Month: March 2018

‘Act of War’: British Lawmakers Fume Over Russian Spy Poisoning

Daily Beast

‘BRAZEN AND RECKLESS’

‘Act of War’: British Lawmakers Fume Over Russian Spy Poisoning

British politicians publicly point the finger toward Russia as Sergei Skripal and his daughter remain critically ill.

Jamie Ross        March 8, 2018

British lawmakers have voiced their anger over the “brazen and reckless” attempted murder of a former spy using a deadly nerve agent, with one accusing Russia of having potentially committed an “act of war.”

Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain in critical condition in the hospital after they were found unconscious on Sunday as a result of being exposed to an as-yet unspecified nerve agent. The police officer who first responded to the scene, who had been in intensive care, is now “stable and conscious” and has been named as Sergeant Nick Bailey.

Local newspaper the Salisbury Journal reported that police had cordoned off the graves of Skripal’s wife and son, appearing to confirm previous reports that their deaths are now part of the ongoing investigation by British counter-terrorism police. Liudmila Skirpal died of cancer in 2012, and Alexander Skripal died in St. Petersburg last year.

As speculation mounted that Russia was responsible for the attack, the British government’s Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, said: “The use of nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way.”

But she added: “If we are to be rigorous in this investigation we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation. The investigation now involves hundreds of officers following every possible lead to find those responsible.

“We are committed to doing all we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be. As the Foreign Secretary [Boris Johnson] made clear, we will respond in a robust and appropriate manner once we ascertain who was responsible.”

Both Rudd and Prime Minister Theresa May refused to be drawn into questions over Russian involvement on Thursday. In a session in the British Parliament, Rudd repeatedly swatted away questions from lawmakers, both from her own party and the opposition, about what the government’s retaliatory measures would be if Russia was implicated.

Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh told Rudd: “The circumstantial evidence against Russia is very strong. Who else would have the motive and the means? … Those of us who seek to understand Russia know that the only way to preserve peace is through strength If Russia is behind this, this is a brazen act of war, of humiliating our country.”

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said: “[We] have warned for several years about the growing threat of the terrorist Russian state under President Putin whether it’s money laundering in the City of London, targeted murders… and the interference in our political and democratic system.”

Rudd insisted that the government had “not been asleep at the switch as to where our international enemies are,” saying Britain has been vocal over its opposition to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Syria. She said the government would “go further if we needed to do so.”

Prime Minister Theresa May said: “We will do what is appropriate, we will do what is right, if it is proved to be the case that this is state-sponsored.”

Russia has continued to vociferously deny any involvement in the attempted murder after the Russian Foreign Ministry rejected the “groundless” speculation on Wednesday. The unusually outspoken Twitter account of the Russian Embassy in London spent Thursday correcting reports that called Skripal a Russian spy, insisting he was a British one who worked for MI6.

The account also tweeted: “When Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Perepilichny died in Britain, there was a lot of speculation in the media, then all the conclusions were classified, and no data provided to Russia. Same happening now, with MI6 agent Sergei Skripal poisoning.” 

Although British police officially declared Perepilichny and Berezovsky’s deaths non-suspicious, a BuzzFeed News investigation from last year claimed that the British government suppressed evidence that Russia was responsible for both deaths and seven others.

The Russian Embassy account also complained of “Russophobia” from a British lawmaker who had pointed the finger towards Russia.

Counterterrorism police continued their investigation on Thursday with a fingertip search of Skripal’s home as hundreds of analysts and detectives worked to reconstruct his movements before he was found collapsed with his daughter on a bench outside a shopping center.

A source on the investigation told the BBC the nerve agent used was likely to be rarer than the sarin gas which is thought to have been used in Syria or the VX substance used to kill Kim Jong Un’s half brother last year.

When Rudd was asked outright if she believed the poisoning was a Russian assassination attempt, she said: “I’m determined to wait before any attribution [is made] until we have the facts. I’m completely confident that the police will be able to get that.”

Police again appealed to potential eyewitnesses to get in touch.

The Trump doomsayers might turn out to be right

Yahoo Finance

The Trump doomsayers might turn out to be right

Rick Newman     March 8, 2018     

In this photo illustration Levi’s 501 blue jeans by U.S. clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss are seen on March 8, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to sign into law tariffs on imported steel and aluminum today and the European Commission has vowed to retaliate with tariffs on Levi’s jeans, Kentucky bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

During the 2016 election season, many analysts and prognosticators (including me) predicted the economy would tank if voters elected Donald Trump president. They turned out to be wrong.

Or were they just premature?

Developments over the next several months will provide some important clues. During his first year in office, Trump presided over a strengthening economy and booming stock market, due in part to the sharp cuts in business taxes Trump promised—then delivered. Employers added 2.1 million jobs during Trump’s first 12 months in office. The S&P 500 stock index rose 25%.

But stocks are now wobbling, and economists are warning of new dangers to the economy—thanks largely to Trump. Among the campaign promises Trump has yet to fulfill are new tariffs on imported goods, which, to Trump’s mind, are necessary to revive the U.S. manufacturing sector. So Trump now to plans to impose tariffs of 25% on all imported steel and 10% on all imported aluminum.

It’s hard to find an economist who thinks this is a good idea. The real question is how bad, and how dangerous, Trump’s tariffs might be. Nations affected by the tariffs are almost certain to retaliate with tariffs of their own on American exports. If that’s where it ends—trading partners doing nominal damage to each other’s economies, for purely political reasons—the economy will adapt. But if broader trade wars break out, with whole new classes of tariffs on a wide range of products, markets seem likely to heave, and business likely to slow or halt investment until it all sorts itself out.

Still unfulfilled campaign promises

Trump seems unconcerned, for now. But it’s worth pointing out that the stock market is flat for the year, which is pretty unusual given that the tax cuts are expected to generate record corporate profits. Markets are adjusting to the possibility of slightly higher inflation, and most forecasters still think stocks will end handsomely higher in 2018. But that confidence dims with every tweet and utterance from the White House indicating Trump’s fondness for tariffs and his belief that “trade wars are good.”

Many forecasters—including Moody’s Analytics, Oxford Economics, Citibank and Macroeconomic Advisers—predicted the economy would quake, and stocks fall, if Trump won. But those analyses were based on Trump doing what he said he was going to do, which Trump hasn’t, so far. As a reminder, while campaigning, Trump said he’d imposed tariffs of 45% on all imports from China and 35% on imports from Mexico. Trump hasn’t done either of those things, so far, but he’s now testing the waters on tariffs for the first time, with his proposed steel and aluminum duties. Trump also said he’d revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement, or withdraw from it completely (work in progress, outcome unknown). And he vowed to kick 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the country and reduce the number of legal immigrants (also works in progress).

When economists tried to estimate how those policies, if enacted, would affect the economy, the outlook was gloomy. Moody’s Analytics found that the economy would enter a recession starting in 2019 and lose 2.8 million jobs that year alone. Oxford Economics predicted Trump’s plan would cost the economy 4 million jobs and slash $1 trillion in economic output. Citibank said a Trump victory would induce a global recession.

None of that carnage has occurred. But the main reason it hasn’t is that Trump has only done things that stimulate the economy, so far. He hasn’t done things he called for while campaigning that are likely to depress the economy—until now.

The nonprofit group Trade Partnership analyzed Trump’s metal tariffs and found they’d generate 33,000 new jobs in steel and aluminum, but kill 179,000 jobs in other industries, because of the higher prices manufacturers buying those metals would have to pay. So a net loss of 146,000 jobs, just from two tariffs. That doesn’t include any ramifications of retaliatory tariffs by trading partners.

Does Trump want to institute two tariffs just to check off a campaign promise? Just to keep faith with deplorables who expect him to sucker-punch the globalists? Maybe. It’s possible Trump will get his tariffs, downplay the damage when partners retaliate, declare victory and call it a day. Trump could also impose the tariffs but then announce exemptions for a variety of trading partners, diluting the damage. If there isn’t much bite to accompany the bark, markets will quiver but probably recover, and 2018 might end nicely.

But Trump might also feel emboldened, and follow his steel and aluminum tariffs with a major rewrite of NAFTA, or even a withdrawal. Then we’d be getting closer to the doomsday scenarios Trump critics were painting during the later days of the 2016 election. Trump seems to think he can dismantle trading regimes and put them back together on more favorable terms. But even if that’s possible, there will almost certainly be a painful interim period when markets, allergic to unpredictability, price in the worst. If Trump gets his trade wars, he might end up making his critics look pretty smart.

Read more:

What Trump is missing on jobs

Why Trump’s tariffs are a “complete sham”

Trump is picking winners and losers

The real reason the NRA wins

Government debt is exploding. Here’s the danger

Trump’s stock-market mistake

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.

Trump’s Deranged Managerial Theories Are Destroying His Presidency

Vanity Fair – Politics

Trump’s Deranged Managerial Theories Are Destroying His Presidency

Tina Nguyen, Vanity Fair            March 7, 2018

No, it’s not normal.

At the outset of Donald Trump’s administration, various theories arose as to why the White House could not pivot out of a state of permanent chaos. And while it is true that many of the intra-office clashes seemed inseparable from the fact that a hodgepodge of political neophytes with caustic personalities were now attempting to form coherent policy, it also became increasingly apparent that the problem stemmed from the boss, himself, whose Thunderdome-inspired approach to management has fueled the highest West Wing burn-rate in modern history. Now, Trump’s organizational dysfunction, which crescendoed over the last month, appears to be reaching an apex—or, at least, a new plateau of zaniness.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that Trump is covertly supporting Anthony Scaramucci’s regular tirades against Chief of Staff John Kelly, during which he recently called Kelly such charming names as “General Jackass” and blamed him for staffers’ low morale. Trump has reportedly “emboldened” the Mooch to continue the attacks, which he apparently follows on cable TV. At the same time, Trump dismissed the suggestion that the White House is eating itself alive at his direction, describing the rapid turnover as evidence of “tremendous energy” and “tremendous spirit.” “It is a great place to be working. Many, many people want every single job,” he told reporters Tuesday. “Believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House. They all want a piece of that Oval Office, they all want a piece of the West Wing.”

During the White House press briefing Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders also defended the turnover as “not abnormal.” When a reporter pushed back—“If this is not the definition of chaotic, how would you describe what’s happening in these recent weeks?”—Sanders pointed to the economy, “jobs,” military successes against ISIS, and “the remaking of the judiciary,” which she called historic. “Sounds like a very functioning place of business to me.”

Other people who have worked in the West Wing seem to feel otherwise. Less than a week ago, both Josh Raffel and Hope Hicks, a senior communications official and the communications director, respectively, announced their resignations, citing a desire to return to their families. Earlier that month, Reed Cordish, an assistant, announced that he would leave to return to his family’s real-estate business, and staff secretary Rob Porter, stepped down in the face of allegations that he had abused his ex-wives (Porter has denied the claims). And, less than two hours after Trump bragged about the size of his applicant pool, Gary Cohn, his beleaguered national economic adviser, announced that he, too, would depart “in the coming weeks.”

That list doesn’t include the 34 percent of Trump staffers who were either fired, resigned, or reassigned in 2017. But it does highlight the very real problem Trump continues to have in hiring and keeping talent, a task made more difficult by the delight he takes in starting fires. “I like conflict. I like having two people with two points of view,” Trump said during the Tuesday presser. “I like watching it, I like seeing it.” His lust for conflict, however, has taken a toll on the White House, where the attrition rate is so bad that in a recent reshuffle, senior administration official Johnny DeStefano was asked to take charge of the Office of Public Liaison, the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and the duties of the recently departed deputy chief of staff—all while retaining his original job as the head of the Office of Presidential Personnel, overseeing (irony of ironies) the White House hiring process.

Trump, for his part, seems content to gloss over the sky-high burn rate. “The new Fake News narrative is that there is CHAOS in the White House. Wrong!” he tweeted Tuesday morning. “People will always come & go, and I want strong dialogue before making a final decision. I still have some people that I want to change (always seeking perfection). There is no Chaos, only great Energy!” If that “energy” continues to repel talent, however, the consequences could be dire. “With Gary gone, I just think, from a policy perspective, it means disaster,” one White House official told Politico. “The number of bad ideas that have come though this White house that were thankfully killed dead—there are too many to count.”

Foxconn finds way to stick 7 million-gallon straw into Lake Michigan

Chicago Tribune

Foxconn finds way to stick 7 million-gallon straw into Lake Michigan

Michael Hawthorne, Reporter Chicago Tribune, March 7, 2018

Foxconn Technology Group’s new factory site in Wisconsin lies partially outside the Great Lakes Basin. But it is counting on a steady stream of Lake Michigan water, delivered courtesy of nearby Racine. (Alyssa Pointer / Chicago Tribune)

Great Lakes states are so zealous about guarding their increasingly valuable natural resource from thirsty outsiders that all eight of the region’s governors had to sign off before an inland Wisconsin city was allowed to siphon water out of Lake Michigan.

Less than a year after Waukesha secured permission to withdraw more than 7 million gallons a day from the lake, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group could end up winning access to a similar amount of fresh water for its new Wisconsin factory with merely a stroke of a pen from Gov. Scott Walker, the company’s chief political sponsor.

Foxconn’s bid for Lake Michigan water is the latest test of the decade-old Great Lakes Compact, an agreement among the region’s states intended to make it almost impossible to direct water outside the natural basin of the Great Lakes unless it is added to certain products, such as beer and soft drinks.

At issue with both Waukesha and Foxconn is an exemption that allows limited diversions outside the basin for “a group of largely residential customers that may also serve industrial, commercial, and other institutional operators.”

Waukesha, a city of 70,000 west of Milwaukee, lies fully outside the basin but is within a county that straddles the meandering subcontinental divide that separates areas of the Midwest that drain into the Great Lakes from those where water flows toward the Mississippi River. Foxconn’s plant would be built on top of the divide.

As envisioned by the Walker administration, the water for Foxconn would come from Racine, an industrial city that would add the company to its larger base of residential customers, along with a small number of homes in Mount Pleasant, the community where the factory is to be located. Racine is entirely within the basin and has more than enough capacity from its existing allotment of water from the lake.

Lawyers, activists and politicians who drafted the compact are split on whether Foxconn’s bid violates the spirit, if not the actual language, of the agreement, which they hammered out in 2008 after an Ontario firm unveiled plans to ship 158 million gallons a year from Lake Superior to Asia.

Though the proposal to fill an armada of supertankers with fresh water never came to pass, it shocked regional leaders who realized that arid, drought-ravaged nations and communities throughout the world might covet the Great Lakes as a potential solution to their water woes.

Some who were involved in the debate hoped the compact would discourage the use of Great Lakes water to fuel suburban growth outside the basin. Instead, the thinking went, access to the water should be limited to new industries and development in areas within the basin, such as Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and other older, urban cities ravaged by the loss of manufacturing jobs.

“Access to Great Lakes water is a contentious issue even within states, and we knew southeast Wisconsin would be one of the flashpoints,” said Noah Hall, a Wayne State University law professor who focuses on environmental issues in the region. “We wanted to discourage sprawl, but we made political, perhaps arbitrary, compromises along the way.”

The application to divert water for Foxconn assumes Wisconsin is not required to consult with other Great Lakes states, let alone seek their approval.

“I think you can make a cogent argument they are covered under the compact,” said Todd Ambs, who helped negotiate the agreement as top aide to former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle.

Some critics of the Waukesha diversion plan to question the legality of Foxconn’s bid when the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources holds a public hearingWednesday. The department also is taking public comments until March 21 and is expected to rule on the application later in the year.

“Every application for Great Lakes water is an opportunity to review the strength of the compact,” said Molly Flanagan, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes. “Given the number of unanswered questions about Foxconn’s application, there is no need to rush this.”

Walker’s office referred questions to a spokesman for the Natural Resources Department, who said the agency “has not taken a position, nor will it, until it thoroughly reviews the application and any comments we receive.”

Easy access to Lake Michigan water was one of Walker’s selling points as he wooed Foxconn last year. Two other Great Lakes states, Michigan and Ohio, were finalists in the company’s sweepstakes for its latest liquid-crystal display (LCD) factory.

Walker, a former Republican presidential candidate who is up for re-election this year, also offered $3 billion in taxpayer subsidies, promised to relax state environmental lawsand pledged to fight federal clean air regulations that would require Foxconn to spend more money on pollution-control equipment.

Of the 7 million gallons of water withdrawn daily for Foxconn, 4.3 million gallons would be treated and returned to the lake and the rest would be lost, mostly from evaporation in the company’s cooling system, according to the application sent to Wisconsin officials.

That amount of lost water falls below a daily limit of 5 million gallons that would trigger a review by other Great Lakes states, including those that lost out on the factory.

Peter Annin, co-director of a Northland College water center and author of “The Great Lakes Water Wars,” said the proposed diversion could be vulnerable to a legal challenge given the lack of agreement among drafters of the compact. There also are political considerations for elected officials in Wisconsin, Michigan and other states in the region who are either seeking higher office or attempting to hold on to the jobs they have now.

“A lot of people are upset with the hubris with which Wisconsin has been dismissing environmental laws in order to grease the wheels for Foxconn,” said Annin, who incorporates the company’s bid for Lake Michigan water in an upcoming edition of his book. “The compact language does appear to provide an opportunity for opponents to trip things up. The fact that Walker is up for re-election this year makes the geopolitical dynamic here even more intriguing.”

Foxconn would be one of the largest users diverting water outside the Great Lakes basin. The largest by far is Chicago, which under a 1967 Supreme Court decree is authorized to withdraw up to 2.1 billion gallons a day from Lake Michigan. The decree also resolved questions about the city’s nearly century-old practice of discharging treated sewage into waterways that drain toward the Mississippi, instead of the Great Lakes.

By contrast, the Great Lakes compact requires Foxconn and Waukesha to treat most of the water used and return it to Lake Michigan.

Cameron Davis, who served as Great Lakes czar for former President Barack Obama, noted the amount of Lake Michigan water that would be diverted for Foxconn is tiny when compared with the volume of the lake.

The bigger question about Foxconn, Davis said, is whether Wisconsin ensures the factory is prevented from releasing toxic pollution into the lake.

Under clean water laws, Foxconn could be required to treat wastewater at the factory to remove hazardous chemicals used during the manufacturing process before it is pumped through Racine’s treatment plant and released back into Lake Michigan.

“It’s understandable that people are focused right now on the compact and the proposed diversion,” Davis said. “But in the long run water quality should be the fight here, rather than water quantity.”

RELATED

Another break for Foxconn? EPA office led by Gov. Walker’s former aide to decide smog pollution rules

 Foxconn seeks to tap 7 million gallons of water daily from Lake Michigan

 After winning Foxconn, Southeast Wisconsin prepares for influx of jobs as residents fear loss of ‘peace and quiet’

A Homeless Man’s Truck Is His Home, Judge Rules In Seattle

NPR

A Homeless Man’s Truck Is His Home, Judge Rules In Seattle

By Laurel Wamsley      March 6, 2018

A King County, Wash., Superior Court judge ruled Friday that the truck a Seattle man was living in is his home, and thus can’t be impounded. Here, a man hauls garbage at a temporary parking area for people living in their vehicles in Seattle in 2016. Elaine Thompson/AP

In a case that may have a significant implications for Seattle’s fast-growing homeless population, a King County Superior Court judge ruled on Friday that the pickup truck a man was living in was his home.

The case concerns a 57-year-old man named Steven Long, whose pickup was impounded because it was improperly parked and he didn’t move it every 72 hours. Long was living in the truck while working as a janitor at CenturyLink Field, and he said the vehicle wasn’t running well enough to move it.

Because of Washington’s frontier-era homestead law, the judge’s ruling means the city can’t impound the truck. The judge also ordered the city to refund the fees Long was levied for the towing and impoundment, saying Seattle violated constitutional protections against excessive fines.

The city argued that impounding Long’s truck was not a “forced sale” and that the courts “have consistently held that there is no constitutional right to housing,” KIRO reports. The city is considering whether to appeal.

NATIONAL

Homeless Population Rises, Driven By West Coast Affordable-Housing Crisis

The ruling follows a decision by a judge in Clark County who found that police officers in Vancouver, Wash., had violated a homeless man’s right against unreasonable search and seizure when they lifted the tarp he was sleeping under, found a bag of meth, and arrested him.

The Clark County prosecutor’s office was critical of that ruling.

“Are we asking our officers to go get warrants now for every person in a park who throws a blanket over themselves?” said Clark County senior deputy prosecuting attorney Rachael Probstfeld, The Stranger reports. “Like a cloak of invisibility? Like ‘Oh this is my dwelling now’?”

But advocates for the homeless say poor people deserve the same protections as those living in traditional housing.

“If this person had rented wooden walls, we wouldn’t have this debate,” Tristia Bauman, senior attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, told the Stranger. “It would be unquestionable that the police overstepped their bounds. But because this person is poor, then there becomes a debate about whether this person even had a home and has any of the fundamental guarantees afforded to the rest of us.”

HERE & NOW COMPASS

Shelters Reach Capacity In Cold Weather As Homeless Population Rises

The King County decision draws attention to a population that often goes unnoticed: people who live in their vehicles.

A one-night count in King County in January 2017 found that 2,314 people were living in vans, cars or RVs — 20 percent of county’s homeless population. Along with people who live on the street, in tents, or in abandoned buildings, they comprise the 47 percent of the city’s homeless population who are considered “unsheltered.”

Many West Coast cities are struggling with growing numbers of people experiencing homelessness as housing costs have spiked. The Associated Press reports that Washington’s population of chronically homeless people has risen 67 percent since 2007, while nationally the rate has declined 27 percent.

SHOTS – HEALTH NEWS

For Some Seniors Without Housing, A Parking Lot Is Home

Some cities have established places for people living in their cars to park. Santa Barbara, Calif., for example, has a Safe Parking program with designated spots where they can park overnight, often in church parking lots. The program also provides services and outreach to the people living there – including necessities like bathrooms.

Los Angeles has an estimated 8,000 people living in vehicles, according to the Los Angeles Times. But as KPCC has reported, LA has been slow to get its own safe-parking program off the ground.

And Seattle now has just one vehicle safe zone, The Seattle Times reports, with plans to shut it down by the end of April. The newspaper says Seattle’s parking enforcement officials work with a local homelessness organization to determine who is living in their vehicles so they don’t face excessive fines.

Ann LoGerfo, one of the attorneys who worked on Long’s case, told The Stranger she would like the Seattle decision to impact other cities, too.

“We’re hoping the city and other cities across the state will look at this and rethink how they’re treating people who have no other choice but to live in a vehicle,” she said.

 Why is a top aide to the EPA chief ‘moonlighting for private clients’?

MSNBC

The Rachel Maddow Show – The Maddow Blog

 Why is a top aide to the EPA chief ‘moonlighting for private clients’?

 By Steve Benen       March 6, 2018

The headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stands in Washington, D.C. Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty

Since Donald Trump put Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA, the agency has faced one controversy after another, but today’s is just … bizarre.

Last year, Pruitt hired a Republican political consultant named John Konkus to serve as the EPA’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs. It’s not, however, just a public-relations job. The Washington Post  reported in September that Konkus, despite his lack of environmental policy experience, is in charge of “vetting the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the EPA distributes annually.”

We learned at the time that Konkus “reviews every award the agency gives out, along with every grant solicitation before it is issued.” As part of his reviews, he looks out for “the double C-word” – climate change – and according to the Post, he’s repeatedly “instructed grant officers to eliminate references to the subject in solicitations.”

It’s against this backdrop that the Associated Press reports that the EPA official is also moonlighting for unnamed private-sector clients.

A key aide to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has been granted permission to make extra money moonlighting for private clients whose identities are being kept secret.

A letter approving outside employment contracts for John Konkus – signed by an EPA ethics lawyer in August – was released Monday by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The ethics official noted that Konkus’ outside contracts presented a “financial conflict of interest” and barred him from participating in matters at EPA that would have a “direct and predictable” financial benefit for his clients.

Apparently, Konkus, a former Trump campaign aide who now receives a $145,000 annual salary at the EPA, received permission to work for at least two unnamed clients, with the expectation that this list will grow.

What’s more, according to the AP, he’s not the only one.

Along with the information about Konkus’ side jobs, the House Democrats also got a copy of letter approving similar outside employment for Patrick Davis, another Trump political appointee working as a senior adviser for public engagement in the EPA’s regional office in Denver.

Like Konkus, Davis is a Republican political consultant who led Trump’s presidential campaign in Colorado. According to a 2015 report by ProPublica, Davis was accused two years earlier of defrauding a conservative super PAC called Vote2ReduceDebt, which was funded by an elderly oil tycoon. The group collapsed after Davis allegedly paid nearly $3 million of the PAC’s funds to organizations run by him or his close associates, according to the news report. […]

An EPA ethics lawyer in February 2017 approved of Davis receiving outside compensation for work as sales director for a company called Telephone Town Hall Meeting, which provides services such as robocalls to political campaigns and advocacy groups. The agency redacted how much Davis is to be paid for the agreement, but his outside compensation would also be capped at less than $28,000.

I don’t know how long it’ll take to repair the Environmental Protection Agency, but I have a hunch it’s going to take a while.

Update: Norm Eisen, the chief ethics lawyer in Obama’s White House, described these EPA waivers as “insane,” adding, “In the Obama White House, I even made people quit uncompensated non-profit outside positions because of conflicts risks. This is for-profit work that could conflict with official duties.”

Is Mueller Closing in on Trump?

Newsweek

Is Mueller Closing in on Trump? Incidents Involving President’s Lawyer and Russia Under Scrutiny, Report Says

Greg Price, Newsweek    March 6, 2018 

Two particular events involving President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen have reportedly become areas of interest in the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Robert Mueller’s team has asked for documents and spoken with witnesses specifically about Cohen, involving the Trump Organization’s plan to build a new property in Moscow during the president’s campaign and a peace plan for Ukraine that favored Russian interests, according to The Washington Post’s report Tuesday. The report cited people familiar with the investigations subpoenas and interviews with witnesses.

Cohen’s work on those two matters has “drawn Mueller’s attention,” the report stated. Cohen is said to have handed Trump a letter of intent from a Russian developer in October 2015 to build a new tower in Russia’s capital city and then later reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man to try and move the project along. At that point, Trump had already been on the campaign trail for several months.

Michael Cohen, a personal attorney for President Trump, departs from a House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, October 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. Getty Images/Mark Wilson

Nine days before his inauguration, and with allegations of Russian collusion swirling, Trump vehemently denied having any business ties to Russia whatsoever:

“Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” Trump tweeted January 11 of last year.

As well as the Trump Tower negotiations, Cohen is reported to have received the Ukraine peace proposal plan from a Ukrainian lawmaker a week after Trump took office. Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 sparked sanctions from the United States and European Union members that Putin’s regime has tried to lift or circumvent.

“Unsourced innuendo like this succeeds only because the leakers know the Special Counsel will not respond to set the record straight,” Cohen’s attorney, Stephen Ryan, told The Post in a statement.

Cohen, who has worked for Trump for more than two decades, previously spoke to both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in October. Both committees reportedly asked about the Trump Tower Moscow deal that never was.

More from Newsweek

Mueller Could Use Trump Lawyer Cohen to ‘Take Down’ President, Former Campaign Aide Says

Can a Lawyer (Michael Cohen) Pay a Witness (Stormy Daniels) Hush Money to Silence Her?

Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Says The ‘Haters’ Are Trolling Him For Supporting the President

This evangelical Christian is also a world-renowned climate scientist

New York Post

This evangelical Christian is also a world-renowned climate scientist

By Reuters       March 6, 2018 

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. AFP/Getty Images

EDMONTON, Canada – Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and evangelical Christian, says she gets slammed every day on social media for her contributions to establishing that climate change is human-made.

But on Monday, she was welcomed with applause at a United Nations-backed climate summit in the capital of Canada’s western province of Alberta, where polls show that climate skepticism rates are among the highest in the country.

Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech University, has emerged in recent years as a leading voice sharing the science of climate change to skeptics — many of whom are fellow evangelical churchgoers.

A 2015 survey from the Washington DC-based Pew Research Center found that just one-quarter of white evangelicals in the United States believe that climate change is caused by humans.

A separate Pew poll from 2016 showed that white evangelicals voted overwhelmingly to elect United States President Donald Trump, who has pulled his country out of the Paris agreement, a global pact to curb climate change.

But Hayhoe said it is that same Christianity that fuels her dedication to climate science.

“I study climate change because I think it’s the greatest humanitarian crisis of our times,” she said.

“It exacerbates poverty and hunger and disease and civil conflicts and refugee crises,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Traits that have made Hayhoe uniquely qualified to speak authoritatively in such conservative circles are best summed up by two accolades she has received.

For her work in explaining climate change, Hayhoe has made TIME magazine’s list of most influential people and she was named one of the 50 Women to Watch by the evangelical magazine Christianity Today.

Her calling came “completely serendipitously.”

Six months into her marriage, her husband, a linguistics professor, told her about his disbelief in global warming.

“You have somebody you respect and you also love and you also want to stay married. I said well, ‘Let’s talk about it.’”

It took two years of discussion to agree that heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions attributable to human activity are driving today’s climate change.

The marital episode and her subsequent engagement with faith groups have firmed up her views that the traditional conservative tenet of small government – not science – usually explains why some resist the issue.

“(It’s) not because they really have a problem with the science,” she said. “It’s because they have a problem with the perceived solutions.”

“Taxes, government legislation, loss of personal liberty … that’s the real problem people have.”

Hayhoe did not field any questions from climate change skeptics during her talk at the summit in Edmonton. And her message struck particularly close to home in a province that is Canada’s main oil producer.

“The world energy system is undergoing an energy revolution … from old dirty energies that we have been using for hundreds of years to clean, endless sources of energy like wind,” she said, in an interview after her speech.

“Oil and gas companies, they look down the road and they understand that the world is changing.”

Under the Paris agreement, nearly 200 countries agreed to curb planet-warming emissions enough to keep the rise in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, ideally to 1.5 degrees.

But without unprecedented action temperatures could rise above 1.5 degrees, according to a draft report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seen by Reuters earlier this year.

Senate inches closer to passing bill to ease bank safeguards

Associated Press

Senate inches closer to passing bill to ease bank safeguards

Kevin Freking and Marcy Gordon, Associated Press  March 6, 2018

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., flanked by Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., left, and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., arrive with other lawmakers for a procedural vote as the Senate moves to pass legislation that would roll back some of the safeguards Congress put into place after a financial crisis rocked the nation’s economy ten years ago at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 6, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate advanced legislation Tuesday to roll back some of the safeguards Congress put in place to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis. Enough Democrats supported a procedural vote on the bipartisan bill to show it has a good chance of passage in the coming days.

The move to alter some key aspects of the Dodd-Frank law comes ten years after the financial crisis rocked the nation’s economy. The bill has overwhelming Republican support and enough Democratic backing that it’s expected to gain the 60 votes necessary to clear the Senate. That was reflected in the 67-32 vote Tuesday, with 16 Democrats and one independent voting to move ahead with consideration of the bill.

Several Democratic lawmakers facing tough re-election races this year have broken ranks with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said he was proud to support Dodd-Frank eight years ago, and for the most part, the legislation was successful, but the bill also had unintended consequences, which he said included consolidation in the banking industry and a decline in small business lending. He said local banks in Montana have suffered from regulations specifically designed to rein in risky behavior on Wall Street.

“As a result of complying with these regulations, many of our community bankers are hanging up their hats,” Tester said.

Nonpartisan congressional analysts say the legislation would slightly increase the probability of a big bank failure — prompting a possible taxpayer bailout — or another financial meltdown. The probability of those events is deemed to be small under current law. The new assessment by the Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would increase federal deficits by $671 million between 2018 and 2027 if it became law.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the drumbeat for derailing Dodd-Frank has been constant. He said Wall Street banks always want “a new exception, or a new, weaker standard, or a new tax break.”

“We know what happens next. It is hubris to think we can gut the rules on these banks again, but avoid the next crisis,” said Brown, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

But the bill’s proponents insisted it would bring a needed boost to beleaguered banks outside Wall Street that didn’t engage in the reckless practices that fueled the financial crisis.

“Dodd-Frank’s enormous regulatory burden has been inefficient and unhelpful for financial institutions of all sizes, but it has hit Main Street lenders especially hard,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

The legislation would increase the threshold at which banks are subject to stricter capital and planning requirements. Lawmakers are intent on easing those rules for midsize and large regional banks, asserting that would boost lending and the economy.

Banks have long complained about the cost of complying with the many requirements of Dodd-Frank. Under the Senate bill, some of the nation’s biggest banks would no longer have to undergo an annual stress test conducted by the Federal Reserve. The test assesses whether a bank has enough capital to survive an economic shock and continue lending. Dozens of banks would also be exempted from making plans called “living wills” that spell out how the bank will sell off assets or be liquidated in a way that won’t create chaos in the financial system.

The Senate legislation increases from $50 billion to $250 billion the threshold at which banks are considered critical to the system. The change would ease regulations on more than two dozen financial companies, including BB&T Corp., Sun Trust Banks Inc. and American Express.

Opponents of the bill argue that the same banks getting regulatory easing through the Senate bill also got about $50 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts during the financial crisis. Warren said banks got their wish-list in the bill, but consumers got next to nothing.

“This bill was written by big banks to help big banks,” said Warren, who is hoping to offer several amendments to the bill.

The Senate bill emerged from lengthy negotiations between Sen. Mike Crapo, the Republican chairman of the banking committee, and several Democratic members on the committee. Crapo said the Federal Reserve will have the authority to tailor tougher capital and liquidity requirements for individual banks when it believes it’s necessary. For the others, compliance costs should drop.

The bill has 13 Republican and 13 Democratic or independent co-sponsors, a rare level of bipartisanship for substantive legislation in the current Congress. By contrast, the House effort to roll back Dodd-Frank didn’t generate a single Democratic vote in support.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the financial sector spent more than $200 million alone on lobbying last year and has donated billions to election campaigns since the 1990s.

“That is why Congress will be spending day after day trying to make life easier for these large financial institutions while at the same time ignoring the needs of working families,” Sanders said.

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