OASI into DI. This isn't anything new -- it's been done many times in recent years.

But House Republicans adopted a parliamentary rule barring the House from allowing that transfer unless it was accompanied by benefit cuts or tax increases. If it can't get worked out, people on DI could see their benefits cut substantially.

The next generation and Social Security

So why would Republicans insist on this? My guess is that they think forcing a mini-crisis over the Disability Insurance program's finances will allow for a debate on the program that will make it easier to do what they've wanted to do for a long time: cut it back somehow, either by reducing benefits, increasing the retirement age, or even partially privatizing it. The justification is always that the program is "going broke." But that's just not true.

When people say that, what they're usually referring to is that, according to the projections in the Social Security Trustees' latest report, in 2033 the program's trust fund will be exhausted. But even if there are no changes between now and then, the program would not be "broke." That's because it would still be taking in billions of dollars in taxes every day and paying them out in benefits. Even under this scenario, the program will still pay 77% of recipient's benefits after 2033, according to the report.

Which would be awful. That would be a large reduction in income for millions of seniors. But 77% is not nothing. The people who tell you that the program will be "broke" are hoping that, faced with that (fictional) nightmare, you might be willing to accept steep benefit cuts now.

But we don't have to -- the projected shortfall can be fixed with some very modest changes, like raising the payroll tax cap (right now you only pay payroll taxes on the first $117,000 of your wages, which means that the wealthy actually pay less as a proportion of their income than the rest of us) or gradually raising the payroll tax by a point in tiny increments over an extended period.

The point is, it wouldn't be hard to come up with some combination of changes that could take care of the shortfall without cutting benefits. But for that to happen, both parties would have to agree on that goal. And there's reason to wonder whether Republicans really want a Social Security that's strong and stable.

Programs like Social Security and Medicare -- which provide vital benefits to millions of Americans and are hugely popular -- stand as a living rebuke to conservatives' small-government philosophy. When Republicans tell voters that government can't do anything right, they hope that the voters don't respond, "Well, the government is doing a good job keeping my grandma from having to eat cat food." The idea that the program is perennially in crisis, on the other hand, validates everything else that Republicans say.

Congress will probably work out the issue with Disability Insurance funding, just like they have in the past -- once the GOP starts feeling some political heat over it. But Republicans will be back for another attack on Social Security soon enough.

                  Pledge of What?

Oh!  How the republicans complained about President Obama.   What do they think of these photos?

Amherst Democratic News

ACVDN

Pamela Ramsey Taylor Shows Her Ass on Facebook

Donald Trump's Election fired up these racist West Virginians.


CLAY, W.Va. - The director of a West Virginia nonprofit group who was placed on leave after making a racist comment about first lady Michelle Obama on Facebook plans to return to her job this month.

 Check out that Mug, and she attacks the First Lady

Clay County Development director Pamela Ramsey Taylor made the post following Republican Donald Trump’s election to president, saying: “It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a (sic) Ape in heels.”

The Charleston-Gazette reports a letter from the agency’s acting director Leslie McGlothin to the West Virginia Bureau of Senior Services says Taylor is on suspension and scheduled to return to work Dec. 23.

The nonprofit provides services to elderly and low-income residents in Clay County. It is funded through state and federal grants and local fees.

Look at the face on this woman and she has the nerve to attack the first lady.  The last thing she should comment on is how someone looks.  Are there are no mirrors in her part of the country.  Can't believe she is being rehired, the whole town must be red neck racist.

                     Mayor Beverly Whaling


Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling also came under criticism after responding to the post: “Just made my day Pam.”

Whaling said in a statement sent to news media that she was referencing the change in the White House and said she wasn’t racist.

West Virginia official under fire for racist Facebook post about Michelle Obama
But Whaling later resigned following a backlash about the comment.

The Clay Town Council accepted Whaling’s resignation in a meeting in November.

Council member Jason Hubbard issued a brief statement condemning the “horrible and indecent” post and said racism and intolerance “isn’t what this community is about.” He apologized on behalf of the town to Michelle Obama and anyone who was offended.

“This community is a helpful, hopeful, empathetic and God-loving community,” Hubbard said. “Please don’t judge the entire community for one or two individual acts.”

African-Americans make up about 4 percent of West Virginia’s 1.8 million residents, according to the U.S. Census.

About 77 percent of Clay County residents supported Trump in the Nov. 8 election. In 2012, President Barack Obama received 31 percent of the county vote when Republican Mitt Romney easily carried the state. 

The director of a West Virginia nonprofit who was put on leave for referring to First Lady Michelle Obama as “an ape in heels” will be back at work next week.

Pamela Ramsey Taylor, director of the Clay County Development Corp., will return to her position Dec. 23. She was originally suspended for racist comments on Facebook she posted after Republican Donald Trump won the presidential election.

“It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I’m tired of seeing an ape in heels,” Taylor wrote in the post that she later deleted but was preserved in screenshots.

 1. Taylor Wrote That She Is ‘Tried of Seeing a Ape in Heels’ as First Lady

The controversy started on November 12, when Taylor wrote a Facebook message after seeing photos of Obama talking with the new First Lady, Melania Trump. Taylor’s post read:

It will be so refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House. I’m tired of seeing [an] Ape in heels.

Over an hour later, Whaling wrote, “Just made my day” in a comment on the post. A person who posted screenshots of the comments said that they should both lose their jobs.
The comments were picked up by WSAZ in West Virginia. Taylor told the station that she deleted the comment and apologized on Facebook, but her Facebook page has been deleted. Still, Taylor said that she has received death threats because of the comment and is talking with her attorneys about filing a lawsuit against those who slandered her.

 2. Taylor Was Placed on Leave, but Will Be Back to Work on December 23

Taylor told WSAZ that she was reprimanded quickly after the post went live. On Monday, November 14, she was removed from her position. WCHS-TV reports that Taylor was placed on leave.
“While we respect Ms. Taylor’s right to free speech, we strongly oppose any form of racism or hate speech,” Joe Murphy, vice chairman of the Clay Democratic Executive Committee, told the West Virginia Gazette-Mail. “We fully support our president and the first lady.”
On December 11, The West Virginia Gazette-Mail reported that Taylor will get her job back. She will return to work on December 23 and the Clay Development Corporation did not provide the Gazette-Mail with a comment.
State Democratic Party Chairwoman Belinda Biafore also issued a statement on the controversy:

On behalf of my fellow Mountaineers I would like extend my sincerest apologies to first lady Michelle Obama. West Virginia truly is better than this. These radical, hateful, and racist ideals are exactly what we at the West Virginia Democratic Party will continue to fight against. These words and actions do not represent West Virginia values.
We will continue to fight for a West Virginia that is inclusive, not divisive and a home for all to feel safe, welcome, and protected. In a time when we are at a crossroads and many fear the future we must stand together against hate of all forms.

The Clay County Development Corporation’s Facebook page is flooded with negative reviews now. One person praised the company for firing Taylor.
“I’d like to apologize to anyone who was offended and most certainly the First Lady. I’m sorry that this happened,” Clay Councilman Jason Hubbard told WSAZ. “The Town Council would like to condemn the horrible and indecent post that is the center of the controversy. This post is an individual and isolated act. This kind of racial intolerance is not what this community is about.”

 3. Over 100,000 People Signed a Petition to Get Whaling Recalled, but Less Than 700 People Live in the City

After news of the post began to circulate, a petition on The Petition Site popped up, asking that both Taylor and Whaling lose their jobs. The petition has over 110,000 signatures. However, the city has a population of 648. The latest Census estimates show that just 9,386 live in all of Clay County, West Virginia.
The petition reads:

Clay County Development Corp. Director Pamela Taylor Ramsey posted a hateful, racially motivated statement to Facebook, which was not only liked by the Clay County Mayor Beverly Whaling, but commented on in a way that showed she agreed with her comments. Every grant and piece of paper Mrs. Taylor and Ms. Whaling have to fill out and sign promises equal opportunities and a racism free workplace.

As the Gazette-Mail notes, a recall vote would need signatures from the registered voters who live within Clay. Ultimately, the recall wasn’t needed since Whaling decided to resign.

4. Whaling Says She Didn’t Intend for Her Message to be Seen as Racist

Whaling has been in office for just over a year, taking office on July 1, 2015. Her term wasn’t supposed to end until June 30, 2019.
Whaling did issue an apology for her comment to the Washington Post, writing, “My comment was not intended to be racist at all.”
Here is Whaling’s full statement:

I would like to apologize for any unintentional harm caused by my comment. My comment was not intended to be racist at all. I was referring to my day being made for the change in the White House! I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me, know that I am not in any way racist! Again, I would like to apologize for this getting out of hand!

On Tuesday, Whaling resigned from her post.

5. Donald Trump Won Clay County With Over 70 Percent of the Vote

 Trump has put Clay County West Va in the Way-Back Machine and sent it to the 1950's.


Trump easily won West Virginia during the general election against Hillary Clinton with 68.7 percent of the vote. Trump won every single county in the state.
In Clay County, Trump earned 77.4 percent, while Clinton earned just 19.1 percent of the vote. Clay County is located in the Southern area of West Virginia and borders Kanawha County, which includes the state capital, Charleston.
Since Trump’s election, there have been several cases of hate crimes throughout the country against minorities.

The Clay County Development Corp. is not a government agency but does receive state and federal funding for its work providing services to low-income and elderly residents of Clay County in West Virginia. The organization confirmed Nov. 15 that Taylor had “been removed from her position,” but did not say whether she would be fired.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that according to a letter from the agency’s acting director, Taylor will be back at work next week.


The director of a Clay County nonprofit group, who was removed from her position after making a racist Facebook post about first lady Michelle Obama, plans to return to her job later this month, according to a letter from the agency's acting director.

Pamela Taylor, whose online post referred to Obama as an “ape in heels,” is on suspension and is scheduled to return to work at the Clay County Development Corp. on Friday, Dec. 23, according to the letter from Leslie McGlothin to the West Virginia Bureau of Senior Services.

The state bureau's commissioner, Robert Roswall, has warned the Clay agency that any discrimination from staff would jeopardize their state and federal funding.

In a letter dated Nov. 14 — the day media reports about Taylor's Facebook became widespread — Roswall warned that “any discrimination of staff or the customers [they] serve” could cause the agency to lose funding from state and federal agencies. The organization received about $1.5 million in federal funding and $363,000 in state funding in 2014.

Neither Taylor nor McGlothlin has responded to multiple phone calls from the Gazette-Mail.

The Clay County Development Corp. is a private nonprofit organization, and Clay County's second-largest employer, according to a recent study from Workforce WV. The organization provides senior services and financial assistance to elderly and low-income residents of Clay County. According to 2014 U.S. Census estimates, one out of every four people in Clay County is living below the poverty level.

Taylor became the CCDC's director in 2007. She was paid $75,000 in 2008 and almost $83,000 in 2014, according to tax returns from the group. The previous CCDC director, Betty Stalnaker, made about $63,000 before she retired. The agency's board sets all salaries, according to Ramona Stanley, executive director of the Appalachian Area Agency on Aging, which supervises the CCDC.

The governing board has 12 members, including Taylor. Board members are unpaid, and vote on decisions that affect CCDC programs.

According to meeting minutes obtained through a public records request to the Bureau of Senior Services when Taylor was initially suspended, board president Eunice Thomas and board secretary/treasurer Donald Holcomb decided on Taylor's suspension. Thomas, Holcomb and other board members did not respond to requests for comment.

Before she became director, Taylor was briefly removed twice from her job at the CCDC.

In 1999, Taylor and two other employees lost their jobs when Clay Development's board was restructured. Within a few days, a judge ordered that all three get their jobs back.

Taylor said in a lawsuit deposition that she was removed from her job again in 2002 after she was accused of pocketing fundraising dollars, but was hired back after a few months.

In 2009, Clay Development listed the job requirements for the executive director position. The director was supposed to have, at minimum, a bachelor's degree with 10 years' experience.

Taylor said in a 2008 deposition that she attended Clay County High School and had no college education. Prior to joining the Clay Development staff in 1989, she was a cosmetologist.

It's unclear if the organization's bylaws have been changed. Clay Development staff members refused to give the Gazette-Mail the most recent copy of the bylaws. They said the only person who could give the records was McGlothlin.

Stanley said the CCDC does not have to release records related to personnel matters, but are legally required to release all governing documents on request.

Taylor has been sued twice by employees for wrongful termination. One suit was settled and one dismissed.

Brenda Baird, who worked for Clay Development as a bookkeeper from 2000 to 2007, sued after she was fired. In her lawsuit, Baird said she found discrepancies on tax forms produced by Taylor, then a new employee. She said she was told not to question Taylor's work and got a written reprimand after arguing with another employee about it.

Later in 2007, Baird said, she told a CCDC board member about employees getting raises that were double the standard amount, and some employees getting bonus checks. The board member told Taylor, who then accused Baird of “trying to get her fired,” according to Baird's lawsuit.

By the end of the month, Baird was fired for “gross misconduct and insubordination.” She had not been formally disciplined for insubordination since 2002, according to her lawsuit.

Baird sued Taylor and Clay Development, claiming that Taylor fired her because of her concerns and spread lies about her.

The case was settled out of court in 2009 for an unspecified amount.

Baird declined an interview request from the Gazette-Mail, citing a gag order when the case was settled.

In a deposition in the lawsuit, Taylor claimed Baird was the one who authorized the disputed bonus checks, not her. She also said Baird had made an effort to make Taylor “look incompetent” in front of other employees.

Another former employee, Janet Fitzwater, sued CCDC last year. Fitzwater worked for the CCDC as a secretary from 1998 to 2010. Her lawsuit was dismissed in March 2015. Fitzwater did not reply to multiple interview requests from the Gazette-Mail.

Clay was established on the site of a farm that was the site of Clay County's first court meeting following the county's establishment in 1858. The community was initially known by the name of "Marshall," then briefly as "Henry," and then as "Clay Courthouse" and finally Clay. The town and county are both named for U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Henry Clay (1777–1852). The town was incorporated in 1895. Before 1880, Clay was inaccessible to traffic from horse-drawn vehicles, and the Elk River was its primary mode of transport. Expansion of the Coal and Coke Railway reached Clay in 1905.

In June 2016, the town was impacted by severe flooding from the Elk River.

In November 2016, Clay mayor Beverly Whaling approvingly responded to a social media post that referred to U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama as an "ape in heels".   Following international media coverage of the incident and a petition of 200,000 signatures, Whaling, an admitted racist, resigned. 
The mayor of the nearby town of Clay, Beverly Whaling, also came under fire for responding to the Facebook post with a comment that said “Just made my day Pam.” She resigned Nov. 15 after an online petition called for the resignation of both women got almost 200,000 signatures, but Whaling insists her comments were not racist.

“My comment was not intended to be racist at all. I was referring to my day being made for change in the White House!” Whaling said in a statement to the Washington Post. “I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me know that I’m not of any way racist!”

The director of a West Virginia nonprofit who was put on leave for referring to first lady Michelle Obama as "an ape in heels" will be back at work next week.

Pamela Ramsey Taylor, director of the Clay County Development Corp., will return to her position Dec. 23. She was originally suspended for racist comments on Facebook she posted after Republican Donald Trump won the presidential election.

RELATED

'Ape in Heels': West Virginia Mayor Resigns After Liking Racist Facebook Post

"It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I'm tired of seeing an ape in heels," Taylor wrote in the post that she later deleted but was preserved in screenshots.

The Clay County Development Corp. is not a government agency but does receive state and federal funding for its work providing services to low-income and elderly residents of Clay County in West Virginia. The organization confirmed Nov. 15 that Taylor had "been removed from her position," but did not say whether she would be fired.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that according to a letter from the agency's acting director, Taylor will be back at work next week.

The mayor of the nearby town of Clay, Beverly Whaling, also came under fire for responding to the Facebook post with a comment that said "Just made my day Pam." She resigned Nov. 15 after an online petition called for the resignation of both women got almost 200,000 signatures, but Whaling insists her comments were not racist.

"My comment was not intended to be racist at all. I was referring to my day being made for change in the White House!" Whaling said in a statement to The Washington Post. "I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me know that I'm not of any way racist!"

Taylor vowed to sue people who had "slandered her" following the incident, claiming the response had become a "hate crime against me.

You might remember reading last month about a woman who called Michelle Obama “an ape in heels” on Facebook?

Many of you were disgusted by her comments and called on her to be sacked.

You’d think that a racist comment against the First Lady would be enough to get you fired?

Well, despite her comments, it looks like Pamela Ramsey Taylor is heading back to her job next week.

It turns out, the director of the Clay County Development Corp was only suspended from her job – not fired.

We’re so used to hearing about people who have been fired over something they’ve said on Facebook, it happens all the time.

In fact, it happened just last week the actress who played Cindy Brady on the Brady Bunch.

So, why hasn’t Taylor been fired?

According to a letter from The Clay Country Development Corp’s acting director, published in the Charleston Gazette Mail, Taylor is returning to next week.

She’s being reinstated because her ‘ape in heels’ comment was “made outside of the agency on a personal social media post on personal time”.

 “It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I’m tired of seeing an ape in heels,” Taylor wrote in the post after the election, that was later deleted.

Apparently, according to reports in the Sydney Morning Herald, Taylor is vowing to sue people who have “slandered her”.

She’s also described the response from people across the world as a “hate crime against me.

Her fate is different to the mayor of a nearby town, Beverly Whaling, who was forced to resign after commenting on Taylor’s post.

An online petition signed by almost 200,000 signatures called for both women to resign. 

The eyes of the world need to be upon this community.


Amherst Democratic News

ACVDN


 

How Much Damage Can Trump Do to The United States?

The Damage Donald Trump’s Done: 

As he sinks lower, he does lasting harm to America's image in the world.

There appears to be no bottom to the depths Donald Trump will plumb in his quest for the title of President of the United States.

Campaigns reveal character. Trump entered the Republican contest well known for qualities that made him a reality-TV star, among them egotism, bully-boy toughness and gross excess. The run has further — and mercilessly — revealed his essence.

He is a liar. He is a thief. He is a victimizer. He is vulgar. He is a racialist, if not a racist. He is shameless, if not conscienceless.

His insinuation in a presidential debate that he is well-endowed genitally unpardonably demeaned the office he seeks and the nation he hopes to lead.

Mark the time: At approximately 9:06 p.m. on March 3, 2016, the dignity of the American political process expired.

There is surely worse to come, because, graceless when buoyed by cheers, Trump responds to criticism or pressure like a toddler. He calls names (little Marco, and lying Ted), screams (Wrong! Wrong!) and unabashedly denies reality (he never went bankrupt).

His spectacle has confirmed that Trump is unfit to serve as President by virtue of the DNA of his personality — yet he rolls on with enough support in a weak and fractured field to hold the Republican Party hostage to a mob.

Trump’s singular unsuitability, lack of preparation and unwillingness to understand what little he knows inflict terrible consequences on the Republic.

Attempting to project strength as a potential commander in chief of a country threatened by radical Islamist terror, Trump bragged a month ago that he would subject captured jihadists to torture.

“I would bring back waterboarding,” and “I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

Simultaneously, he said he would order America’s military to kill terrorists’ families — deliberately targeting non-combatant women and children.

In fact, he was promising to commit war crimes by subjecting suspected terrorists and relatives to treatment banned under international human-rights law.

Could he be serious, he was asked at a rally? Yes he was. Pausing before answering, he used vulgarity in a juvenile attempt to diminish rival Ted Cruz, a supporter of waterboarding.

After leading foreign policy experts said that military commanders would be honor-bound to refuse a torture order from a President Trump, the tower of testosterone declared at Thursday night’s debate: “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me.”

Then, wiser heads took Trump to school to learn basics that, it seemed, everyone else in America had long ago learned.

On Friday, Trump acknowledged that “the United States is bound by laws and treaties and I will not order our military or other officials to violate those laws and will seek their advice on such matters.” No one who aspires to the presidency should ever have to provide such an assurance.

He added: “It is clear that as President I will be bound by laws just like all Americans and I will meet those responsibilities.”

Which is not at all certain.

Trump’s endorsement of atrocities seriously damaged America, along with what little claim he has to the office. The much-presumed Republican presidential candidate showed the world that he has no regard for solemn human rights obligations, flaunted his barbarity and was cheered.

Draw the line for America’s enemies: Abu Ghraib — Guantanamo — Donald Trump.

On the domestic front, consider the flim-flam fleecings perpetrated by Trump University.

Exploiting his overblown image as a master businessman, Trump’s enterprise lured students into paying increasingly large amounts of money on the promise that his “hand-picked” instructors (few were) would teach the secrets for financial success.

Right out of the gate, New York State authorities told Trump that he could not call an institution that had no charter and failed to grant degrees a “university.” Ignoring the directive, Trump plowed ahead, taking the money of thousands and giving them next to nothing in return.

He faces three lawsuits, including one lodged by the New York attorney general in which 5,000 people assert they were conned out of a total of $40 million.

Trump dismisses the suits as small matters and defends Trump University’s offerings by citing, among other things, an A rating by the Better Business Bureau. Actually the BBB’s last mark was D minus.

Unless he settles for payments of extraordinary amounts of money, Trump would stand for election or enter the White House on trial for thievery — which would surely be proven.

The evidence of Trump’s instability, of his irresponsibility, of his pathological penchant for putting the dark art of the deal over telling the truth, is overwhelming.

Regardless, rivals Cruz, Rubio and John Kasich said at the close of the debate that they would support Trump as presidential nominee, certifying his fitness for the White House and placing the GOP in his ever more destructive hands.

They were cowards when the Republican party and the nation needed courage.

Trump’s Secretary of State Pick and Putin Want to Drill for Oil in the Arctic

On Friday, President Obama signed an executive order to protect part of Alaska’s Arctic known as the North Bering Sea from future oil well drilling. The news was met with enthusiasm by environmentalists and Alaska Native tribes, but the celebration was short lived.

The Wall Street Journal reported early Saturday morning that President-elect Donald Trump is expected to tap Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, for Secretary of State. On Sunday morning, Trump tweeted that he hasn't made a final decision, but said that Tillerson is a "world class player and dealmaker." If Trump does pick Tillerson for Secretary of State, that will make the CEO of the third largest petroleum company in the world America’s top diplomat.

Trump’s choice is less than surprising given that the president-elect has expressed a desire to normalize relationships with the Kremlin. During his ten year reign at the helm of Exxon, Tillerson has been noted for his close ties to Russia, which began when he oversaw Sakhalin-I, Exxon’s flagship drilling project in Russia that began in 1996.

Most recently Tillerson brokered a massive deal with the Russian state oil company Rosneft to explore for oil in the Russian part of the Arctic Ocean in 2011. The deal also gave Rosneft significant holdings in oil resources in other countries, including the US.


The Exxon-Rosneft project, which was estimated to be worth “tens of billions” of dollars on the low end and up to $500 billion on the high end, drilled its first Arctic exploration well and struck oil in 2014.

Just days after the company announced it had hit oil in the Arctic, Exxon had to withdraw from its deal with Rosneft after the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine. In 2015, Exxon filed a report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission detailing that the US sanctions on Russia had lost the oil giant up to $1 billion in revenue.

Unsurprisingly, Tillerson has spoken against sanctions on Russia so that Exxon can continue drilling in the Arctic.

“We don’t find [the sanctions] to be effective unless they are very well implemented comprehensively, and that’s a very hard thing to do,” Tiller said during the annual Exxon shareholder meeting in 2014. “So we always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions and what are their objectives and whether sanctions are really effective or not.”

Even though recent US orders to keep its portion of the Arctic oil well-free would be difficult for Trump to overturn, it is comparatively easy for the president-elect and his top pick for Secretary of State to lift sanctions on Russia, which is ramping up oil extraction in the Arctic.

Unfortunately, though the US and Russia have drawn political lines over the Arctic, the ecosystem itself is not so easily divided. The Arctic Ocean is one of the most pristine marine environments in the world and is home to a number of species unique to the region, many of whom are already being seriously impacted by climate change-induced ice melts. This area is also important as a major global fishery that provides sustenance not only to indigenous communities in the region, but the rest of the world as well.

Drilling in the region is particularly dangerous because there is no effective way to contain and clean up an oil spill in icy water, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. For a company like Exxon (which doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to oil spills), a spill on the order of the 1989 Exxon Valdez crisis in the Arctic would devastate the region.

“At a time when the climate crisis is deepening, both the United States and the world deserve much better than having one of the planet’s top fossil fuel tycoons run U.S. foreign policy,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement published on Saturday. 

“ExxonMobil not only deliberately concealed its knowledge of climate change for decades but is responsible for one of the costliest environmental disasters in history. We urge Senators…to stand up for families across the country and the world and oppose this nomination.”

The Earth's Poles Have Lost Enough Ice to Cover Texas Four Times
 
As if 2016 wasn’t rough enough, climate scientists recently discovered parts of Antarctica have now melted. The polar continent’s ice shelf had been spared from rising global temperatures until this year.

Ice shelves in Antarctica had generally remained steady, and even grew, despite the steady collapse of ice up north in the Arctic. But this year, researchers recorded ice receding at both the northern and southern poles, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

In fact, the center recorded that the Arctic and Antarctic combined had shrunk 3.8 million square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average ice cover as of Dec. 4, which is enough ice to cover all of Texas four-and-a-half times.

Antarctica alone shrunk about 2 million square kilometers, according to data from the center, from its 1981-2010 average as of November—but the center’s research shows it could gain 0.4 percent of its mass back per decade from certain parts of the continent refreezing as usual. The Arctic shrunk about 2.3 million square kilometers during that time, and it’s on track to diminish 5 percent per decade.

All of this is bad news for land dwellers since increased ice melt means greater levels of sea level rise. With cities such as Miami, Florida, and Annapolis, Maryland, already dealing with sea flooding during high tides, other cities may soon have to set up sea walls and drainage systems.

A 2014 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists expect dozens of coastal cities, including Washington D.C., to be affected by seawater flooding by 2045. 




Donald Trump’s Interior Pick Thinks Climate Change Is ‘Creative Writing’
 
Today, Donald Trump nominated his pick for Secretary of the Interior: Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference, and a vocal climate change denier.

Just days after selecting Scott Pruitt—an attorney general whose pockets have been lined by the fossil fuel industry—to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump has beefed up his roster of pro-fossil fuel personalities. At this point, a larger theme is emerging. As president, Trump intends to undo the current administration's climate legacy by unleashing Cabinet officials with experience systematically striking down climate regulations.

According to the League of Conservation Voters, a national environmental nonprofit, McMorris Rodgers boasts a lifetime voting score of 4 percent. She’s voted to strike down bills that would limit emissions from power plants, protect communities from toxic coal ash, ban the sale of ivory products in the US, and protect threatened species like the lesser prairie chicken.

As Secretary of the Interior, McMorris Rodgers would have tremendous jurisdiction over the fate of America’s climate future, national parks, and wildlife. The Center for Biological Diversity, an endangered species protection nonprofit, called the congresswoman a “foe” to public lands, having actively promoted “the privatization and industrialization of America’s public lands,” and cosponsored “multiple bills to weaken protections on public land.”

In 2011, McMorris Rodgers supported H.R. 1126, which would have offered up more than 3 million acres of federal lands in the West to private interests. In her role as Secretary, she’ll oversee 20 percent of America’s public lands, including national parks and national wildlife refuges.

Like Pruitt and Trump, McMorris Rodgers also believes that man-made global warming is a hoax. In 2008, during a forum on climate change, the congresswoman said the following: “We believe Al Gore deserves an ‘F’ in science and an ‘A’ in creative writing.” She also told the Spokane Review that, “Scientific reports are inconclusive at best on human culpability of global warming.” (Approximately 97 percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and can be attributed to human activities.)

It’s especially concerning that McMorris Rodgers has voted to weaken the Interior’s power to make decisions based on climate science. In 2014, she opposed an amendment that would allow the Interior Secretary “to include climate change as a consideration in making decisions related to conservation and recreation on public lands.”

“If McMorris Rodgers brings her ideology to management of America’s public lands, it will be open season for polluters who want to frack, drill and mine our public lands and waters,” said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“She just doesn’t understand that the nation’s public lands are a legacy for this and future generations rather than up for grabs to industry.”




Trump’s EPA Pick Is a Shill For the Oil Industry 
Of all the people Donald Trump was considering to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), his eventual pick, Scott Pruitt, a fellow climate change denier, has the most dangerous ties to the fossil fuel industry.  The news was announced today, after the Oklahoma attorney general beat out four other candidates, including climate change denier Myron Ebell.

Like his competition, Pruitt, a lawyer, possesses the following characteristics: a staunch disbelief in man-made global warming, a disdain for the EPA’s regulatory power, and a strong yearning to undo President Obama’s environmental policy, such as the proposed Clean Power Plan.

Pruitt, in his role as Attorney General, also has experience fighting environmental policies in court. His resume, according to the New York Times, notes him as “a key architect of the legal battle against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies.” Earlier this year, Pruitt spearheaded a 28-state lawsuit in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia against alleged constitutional overstepping by President Obama’s climate rules.

 The Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, and is essential to meeting Paris Agreement goals, was criticized by opponents for being an illegal power-grab by the EPA. The case is expected to move to the Supreme Court.

Pruitt’s most anti-environment quality, however, is conflict of interest, stemming from his mutualistic relationship with the oil and gas industry. In 2014, a New York Times investigation revealed that Pruitt had assembled an alliance between Republican attorneys general and the nation’s biggest energy companies, such as coal producer Murray Energy, and electricity utility Southern Company.

When Pruitt sent a scathing letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson regarding emissions regulations and air pollution, he concealed the fact that it had been drafted by lawyers for Devon Energy, an oil and gas company headquartered in his home-state, Oklahoma. The investigation found that letters sent from Pruitt to President Obama and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell were also written by Devon Energy.

“Outstanding!” wrote Devon Energy’s Executive Vice President of Public Affairs to Pruitt’s office, referring to the EPA letter. “The timing of this letter is great… We also appreciate the flagging of the issue for other AGs.”

Among Pruitt’s campaign donors since 2010, according to ProPublica, are energy giant ConocoPhillips, and Koch Industries, which boasts ties to the fossil fuel industry at every level.

Yet, despite Trump’s repeated threats to dismantle the EPA, the president-elect won’t find it easy to completely gut the agency—even with Pruitt at its helm. Policy experts theorize that Trump can’t just cancel rules like the Clean Air Act, which regulates the emission of hazardous air pollutants. Instead, the Trump Administration will need to chip away at EPA regulations through Congress, or simply stall or roll back existing laws.

One thing Pruitt can offer Trump, however, is his extensive legal know-how, which according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the attorney general has frequently exercised since accepting the position in 2011. So far, however, he hasn’t been very successful.

“Pruitt has sued the EPA to stop vital protections for public health – including standards for reducing soot and smog pollution that crosses interstate lines; protections against emissions of mercury, arsenic, acid gases and other toxic pollutants from power plants; and standards to improve air quality in national parks and wilderness areas. Each time he failed,” wrote EDF in a review of Pruitt’s environmental record.

Still, with so many climate change regulations already in the GOP’s crosshairs, Pruitt’s nomination is certain to renege some of President Obama’s environmental achievements. At the very least, it proves that Trump intends to follow through on his most devastating promises regarding our planet.



Why It Matters That Trump's Attorney General Pick Is a Climate Change Skeptic
 

Jeff Sessions, the ultra-conservative Republican senator from Alabama, has been a controversial political figure for decades. His early career as a US attorney was threatened by allegations of racist remarks in the 1980s, but he remained popular in his home state and managed to carve out a congressional career for himself as a staunch opponent of, among many other things, consensus climate science.

But Sessions is about to get a whole lot more influential to the lives of all Americans: President-elect Donald Trump has picked him to be the next attorney general of the United States.

In what’s become a daily routine during the Trump transitionary period, the president-elect’s pick of Sessions has been met with exasperated outcries. Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are preparing for a long period of conflict under the Trump Administration, and Sessions is sure to be a part of it.

Many critiques of Sessions center on documented accusations of racism. In 1986 he became only the second nominee to be denied a federal judgeship by the Reagan administration after his coworkers testified that he regularly used the n-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan. He's also vocally opposed to legalized marijuana (an "anti-marijuana zealot," in the words of one activist), which could make things awkward for the eight US states (plus D.C.) that have legalized marijuana for recreational use.

While his controversial past and hardline stance on immigration reform (he even opposes some types of legal immigration), are enough to raise eyebrows over this appointment, his scientifically unsound denials of climate change have largely been glossed over, so far. The senator is a devoted climate change skeptic and has gone above and beyond to take down Obama’s Clean Power Plan and sow seeds of doubt about the existence of global warming.

As US attorney general, Sessions will be tasked with leading the Justice Department and representing the federal government in legal affairs, which makes his previously reported record on racial issues cause for special concern (especially as minorities have faced historic prejudicial treatment in the US justice system).

But it would also be Sessions’ job to bring cases concerning environmental laws to federal courts if needed. The US Justice Department currently regularly prosecutes individuals and companies for environmental crimes (mainly through its Environment and Natural Resources Division), such as polluting or evading regulations. Given Sessions’ public stances against climate science and environmental legislation, there’s an additional concern that he might ignore certain environmental issues, allowing federal environmental protections to wither.

Sessions has voted against various climate bills in Congress, including President Obama’s comprehensive climate change legislation in 2010, a bill in 2011 that would allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, and another in 2007 that proposed the US government factor in the costs of global warming in future federal projects.

During a Senate hearing on climate change in 2012, Sessions led the charge against climate science. As reported by the political news site ThinkProgress, Sessions was incredulous when he was informed by the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee that 98 percent of climate scientists believe anthropogenic warming was real and serious.

“Madam Chairman, I am offended by that, I’m offended by that — I didn’t say anything about the scientists. I said the data shows it is not warming to the degree that a lot of people predicted, not close to that much,” Sessionshe said.

In 2015, during a hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed budget for 2016, Sessions took hold of the questioning and careened it off course, turning it instead into an interrogation of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on the Clean Power Plan and its proposed emissions cuts for power plants. The senator used models of very recent weather trends, like decreased hurricane landfall and slightly increased soil moisture in the last ten years, to try and ensnare McCarthy in what the Washington Post regarded as “a series of ‘gotchas.’”

Unprepared for such an attack, the EPA administrator was knocked off balance and didn’t have direct answers. Sessions balked, stating: “This is a stunning development: that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who should know more than anybody else in the world, who’s imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in costs to prevent this climate—temperature increase, doesn’t know whether their projections have been right or wrong.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sessions, a climate change skeptic, was picked to be apart of the president-elect’s team. Trump himself famously declared that climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese. Mike Pence, his vice president-elect, is also on record denying climate change (although he has softened his tone in recent months).

The facts, meanwhile, say otherwise. Now, 98 percent of climate scientists do confirm that anthropogenic warming is real and dangerous. And 2016 is likely to steal the crown yet again as the hottest year on record, up from 2015 before that, and 2014 before that. But this won’t likely sway Sessions or this administration’s opinion. The fact that the Arctic just entered its long night of winter at a temperature 36 degrees above what it should be won’t have any impact on their beliefs either.




Covering Up Climate Change So Businesses can Keep on Destroying the Planet for Profit

 
For instance, the State Department “retired” climate change from its “global issues" section, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration delayed the publication of climate change data because of “White House concern about the subject’s political sensitivity,” and the Environmental Protection Agency’s pages on global warming and global climate change research stopped being updated shortly after Bush took office. A high-ranking scientist at NOAA told the report’s author that “anything dealing with climate change had to be pre-approved at the White House level,” including the content on his laboratory’s website. Bush also shut down the EPA’s research libraries, an action that triggered an investigation from the Government Accountability Office.

It wasn’t just Bush—anti-environment politicians such as Stephen Harper in Canada and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have muzzled and censored scientists, as well as made government data less accessible from websites. Journalist James Rowen has been keeping an exhaustive blog about Walker’s war on the environment.

    "It’s prudent for folks to download the science that’s easily available now"

With the Trump presidency looming, many scientists who studied Bush’s policies are starting a mad dash to preserve climate science that has been made available under President Obama based on fears that it might no longer be publicly accessible. Several professors I spoke to say that officials who work for the government’s science departments are privately imploring researchers outside the government to download what they can now, or risk losing access to it later. NOAA and the EPA did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for NASA told me the agency is “apolitical” and that it is “committed to doing whatever we can to assist in making the Executive Branch transition a smooth transition.”

Scientists who don’t have to worry about upsetting their future bosses, however, tell a very different story.

“My expectation and fear is we are going to see round two of Bush,” Robert Paterson, co-director of the Urban Information Lab at the University of Texas’s School of Architecture, told me. Paterson posted about his concerns on a Facebook group for professors called Planners 2040 earlier this month. “The appointments are hostile to climate change, so I think it’s prudent for folks to download the science that’s easily available now, because you may have to file a [Freedom of Information request] later to get it.”

While it’s easy to scrape an HTML website, Paterson and others are worried that, for instance, a NOAA database and tool regularly used by city planners to calculate sea level rise could be pulled offline.

“It’s less the documents, which we can get through alternative means,” he said. “The bigger issue in my mind is the access to databases and analytic software that public dollars paid for which by administrative fiat they may remove. I use the NOAA sea level rise projection database for discussion in my environmental impact assessment class. I use the greenhouse gas emission calculator for analysis of major federal climate actions.”

One of the main concerns is that a Trump presidency doesn’t even have to purposefully take down these tools—many of them will simply break or become useless without being regularly updated.

“While we may not see the straightforward deleting of data, we expect to see access to data starved out,” Michelle Murphy and Patrick Keilty, who are spearheading a “Guerrilla Archiving” event at the University of Toronto, told me in an email. “It takes effort and money to keep databases and portals updated and maintained, and to make them publicly available. Moreover, data can move from being publicly shared through portals that make it immediately accessible to less accessible, but still technically public forms of availability.”

In addition to the guerrilla archiving initiative, researchers at Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Pennsylvania are working on pre-Trump hackathons and other data retention plans. Professors at each of those universities expressed similar concerns, and said they would be working together to make sure that their projects didn’t overlap. At Carnegie Mellon, for instance, associate professor Chris Labash is heading up a series of projects that will determine just how much data is lost under Trump.

    "The ephemerality of web content is something people don’t think about until there’s a catalyzing event"

"It's a bundle of research projects including looking at the tone, tenor, and trustworthiness of .gov communications, the topology of information, the commitment to information sharing with the public, what happens to information when an agency, department, or initiative is eliminated, and many other projects," Labash told me of the work.

The most important and long-running effort to compile a complete picture of the government’s websites as they stand today, however, is a joint project between the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress, and several other universities around the country. Called the “End of Term Web Archive,” the project compiled full snapshots of government websites at the end of the 2008 and 2012 terms. This project, unfortunately, likely won’t be able to capture many of the databases that professors are worried about losing. It will, however, be the most complete archive of government websites as they stand today.

“We basically crawl as much as we can—.gov, .mil, government websites that are not .gov, and social media accounts,” Jefferson Bailey, director of web archiving at the Internet Archive, told me. “We collect a lot of government web content in our regular course of activities, but we put a lot more resources into acquiring these resources before and after transition. It allows researchers to perform a longitudinal analysis of what disappears and how much content is on any given site.”

The team recently started crawling as many sites as possible—hundreds of millions of unique URLs—and will continue to crawl for two months after the inauguration. In 2008, it collected roughly 16 terabytes of information; in 2012, it collected about 21 terabytes. This year, it’s expecting the entirety of the government’s websites to be between 30 and 40 terabytes.

“We’re doing this as part of our own institutional goals,” Abigail Grotke, who is heading up the project for the Library of Congress, told me. “There are a lot of things going on in the government, and we want to take a snapshot of that.”

While the End of Term archive is a routine, nonpartisan project, both Grotke and Bailey say that there has been an increased sense of urgency this year as academics have expressed their concerns about the potential for data destruction under Trump.

“We’ve definitely seen much more attention to the issue with this transition than previous ones,” Bailey said. “The ephemerality of web content is something people don’t think about until there’s a catalyzing factor or event.” 




 Trump's Pick for Attorney General Will Likely Crack Down on Cannabis 

The election was a massive win for weed, with eight states voted to legalize adult use or medical marijuana, which upped the total number of green states to 29. However, with the election of Donald Trump, and more so his incoming administration, state marijuana programs are under threat.

"By and large, from a drug policy reform perspective, Trump's appointees so far are a nightmare," Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy organization, told Motherboard.

Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions has had a historically hostile attitude toward marijuana law reform. As a U.S. Attorney in the 1980s, the now-senator from Alabama had gone on record saying he thought the Ku Klux Klan were okay until he found out they smoked pot. He's called marijuana law reform a "tragic mistake" and said that "good people don't smoke marijuana." Sessions has also criticized the Obama administration for not rigorously enforcing federal marijuana prohibition in states with adult use or medical marijuana policies.

In essence, we're dealing with a prohibitionist who would do Nixon and Reagan era drug warriors proud. One who disagrees with 60 percent of the American people who think marijuana should be legal.

    He's called marijuana law reform a "tragic mistake" and said that "good people don't smoke marijuana."

Growers, dispensary owners, product manufacturers, and marijuana users—all criminal under federal law—could easily risk arrest if Sessions so chooses to spend taxpayers' money on targeting the $6.7 billion legally compliant cannabis industry.

In regard to drug policy reform, Sessions opposes sentencing reform, which would have helped avoid the expensive and controversial practice of putting people in jail for decades for carrying a few ounces of weed. He’s also against consent decrees, which address civil rights issues like police brutality and racial profiling, and granting those who have been incarcerated voting rights— like 30 percent of black men in the Deep South.

Sessions also supports civil asset forfeiture, which allows cops to keep convicts' money and property for themselves, wrote Bill Piper, senior director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. With Sessions as attorney general, the Drug War could be used to spy on, investigate, incarcerate, and deport immigrants, Muslims, and other groups that Trump has repeatedly targeted on the campaign trail, according to Piper.

"I still think the marijuana industry in states like Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, where the framework has been set in a complete and well regulated way, will be allowed to do business and more and more states are falling in right behind," said Anthony Franciosi, founder of Honest Marijuana, an organic marijuana company in Colorado.

But he also thinks that the new administration could use their power to stop marijuana cultivation or sales, and the burden would fall on home growers and medical programs. The best way for cannabis industry folk to protect themselves, Franciosi recommends, is to follow state law as meticulously as possible.

At the federal level, a few measures may help state marijuana, but whether they'll be enough is up for debate. The Cole Memorandum, issued in 2013, is a guidance memo for the justice department not to challenge the state-compliant marijuana industry. "It does not codify any change in federal policy and it can readily be ignored or rebuked by the new administration," said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

    The best way for cannabis industry folk to protect themselves is to follow state law as meticulously as possible.

There's also the Rohrabacher-Farr budget amendment, which prohibits the justice department from using federal money to prosecute those who comply with their state marijuana laws. However, that amendment needs to be renewed annually. "It is possible that Congress will not do so in 2017 because new House rules forbid the House of Representatives from considering the issue," said Armentano. Neither, the Cole Memo nor the Rohrabacher amendment are ingrained as permanent policy.

Another option could be for states to pass legislation saying that they won't cooperative with federal agents who try to interfere with state marijuana programs, says Amanda Reiman, marijuana law and policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance. "I think at the end of the day, the more robust a state regulatory system is, the better off they're going to be."

Todd Mitchem, a Colorado-based entrepreneur who works with lawmakers to ensure high standards for operating in the cannabis industry, recommends that the cannabis community look at how what a reversal of marijuana laws would do to states' rights in general.

"If worse came to worse and a universal federal reversal was executed, it would not only be a very time consuming process to redefine marijuana legalization across the nation, but it could also start a state by state nationwide federal lawsuit surge arguing that the federal government is sending mixed messages," he said.

Moreover, Mitchem added, if the new attorney general wants to increase the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spending budget to go after the cannabis industry, he would need to submit the new plan and hope Congress approves the massive expenditure to go after state-compliant marijuana businesses. Which could take years.

Mitchem pointed out that to actually reverse marijuana legalization policies would be a huge financial and burden and time drain for the incoming administration to fight drug policy reform advocates, cannabis industry folk, and individual state legislatures.

Moreover, doing so would detract DEA time and resources from fighting more serious drugs like meth and heroin, which is now a bigger threat to our lives than guns.



 How Much Damage Can Trump Do
 
The queue of activists, interest groups, and ordinary people wringing their hands over what a President Donald Trump might do in office is long, and environmentalists are at the front of the line. Trump has issued threats and taken stands that are cause for alarm. But put aside for a moment his instincts and intentions, and take a step back. What would, or could, a President Trump actually do? There’s nothing about the answer that should make greens leap with joy—he will never be known as the Environmental President, nor would he want to be. But the limits on his freedom of maneuver are immense, in this area as in almost every other that involves the administration of a mammoth federal government. And thankfully, there is little sign that he appreciates this fact.

On the “policies” page of Trump’s official Web site, the word “environment” does not appear anywhere. You can find a page on energy that includes a pledge to “unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas,” which doubtless would have environmental implications. But direct statements about green issues are few and vague: promises to make the country energy-independent while “protect[ing] clean air and clean water” and “conserv[ing] our natural habitats”; a vow in the infrastructure section to “make clean water a priority” (by which Trump apparently means drinking water, not rivers, lakes, and wetlands); and an offhand guarantee that a Trump administration would “eliminate our most intrusive regulations, like the Waters of the U.S. Rule” and the “Clean Power Plan.”

Candidate Trump made promises that are not reflected on any official Web site. Many of these seem like expressions of random pique—a tweeted oath to reverse President Obama’s 2015 decision to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Mt. Denali, for instance. A few apply to the environment, such as candidate Trump’s call (also on Twitter) for “clean, beautiful and healthy air—not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit!” (Ironically, businessman Trump is simultaneously begging the Irish government to let him build a seawall to protect his golf course in County Clare from “global warming and its effects.”) After the election, Trump put Myron Ebell, a pro-pesticide, climate-change skeptic from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, in charge of the “E.P.A. transition.” Overall, Trump has mainly used environmental issues as a goad to rile up crowds of economically anxious rural men who see environmentalists as a code word for “snobby urban elites.”

These applause lines fall into two broad categories: jeremiads against the “Department of Environment Protection,” as he noted at one debate, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency, and green regulations in general; and denunciations of climate change as an elitist hoax. In both areas, however, Trump is likely to discover that the subjects are nightmarishly wonky and that he has much less room to maneuver than he apparently thinks.

When it comes to E.P.A. regulations, consider the fortunes of the previous Republican president, George W. Bush. Two months after taking office, in 2001, Bush announced that he was going to withdraw new E.P.A. rules that restricted arsenic levels in drinking water—a victory for the mining industry and a symbolic slap at the Clinton administration, which had pushed through the legislation in its final days. Public reaction was fierce and, it seemed, surprising to Bush. Americans are willing to cheer on politicians who denounce bureaucratic overreach and job-killing red tape in abstract terms. But they turn out to like specific regulations against toxic chemicals in their drinking water. Panicking, Republican legislators, including die-hard E.P.A. haters, led a drive to cut arsenic even further than Bill Clinton had proposed. Seven months after noisily revoking the E.P.A. rules, Bush quietly allowed them to go into effect.

Among the few explicit environmental policies that Trump has announced is the desire to “eliminate the highly invasive ‘Waters of the U.S.’ rule.” Technically, WOTUS, as it is called, defines which U.S. rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands fall under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. Practically, WOTUS is the latest round in a seemingly endless battle over the Clean Water Act. The law is intended to regulate “navigable waters” like the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, but it doesn’t spell out how far protections must go upstream to keep those “navigable waters” clean. Should you monitor only the tributaries of rivers, or worry about the wetlands that filter the water that goes into those tributaries? Over the years, the E.P.A. extended the law, on dubious legal grounds, to include isolated ponds and marshes used by migratory birds. Opponents called this a massive D.C. power grab; supporters said it was necessary to protect the nation’s water and wildlife. The fight has been to the Supreme Court twice since 2000, with confusing results. WOTUS, now on hold while under review from the Sixth Circuit, will end up putting the issue again to the Supreme Court—unless Trump, as he has promised, sends the E.P.A. back to the drawing board for the zillionth time.

Prediction is a mug’s game, but taking the side of water polluters has not been a winning political strategy for 50 years. Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II all undertook to weaken water regulations in the name of economic growth. They left office; the regulations remained.

If Trump goes ahead—if POTUS revokes WOTUS—the effect will be to leave in place the existing and complex jumble of state, local, and tribal water rules. According to the State Association of Wetland Managers, 35 states now have their own definition of “wetlands.” Twenty-five states have wetland and waterways programs completely separate from the Corps and E.P.A. Thirty-four states have some form of wetlands monitoring. Thirty-one states apply federal water-quality standards to their own wetlands. Many other states simply apply their general water-pollution standards to swamps and marshes, an even more stringent standard. Some Western states have collaborative water agreements with Indian tribes—Washington state, for instance, monitors a number of its rivers to protect spawning salmon, which are promised to native peoples under 19th-century treaties. And on and on. Pity the poor flunky who has to explain this to Mr. Short Attention Span in the Oval Office.

These laws won’t vanish. And corporate America—this may come as a surprise—is not likely to lend much weight to removing the E.P.A.’s oversight. Doing so, after all, will leave industry dealing with the patchwork of state and local regulations that it has been decrying for decades. It will also be left with the hundreds of vehement green organizations that use those regulations to stall and stop projects they don’t like. If I am a corporate executive, do I want well-heeled, suburban NIMBY-ites setting the standards via lawsuits? Or would I rather have the E.P.A.? Historically, industry prefers Washington. The Trump Organization is an example. Even though it has fought countless battles with local green groups, the company’s chief environmental consultant, Ed Russo, recently explained that Trump has followed federal land and water rules so diligently that the president-elect is actually an environmental hero.

Trump may have more of a chance to roll back environmental rules if he turns to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE, pronounced like a cup of coffee) standards, which were dramatically increased by Obama in 2012. Average fuel efficiency for new-model cars is supposed to rise to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, though because of the absurd way that Washington measures mileage, the actual figure will be more like 36 miles per gallon. Detroit complains about CAFE, because—as car aficionados constantly marvel—Americans have a peculiar attachment to costly, inefficient, badly handling vehicles, and it is hard to convince them to buy cheaper, nimbler, safer models. Trump could, in theory, change or eliminate the standards, which have a handy “mid-program review period” to allow for modifications.

But even if Trump wants to do this, carmakers will still have to deal with the California Air Resources Board. CARB is a perpetual candidate for Most Important Government Body You Have Never Heard Of. It set up, among other things, California’s Zero Emission Vehicle rules, which have paved the way for electric cars. CARB is influential because its standards have largely been adopted by 13 other states and the District of Columbia, representing about 40 percent of the automobile market in the U.S. CAFE or no CAFE, Detroit will still have to make fuel-efficient cars. And don’t forget international sales. At the moment, about 80 percent of the world auto market is regulated for efficiency or carbon-dioxide emissions, and most of the standards are stronger than their U.S. equivalents. Unless Detroit wants to stop selling cars to the world, it will have to meet the world’s rules.

Most of Trump’s environmental promises are byproducts of his apparent desire to unleash the U.S. energy industry, a reliable G.O.P. crowd-pleaser since the days of Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill!” But go back again to the election of 2000, when George W. Bush, a Texas oil man, was handed the presidency by the Supreme Court. Every February, the National Association of Petroleum Engineers hosts a summit in Houston. NAPE is to the oil and gas industry what Cannes is to the movie industry—the place and time where hot properties are bought and sold. In 2001, according to one energy consultant who was there, “everybody in Houston was dancing with glee—they thought they were going to be drilling on the White House lawn! Guess what? It didn’t happen.”

And it probably will continue not to happen. Oil and gas prices worldwide right now are very low, because—far from being hobbled by restrictions, as Trump apparently thinks we are—the United States is producing vast amounts of oil and gas, thanks largely to Obama-administration policies. Most of this petroleum is from fracking. Because the cost of fracking has continuously fallen, production has proceeded almost unabated despite the low price. Oil and gas storage and inventories are at high and even record levels. There isn’t all that much unmet demand.

If, as Trump promises, U.S. petroleum companies “unleash $50 trillion“ in new energy, the environment will not be the biggest loser. The biggest loser will be the coal industry. Last year, U.S. coal production, consumption, and employment fell by more than 10 percent. In 2005, the United States had 619 coal-fired power plants; last year it had 427, a decline of almost one-third in a decade. The shutdown of coal power plants is the main reason why U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions hit a 25-year low this year. (The advance of solar and wind power also played a role.)

As Trump has charged, E.P.A. regulations have contributed to the coal industry’s woes. But the biggest reason for the decline is that natural gas is now much cheaper than coal. When utilities replace their old plants, they want to build new ones with the cheapest fuel. Increasing the supply of natural gas, which Trump wants to do, would only lower its price further, increasing its competitive advantage over coal. To all those coal miners who voted for Trump, the new president is effectively saying “Tough luck!,” even if he does not necessarily know it.

As for the threat of global warming, which he does not acknowledge, Trump has vowed that he will soon be “canceling billions in climate change spending for the United Nations” and redirecting the money to infrastructure in the United States. He seems not to know that the “billions” per year are actually only $500 million and that these payments were likely going to vanish anyway, because of obscure 1990 and 1994 laws that block the U.S. from supporting U.N. programs that include “any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood”—a code word for Palestine. These laws explain why Washington no longer contributes to UNESCO. Elimination of funds for U.N. climate programs would also have happened under a President Hillary Clinton. It has little to do with Trump.

Trump has also sworn, rather famously, to “cancel” the Paris climate deal, by which one assumes he means to withdraw the participation of the United States. The backbone of the Paris deal is the bilateral agreement that Obama signed with China, the world’s biggest source of carbon emissions. Beijing is going to—and already has—put pressure on Trump to honor that bilateral agreement. It will be difficult for Trump to unravel this deal without risking an out-and-out trade war, as China has made abundantly clear. Corporate America has no wish to bring on a trade war and understands that reneging on the climate deal would be like firing on Fort Sumter. So if this is really what Trump intends to do, he will face the opposition of big business and green activists—maybe not the way he hoped to “bring us together,” but not a bad start.

More important than this eye-poking and middle-finger-gesturing is what actually is happening to U.S. carbon emissions. Almost no matter what Trump does, the stage is set for continued decline. Not only is our coal fleet approaching the end of its useful life; not only is natural gas abundant; but the costs of both solar power and solar-power storage are falling in ways that have everything to do with technological progress and little to do with public policy. Moreover, there are major state initiatives on climate change in New England, the West Coast, and even Texas (a wind-power giant). All of these will continue no matter what Trump does.

Even the “intrusive” Clean Power Plan, an occasional Trump target, is less vulnerable than it might seem. Many state, local, and private initiatives devoted to compliance with it are already under way. Pulling these back involves a bureacratic process called “notification and review.” The courts will play a big role in this, and Obama’s appointees fill the appellate level. Trump could ask Congress to cut subsidies for solar and wind power. But because Congress just renewed those subsidies last December, history suggests that legislators will have little appetite for revisiting that particular field of battle anytime soon.

Trump can indeed throw some sand in the works by rejecting funding for research (Washington picks up some of the costs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example). Insofar as rhetoric can be destructive, he can be destructively rhetorical. He can fail to advance progress as fast as progress could be advanced. But it would require an immense and sustained effort—a pitched, long-term battle, in which many of Trump’s supposed allies would in fact turn into his enemies—to halt progress, much less roll it back.

None of this is to say that environmentalists should cheer Trump’s election. But it is important to note that Trump is not Sauron in Mordor. Not only did Sauron have limitless persistence and an ability to sweat the details, but in Mordor he was taking over a wasteland with no existing institutional structure. Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he can focus on topics for only a few minutes at a time. And he would be moving into a realm where even the smallest actions require planning worthy of D-Day, and can have immense consequences contrary to whatever is intended. The constraints of actual governance infuriated and hobbled Obama often enough—and Obama was a man with boundless patience and a willingness to engage with complexity. His successor is the opposite—and shows no sign of understanding what he faces.





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