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Obama administration just gave a little breathing room to organic livestock.

At his final press conference on Wednesday, the president said that some issues — for example, “how concerned are we about air pollution or climate change” — are just part of the “normal back-and-forth, ebb-and-flow of policy.”

Other issues, though, might get him riled up enough to speak out after he leaves office. “[T]here’s a difference between that normal functioning of politics and certain issues or certain moments where I think our core values may be at stake,” he said. He listed a few things that he would see as threats to those core values: “systematic discrimination,” “obstacles to people being able to vote,” “institutional efforts to silence dissent or the press,” and deportation of so-called Dreamers.

It sounded like an articulation of his priorities in the Trump era, and global warming didn’t make the cut. Likewise, in Obama’s farewell address last week, he mentioned climate change and clean energy, but his more passionate points were dedicated to sustaining a healthy democracy.

In September, Obama talked about focusing on climate change after he leaves office, but at that point, he thought Hillary Clinton would be succeeding him. Now that Donald Trump is moving into the Oval Office, Obama seems to be indicating that he’ll focus on other problems instead.

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Obama administration just gave a little breathing room to organic livestock.

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Swamp Watch – 17 December 2016

Mother Jones

Mick Mulvaney, a lunatic budget hawk who entered Congress in the great tea party wave of 2010, will be our new director of the Office of Management and Budget. Most people probably think this is bad because he’s a lunatic budget hawk, but I’m not sure how much that matters. After all, Paul Ryan is already a budget hawk—except for budget-busting tax cuts, of course—and defense spending—and anything else that conservatives happen to like. But anyway, he’s a budget hawk as that term is currently abused. So Mulvaney probably doesn’t add an awful lot to the total weight of budget hawkery that will rule Washington DC next year.

But OMB is important for an entirely different reason: it plays a huge role in the regulatory process. Allow me to quote from the OMB website:

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is a statutory part of the Office of Management and Budget within the Executive Office of the President. OIRA is the United States Government’s central authority for the review of Executive Branch regulations, approval of Government information collections, establishment of Government statistical practices, and coordination of federal privacy policy. The office is comprised of five subject matter branches and is led by the OIRA Administrator, who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate.

Mulvaney will be the patron saint of “cost-benefit” analysis of federal regulations—which, in Republican hands, normally means totting up the costs and ignoring the benefits. In particular, it means that environmental regulations, even those with immense benefits, will be scored into oblivion and never see the light of day. Lucky us.

Anyway, we’re almost finished. We have two cabinet positions left—Agriculture and Veterans Affair—and two cabinet-level posts—CEA and trade representative. Tick tick tick.

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Swamp Watch – 17 December 2016

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