The Bannon Deregulatory "Juggernaut" Wreaks Havoc On Citizens' Lives

Tania solium solex or the pork tapeworm (left) and larvae visible in the raw pork we will soon behold - if Trumpian deregulators in the FDA, USDA get their way

Also, tapeworm cysts that have developed in the brain, after consuming infected pork..

Back in February I posted on Steve Bannon's promise to "deconstruct the administrative state".   I pointed out that what he actually meant was the destruction of the regulatory state - meaning the system of taxes, regulations and agency oversight supported by the current structure of government.. In other words, destructive  deregulation would eradicate all those elements of the federal "bureaucracy" that ensure your milk is free of fecal matter, your burgers of E Coli., your drinking water of perchlorates and lead, and your canned tuna free of botulism. Oh, also that medical devices are properly manufactured and sterilized to acceptable standards (FDA regs), i.e. so when you get your colonoscopy the colonoscope didn't just come directly from insertion into another patient..

How has this feral plan been working? Well, seemingly fine according to WSJ columnist Gerald Seib, 'Trump's Deregulatory Juggernaut Is Rolling' (Oct. 31, p. A2) where he notes:

"Executive branch agencies have issued 100 directives that either knock down regulations or begin a process to eliminate or shrink them."

While some might cheer the sound of the word "deregulation" or mentally conjure up images of freedom and personal liberty, they are more brainwashed than accurate. Actually,  as economist George Lakoff has pointed out, e.g.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/george-lakoff/71462/the-public-s-viewpoint-regulations-are-protections

Regulations are protections. Protections of the public health provided by a government that puts citizens' interests above corporate profits.  Deregulation then, means the abolition or elimination of those same protections. In other words, embracing proposals and policies that would enable tapeworm larvae to proliferate in our pork chops (and woe betide if you don't cook them properly), or allow mouse feces to get into your milk and your water to contain carcinogenic chemicals.

The deregulation team  - say ensconced at the FDA or USDA-  would ask questions like:

Do we really need to check restaurants for sanitary standards?

Can't we tolerate a little bit of roach feces and fly larvae in the pantries and on the foods, and some norovirus in the salads?

Can we not allow just a bit more food poisoning - like at Chipotle  - to get higher profits?  (If all restaurants have the same lower standards we all win, no?)

Do we really need to regulate the amount of agricultural fertilizer runoff into lakes and streams giving rise to cryptosporidium,? (The parasite that made 440,000 Milwaukeeans sick in 1994)

Do we really need to inspect meat packing plants for E. coli. and whether the automated butchering process splatters it  into burgers?

This elicits the question of how bad things have actually become while we've had our attention diverted by Dotard's antics and tweets. Such as the screwball's "fire and fury"  tantrum and threat to blow up North Korea and the whole world with it.

A good place to start is the EPA where regulatory renegade Scott Pruitt has been taking a battle axe to a slew of regulations including the desire to demolish the Clean Power Plan. Devised as a way to fight climate change, most in the business friendly GOP abhor it because it hurts the coal industry. The plan was designed to slash the amount of SO2 (sulfur dioxide) emitted by power plants by 90 percent, and cut nitrogen oxides by more than 70 percent.  These are good moves considering both contribute particulate matter to smog and that activates asthma as well as triggers heart attacks. DO Scotty and the GOP care. Hell no.

According to the EPA's earlier analysis - before these latter day Visigoths arrived - 3,600 lives would be saved and $34 b a year in health and climate benefits by 2030.   But Pruitt has rejected this data as irrelevant. No surprise when you consider his GOP pals have tried to repeal the ACA - so no one gets any health care. In other words, they don't give two shits if you live or die. You're on your own in the brace new world of Bannonite "deconstruction" of the administrative state.

Little wonder, EPA veteran Mustafa Ali - who resigned in March- told TIME reporter Justin Worland in a recent interview about what caused him to leave:

"They're trying to deconstruct and dismantle the basic protections. They're creating situations where more folks are going to get sick, more are going to die."

Pruitt's adopted the same approach in unleashing carcinogenic chemicals - like chlorpyrifos - on unsuspecting millions.   The EPA banned the chemical in 2000 on the basis that I was traced to brain defects I children.  One study by researchers at UC- Berkeley fond that children born in proximity to a farm where the stuff has been used have lower IQs.

But why should Scott Pruitt, Steve Bannon or Donald Trump care? They don/t have to raise those kids. 

His efforts to deregulate policies and legislation on climate change are also well known. Already Pruitt's hand was exposed when an advance copy of one of his proposals leaked. Apparently, EPA is relying wholly on the argument that it can interpret the statute in question (section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act) to cover only regulations within the fence line (that is, within the physical grounds) of a power plant, not regulations that require the owner to obtain power from cleaner sources elsewhere.

Don't forget this is the same maggot who back in March boasted openly on his linked-in page of "being a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda". Transl.:  He is quite happy to see your grand kids choke to death on fracking fumes, nitrogen oxides or mercury pumped from coal fired utilities, or the toxic residue left behind in a place because there aren't enough EPA personnel to do clean ups. 

How best to deal with these miscreants? Apart from suing to tie up their efforts in courts, we expose what they're assorted deregulation would do - say to our food and water. When people see that they should be sufficiently appalled to vote the bastards out  -in fact the whole Trump bunch- at the first opportunity. It starts next year, taking back the House of Representatives and for that we'll need the biggest Blue Wave ever..

 

Human Influence On Climate Tracked To The 1930s

Thermal graphic with Earth's long term warming trend, showing temperature changes from 1880 to 2015 as a rolling 5-year average.  Orange regions indicate temperatures warmer than the 1951-1980 baseline average. Blue represents temperatures cooler than the baseline.

We know that in recent years, as the effects of climate change have ratcheted up, climate scientists have attempted to determine whether extreme weather events (extended heat waves, droughts, 'thousand year' floods etc.) are more likely to occur, e.g. as CO2 concentrations have increased along with global mean temperatures. Associated with this line of research, specialists have also tried to ascertain the extent to which past extreme events can be attributed to human influences on global climate.

Now, a breakthrough appears to have been made as published in Geophysical Research Letters, April 2, 2016 by Andrew King et al. See abstract at link below:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL067448/abstract

While noting "numerous extreme events" for which effects may be attributed to human-induced climate change, the researchers also note:

" it is likely that for temperature extremes occurring over previous decades a fraction of their probability was attributable to anthropogenic influences."

The question at hand, of course, becomes what fraction of their probability? If ALL the extreme events could be tied to human influence then the probability is P = 1.0. If it is 1 out of 5 extreme events, then P = 0.20. (Based on the standard frequency model for computing an empirical probability).  But technically we would expect the probabilities to vary somewhat with the category assessed, so expect to find differences in terms of heat waves, droughts etc. A more meaningful tag would therefore be "record breaking hot years".  This category would not only subsume heat waves but also the median level of high night time temperatures for regions, which most researchers regard as a key global warming parameter.

In this case, King et al - based on examining past hot years and seasons that exceeded the range of natural variability (going back to 1900) -  found that humans have likely caused the 16 most recent record- breaking hot years experienced up to 2014. This means that for this category and defined subset of data the probability for human -induced effects was 1.0.

They further found   the human influence extended back in time to at least 1937.   Their focus for the extreme heat events covered five regions, including: central England, central Europe, central U.S., east Asia and Australia.  The question that arises is: Why has it taken so long to track back the human agency in these events?

The researchers, in fact, showed that  the emergence of the human signal had been delayed in the same regions owing to a cooling period  in the 1970s that arose from presence of particulates and aerosols.  After the Clean Air Act and similar bills were passed, those particulates disappeared and the cooling was no longer as evident. Aerosols remained and gave way to the global dimming phenomenon which also concealed about a third of global warming. But when aerosols were also controlled - after similar legislation, global dimming receded and warming assumed dominance. With that change, the unmistakable human contribution became more apparent.

One of the other profound conclusions to emerge from the work is that minus human-induced climate change the recent record hot years, including 2014 and 2015 would not have occurred.

These documented changes and signals should get the attention of the climate change deniers, especially those who dispute any role for humans in global warming.  It is abundantly clear by now that humans - pumping out dozens of gigatons of carbon each year, are responsible for at least 60 percent of the  0.6W/ m²   by which the temperature of the planet is currently out of balance. (Every 2 ppm increase in CO2 concentration increases the radiative heating effect by 2 W/ m².)

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/tom-engelhardt/68960/tomgram-michael-klare-the-rise-of-the-right-and-climate-catastrophe