This New Healthcare Bill Wrecks Lives in Exchange for, What, Exactly?

Esquire

This New Healthcare Bill Wrecks Lives in Exchange for, What, Exactly?

A few thoughts, and questions, about the Cassidy-Graham plan.

Getty

By Charles P. Pierce September 19, 2017

Let us stipulate right at the beginning that, if you put the menu for Chinese takeout in front of the president* and wrote “Obamacare Repeal” across the top, he’d sign it. So let’s take him out of the whole equation. The tragedy is that, once you do that, you are left with the inescapable conclusion that, on the matter of the Affordable Care Act, the Republican Party is little more than a cult centered around human suffering.

The latest evidence comes to us as The Cassidy-Graham Plan, named for its co-sponsors, Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and our old pal, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The difference between this proposal and the rest of the Walking Dead plans that have wandered through Congress this year is that this one is at least nominally detailed. And that’s the problem, and the cruelty, of it.

As Sarah Kliff explains at Vox, this plan comes closer to absolute de facto repeal of the ACA as any of the other plans did.

The proposal would eliminate the health care law’s subsidies for private insurance and end the Medicaid expansion. States could allow for waivers that let insurers charge sick patients higher premiums and stop covering certain benefits required under the Affordable Care Act, like maternity care or prescription drugs. The health insurance marketplaces would no longer exist as they are envisioned to continue under other Republican proposals. The federal government would convert some (but not all) of that spending into a lump-sum payment to states. States could choose to spend this money on providing insurance — or they could use it to fund high-risk pools, or do other activities to pay the bills of patients with high medical needs. States wouldn’t get this money for free: They’d be required to kick in a small percentage themselves. The plan hasn’t been scored by the Congressional Budget Office yet, but analysts who have studied Cassidy-Graham estimate it would cut deeply into federal funding for the health law programs, likely resulting in millions losing coverage. Cassidy-Graham would arguably be more disruptive, not less, to the current health care system than the plans that came before it. It would let money currently spent on health insurance go toward other programs, providing no guarantee that the Affordable Care Act programs individuals rely on today would continue into the future.

The individual details of this plan have been exposed as scams, time and time again. (For a party that doesn’t want “government” controlling healthcare, these people seem remarkably enthusiastic of handing it over to governors like Scott Walker and Sam Brownback.) It’s demonstrably worse for people than the plan that famously was sunk by a single vote. And yet it’s just as close to passing right now as that one was. Maybe closer. It’s likely going to be voted on without a score from the Congressional Budget Office, which likely would be as grotesque as the CBO scores its predecessors rang up. It likely once again will garner no Democratic votes. (Joe Manchin on Tuesday said he was against it.) But it is the fundamental anti-politics of the thing that clearly shows that the entire Republican Party is lashed to the side of the whale at this point. The party opposes any attempt to reform the healthcare system in this country—and, certainly, any attempt to improve the ACA—in a fashion that is damned near evangelical in its blind and reckless fervor.

Consider: Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, voted for the previous bill and likely will vote for this one, despite the fact that his state’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, is practically screaming at him not to do so.

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Consider: John McCain, who cast a crucial vote the last time around, has been all over the lot this time around, probably because he’s Damon and Graham is Pythias. This time, McCain has tried to hide behind Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and nobody has any idea what he’s finally going to do.

Consider: state governors in general seem to be reluctant to embrace the freedom that comes with this latest bag of rocks, at least if you listen to its sponsors. From USA Today:

“Among the list of governors was Alaska’s Bill Walker, an independent, who had been lobbied by the Trump administration to support the bill because Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski is undecided and is a critical vote to get the legislation through. “As you continue to consider changes to the American health care system, we ask you not to consider the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson amendment and renew support for bipartisan efforts to make health care more available and affordable for all Americans,” the 10 governors urged in a letter addressed to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.”

It’s still anyone’s guess if this dog’s breakfast even will get to a floor vote in the Senate. But the insistence on trying marks the Republican congressional majorities pretty lousy. They know the country doesn’t want this. They know that an effective majority of their members don’t want it. They know that governors of their own party don’t want it. And they know that the president* of their own party has moved on to threatening nuclear annihilation, among other hobbies. Why this fanatical pursuit of this one legislative goal? It can’t all be about money; none of the senators in question seems to be in danger of a serious primary challenge or of having the golden spigot turned off.

The only conclusion would seem to be that there is something in their political makeup that believes that the people who benefit from the ACA, and the people who would benefit if it were repaired and not destroyed, are unworthy of those benefits and that it is not the proper function of government to question this fundamental truth. (This, at least, is what Rand Paul is honest enough to say out loud.)

They will wreck lives to prove a point that isn’t even true to begin with, and on which they are such monumental hypocrites that even the elite political press is beginning to notice. (Much as has been the case with immigration, the people seeking to “hand power back to the states” are more willing to take power away from the states if the states dare do on their own that which the senators are trying desperately to head off nationally.) Listen to Lindsey Graham go all mad-preacher about the subject on Monday, Per the Washington Examiner:

“This is Bernie Sanders’ worst nightmare,” Graham said in an interview on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM, speaking about his healthcare proposal. “It’s either this or we’re going to Obamacare and Berniecare. Now, Berniecare is full-blown single-payer socialism. It is his dream and that’s where Democrats are going.”

Don’t tease me, bro.

Update (6:04 p.m.): OK, so it’s a little bit about money. (Koch network ‘piggy banks’ closed until Republicans pass health and tax reform, The Guardian)

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

GOP senators are rushing to pass Graham-Cassidy. We asked 9 to explain what it does.

Vox

GOP senators are rushing to pass Graham-Cassidy. We asked 9 to explain what it does.

by Jeff Stein September 20, 2017

“You have to have a car to get into, and this is the only car there is,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) said. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Republican senators are struggling to articulate why they are rushing to pass their last-ditch effort to repeal and replace Obamacare over the next 10 days before running into their September 30 deadline.

In interviews with Vox on Tuesday, nine Republican senators primarily argued that their “Hail Mary” bill — spearheaded by Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC) and Bill Cassidy (LA) — would return federal power to the states, giving them greater flexibility to improve their health systems locally. “The heart of the legislation takes the policymaking role of Washington and sends it to the states,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said.

Far less clear is exactly how Graham-Cassidy would pull off this feat without resulting in millions of Americans losing their insurance — and the number of millions is still unknown, since any vote would likely have to come before the Congressional Budget Office completes its analysis of the bill. The GOP senators insisted that the tens of billions in cuts to federal health spending proposed in the bill would not result in coverage losses because, they said, the states would have more flexibility.

“They can do it with less money,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who was unable to explain how or why.

Other Republican senators, meanwhile, fell back on political explanations for a bill that experts warn could result in millions losing their insurance. “If we do nothing, it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections,” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS). “And whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel.”

And then some members of the upper chamber acknowledged that the spending changes might have a big impact, but argued their home states would not be negatively impacted. “Four of our states are getting a disproportionate amount of money from health care now,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said. The bill, he added, “wouldn’t cut Alabama.” (Numbers from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggest Alabama would receive more than $1 billion in additional funding under the bill, but most states would see big cuts.)

The stakes of the Republican rush to repeal and replace Obamacare could hardly be higher. The GOP has less than two weeks to pass a repeal-and-replace plan before their budget reconciliation instructions expire, and the insurance of tens of millions of Americans hangs in the balance.

Vox conducted the interviews with nine Republican senators throughout the Capitol and Russell Senate Office Building on Tuesday.

Transcripts of those conversations follow.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS): “If we do nothing, it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections”

Pat Roberts, right, of Kansas. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

If we do nothing, I think it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections. And whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel.

Jeff Stein

But why does this bill make things better for Americans? How does it help?

Pat Roberts

Pardon me?

Jeff Stein

Why does this make things better? What is this doing?

Pat Roberts

Look, we’re in the back seat of a convertible being driven by Thelma and Louise, and we’re headed toward the canyon. That’s a movie that you’ve probably never seen —

Jeff Stein

I do know Thelma & Louise, sir.

Pat Roberts

So we have to get out of the car, and you have to have a car to get into, and this is the only car there is.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK): “Efficiencies” from federal-state transfer “can very well make up the difference”

Jim Inhofe. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Jeff Stein

What’s the policy explanation for the Graham-Cassidy bill? What substantive problems does this solve?

Jim Inhofe

Well, first of all, as a general rule the states do things better than the federal government does [things]. And that is essentially what the bill is. We actually had a bill that passed, except at the last minute — as you know — we had one deciding vote against it that was unforeseen. And I think what we’re looking at right now is essentially the same thing.

It’s a stronger position for the states to be in, and generally, Republicans agree with that.

Jeff Stein

I understand what you’re saying with the states having the ability to make these decisions, but the bill doesn’t just “give states more freedom” — it also cuts federal funding to the states. So it’s not just about giving the states more control; it’s also about cutting federal expenditures, right?

Jim Inhofe

Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be — I think the efficiencies that come with transferring the funding to the states can very well make up the difference between what the federal thing would be.

A philosophical difference — you know?

Jeff Stein

No, what do you mean?

Jim Inhofe

I mean it’s more efficient when it’s done from the states, and so they can do it with less money.

Jeff Stein

Are you confident, and how do you know those savings will be close to enough to protect everyone?

Jim Inhofe

Well, nothing protects everyone.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): “It lets states innovate and adopt creative solutions”

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Jeff Stein

I’m looking for a broad policy explanation for what Graham-Cassidy will do — how does it improve the American health care system?

Ted Cruz

Well, the details of it are still being negotiated, but the heart of the legislation takes the policymaking role of Washington and sends it to the states. It lets states innovate and adopt creative solutions to local problems, which vary state by state.

Jeff Stein

But it’s not just devolving power from the federal government to the state. It also involves a 16 percent cut in federal spending [upfront] and a 34 percent cut over the next 10 years.

If you’re saying, “Let’s just devolve power to the states,” why also cut federal spending so dramatically?

Ted Cruz

My central focus from the beginning has been on lowering health insurance premiums.

The biggest reason so many millions of people are hurting under Obamacare is that it has made premiums skyrocket. And what I think is critical for Obamacare repeal is that we expand consumer freedom so that you, the consumer, can be in charge of what health insurance you want to buy, and we lower premiums so that health insurance is more affordable.

Jeff Stein

Why not wait until the CBO says what you’re saying about premiums? Why not confirm with them? Over the first few votes, the CBO suggested that premiums would go up and that tens of millions of people would lose health insurance.

Ted Cruz

CBO’s analysis throughout this process has been ridiculously slow, unreliable, and based on policy assumptions that are demonstrably false.

Jeff Stein

You really believe that cutting federal spending by 34 percent will not result in any other people losing their insurance?

Ted Cruz

What federal spending is cut?

Jeff Stein

Well, the Medicaid expansion would be sunset, for one, is my understanding.

Ted Cruz

The decrease in future rates of growth is not a cut. And it is only in the bizarre world of Washington that billions more money is characterized in the press as a cut rather than an increase, which is in fact what it is.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA): “Read the bill and you’ll understand”

John Kennedy. Jonathan Bachman / Stringer / Getty Images

Number two: First chance I get to vote for repeal it, I’ll do it.

And number three: If it’s replacement, if replacement is better than Obamacare, I will vote for it.

Jeff Stein

What are the policies that make you think that?

John Kennedy

I think it spends scarce resources in a more rational manner. It will control costs. I like the idea that it encourages states to innovate.

Jeff Stein

How does it do that? Any of those things?

John Kennedy

Well, you need to read the bill.

Jeff Stein

Well, you’re voting for it, right? So what is the explanation for how it does those things?

John Kennedy

I am. Because it gives states added flexibility. Read the bill and you’ll understand.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): “It wouldn’t cut Alabama, though”

Richard Shelby, right Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “I don’t know what the numbers are going to end up looking like”

Johnny Isakson, right. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By going to block grants, back to the states, the control of money stays with the states, and you have less [un]predictability and external deviation in terms of funding.

Jeff Stein

So just a follow-up on that. It’s one thing to say the bill gives the states power — that’s one thing.

But it doesn’t just do that. It also cuts the money they have — some estimates say around 16 percent of federal funding.

Johnny Isakson

I’m not going to confirm that statement one way or another. I don’t know what the numbers are going to end up looking like.

Jeff Stein

Right, but if it does cut federal spending overall, would you support it?

Johnny Isakson

You know, those are dangerous questions. I’m waiting until I see the totality of the legislation to say whether I support the whole thing or not, anyway.

I’m not a no, but I’m not a yes either — and I’m waiting for my governor to respond to me with their input as well. It’s really key what they’re doing.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY): “The governors who decided to expand [Medicaid] knew that they were going to lose federal funding”

John Barrasso. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Jeff Stein

I had a quick question on the Graham-Cassidy bill — could you explain what the policy purpose of the bill is? What is this bill going to achieve, policy-wise?

Luther Strange

Honestly, I have a meeting to talk about that shortly — so let me get back to you on that shortly. I have to talk to my staff.

Jeff Stein

[In a follow-up conversation with Strange about eight hours later]

So what do you think?

Luther Strange

We’re still looking at the details on how it affects Alabama, so we haven’t taken a position on it yet.

I like the idea of sending money back to the states and letting each state experiment with what’s best for their citizens. But I haven’t seen enough detail to know how it affects Alabama to have taken a position on it.

Jeff Stein

Do you worry about the billions in cuts in federal health care expenditures?

Luther Strange

That’s the kind of detail I haven’t seen on how it would affect our state.

Jeff Stein

Anything in particular you’ll be looking for?

Luther Strange

How it affects the state of Alabama, and how we are treated as a non-expansion state.

Jeff Stein

Will you be looking for protections for those with pre-existing conditions? What else matters?

Luther Strange

All of the above.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA): “This is the last attempt to do what we promised in the election”

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Jeff Stein

I was hoping you could explain, in broad detail, what the point of Graham-Cassidy is.

Chuck Grassley

Let me give you a political answer, and then I’ll give you a substance answer.

The political answer is that Republicans have promised for seven years that we were going to correct all the things that were wrong with Obamacare, and we failed the first eight months. This is the last attempt to do what we promised in the election.

The substance answer is that Obamacare starts with the principle that all knowledge about health care, and all decisions on health care, ought to rest in Washington, DC. The complete opposite of that is Graham-Cassidy, that Washington doesn’t know best and we’ll let each of the 50 states [decide what’s best].

Towards a Regenerative Food System

Resilience

Towards a Regenerative Food System

Gunnar Rundgren, orig. published by Garden Earth, September 7, 2017

Almost 40 years ago, in our small farm we were packing bags of vegetables to consumers

Almost 40 years ago, in our small farm we were packing bags of vegetables to consumers that wanted good food. After a having spent thirty years with development of the organic sector, the entry of supermarkets and multinational food companies in the organic sector, development of certification systems and international trade – I am now back in a small farm packing bags of vegetables to consumers who want good food.

Industrial food and farming have been very successful in producing more food, and cheaper food. But it has come at a very high price as you all know. The practices have disturbed and destroyed important biological systems, in particular bio-diversity and the nitrogen and carbon cycles.

While food is abundant, the distribution system, the market, fails to reach almost 1 billion people which are hungry. Even in the rich EU every tenth person can’t afford a proper meal every second day.

More than anything else the global market fueled by oil and coal and shaped by merciless competition has been the factor that has determined the whole food system, from the prairies to the supermarket shelf, from the production of grain fed chicken to the emergence of fast food chains. The effects on biodiversity, landscape, rural development, and the quality and culture of food of this transformation is immense.

Agricultural policy in the EU as well as in most other countries has by and large supported this trend by a one-sided focus on competitiveness. The result is that 1 out of 4 farms have disappeared in the EU between 2003 and 2013, and almost 5 million full time jobs were lost, one third of all jobs in the agriculture sector. With current trends we will have 2 farms with 150 000 dairy cows each in Sweden at the end of the century.

Productivity in farming has increased quicker than in most other sectors. Farming has become a very capital intensive business where it often cost 1 million euros to create a full time job. The average Danish farm represent a capital investment of 2.5 million Euros, Dutch farms almost as much.

The combination of high capital costs, constant reduction of number of farms and farm workers and low profitability together explains well why so few young people enter the farm sector. As a matter of fact, in the modern economies many more people work in restaurants and cafés than in farming and food industries.

As a reaction to the development, organic farming, local foods, slow food, fair trade and alike has developed. And they play a very important role, both as agents of innovation and for their actual results.

We have come a long way and should be proud of the accomplishment.

However, these systems are, by and large, still subject to the same market imperatives of competition, profit and constant labor productivity increase. And increasingly so the more successful they are.

This limits their transformational power. Both Thomas Fertl and Nic Lampkin said that organic is more, more than regulations and more than markets, and I think most of you agree. But we have spent most of the sector’s energy in government regulations and conventional markets the last decades. Both are institutions we need to relate to if we want to be relevant and live in the real world. But they don’t carry the soul of organic and they are not fostering innovation. They are reflections of the past and not the image of the future.

A truly regenerative food and farm system will close loops of energy, nutrients and most importantly meaning and culture. It must reconnect people to the land and to farming.

We need to think carefully which are the best paths to reach there.

Let me take an example: The value of the ecosystem services and the external costs of a product can be higher than the commercial value of the product itself. FAO calculated external costs for the four most important crops and found that they were 1.8 times the farm gate prices for the same crops. Full and fair payment to farmers for ecosystem services and inclusion of costs for environmental damage sounds like a good idea. Who could object to that?

I could. For many reasons.

To calculate the real cost of production is not at all simple, and the calculated cost of using one method, say a kg of synthetic fertilizer, will differ enormously in different parts of the world, even within the same country. All valuation of nature is subjective. In a hugely unequal world it will be the priorities of the wealthy that determines the values. It would also require an administrative system and controls which would make the current CAP, and organic regulations, look like a kindergarten.

But the major objection to true cost accounting is that it puts even bigger pieces of nature under the rule of the market, a trend that I believe is contrary to the desired development.

So while the ambition is a good one – to reward good stewardship and discourage harmful practices – we need to think carefully about what we are asking for and how it can be realized. The organic regulation is another example of how a good intention easily can become an obstacle.

Technology and natural science are great and there is still a lot to do there. We need to understand better the whole micro cosmos of the soil, as well as the linkages between the soil and the health of our bodies.

But, is it lack of knowledge that is the main limitation for farmers to produce sustainably? I believe most farmers do know how to farm sustainably. But there are economic and sometimes regulatory hurdles to the best behaviors. Examples are specialization and dropping rotations.

Some of the major challenges as well as the possible innovations are found in the political, social and economic arenas. It is encouraging to see that there is a lot of such innovation going on, even if many of them are taking place outside of the “certified organic” straight-jacket.

And perhaps we should not be so bothered about that. After all, certification and regulations are tools for the conventional market and they will not be the relevant tools when we seek to develop new relationships.

Organic, regenerative farming is a very important counter narrative to the eco-modernist narrative of GMOs, lab meats and vertical hydroponic farms, where the ideal is a food production that is land-less, sweat-less and dirt-less. In the end it is also soul-less, culture-less and human-less.

IFOAM EU propagates for organic on every table and Fair Play – fair pay and it wants to improve, inspire and deliver. And it promotes the transformation of the food system. Cornerstones for such new food systems need to be:

Food as a human right rather than a commodity
Food as culture rather than the intake of prescribed nutrients
Food producing resources – land, water, seeds and breeds – should be seen as common goods rather than assets which can be traded and speculated in
New relationships in agriculture and food built on cooperation rather than competition
Food and agriculture based on local resources and linkages rather than on international trade and global supply chains
Farming is not only seen as production of food but as much as planetary stewardship

Let us apply the organic principles of health, fairness, ecology and care on the whole food system and not only on the farms.

(Speech at the European Organic Conference in Talinn 6 September 2017)

New report details just how toxic Trump’s environmental agenda has been thus far

ThinkProgress

New report details just how toxic Trump’s environmental agenda has been thus far

The Trump administration is increasing the environmental burden on low-income communities of color, a new report finds.

Natasha Geiling September 19, 2017

Petrobras oil refinery plant in Pasadena, Texas. (CREDIT: AP Photo/Frank Bajak)

From fast-tracking the Dakota Access pipeline to failing to ban a potentially brain-damaging pesticide, the Trump administration’s environmental policies have already negatively impacted the country’s most vulnerable communities, according to a newly-released report from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

During EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s confirmation process, he told senators that he was “familiar with the concept of environmental justice” and that “all Americans be treated equally under the law, including the environmental laws.” Despite those assurances, however, the report, titled “Pursuing A Toxic Agenda,” tracks a slew of policy and budget choices made by the Trump administration in its first seven months and concludes that “the Trump administration poses the most serious threat the EPA has faced in the agency’s 47-year existence.”

Mustafa Santiago Ali, former head of the environmental justice program at the Environmental Protection Agency and current senior vice president of climate, environmental justice and community revitalization for the Hip Hop Caucus, agrees with the report’s conclusions.

“This is one of the most challenging times for the agency,” Ali told ThinkProgress. “There seems to be a direct assault on communities of color, low income communities, and indigenous communities based on the policies that [the Trump administration] have proposed and tried to move forward on.”

Ali, who left the EPA in March after seeing the agency begin to pursue “values and priorities” different than his own, said that he has yet to see the administration propose a policy that would directly benefit vulnerable communities. Instead, Ali noted Pruitt’s stated goal of wanting to “dismantle” the EPA in its traditional form and turn it into an agency that works more for industry stakeholders than the American public.

“There’s this huge disconnect between what is needed, and what is being asked for from anyone except the fossil fuel industry,” Ali said.

Still, as the report notes, there are opportunities for the environmental justice movement to make progress under the Trump administration — just so long as they don’t involve the federal government. At least for the duration of the Trump administration, the report suggests that the EPA and the federal government will not be the appropriate avenues for pursuing progress in environmental justice. Instead, the report suggests that civil society as well as local governments need to take a more active role in ensuring that the tenets of environmental justice are incorporated into policy planning.

“The federal government does not get a pass. They have a distinct responsibility for addressing these issues inside of our most vulnerable communities,” Ali said. But, he added, groups like faith-based organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations also have an important role to play in furthering environmental justice during the Trump administration.

“All of these folks have got to come together and work in authentic, collaborative partnerships,” Ali said. “That is the way we will move our most vulnerable communities to surviving to thriving.

Even with help from civil society and local government, however, several Trump-era environmental policies are already placing vulnerable communities in danger. Specifically, the report cites rollbacks in environmental justice policies within the EPA which are already placing farm workers and communities living near industrial facilities at risk. The report notes EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision not to ban chlorpyrifos — a widely-used pesticide that EPA scientists had linked to brain damage in children — as a policy that will have an outsized impact on the health of farm workers and farming communities. Just over a month after declining to ban chlorpyrifos, the chemical was implicated in the poisoning of at least twelve farm workers in California, all of whom reported symptoms of vomiting and nausea after exposure.

The report also highlights Trump’s executive order to fast-track completion of the Dakota Access pipeline as an example of the administration’s preference for industry over vulnerable communities. In December, after months of protest by indigenous communities as well as social justice and environmental groups, the Obama administration temporarily halted construction on the controversial pipeline and ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full study of the pipeline’s potential environmental impacts. A month later, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Army Corps to approve the pipeline in an “expedited” manner, effectively canceling the previous administration’s request for further environmental review,

Indigenous groups won a victory in mid-June, however, when a court found that the administration had failed to fully consider the environmental impacts of the project, especially on the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The court ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to more fully consider the project’s potential impacts, though it’s unclear whether the pipeline will remain operational during the review. It became operational in June and has already suffered three minor leaks.

The report also cites the Trump administration’s decision to delay an Obama-era update to the rules that govern how industrial facilities — particularly those that store hazardous chemicals — plan for and respond to potential disasters. Known as the Risk Management Plan rule, the Obama administration’s updates would have required facilities to contract with third-party auditors following accidents and would have forced companies to create enhanced emergency response plans in the event of a toxic discharge. In March, Pruitt announced that the EPA was delaying implementation of these RMP updates until 2019, citing requests from industry.

Just months later, in the wake of devastating flooding from Hurricane Harvey that left parts of Houston under feet of water, the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas suffered a series of explosions and fires. More than 300 residents were evacuated from a 1.5-mile radius around the plant to avoid any toxic health impacts. The facility would have been covered by the updated RMP plan, but the company was part of the industry coalition that lobbied for its delay.

Facilities that handle hazardous chemicals and waste tend to be disproportionately concentrated in low-income communities of color, meaning that facilities impacted by the delay of the RMP rule are more likely to be near vulnerable communities.

The report also looks at suggested cuts to the EPA’s environmental justice programs, as presented in the Trump administration’s proposed budget. The administration has proposed eliminating eliminate the Lead Risk Reduction Program, for instance, which is charged with reducing childhood exposure to lead-based paint. The Trump administration has also proposed eliminating the Department of Justice’s budget to help EPA prosecute Superfund cases to ensure that industry actors actually work to remediate the areas they have polluted.

Conflicting decisions on pipelines frustrate industry, landowners

StateImpact

A reporting project of NPR Member Stations- Pennsylvania

Conflicting decisions on pipelines frustrate industry, landowners

By Marie Cusick September 18, 2017

Marie Cusick / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Hundreds of Cathy Holleran’s maple trees were cut down, through the use of eminent domain, for an interstate natural gas pipeline that’s now stalled.

In March 2016, workers for one of the nation’s largest natural gas pipeline companies cut down a large swath of maple trees in Susquehanna County–a rural patch of northeastern Pennsylvania. A video shot by an activist shows the trees crashing down as chainsaws buzz.

Cathy Holleran was powerless to stop it. At the time, she was tapping the trees for her family’s maple syrup business, but the pipeline company condemned her land using the power of eminent domain.

Armed U.S. Marshals

Driving around a year-and-a half later, she’s still in disbelief. A court order had prevented her from interfering, and law enforcement officers came to protect the pipeline workers.

“We had to stay completely away. They brought armed U.S. Marshals with assault rifles and Pennsylvania State Police, and had guys walking all over property in bullet proof vests,” Holleran recalls. “I mean, really! We’re making syrup. What are we going to do? Are we going to go attack these guys?”

Walking through her property on a recent soggy September afternoon, Holleran finds tree stumps hidden beneath shoulder-high weeds.

“This used to all be woods– as thick as that,” she says, gesturing to a cluster of remaining trees.

By her count, she lost more than 550 maples, “I went through with my camera and took pictures from every angle and counted them by hand to make sure I was accurate.”

She says her family’s maple syrup business has been cut in half. But the real shame of it all, Holleran adds, is this may all have been for nothing.

The Constitution Pipeline was supposed to emanate from northeastern Pennsylvania, and run 121 miles through New York State. Federal regulators gave their blessing to the project. So did Pennsylvania regulators. But New York State (whose border is about 20 miles from Holleran’s land) refused to grant a necessary water permit.

The pipeline company, Williams, sued, but a federal court recently sided with New York. Holleran says she’d warned the company of this possibility.

“All along we kept saying, ‘You might not get through New York. You might not get your permits. You’re gonna come through here and cut our land?’”

Williams spokesman, Chris Stockton, says at the time the company was working with New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, and the permit was advancing.

“We were addressing their concerns as they came up,” he says. “We had no reason to think we would not receive that permit. We were playing by the rules and doing everything we needed to do.”

‘The rules of the game have changed’

“What happened with the Constitution was a surprise,” says Fred Lowther, a partner with the law firm Blank Rome, who’s represented major oil and gas pipeline companies.

It reminds him of another ruling, about a decade ago, when the industry ran into a similar problem: a state killed a federally-approved pipeline. The Islander East project was supposed to run from Connecticut, under Long Island Sound. But Connecticut wouldn’t give it a water quality certificate, claiming it would damage nearly 600 acres of clam beds. And when the pipeline companies sued, a federal court sided with the state.

“It caused quite a stir in the industry,” Lowther says of the ruling. “Because the intention was not to give states the veto power over a federally-approved project, but to give them a say in how the project was shaped.”

History appears to be repeating itself with the Constitution Pipeline. Lowther says pipeline companies will likely be more cautious.

“I think going forward, people will be very careful before they authorize either the taking of land or the clearing of right of way,” he says.

It has long been assumed by the pipeline industry that once their projects get approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) the state permits fall into place.

“Historically, that has not been a problem,” says Mark Robinson, a gas industry consultant who used to work at FERC. ”We’re kinda in a new arena now. The rules of the game have changed a little bit.”

In a surprise move earlier this month, West Virginia environmental regulators rescinded a water certificate for another federally-authorized natural gas pipeline. Robinson warns states shouldn’t be able to unilaterally reject important, interstate projects.

“I imagine you’ll see significant pushback from the pipeline industry,” he says.

Last week FERC overruled New York environmental regulators in their denial of a water permit to another pipeline, saying the state had taken too long with its review and thus “waived” its authority.

Landowners often find themselves with few options. Angela McGowan is an attorney for the Harrisburg for the firm, Pillar Aught. She’s represented property owners dealing with other new pipelines in Pennsylvania, and says the industry generally has the upper hand—they just have to pay the people whose land their taking.

Eminent domain occurs in a sort of vacuum, she explains. The law doesn’t consider whether a pipeline company has all its permits in hand– the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed.

“The eminent domain code basically just says you’ve got to prove you have the power,” says McGowan. “Once you do that, it’s just about what the ‘just compensation’ is.”

But Cathy Holleran is waiting for answers. She and the company are still in court and haven’t agreed on how much she should be paid.

“I can’t even tell you the amount of stress, personally, this has put us through,” she says.

The conflicting decisions from the state of New York and the federal government have left her with heaps of rotting maple trees strewn across her property.

Once-a-Year Clinic is the Only Affordable Healthcare for Many

Now This Politics Video

Once-A-Year Clinic Is Only Affordable Health Care Option For S…

There is no excuse for this in 2017

Posted by NowThis Politics on Sunday, September 17, 2017

In America, “we spend more money responding to floods than preventing them.”

In America, “we spend more money responding to floods than preventing them.” Corporate interests bankroll politicians for deregulation which makes everything worse. The Dutch don’t let this happen. We shouldn’t either. We can learn a lot from how the Netherlands prevents floods.

We can learn a lot from how the Netherlands prevents floods.

Posted by ATTN: Video on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Hurricane Harvey Flooding: EPA to Close Houston Lab Amidst Vital Recovery Work

Newsweek

Hurricane Harvey Flooding: EPA to Close Houston Lab Amidst Vital Recovery Work

By Janissa Delzo September 16, 2017

Hurricane Harvey—a Category 4 storm—made history as it pummeled Texas leaving behind extensive damage and more than 40 inches of rain. The catastrophic floodwaters are potentially carrying many harms, including bacteria, human waste, and deadly chemicals. To understand exactly what may be lingering in the water, employees at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 6 Lab in Houston are conducting water tests. But now that lab, which is expected to play a key role in the extensive recovery efforts, may be closing, the Houston Chronicle reports.

When the lease ends in 2020, the 41,000 square foot space that employs about 50 people is expected to shut down and it’s unknown what will happen next, officials of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) told the Houston Chronicle.

Environmentalist and labor union groups protested at a news conference on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. about the Trump administration’s pending decision to cut EPA funding by millions of dollars. The groups cited the important work that the chemists, biologists, and other lab employees are doing regarding Hurricane Harvey. Additionally, they stated that if the Houston lab closed, testing water and soil will be much more complicated, considering the next closest EPA regional lab is located in Oklahoma, 400 miles from Houston. In addition to the Houston-area, the lab also covers other parts of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Houston EPA lab set to close. Some say the lab’s closure is among harmful impacts of the Trump administration’s drive to slice staff and mission in the agency. houstonchronicle.com

At the news conference, John O’Grady, who works with AFGE representing EPA employees, voiced his concerns about the potential closing.

“We have a laboratory in Houston that is state of the art and is situated directly in an industrial petrochemical complex. And that laboratory is slated for closure. Why? How much money are we going to save with that?” he questioned.

In April the employees were told the building’s lease would not be renewed, Clovis Steib, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees local 1003, told CNN. Employees are still left in the dark about future plans, leaving many worried if they will have a job come 2020.

As the end of the lease gets closer in sight, “the folks in the Houston lab are in limbo; they’re waiting for the shoe to drop. It’s like being on death row,” Steib said.

The scientists at the lab play an important role in ensuring the safety of the millions of people displaced by Harvey, he explained.

“They will be a part of determining when it is safe for storm victims to return to the area, especially neighborhoods near toxic chemical plants and contaminated Superfund sites,” Steib said.

Water testing, organized by The New York Times, found concerning results of what’s lingering in it, including one area in Houston with fecal contamination that’s at a level more than four times considered safe. In the living room of one family’s home, the tests revealed the standing water had E.coli levels 135 times above a safe level. In the kitchen, there was also high levels of lead and arsenic, The Times reported.

Big Oil will have to pay up, like Big Tobacco

CNN

Sachs: Big Oil will have to pay up, like Big Tobacco

By Jeffrey Sachs September 15, 2017

Story highlights

Jeffrey Sachs: Fossil fuel companies will soon face financial reckoning as courts hold them liable for damages caused by climate change
Big Tobacco is implicated in causation of health problems — Big Oil will also be a target for civil damages and compensation

Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN)Here is a message to investors in the oil industry, whether pension and insurance funds, university endowments, hedge funds or other asset managers: Your investments are going to sour. The growing devastation caused by climate change, as seen this month in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean, are going to blow a hole in your fossil-fuel portfolio.

Jeffrey Sachs

Not only will the companies you own suffer as society begins to abandon fossil fuels in earnest, they will also be dragged through the courts here and abroad for their long-standing malfeasance and denial of what they have done to the world.

Climate change deniers, mainly politicians in the pay of the oil industry, protest that there is no proof that destructive storms and floods are the result of human-induced global warming. Who can say that a Hurricane Harvey or Irma wouldn’t have occurred in the past?

Such a defense — the cynical shrug — will not play for much longer, either in the court of public opinion or in courts of law in the United States and abroad. The risks of climate-related disasters are real and rising, and soon it won’t matter politically or legally that any particular event might have occurred even without human-induced global warming.

The issue is of probability, not certainty. Of course, there have been weather-related disasters in the past. But global warming makes us more vulnerable to these events. Scientists emphasize that hurricane damage, for example, may rise for three reasons: higher sea levels (due to warming) cause larger storm surges; warmer oceans add energy to hurricanes; and warmer air holds more water vapor that can cause torrential downpours.

Trump is not changing view on climate change.

Insurance companies know that climate risks are rising, scientists know it, and an increasing number of investors know it. And more of the general public knows it, too.

In climate science, the link between specific events like Harvey and Irma and the general rise in risk due to global warming is called “attribution.” It’s a problem we grapple with in many contexts. When a miner gets lung disease, a homeowner with asbestos insulation develops a rare cancer, or a smoker succumbs to lung cancer, we can never be sure that the particular case was linked to coal dust, asbestos or cigarettes.

But the courts have been ready to read the probabilities, and hold companies liable for damages when the likelihood of causation is high enough.

The courts have also linked liability with the standard of care exercised by the defendant. When a company understands the risks but ignores them, or even worse, lies about them, the court or jury is far more likely to agree to a large claim.

The tobacco companies relentlessly misled the public about their products. Some oil companies have done the same about climate change. ExxonMobil, for example, knew internally for decades that its products contribute to global warming, according to a peer-reviewed Harvard University study published last month, but publicly downplayed the linkages and the resulting risks (Exxon denies this).

The Koch brothers, owners of refineries and oil pipelines, have manufactured doubts about climate science and spent vast sums to oppose decarbonization policies and to elect politicians to do the same.

Pope Francis slams climate change deniers.

But the science of climate attribution is rapidly becoming more sophisticated, leaving the oil industry more exposed than ever.

Consider, for example, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) project. This is an effort by a consortium of scientific institutions, including the University of Oxford Environmental Change Institute, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, the University of Melbourne and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

This project has recently shown, that human-induced climate change dramatically raised the likelihood of the record-breaking heat wave in western Europe this summer. The team found that climate change “made the intensity and frequency of such extreme heat at least twice as likely in Belgium, at least four times as likely in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and central England and at least 10 times as likely in Portugal and Spain.”

The project is now analyzing whether human-induced global warming raised the likelihood of the rainfall brought by Harvey.

American politics has long been manipulated by Big Oil, with massive campaign financing as well as backroom lobbying not seen by the public. The federal government and oil states like Texas have been as derelict as the companies, and could well find themselves also as defendants in cases brought by Americans and others who are hit by climate disaster.

Many Caribbean islands were devastated by Irma, and their leaders are appealing for aid. Soon, the cries around the world will change to a call for “compensation” or “civil damages” instead of just aid.

When climate justice comes — and it will — those who have been in denial will pay a heavy price. And those who have invested in companies that behaved recklessly and irresponsibly will share the heavy losses on that day of reckoning.

Electric company lineman missed his son’s wedding after Irma: ‘God put us here to restore power’

Yahoo

Electric company lineman missed his son’s wedding after Irma: ‘God put us here to restore power’

Sabrina Rojas Weiss September 16, 2017

Photo: Getty Images

Whenever there’s a hurricane, or any kind of disaster that causes power outages, impacted individuals are generally quick to talk about the energy companies as giant abstract entities that never work fast enough to get the lights back on. In fact, it’s up to the people, such as Duke Energy lineman Jim LeBlanc, to get in their bucket trucks or climb dangerous poles and physically fix those power lines. LeBlanc just missed his son’s wedding this week to get residents in Largo, Fla., back online after Hurricane Irma.

“I said, ‘Son, you’re planning your wedding in the month that’s the busiest for hurricane season here,’” LeBlanc, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, tells Yahoo Style. “When he set up the date, it was for the time I was going to be out of town, and I said, ‘Good luck. Let me know how things work out. I’m sorry I can’t be there.’

In the initial aftermath of Irma, about 6.8 million people were without power in Florida alone. By Friday, Duke Energy said that its crews had restored electricity to 1.1 million customers, with 294,000 left to go. The pressure is especially high for all utility companies to get their work done after the death of eight residents in an un-air-conditioned nursing home.

When the work on Irma began earlier this week, LeBlanc said no one knew how long they’d be in Florida, and his supervisor warned it could be more than two weeks. His son’s wife has a brother who just enlisted in the military and is going to be deployed soon, so they decided not to delay the wedding.

“I’m sorry as I can be, but we’ll celebrate whenever I get done,” LeBlanc said.

In his 16 years of working for Duke, LeBlanc has traveled to repair the damage after Katrina, Francis, Sandy, Charlie, and other big storms. There’s a rotating list of who travels to these emergency situations, and employees have the option to stay home, but LeBlanc said he never considered doing so.

“You’re either a dedicated lineman or you’re someone else,” he said. “Holidays, anniversaries, my children’s birthdays — as a lineman you celebrate it whenever you’re not on call anymore.”

Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks tweeted a video of LeBlanc on Thursday, after the wedding. After sharing a picture of the newly betrothed couple, he said, “This is why we’re here on earth, God put us here to restore power. We’re linemen, that’s what we do.”

This earned the lineman a call from Senior Vice President Michael Lewis, which is when he felt the full force of his sacrifice.

“It hit me all at one time,” LeBlanc says. “A lot of times we suppress our feelings — we’re tough guys out here working on power lines. When Michael Lewis called me, it made me pause and think, ‘What have I done to my son, now?’ I missed his wedding. I felt ashamed for a few minutes about it.”

Millions of Floridians are probably thankful that LeBlanc’s prevailing feeling seems more like pride in his work.

“I can’t sing and dance,” he admits. “I play guitar, but I’m really not that good. I don’t have any other talent, but I can do this job safely.”