Category: “Dead Skunk in The Middle of The Road”

Issues and events that stink to high heaven

Two kids kill half-a-million bees and wipe out a honey business, police say

Miami Herald

Two kids kill half-a-million bees and wipe out a honey business, police say

A bee flies back to a swarm in an oak tree in Salina, Kan., in this file photo. In Iowa, a honey farm owner says the killing of a half million bees last month was a “senseless” act. AP file photo

By Max Londberg        January 18, 2018

Two juveniles have been charged with killing more than a half million bees at a honey business last month in Iowa.

The juveniles allegedly destroyed 50 hives at the Wild Hill Honey business in Sioux City, exposing the hundreds of thousands of bees to bitter cold.

“All of the beehives on the honey farm were destroyed and approximately 500,000 bees perished in the frigid temperatures,” Sioux City police said in a release.

The names of the juveniles have not been released, but they are 12 and 13 years old, the Sioux City Journal reported. They’re charged with criminal mischief, agricultural animal facilities offenses and burglary.

Justin and Tori Englehardt, the owners of Wild Hill, were despondent by the “senseless” act.

“They knocked over every single hive, killing all the bees. They wiped us out completely,” Justin Engelhardt told the Journal. “They broke into our shed, they took all our equipment out and threw it out in the snow, smashed what they could. Doesn’t look like anything was stolen, everything was just vandalized or destroyed.”

Even so, the owners vowed to rebuild the business, which is estimated to cost about $60,000. The damage was not covered by the owners’ insurance, but fundraising campaigns have raised thousands of dollars for the recovery.

The owners thanked donors in a post on a GoFundMe page.

“Because of you, we will be able to continue our business in the spring. We are deeply moved by your compassion. Between the contributions and the equipment we were able to salvage, our needs have been met.”

Video: Bees found to have buzzworthy brain power

Researchers at the Queen Mary University of London taught the bees to roll a ball towards a hole in return for food, challenging many preconceived notions about how intelligent insects can be.

O.J. Loukola et al., Science (2017); edited by Cristina Rayas/McClatchy

Englehardt told the Journal that he believed the story resonated with so many because of the declining population of bees due to habitat loss.

Last year, some species of bees were identified as endangered for the first time ever.

A mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in which worker bees abandon their queen, has contributed to declining bee numbers.

“Bees are critical, and people are conscious of the fact that bees are having a hard time right now and facing some real challenges,” Englehardt said.

Video: Virtual beekeepers help save the honeybees

Concern about colony collapse among the honeybees spurred Bryan and Barbara Ritter of Garland, Kan., to leave leave their jobs in the Kansas City area and move to a farm about 100 miles south and become virtual beekeepers. Essentially we keep bees for others,” Barbara Ritter explained.

Tammy Ljungblad The Kansas City Star

FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump

McClatchy – D.C. Bureau

FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump

President Trump addressed the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention on April 28, 2017. He’s the first president to do so in more than 30 years. “The eight-year assault on your second amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end,” Trump said. The White House

By Peter Stone and Greg Gordon    January 18, 2018

Washington. The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up.

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because Mueller’s investigation is confidential and mostly involves classified information.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined comment.

Disclosure of the Torshin investigation signals a new dimension in the 18-month-old FBI probe of Russia’s interference. McClatchy reported a year ago that a multi-agency U.S. law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s intervention, begun even before the start of the 2016 general election campaign, initially included a focus on whether the Kremlin secretly helped fund efforts to boost Trump, but little has been said about that possibility in recent months.

The extent to which the FBI has evidence of money flowing from Torshin to the NRA, or of the NRA’s participation in the transfer of funds, could not be learned.

However, the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Two people with close connections to the powerful gun lobby said its total election spending actually approached or exceeded $70 million. The reporting gap could be explained by the fact that independent groups are not required to reveal how much they spend on Internet ads or field operations, including get-out-the-vote efforts.

During the campaign, Trump was an outspoken advocate of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, at one point drawing a hail of criticism by suggesting that, if Clinton were elected, gun rights advocates could stop her from winning confirmation of liberal Supreme Court justices who support gun control laws.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” Trump said at a rally in August 2016. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Spanish authorities tag Torshin for money laundering

Torshin, a leading figure in Putin’s party, has been implicated in money laundering by judicial authorities in Spain, as Bloomberg News first revealed in 2016. Spanish investigators alleged in an almost 500-page internal report that Torshin, who was then a senator, capitalized on his government role to assist mobsters laundering funds through Spanish properties and banks, Bloomberg reported

A summary obtained by McClatchy of the still-secret report links Torshin to Russian money laundering and describes him as a godfather in a major Russian criminal organization called Taganskaya.

Investigators for three congressional committees probing Russia’s 2016 operations also have shown interest in Torshin, a lifetime NRA member who has attended several of its annual conventions. At the group’s meeting in Kentucky in May 2016, Torshin spoke to Donald Trump Jr. during a gala event at the group’s national gathering in Kentucky in May 2016, when his father won an earlier-than-usual NRA presidential endorsement.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the investigation.

The NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Torshin could not be reached for comment, and emails to the Russian central bank seeking comment from Torshin and the bank elicited no response.

Mueller’s investigation has been edging closer to Trump’s inner circle. This week, The New York Times reported that Mueller had negotiated an agreement under which Steve Bannon, who was recently ousted from his post as a senior White House adviser, would fully respond to questions about the Trump campaign. Bannon headed the campaign over its final weeks.

Since taking over the investigation last May, Mueller has secured guilty pleas from two former Trump aides, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom agreed to cooperate with prosecutors; and criminal charges against two other top campaign figures, former campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates.

A year ago, three U.S. intelligence agencies signed off on a joint assessment that was the basis for the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and other sanctions against the Kremlin. The intelligence agencies concluded that what began as a sophisticated Russian operation to undermine Americans’ faith in democracy morphed into a drive to help Trump win.

Torshin is among a phalanx of Putin proxies to draw the close attention of U.S. investigators, who also have tracked the activities of several Russian billionaires and pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs that have come in contact with Trump or his surrogates.

Torshin was a senior member of the Russian Senate and in recent years helped set up a Moscow gun rights group called Right to Bear Arms. He not only spoke with Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, but he also tried unsuccessfully to broker a meeting between Putin and the presidential candidate in 2016, according to the Times. He further sought to meet privately with the candidate himself near the 2016 NRA convention.

Torshin’s ties with the NRA have flourished in recent years. In late 2015, he hosted two dinners for a high-level NRA delegation during its week-long visit to Moscow that included meetings with influential Russian government and business figures.

In their internal report, Spanish prosecutors revealed a web of covert financial and money-laundering dealings between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

The prosecutors’ evidence included 33 audio recordings of phone conversations from mid-2012 to mid-2013 between Torshin and Romanov, who allegedly laundered funds to buy a hotel on the ritzy island of Mallorca. Torshin had an 80 percent stake in the venture, the Spanish report said.

In the phone conversations, Romanov referred to Torshin as the “godfather” or “boss.” Torshin has denied any links to organized crime and said his dealings with Romanov were purely “social.”

The Madrid-based newspaper El Pais last year reported that Spanish police were on the verge of arresting Torshin in the summer of 2013, when he had planned to attend a birthday party for Romanov, but a Russian prosecutor tipped the banker to plans to nab him if he set foot in Spain, and Torshin canceled his trip.

Congress looking at Torshin, too

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also have taken an interest in Torshin as part of their parallel inquiries into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.

In questioning Donald Trump Jr. at a closed-door hearing in mid-December, investigators for the Senate Intelligence Committee asked about his encounter with Torshin at the NRA convention, according to a source familiar with the hearing.

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., said his client and Torshin talked only briefly when they were introduced during a meal.

“It was all gun-related small talk,” Futerfas told McClatchy.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent letters in November to two senior Trump foreign policy aides, J.D. Gordon and Sam Clovis, seeking copies of any communications they had with or related to Torshin; the NRA; veteran conservative operative Paul Erickson; Maria Butina, a Torshin protege who ran the Russian pro-gun group he helped launch, and others linked to Torshin.

Erickson has raised funds for the NRA and is a friend of Butina’s. Shortly before the NRA’s May 2016 convention, he emailed Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn about the possibility of setting up a meeting between Putin and Trump during the campaign, according to the Times.

Erickson’s email to Dearborn bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, Erickson solicited advice from Dearborn and his boss, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a top foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, about the best way to connect Putin and Trump.

Both Dearborn and Butina, who has been enrolled as a graduate student at American University since mid 2016, have been asked to appear before the Judiciary Committee, but so far Erickson has not, sources familiar with the matter said.

Bridges LLC, a company that Erickson and Butina established in February 2016 in Erickson’s home state of South Dakota, also is expected to draw scrutiny. Public records don’t reveal any financial transactions involving Bridges. In a phone interview last year, Erickson said the firm was established in case Butina needed any monetary assistance for her graduate studies — an unusual way to use an LLC.

Erickson said he met Butina and Torshin when he and David Keene, a former NRA president, attended a meeting of Right to Bear Arms a few years ago in Moscow. Erickson described the links between Right to Bear Arms and the NRA as a “moral support operation both ways.”

Torshin’s contacts with the NRA and the Trump campaign last year also came to the attention of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser. When Torshin tried to arrange a personal meeting with Trump near the NRA convention site last May, Kushner scotched the idea, according to emails forwarded to Kushner.

On top of Torshin’s efforts to cozy up to the Trump campaign, the Moscow banker has forged ties with powerful conservatives, including Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Californian whom some have deemed Putin’s best friend in Washington. In a phone interview in 2016, Rohrabacher recalled meeting Torshin in Moscow a few years earlier and described him as “a mover and shaker.”

Last February when Torshin visited Washington, Rockefeller heir and conservative patron George O’Neill Jr. hosted a fancy four-hour dinner for the banker on Capitol Hill, an event that drew Rohrabacher, Erickson and other big names on the right. Rohrabacher has labeled Torshin as “conservatives’ favorite Russian,” Torshin was in Washington at the time to lead his country’s delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast, where Trump spoke. The banker also was slated to see the presidentat a meet-and-greet event prior to a White House breakfast, but Torshin’s invitation was canceled after the White House learned of his alleged mob connections, Yahoo News reported.

Torshin’s involvement with the NRA may have begun in 2013 when he attended the group’s convention in Houston. Keene, the ex-NRA leader and an avid hunter, was instrumental in building a relationship with the Russian, according to multiple conservative sources.

Keene also helped lead a high-level NRA delegation to Moscow in December 2015 for a week of lavish meals and meetings with Russian business and political leaders. The week’s festivities included a visit to a Russian gun company and a meeting with a senior Kremlin official and wealthy Russians, according to a member of the delegation, Arnold Goldschlager, a California doctor who has been active in NRA programs to raise large donations.

Others on the trip included Joe Gregory, who runs the NRA’s Ring of Freedom program for elite donors who chip in checks of $1 million and upwards, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke and Pete Brownell, a chief executive of a gun company and longtime NRA board member.

In a phone interview, Goldschlager described the trip as a “people-to-people mission,” and said he was impressed with Torshin — who, he noted, hosted both a “welcoming” dinner for the NRA contingent and another one.

“They were killing us with vodka and the best Russian food,” Goldschlager said. “The trip exceeded my expectations by logarithmic levels.”

Peter Stone is a McClatchy special correspondent

Alexander Torshin (far left), Russia’s secretary of state and deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia, attended a cabinet meeting in suburban Moscow on February 11, 2016.Alexander Torshin (far left), Russia’s secretary of state and deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia, attended a cabinet meeting in suburban Moscow on February 11, 2016. Ekaterina Shtukina Sputnik via AP

Deputy Governor Alexander Torshin of the Bank of Russia, shown here at the at the InvestRos international conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Moscow in April, 2016. Vitaliy Belousov Sputnik via AP

One year in, Trump’s environmental agenda is already taking a measurable toll

Los Angeles Times

One year in, Trump’s environmental agenda is already taking a measurable toll

 

Evan Halper, Contact Reporter      January 18, 2018

A massive coal ash spill near Knoxville, Tenn., in 2008 forever changed life for Janie Clark’s family and left her husband with crippling health problems. So Clark was astounded late last year when she heard what the Environmental Protection Agency had done.

In September, at the behest of power companies, the agency shelved a requirement that coal plants remove some of the most toxic chemicals from their wastewater. The infamous Kingston power plant that released millions of cubic yards of toxic coal ash into area rivers was among some 50 plants given a reprieve.

After the EPA’s action, the plant’s owners delayed new wastewater treatment technology for at least two years.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Clark said. “It is like a slap in the face. It is like everything that has happened is just being ignored.”

 

The real-time impact of the most industry-friendly regulatory regime in decades is at times overshadowed by policy battles that are years from resolution. President Trump’s moves to shrink national monuments, return drilling to the waters off the West Coast and allow natural gas companies to release more methane into the air are destined to be tied up in court for the foreseeable future. The contentious Keystone XL pipeline may never get built as volatile oil prices threaten its profitability.

Yet under EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the air and the water are already being affected as the administration tinkers with programs obscure to most Americans, with names like “Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for Steam Electric Power Plants” and “Air Quality Designations for Ozone.”

Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times when he was Oklahoma attorney general, challenging the agency’s restrictions on the fossil fuel industry and authority to protect the nation’s air and water. Now under his leadership, the agency’s enforcement actions against scofflaws have plummeted, agency data indicate.

The numbers emerging from the federal government’s database of enforcement actions against polluters show that from the time Pruitt took the helm early last year through November, the dollar amount of pollution-control equipment and cleanup activity the EPA demanded dropped by more than 85%. Even compared with the dollar amount required during the same period of the George W. Bush administration, there is a dropoff of more than 50%.

 

“It is one thing to say we have a change of administration and a different level of emphasis and focus,” said Cynthia Giles, who led the EPA’s enforcement office during the Obama administration and has analyzed the recent data. “But this kind of drop is not a change of emphasis. That is abandonment. That is a very, very big deal.”

The EPA strenuously objects to the characterization. The agency says holding polluters accountable remains a priority, that a nine-month snapshot of the data does not tell a complete story and that in many cases the EPA has shifted enforcement of environmental violations to state agencies.

Yet those state agencies often lack the resources and sophistication to handle them.

Even in California, where state leaders defiantly assert that their agencies will hold polluters accountable where the EPA retreats, a case involving large amounts of toxic material at the former Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance highlights how ill-equipped the state can be for enforcement responsibilities.

When EPA inspectors arrived at the refinery in December 2016, they found 265 tons of toxic material had sat illegally at the site, in unsuitable tanks, for 26 years, according to a copy of their report provided to The Times by the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project. Such material is supposed to be moved to a hazardous waste facility within a year, according to Kandice Bellamy, a retired EPA inspector in California who was part of the team.

State inspectors had earlier been to the site while the many tons of toxic material sat there, Bellamy said, but apparently had not done anything about it.

State officials refused to comment, saying the refinery remained subject to investigation.

“One of the alarming things with this facility is that not too far in the past there had been an explosion there, and they had to evacuate a sizable chunk of the area,” Bellamy said, referring to an incident in 2015 which the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which investigates accidents at plants, called a “serious near miss” that could have resulted in a “potentially catastrophic release” into surrounding communities.

“And we still found things that were of concern.”

Bellamy said the federal team was dismayed EPA higher-ups did not pursue the long list of potential violations they drew up, many of them serious. Instead, the case was turned back over to the state.

“We had the sense that they [EPA] had decided not to take on any of these challenging type cases because any refinery operator and their attorney could just appeal directly to the administrator in Washington,” Bellamy said. “And their pleas would most likely be seen favorably by this administration.”

An EPA spokeswoman in Southern California declined to discuss the case, writing in an email that “EPA’s policy is not to comment on investigations nor potential investigations.”

 

In another case, in southwestern Michigan, the Trump administration abandoned a years-long push to require a coal-fired electrical plant operated by DTE Energy to update its pollution controls.

A federal appeals court had twice upheld the EPA’s position. But the administration changed direction and put the company in the clear. That decision relaxed restrictions on harmful emissions that owners of other coal-fired power plants will be subject to when they expand facilities.

Pruitt announced the new policy in a December memo, writing that it is not the EPA’s place to investigate whether plant operators are lowballing the emissions that renovated facilities will generate.

The move is expected to slow the pace at which plants install state of the art pollution controls, just as the EPA decision that so upset Janie Clark in Knoxville is moving utilities to slow down plans to remove some of the most toxic materials from coal plant wastewater.

The EPA delay of the wastewater rule, made after power companies protested it would cost jobs and undermine Trump’s energy agenda, is having ripple effects across the country.

Coal plants that were poised to start installing the new technology as soon as this year are now balking.

“We were working with a good number of utilities who immediately said we are putting this on hold,” said Jamie Peterson, CEO of San Diego-based Frontier Water Systems, a company that installs the treatment technology.

“If this rule had not been changed, there would be a significant amount of work being done right now,” said Peterson. “The market has dropped by 80 or 90%.” Regulatory documents obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center confirm that plants are changing their plans.

As the market for high-tech equipment meant to keep some of the most harmful toxins from migrating into drinking water craters during the Trump administration, the market for the highest-polluting trucks is looking up.

The attorneys general of California and 11 other states call the trucks a “pollution menace” that produce 20 to 40 times the harmful emissions of new trucks their size, but the industry that makes “gliders” — trucks built using a new chassis and an old, refurbished diesel engine — has been given a big gift by the administration.

Federal officials are racing to block a rule taking effect this month that aims to keep gliders off the road. The regulation limits the number of new gliders not meeting emission standards to roughly 1,500 each year, nationwide, and eventually bans them altogether. The EPA is moving to change the rule to allow unlimited gliders.

Pruitt pilloried the cap as an attempt by the Obama administration to “bend the rule of law and expand the reach of the federal government in a way that threatened to put an entire industry of specialized truck manufacturers out of business.”

The California Air Resources Board warns the about-face threatens to completely offset all the clean-air gains it has made through the state’s aggressive regulation of heavy diesel trucks and “have a profoundly harmful impact on public health.”

The trucks would continue to roll onto the roads at the same time California and many other states are scrambling to deal with another blow the EPA delivered to their efforts to clean the air. The agency has delayed for at least six months its deadline for declaring which parts of the country are plagued with smog levels that violate new, stricter limits guided by the Clean Air Act.

The EPA’s delay inhibits state and regional air regulators from taking actions to confront the pollution. In California alone, the ozone standards are projected to save as many as 218 lives and prevent 120,000 missed days of school each year.

The EPA says it will have new rules ready by April, but Janet McCabe, who headed the agency’s clean air efforts during the Obama administration, said even so, the delay has consequences.

“If you are an asthmatic exposed to high levels of air pollution, it can mean a lot of missed school days in that six months,” McCabe said.

Zinke Pushes Two-Thirds Of National Park Service Advisory Panel To Resign

HuffPost

Zinke Pushes Two-Thirds Of National Park Service Advisory Panel To Resign

Doha Madani, HuffPost     January 16, 2018

Most of the members of the National Park Service Advisory Board have tendered their resignation over frustrations with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, The Washington Post reports.

Nine of the 12 board members quit Monday night, citing Zinke’s refusal to convene the citizen advisory panel or discuss matters with it since he came into office last March. Zinke has drawn criticism for a number of his actions in the Interior Department, including silencing scientists about climate change.

Zinke has rejected numerous requests to meet with the advisory panel, which is required to meet twice a year, despite his efforts to review restructuring national parks. Departing board Chairman Tony Knowles told the Post that the panel has waited to work with Zinke but has been “frozen out.”

“We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda,” Knowles wrote in a letter to Zinke, which was obtained by the Post.

All nine panel members, who are not employees of the Interior Department but are citizens who have shown a commitment to the National Park Service, have terms set to expire in May. Their early departure leaves the government without a functioning body to designate national historic or natural landmarks, according to the Post.

Phil Francis, chairman of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said in a news release that he understood the members’ frustration at the “complete lack of response” from the Interior secretary.

“This discourteous and disrespectful treatment of the Board is inexcusable and, unfortunately, consistent with a decidedly anti-park pattern demonstrated by Secretary Zinke’s department,” Francis said in the release sent to HuffPost.

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Joel Clement, a former employee who claims the Interior Department retaliated against him for his work on climate change, told HuffPost in October that the morale under Zinke was “in the toilet.” Clement also criticized Zinke’s comments that questioned the department staff’s “loyalty” to him and President Donald Trump.

“It’s profoundly offensive because it portrays a lack of understanding about the civil service and the mission of the agency,” Clement told HuffPost. “It made it clear that what he’s trying to do is not work with the career staff and advance the mission ― he’s trying to undercut the agency and its mission. And it became very clear that his interests were aligned with special interests, like the oil and gas industry.”

CNN Politics

9 Park Service advisory board members quit

By Sara Ganim and Sophie Tatum, CNN     January 16, 2018

Ryan Zinke

Washington (CNN)Nine members of the National Park System Advisory Board quit Tuesday, citing concern over the Trump administration’s priorities regarding the national parks, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

The letter, sent by nine members of the board to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, says the group has been unable to meet with Zinke and the Interior Department during his first year in the position.

The author of the letter, former Alaska Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles, said the board is supposed to meet twice a year. However, he said, he’s been told things were “suspended.”

Previous administrations met with the board immediately, Knowles noted, having served on the board for seven years.

A request for comment has not been returned by the Interior Department.

The Washington Post reported the resignations Tuesday evening.

“Here we were just being basically stonewalled. … They had no interest in learning our agenda, and what we had to brief them on,” Knowles told CNN. “The board said we need to make a statement. We can’t make a statement to the secretary, then we need to make a public statement.”

Eight of the nine who were part of the letter had terms expiring in May, and suspected Interior was running out the clock.

“For the last year we have stood by waiting for the chance to meet and continue the partnership between the NPSAB and the DOI as prescribed by law,” the letter reads. “We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new department team are clearly not part of its agenda.”

“I have a profound concern that the mission of stewardship, protection, and advancement of our National Parks has been set aside,” the letter said.

Kentucky Just Made It Harder For Poor People To Get Health Care

HuffPost

Kentucky Just Made It Harder For Poor People To Get Health Care

It’s what the Trump administration wants — and more states will likely follow.

By Johnathan Cohn, Senior Correspondent, HuffPost     January 12, 2018

The Trump administration on Friday told Kentucky it can go ahead with its controversial Medicaid overhaul ― an initiative that would reduce benefits, require some beneficiaries to work, and generally make it more difficult for people to stay on the program.

Administration officials and their Kentucky counterparts have portrayed the plan as a way to improve the health of low-income residents and encourage self-sufficiency among poor but able-bodied adults. “The result will be a transformational improvement in the overall health of our people and will provide a model for other states to follow,” Matt Bevin, the state’s Republican governor, said at a press conference Friday.

But there’s scant evidence that Kentucky’s changes will have the effects that Bevin and his allies are promising. In fact, of the roughly 95,000 people expected to lose coverage, some will almost surely be people who are working ― or have reasons why they can’t work ― but who failed to satisfy the new system’s paperwork requirements.

Almost by definition, the people likely to lose coverage already have some combination of financial and medical problems, and without coverage, both are likely to get worse. It’s not clear how much this worries Bevin and his allies in Washington ― or whether it worries them at all.

In the new scheme, most working-age adults in Kentucky would have to demonstrate that they have spent at least 80 hours a month working or engaged in employment-related activities, like searching for a job or performing community service. Many would also have to pay premiums, of up to $15 a month.

Anyone who does not pay their premiums or submit paperwork to show their eligibility would lose their coverage and would not be able to reapply for six months, although people who don’t pay premiums could restore coverage by completing a financial literacy course (the details of which aren’t yet clear).

The Kentucky initiative also eliminates a transportation benefit, designed to get poor people to the doctor or hospital when they don’t have the means to do so. And it ends “presumptive” or “retroactive” eligibility, under which Medicaid covers bills from the past three months for people who sign up for Medicaid only after they’ve had a medical episode that landed them in the hospital.

Kentucky’s proposal is likely to prompt legal challenges. If it survives, then the result will almost certainly be a smaller Medicaid program. Both the state and the federal government would likely end up spending less money than they would otherwise. But fewer people would be on Medicaid: The number of beneficiaries would drop by roughly 95,000 within five years, according to official state estimates.

By comparison, Kentucky’s total Medicaid enrollment ― including kids on the Children’s Health Insurance Program ― is about 1.25 million right now, according to official statistics.

In theory, the new requirements would not affect children, the elderly, pregnant women, primary caregivers or the “medically frail,” because Kentucky’s proposal explicitly exempts them. But those categories are narrower than they might seem, experts warned Friday as they pored over the final proposal and checked it against previous versions. (Every analyst studying it has warned that their conclusions are still a little tentative.)

“Medically frail,” for example, doesn’t appear to include people with serious chronic diseases that make jobs difficult to find and keep. And the new paperwork requirements will be difficult for some people to satisfy ― because they can’t get the right documentation, for example, or because overwhelmed state offices won’t be responsive to questions.

As a result, some people who remain eligible for Medicaid will almost surely end up losing coverage anyway. It’s happened that way before, when states introduced work requirements for food stamps and straightforward cash assistance.

“The policy could allow many people to fall through the cracks, including those with chronic health conditions, and those with mental health or substance use disorders such as opioid addiction,” Hanna Katch, a senior analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told HuffPost. “And for those who are eligible for an exemption, the policy could still require someone who is medically frail, for example, to jump through administrative hoops to demonstrate that they are eligible for an exemption.”

Kentucky isn’t the only state that wants to impose these kinds of restrictions on Medicaid. Nearly a dozen states have similar requests sitting in Washington, awaiting approval from the Trump administration that they’re almost certain to get. More could follow soon.

Friday’s approval of Kentucky’s new plan came one day after the Trump administration announced it would approve work requirements. This represented a considerable policy shift. Previously, the Obama administration had rejected such requests, arguing that work requirements violate Medicaid’s guarantee of health care for poor people. These are the same arguments that advocates for the poor are likely to make if and when they sue to block the changes.

Trump administration officials, like their Kentucky counterparts, know this. In their letter approving the proposal, they previewed their defense by making the same argument they did on Thursday ― that requiring able-bodied Medicaid recipients to work would improve their health outcomes and help them become familiar with the way private health insurance works. That is why, the administration said, it was within its rights to approve Kentucky’s request as a “demonstration project.”

But there’s very little evidence to suggest Kentucky’s overhaul will improve health outcomes, and quite a lot of evidence to suggest it will actually worsen them. Multiple studies, some of them focusing on Kentucky specifically, have shown that giving people Medicaid makes them healthier and more financially secure, which in turn makes it easier for them to find and hold on to jobs.

There is also little reason to think these changes would make Kentucky’s Medicaid program more efficient. On the contrary, new requirements such as checking to make sure people have jobs will inevitably require more administrative work ― not just for the people who want Medicaid, but for the state government as well.

Retroactive eligibility ― a key if underappreciated provision of Medicaid in most states ― doesn’t simply help low-income people avoid crippling medical debt. It also helps finance the operation of safety net hospitals. Ending it, as Kentucky plans to do, would likely hurt both. When another state, Indiana, experimented with having Medicaid recipients contribute toward the cost of their Medicaid, large numbers did not, and they ended up losing coverage as a result.

Those are just some of the reasons to think the real motivation for these changes has little to do with health outcomes, efficiency or the economy as a whole. A more plausible explanation is that Republican officials ― including Bevins and Seema Verma, the Trump administration official in charge of Medicaid ― think too many able-bodied adults are on the program. In fact, Verma has said this explicitly before.

Many Americans ― quite possibly most ― would have no problem linking Medicaid and work. But nearly 80 percent of people on Medicaid are already in families where somebody is employed, and nearly 60 percent work themselves, according to data from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And of those who don’t work, most are in school or caring for a family member, or have a medical condition that they say prevents them from working. Other studies have yielded similar findings.

That all of this should be happening in Kentucky is ironic. Although a relatively conservative state, smack in the heart of what now qualifies as Trump country, Kentucky enthusiastically embraced the Affordable Care Act when it became law. It took advantage of new federal money to expand its Medicaid program, so it would be available to all people with incomes below or just above the poverty line.

Between 2013 and 2016, the share of Kentucky’s residents without insurance fell from 20.4 percent to 7.8 percent. That was the single biggest drop of any state in the country.

But that change took place while Steve Beshear, a Democratic governor enthusiastic about helping poor people get health insurance, was in charge. Bevins, his successor and a loud critic of “Obamacare,” campaigned on a promise to roll back the expansion. Although he backed off that promise ― perhaps because many of those who supported him would have been among the hundreds of thousands losing coverage ― he has continued to suggest Medicaid needs radical changes because, he says, it encourages dependency.

Bevin has also made a threat that if he can’t get his way on the work requirement and other changes, he will go ahead and roll back the expansion after all. That would leave a much larger number of Kentucky residents, perhaps approaching half a million, without health insurance.

“Fire and Fury” Meets trump’s Brain

John Hanno       January 10, 2018

“Fire and Fury” Meets trump’s Brain

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Michael Wolf’s best selling book (1 million copies) sold out in less than a week. Reprints are soon to follow. The curtains been yanked off the man (men) behind the West Wing conservative smoke screen. What most of critical thinking America already believed, has been laid bare. Mr. Wolf believes unequivocally, that 100% of trump’s employees, friends, confidants and cabinet enablers believe he’s unfit to be president of the United States.

No need to go through all the striking highlights from the book; many writers have already done a good job of trying to make sense of trumps dysfunctional White House. It’s really not surprising that trump’s collection of political misfits has forever stained the Republican party. The personnel turnover of toxic personalities is unprecedented by anyone’s standards; almost four dozen of trump’s “best and brightest” will have exited his administration in just the first year.

We’ve all encountered people that thrive on endless criticism and abuse of underlings or associates. And you just know they would no doubt bum rap you as soon as your back was turned. But trump is in a class by himself. When things go bad and the heats on, he blames everyone but himself. And if things go well, he’s quick to take full credit. Trump takes credit for the sun rising in the East; how can anyone work for this egomaniac. And we’ve all seen organizations that are dysfunctional and toxic from top to bottom; and that ebbs and decays from the person at the top.

trump and his family and business practices have never been held accountable by anything resembling a board of directors. And that apparently will continue, considering the republi-con apparatchiks in congress, who refuse to honor their oaths of office and the constitution by turning a blind eye to this incompetent and conflicted cabal. This “best” businessman and self described “genius”, who filed bankruptcy 6 times, cheated business partners and trump brand consumers, and failed at almost every business venture, except for his unethical or criminal enterprises, is continuing his ineptitude in our highest office.

trump will undergo a complete presidential physical exam this week; and many concerned Democrats and probably 75% of the public are pushing for an accompanying mental health evaluation. Putting aside his myriad of character flaws, there’s no shortage of professionals offering opinions on what’s wrong with trump’s brain, including learning disabilities, ADHD, dyslexia, dementia and or Alzheimer’s.

The really sad thing is, that in spite of all the tail winds that had to flow together for him to be elected president, trump still had to overcome enormous disabilities in order to get to where he’s at today. And if he would have just applied that talent, ignored his republi-con enablers, lived up to the promises he made to his voters and gone with the gut instincts he displayed during the campaign, he could have been a competent president. The opportunity was right there in front of him. The Democrats, and pretty much all of America, were ready, willing and able. But we’ll probably never find out because trump is his own worst enemy.

trump disregard’s any physical exercise as beneficial to good health, except for kicking his golf ball out of the rough and back onto the fairway and then careening about in a motorized golf cart. He definitively believes in “golf is a good walk spoiled” (Mark Twain). Apparently trumps three primary food groups are McDonald’s double cheeseburgers, Kentucky fried chicken and chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. And since he doesn’t believe in an occasional alcoholic beverage to clear the cerebral cob webs, is it any wonder that all the little cognitive pathways of reason and comprehension and electrical circuits within trumps brain might be plugged up or shorted.

Mental health professionals frequently recommend that old folks should challenge their intellects with reading, writing, or any mind exercising games in order to postpone brain atrophy. But as usual, trump wasn’t paying attention. His main mental focus is watching mind numbing Fox and Friends. That trump relies on Fox News and conspiracy theorists as his primary source of information doesn’t bother his supporters, because they too rely on Fox for their daily dose of trumpian dogma. (with the exception of reality and fact based Shepard Smith Reporting)

Special Prosecutor Mueller’s team is getting closer to the oval office. Will trumps brain survive the mental gymnastics needed to navigate the legal and ethical minefields? And who in the West Wing will still be standing when all the smoke clears? And will the dislodged linchpin that sinks trump inc. come from his double dealing business conflicts, the Russian collusion, the money laundering or obstruction of justice?

Vladimir Putin must be amazed at what his operatives were able to accomplish. And to boot, he could never have imagined that an American president, his entire administration and the republi-cons in congress would vigorously defend Russia’s cyber war against our democratic institutions.

These Republican traitors are willing to disregard their oath of office, our constitution and the best interests of the American electorate in order to cover-up the Russian intervention and their political conspiracy and collusion. They will attack true American patriots, and intelligence agents from our European allies like Christopher Steele, who felt alarmed enough to dial the FBI’s 911 hot line.

And why have Senators Graham and Grassley flipped their loyalties and thrown in with the Kremlin defenders by going after Steele instead of the Russian interlopers? How deep does this tangled conspiracy run? Senator Feinstein felt compelled to release, against Republi-con objection and obstruction, the transcript of Fusion GPS Founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was clearly alarmed at what Steele had discovered.

Vice President Pence, trump’s cabinet and the Republicans in congress have chosen to ride down on the Trumpdenburg; they’re 60 meters above reality and don’t have an escape ladder. But they’re taking the survival of their entire party down with them. Oh, the humanity!

Related:

Ohio has purged 2 million voters from the voting rolls since 2011

MoveOn.org

January 10, 2018

Ohio has purged 2 million voters from the voting rolls since 2011, with Black voters twice as likely as whites to be purged in the state’s largest counties. The GOP wants to do this everywhere – the Supreme Court must stop them.

Case Against Ohio Voter Purge

Ohio has purged 2 million voters from the voting rolls since 2011, with Black voters twice as likely as whites to be purged in the state's largest counties. The GOP wants to do this everywhere – the Supreme Court must stop them.

Posted by MoveOn.org on Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White suggests people send her their January salary

Newsweek

Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White suggests people send her their January salary or face consequences from God 

By Harriet Sinclair     January 9, 2018

Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser has suggested that people send her money in order to transform their lives, or face divine consequences.

Paula White, who heads up the president’s evangelical advisory committee, suggested making a donation to her ministries to honor the religious principle of “first fruit,” which she said is the idea that all firsts belong to God, including the first harvest and, apparently, the first month of your salary.

“Right now I want you to click on that button, and I want you to honor God with his first fruits offering,” she said in a video shared to her website, in which she encourages her followers to donate to her ministries to get blessings from God.

“If God doesn’t divinely step in and intervene, I don’t know what you’re going to face—he does,” she said.

Paula WhiteTelevangelist Paula White speaks during a signing ceremony for an executive order in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 4. MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY

Explaining the principle of the donations, the Pentecostal televangelist, who has recently spoken out in defense of Trump’s mental health following claims in a tell-all book that the president is unwell, suggested that people would reap rewards after donating to her.

“January is the beginning of a new year for us in the Western world. Let us give to God what belongs to him: the first hours of our day, the first month of the year, the first of our increase, the first in every area of our life. It’s devoted…. The principle of first fruits is that when you give God the first, he governs the rest and redeems in,” she said.

“When you honor this principle, it provides the foundation and structure for God’s blessings and promises in your life. It unlocks deep dimensions of spiritual truths that literally transform your life. When you apply this, everything comes in divine alignment for his plan and promises for you. When you don’t honor it, whether through ignorance or direct disobedience, there are consequences.”

White was among a number of televangelists who were examined after Republican Senator Charles Grassley launched a 2007 investigation into the finances of ministries that solicit millions of dollars in donations. However, the report, published in 2011, did not draw any firm conclusions of wrongdoing.

In her newest video, the pastor encourages people to send her money, stating, “Each January, I put God first and honor him with the first of our substance by sowing a first fruits offering of one month’s pay. That is a big sacrifice, but it is a seed for the harvest I am believing for in the coming year. And God always provides!”

Those who send White money, which she suggests belongs to God, will see positive consequences, she claims.

“When you sow a First Fruits Offering of $75 or more, I will rush to you the book, the devotional and also a Paula White 2018 wall calendar! Track throughout the entire year prioritizing God with me!” her website says.

“Why the Koch machine is a threat to democracy”

Robert Reich added a new video.
January 2, 2018

Brace yourselves for more trickle-down lies. The Koch brothers are kicking their propaganda machine into high gear this year to defend the tax cuts for the rich and corporations that Trump and Republican leaders rammed through Congress last month. Their multimillion-dollar campaign will include television, radio, and online ads along with town hall events and workshops.

This is exactly how the vicious cycle of big money in politics erodes our democracy: The wealthy and corporations spend millions on campaign contributions and lobbying to secure massive tax breaks, which in turn only increases their spending power over our political system. We must stop the Koch machine and reclaim our democracy before it’s too late. What do you think?

The Koch Machine

Brace yourselves for more trickle-down lies. The Koch brothers are kicking their propaganda machine into high gear this year to defend the tax cuts for the rich and corporations that Trump and Republican leaders rammed through Congress last month. Their multimillion-dollar campaign will include television, radio, and online ads along with town hall events and workshops. This is exactly how the vicious cycle of big money in politics erodes our democracy: The wealthy and corporations spend millions on campaign contributions and lobbying to secure massive tax breaks, which in turn only increases their spending power over our political system. We must stop the Koch machine and reclaim our democracy before it's too late. What do you think?

Posted by Robert Reich on Tuesday, January 2, 2018