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2016 Was a Really Bad Year. These Folks Made It Better.

by ZakHugheydrmlert Posted on December 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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2016 was certainly a bad year. The planet continued to get hotter (spelling doom for future habitants of Earth), natural disasters wreaked havoc all over the world, white nationalists and neo-Nazis stopped hiding on the fringes of society, and Prince, David Bowie, and Carrie Fisher left us way too soon. But before we consider 2016 as being totally bleak, let’s pause and remember a few folks who made a bad year better. From smart kids to activists and politicians, here are some of the bright spots.

Sarah McBride: Sarah McBride made history this year when she became the first transgender woman to speak at a major-party convention. “Will we be a nation where there is only one way to love, only one way to look, and only one way to live?” McBride, the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, asked fellow Democrats gathered to nominate Hillary Clinton. “Or will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally?” Growing up in Wilmington, Delaware, McBride didn’t think she could live authentically as herself while achieving her professional goals in politics. Since coming out in 2012, she’s been proving her younger self wrong, breaking down barriers and fighting for transgender rights. As an intern, McBride became one of the first transgender people to work in the White House, and she played an instrumental role in getting transgender rights legislation passed in Delaware. She also made waves this year when a bathroom selfie she took in North Carolina went viral after state lawmakers approved legislation barring transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice.

Mari Copeny: Mari Copeny is better known as Little Miss Flint. In 2014, her hometown’s water was poisoned with lead when the city of Flint, Michigan, changed to an improperly treated water supply. It took months to warn Flint residents, and as a result thousands of children in the city tested positive for high levels of lead in their blood. Mari sent a letter to the White House asking President Barack Obama to visit, and Obama responded and visited Flint a few weeks later. Mari’s mother operates a Twitter account for the young girl where she continues to tweet about the ongoing water crisis.

Lindy West: In a year when some of the worst corners of the internet gained new power, Lindy West’s accounts of confronting trolls provided badly needed evidence that you can stand up to cyberbullying and win. In her debut novel, Shrill, West describes what fat shaming really means, a perspective that This American Life host Ira Glass and others have noted changed their perspective on the issue. West’s book, which is a New York Times bestseller, is a delightful yet heart-wrenching collection of essays, spanning subjects from sexism in comedy to finding love. A columnist for the Guardian, she has also argued that objectifying men at the Olympics was not a real issue, and she’s called on everyone to dispense with verbal contortions and just call white nationalists Nazis. (West spoke to Mother Jones earlier this year about internet trolls, fat shaming, and rape culture.)

Tammy Duckworth: The 2016 election wasn’t kind to Democrats, but there were a few winners. Tammy Duckworth will move from the House of Representatives to the Senate, after her defeat of Republican Mark Kirk in the closely watched race for Illinois senator. She is a double amputee and a disabled Iraq War veteran, and she’ll be only the second Asian American to serve in the Senate. During the campaign, Kirk took flack for making a racist comment about his opponent’s family during a debate. Duckworth, who has an American father and a Thai mother, noted that her family has served in the military since the Revolutionary War. Kirk responded by saying, “I had forgotten your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.” The Kirk campaign issued a statement attempting to defend his comments, but the embattled senator was met with a barrage of criticism before he tweeted out an apology. Duckworth has also supported accepting more Syrian refugees in the United States.

Michelle Obama: Real talk: Michelle Obama makes every year brighter. But this year especially, she was a force to be reckoned with on the campaign trail. Though she was a fierce critic of Donald Trump from the outset of the election, even the hot-headed president-elect knew better to go after the hugely popular first lady. In an impassioned speech after the release of an audio recording of Trump in which he talked about grabbing women “by the pussy,” Obama lambasted the Republican nominee for “actually bragging about sexually assaulting women.” Not only was she a champion on the campaign trail, but who can forget when Renaissance (her Secret Service code name) appeared on Carpool Karaoke?

The Reverend William Barber II: William Barber II, a charismatic orator and the founder of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, is probably best known for his work in voting rights and economic justice in the state. In 2013, Barber led a group of activists and clergy into the state Capitol building in Raleigh and blocked the doors to the Senate chambers to express his frustration with the Republican-majority Legislature for implementing voting restrictions, blocking Medicaid expansion, and cutting unemployment benefits. He was eventually arrested. This year, at the Democratic National Convention, Barber spoke out against injustice—from voter suppression to police brutality—and his movement has been credited with helping defeat Gov. Pat McCrory in North Carolina. The reverend shows no signs of stopping his work in voting rights and economic justice in 2017.

#NoDAPL activists: The water protectors of Standing Rock, as they call themselves, braved security guards using pepper spray, attack dogs, water cannons in freezing temperatures, and rubber bullets in order to stop the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline and its threat to the water supply and cultural sites of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The tribe opposed to the project and pointed out that pipeline developers had initially planned to follow a different route but rejected it due to concerns about contaminating the water supply to another community. It looked like nothing was going to stop the project, but in November the US Army Corps of Engineers halted construction of the pipeline, calling for research into environmental risks. The win is cause for celebration, but the final battle may lie ahead: President-elect Trump has invested between $500,000 and $1 million in the company with the contract to build the pipeline.

Marley Dias: Marley Dias is a 12-year-old girl who is already tired of reading books about white boys and their dogs. She impressed the world in January when Philly Voice reported that the New Jersey girl was starting a project called #1000BlackGirlBooks to collect books where black girls are the protagonists and not just background characters. The book drive was part of the GrassROOTS Community Foundation, an organization co-founded by Janice Johnson Dias, Marley’s mother, that she uses for a social action project every year. Marley hit her target of 1,000 books by February.

Chris Murphy: One lawmaker who confronted Republicans in Congress this year was Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn). After the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub last June, Murphy refused to let Republicans avoid voting on two gun control measures, one that banned suspected terrorists from buying guns and another that required background checks for sales at gun shows and over the internet. Murphy lead a 15-hour filibuster on an unrelated spending bill until the issue was brought to the floor. He has become one of the leading voices in the Democratic Party on gun control since the 2012 tragedy at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in which 20 children and six adults were killed by an assailant with two guns. Prior to the election, Murphy explained to Mother Jones why Trump is more radical than the National Rifle Association.

Kamala Harris: The race to replace retiring California Sen. Barbara Boxer came down to two Democrats who were also women of color: Rep. Loretta Sanchez and state Attorney General Kamala Harris. After beating her opponent by 25 points, Harris, who was born to a Jamaican American father and an Indian American mother, became only the second black woman elected to the US Senate. (Carol Moseley-Braun represented Illinois from 1993 to 1999.) After the election, Harris spoke out for undocumented immigrants by vowing to fight Trump’s immigration policies at every turn. “You are not alone, you matter, and we’ve got your back,” she said to immigrants and activists at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles after her victory.

Khizr and Ghazala Khan: The Khans’ son, Humayun Khan, was killed during the Iraq War in 2004. At the Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan sharply and movingly criticized Trump for his proposal to ban Muslim immigration. “Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution?” Khan asked while pulling out a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. “I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.'” Khan went on to note the sacrifice his family and other families like his have made:”Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing—and no one.” Trump responded by criticizing Ghazala Khan for remaining silent while standing next to her husband, saying that she wasn’t allowed to speak because of the couple’s faith. He also claimed he made sacrifices by building “great structures.” His treatment of the Khans earned him widespread criticism from both sides of the aisle. Thanks to Khizr Khan, the American Civil Liberties Union ran out of pocket Constitutions less than a week after his speech.

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2016 Was a Really Bad Year. These Folks Made It Better.

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S&P Says Obamacare Isn’t Failing

by TeriHLMGdow Posted on December 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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S&P says that Obamacare isn’t failing at all:

With better data supported by actual individual market experience, most insurers put in for increased premium pricing for 2016. Also, several insurers introduced narrower network products to control medical costs. Regulatory changes such as tightening the SEP rules also helped this year-over-year improvement. We expect the full-year 2016 underwriting losses to be lower than in 2015 and 2014.

….Insurers have put in meaningful premium rate increases for 2017…but we view 2017 as a one-time pricing correction….For 2017, we believe the continued pricing correction and network design changes, along with regulatory fine-tuning of ACA rules, will result in closer to break-even results, in aggregate, for the individual market, and more insurers reporting profits in this segment.

Hey, how about that! Now that insurers are pricing their coverage about where the CBO expected it to be, they’re starting to move toward profitability. Who could have guessed that?

This reminds me of something. A lot of lefties were unhappy with Obamacare because, in the end, it didn’t include a public option. Thanks, Joe Lieberman! But the truth is that although a public option would have been nice, it’s not really what Obamacare needed. What Obamacare needed was two things:

About twice as much funding.
A higher tax penalty for not buying insurance.

That’s it. But Democrats were fixated on Obamacare costing under $1 trillion (over ten years), and that prevented them from creating a program that people truly would have loved. If, instead, they had supported funding of, say, $2 trillion, generous subsidies would have continued into the working and middle classes; maximum deductibles could have been set much lower; and more insurers would have entered each local market. Combine that with stiffer penalties to back up the individual mandate and a lot more young people would have joined the insurance pools—and would have done so without resentment since the cost would truly be affordable. All of this together would have made Obamacare far more popular with the public and much easier to manage for insurers.

But where would that extra trillion dollars have come from? This is where the hack gap comes into play once again. If this were a Republican plan, and it were something they really wanted, they wouldn’t have bothered with funding. They would have just made up a story about medical inflation coming down (which it is) and broader health coverage leading to improved economic growth blah blah blah. Democrats weren’t willing to do that. Alternatively, they could have just funded a $2 trillion program. That would have meant even higher taxes on the rich and maybe some higher taxes all the way down into the upper middle class. Or maybe a small increase in the payroll tax. Who knows? There are plenty of possibilities.

But Democrats weren’t willing to be hacks and they weren’t willing to raise taxes more than they did. This is despite the fact that the public plainly doesn’t care much about deficits no matter how much they may say so, and the public is positively delighted with higher taxes on the rich. Multiple polls repeatedly show this by a wide margin.

This would have solved virtually every problem Obamacare has had. Higher taxes on the rich would have been a populist winner. Higher funding would have made the program genuinely affordable and far more popular. And the increase in both funding and the mandate penalty would have made the eventual insurance pool closer to what insurers expected, which would have kept them nearer to profitability and truly duking it out to gain market share against their competitors. It was a missed opportunity.

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S&P Says Obamacare Isn’t Failing

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Vladimir Putin Is a Happy Camper These Days

by FrankieKpg Posted on December 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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In his annual press conference, Vladimir Putin took a victory lap:

“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for people to blame everywhere,” Putin said in answer to a Russian TV host, one of 1,400 journalists accredited to the marathon session. “They need to learn to lose with dignity.”

….“Trump understood the mood of the people and kept going until the end, when nobody believed in him,” Putin said, adding with a grin. “Except for you and me.”

Putin has repeatedly denied involvement despite the accusations coming from the White House, and the Kremlin has repeatedly questioned the evidence for the U.S. claims. On Friday he borrowed from Trump’s dismissal of the accusations, remarking “maybe it was someone lying on the couch who did it.”

“And it’s not important who did the hacking, it’s important that the information that was revealed was true, that is important,” Putin said, referring to the emails that showed that party leaders had favored Hillary Clinton.

That last line is almost word-for-word what Republican apologists say. As near as I can tell, Putin is basically just admitting that Russia was behind the hacks and then smirking about it. He must be having a good old time these days. I wonder how Republicans are going to feel about this when Putin decides it’s time to get rid of Trump and help the other side?

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Vladimir Putin Is a Happy Camper These Days

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North Carolina’s Bathroom Bill Is Still on the Books Because Republicans Pulled a Bait and Switch

by Ernest73It Posted on December 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a surprising move, North Carolina lawmakers ended a special session on Wednesday without repealing House Bill 2, one of the country’s most sweeping anti-LGBT laws. The decision to leave the “bathroom bill” on the books came as a shock after Governor-elect Roy Cooper announced earlier in the week that leaders in the Republican-majority Legislature had promised to get rid of it. It seemed like a done deal, but on Wednesday the state Senate opted against a repeal, while the House adjourned without voting, leaving the law intact. “The Republican legislative leaders have broken their word to me and they have broken their trust with the people of North Carolina,” Cooper told reporters.

But why, and what went wrong?

To understand the drama in North Carolina, you need to first understand why Republicans had initially agreed to repeal HB2—which blocks transgender people from bathrooms of their choice and leaves other people open to discrimination. Republican leaders in the Legislature supported the law but told Cooper they’d get rid of it in exchange for something else: Charlotte, the state’s biggest city, had to nix a local nondiscrimination ordinance that protected LGBT people in the city. (Charlotte’s ordinance was a main reason why Republicans had wanted to pass HB2 in the first place, because, among other things, HB2 prohibited other cities from creating similar nondiscrimination ordinances.) With the offer on the table, Charlotte took the next step. After getting a call from Cooper, the Charlotte City Council on Monday voted to repeal key parts of its ordinance, and then Republican Gov. Pat McCrory—a passionate supporter of HB2—called for a special session of the Legislature to do away with the controversial law.

Problems quickly arose. On Tuesday, Republican leaders accused the Charlotte City Council of acting in bad faith by keeping parts of its nondiscrimination ordinance in place—the council had only gotten rid of the section dealing with LGBT protections in public accommodations and bathrooms, not the sections that prevented discrimination by city contractors or taxi drivers. “I think the city of Charlotte has been as disingenuous as anybody I’ve ever seen,” said Republican state Sen. Harry Brown, according to the Charlotte Observer. Charlotte’s city attorney said council members thought they’d done enough by addressing the issues around the public accommodations in HB2, but GOP leaders were not appeased.

On Wednesday morning, hours before the Legislature was set to meet for its special session, the Charlotte City Council called a rare emergency meeting and repealed the rest of its ordinance—effective immediately. When the special session began, however, Democrats did not get what they had hoped. A Republican leader in the Senate introduced a bill that would repeal HB2 in part but would still temporarily ban cities like Charlotte from creating nondiscrimination ordinances to protect LGBT people. LGBT rights groups were outraged—the National Center for Transgender Equality called the Republican proposal “unacceptable” and referred to the Legislature as a “national disgrace.” Cooper urged Democrats not to support the proposal, and in the end it didn’t get enough votes in the Senate. The House adjourned without voting on the repeal, leaving HB2 on the books.

Protesters immediately gathered outside the Senate chamber shouting “Shame!”

“Today the Legislature had a chance to do the right thing for North Carolina, and they failed,” Governor-elect Cooper told reporters. “I’m disappointed for the people of North Carolina—for the jobs that people won’t have,” he said, referring to the companies that have protested the law by scaling back business in the state. “I’m disappointed that we have yet to remove the stain on the reputation of our great state.” North Carolina has lost millions of dollars in revenue because of the law—companies like PayPal and Deutsche Bank decided not to expand operations in the state, musicians like Bruce Springsteen canceled performances in protest, and the NCAA pulled its championships from the state.

The city of Charlotte did not respond to a request for comment, but in a statement the city council pledged that its “commitment to maintaining and protecting diverse and inclusive communities remains unchanged.” Meanwhile, a majority of North Carolinians remain opposed to HB2, according to Public Policy Polling. The Rev. William J. Barber II, a progressive leader in North Carolina and president of the state’s NAACP, said Thursday he would ask the national NAACP to call for an economic boycott of the state. And though Republicans in the Legislature seem dead set on fighting Cooper, the governor-elect vowed to keep pushing for a full repeal of the law: “This was our best chance,” he said. “It cannot be our last chance.”

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North Carolina’s Bathroom Bill Is Still on the Books Because Republicans Pulled a Bait and Switch

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Note From a Conservative: Republicans Can’t Repeal Obamacare on Their Own

by BlondellWisdom Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Conservative Ramesh Ponnuru considers what would happen if Republicans “repealed” Obamacare but left in place the preexisting conditions ban:

This course could cause the insurance exchanges, already in trouble, to collapse entirely. That’s because the Republican bill would scrap the individual mandate while keeping Obamacare’s requirement that insurers treat sick and healthy people alike.

….The Republicans to whom Philip Klein talked are blasé about this possibility. If millions of people lose their coverage, these Republicans plan to say that the exchanges were already collapsing before they touched the law. It seems unlikely that the press will go along with this narrative, in part because many health-care experts, liberal and conservative, will tell reporters that it’s false.

What Republicans have not faced is that they don’t have the votes to repeal Obamacare. Calling a bill that doesn’t repeal Obamacare’s central provisions “repeal” is no escape from that dilemma.

It’s a sign of the times that Ponnuru has to warn Republicans that the press won’t go along with their preferred narrative because it’s a lie. It’s also a bit starry-eyed, unfortunately. The fact that it’s a lie certainly wouldn’t stop the right-wing press; wouldn’t stop Trump; and would quite likely affect the rest of the press at least to the extent of calling it “controversial” and declining to take sides.

That said, Ponnuru is right. If you repeal some of Obamacare but leave the rest in place, it would cause the entire program to collapse. It might even go further, and cause the entire individual insurance market to collapse. Republicans better think hard about whether they want to be on the business end of something like that happening.

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Note From a Conservative: Republicans Can’t Repeal Obamacare on Their Own

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Trump and a Bunch of Silicon Valley Moguls Had an Awkward Little Talk Today

by Valenci2942 Posted on December 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Executives from Facebook, Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, and other Silicon Valley tech giants had a much-anticipated meeting with Donald Trump this afternoon, despite the rocky relationship between tech groups and Trump during his campaign. According to the Wall Street Journal, the president-elect struck a “conciliatory tone,” leading off the meeting with the reassurance that he wants “to help you folks do well.”

“We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation,” he continued. “Anything we can do to help this go along we’re going to be there for you.”

That tone is in sharp contrast to the more critical, sometimes hostile words exchanged between Silicon Valley leaders and Trump in the months leading up to his election. Many tech moguls repeatedly lambasted Trump, characterizing his views on immigration and trade as “a disaster for innovation,” while Trump castigated tech executives for, among other things, sending jobs overseas. In one notable instance, Trump also accused Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for buying the Washington Post—temporarily blacklisted by Trump for its unfavorable coverage of his campaign—to keep taxes low and avoid antitrust scrutiny.

The only tech billionaire at the meeting who supported Trump during his campaign was Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur and venture capitalist who founded PayPal. Thiel, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July and is now on Trump’s transition team, helped decide who from Silicon Valley should be invited to the meeting. One striking omission from the guest list was Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was reportedly excluded as retribution over a failed “crooked Hillary” emoji hashtag.

According to sources close to the meeting, the official agenda was focused on jobs and the role of technology in government. It’s unclear whether other issues important to the attendees were topics of discussion at the meeting. Climate change, for example, which Trump has repeatedly denied, is a priority for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who acquired the solar panel company SolarCity only a week before the election. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In, has forcefully advocated better women’s workplace rights.

On Tuesday, Bill Gates paid a visit to the president-elect only a day after launching a $1 billion fund to fight climate change with clean energy innovation. “We had a good conversation about innovation, how it can help in health, education, impact of foreign aid, and energy,” Gates said after the meeting.

Many in Silicon Valley remain wary of how a Trump presidency will change the industry following its exponential growth during the Obama administration. But Trump is doing his best to be liked. “I’m very honored by the bounce,” he said during the meeting Wednesday in reference to the recent uptick in stocks. “Everybody’s talking about the bounce, so everybody in this room has to like me at least a little bit.”

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Trump and a Bunch of Silicon Valley Moguls Had an Awkward Little Talk Today

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Trump Promised to Kill Billionaires’ Favorite Tax Loophole. Of Course His Economic Adviser Loves It.

by EthanRiggs Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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In an economic policy speech at the Detroit Economic Club in August 2016, Donald Trump repeated a promise he’d made many times on the campaign trail: “The rich will pay their fair share.” He went on to explain that his reform “will eliminate the carried interest deduction and other special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and for people like me, but unfair to American workers.”

Trump’s promises to reform taxes to aid regular Americans undoubtedly helped him win in November. But earlier this month, he announced the appointment of the members of his President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of 16 business leaders who will advise him on government policy regarding economic growth and jobs. The head of that group is billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of the Blackstone investment juggernaut. In 2016, he was ranked the 113th richest person in the world, and Blackstone, in which he holds a roughly 20 percent stake, is one of the largest private equity management firms in America. He also happens to be one of the biggest proponents of the carried-interest deduction that helps create and enrich billionaires—the very loophole Trump vowed to close during his campaign.

The carried-interest deduction works like this: People who manage the investments of others—usually private equity bosses—are often paid with a cut of the investment profits. Under the loophole, they are taxed on those earnings as if they were capital gains, not personal income, which has a much higher rate. Sometimes referred to as the “billionaire’s loophole,” Alec MacGillis for The New Yorker wrote, it “has helped private equity become one of the most lucrative sectors of the financial industry.”

As a private equity heavyweight, Blackstone has been a main beneficiary of the carried-interest deduction. In March 2007, Blackstone earned $4 billion for its managers when it went public. The initial public offering caused a public uproar because it was largely based on the favorable tax treatment of carried interest. A few months later, Schwarzman placed a call to Leo Hindery, a fellow private equity fund manager, the night before Hindery was set to testify before Congress about closing the carried-interest tax loophole. According to Hindery, Schwarzman called him “a traitor.”

Schwarzman later solidified his stance as a staunch proponent of the tax deduction in July 2010, when he compared the Obama administration’s efforts to close the loophole—Obama’s 2010 budget proposal called for changing the carried-interest tax deduction—to the Third Reich. “It’s a war,” Schwarzman said at the board meeting of an unnamed charity. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Schwarzman was widely criticized for the comments, including by Vice President Joe Biden.

Then in August 2011, billionaire investor Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he called for closing the carried-interest deduction, noting that thanks to the loophole, his tax rate that year had been lower than that of any of his office employees. Schwarzman went on CNBC to counter Buffett’s argument, saying he was paying a combined federal and state tax rate of 53 percent. “I’m not feeling undertaxed,” he said. (The Times pointed out that Schwarzman likely hadn’t received much carried-interest-eligible income that year, since many of the investments managed by his company were still recovering from the financial crisis.) In response to a question about Trump’s promise to close the carried-interest loophole last September, Schwarzman implied that he’d be okay with it—only as part of a general move toward a flat tax, a move that would also disproportionately benefit the uber-rich.

Schwarzman has also long been a generous Republican donor, donating more than $790,000 in the 2016 cycle to down-ballot races and PACs dedicated to maintaining a GOP legislative majority. (He did not donate to the Trump campaign.) But now, he and his compatriots will certainly have Trump’s ear: Their first meeting is set to happen at the White House in February—just weeks into the first term of President Trump.

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Trump Promised to Kill Billionaires’ Favorite Tax Loophole. Of Course His Economic Adviser Loves It.

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George W. Bush EPA chief slams Trump’s pick

by BuddyWalden Posted on December 12, 2016

Christine Todd Whitman is arguably the most prominent figure ever to lead the Environmental Protection Agency under a Republican president, and she has critical words for Donald Trump’s potentially disastrous pick Scott Pruitt.

“I don’t recall ever having seen an appointment of someone who is so disdainful of the agency and the science behind what the agency does,” Whitman told Grist. The former governor of New Jersey led the EPA under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.

“It doesn’t put us in a good place, in my mind,” Whitman said. “And he’s going to have trouble within the agency if he does convey that kind of disdain to the career staff.”

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Pruitt has close ties to the oil and gas industry. As Oklahoma attorney general, he sued the agency at least 13 times in five years, eight cases pending. The most high-profile case is his ongoing lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s most ambitious climate-related regulation. His career has gotten a boost from the likes of oil executive Harold Hamm, who was co-chair of Pruitt’s reelection campaign.

At times, Pruitt directly coordinated with the Oklahoma oil and gas industry to put pressure on the Obama White House in an effort to weaken clean air and water regulations or squash investigations.

REUTERS/Nick Oxford

“He obviously doesn’t care much for the agency or any of the regulations it has promulgated,” Whitman said. “He doesn’t believe in climate change; he wants to roll back the Clean Power Plan.”

Whitman foresees Pruitt clashing with the staff of the agency she once ran, which could have several consequences, she said. Staffers could stand in the way of Pruitt’s ambitions to cut back on the agency’s role, slowing the potential damage of his appointment. But at the same time, Pruitt could slow the staff’s ongoing and vital work. Remember Flint, Michigan? Superfund cleanups? Clean air?

Or, if the clashes are too severe and agency staffers either walk away or get purged under Pruitt, the EPA would lose a vast amount of expertise in a short period of time. “I worry about people retiring and losing institutional knowledge,” Whitman said. “They can slow things down, but he could too, and put a hard stop to regulations.”

In addition to suing over Clean Power Plan regulations, Pruitt has argued that climate activists should be prosecuted, and that debate over whether climate change is human-made should be encouraged in classrooms and Congress — despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the debate is settled.

Compared to where her party stands today on climate change, Whitman is considered an outlier. She has argued that the GOP should moderate itself on climate change and accept that humans play a role. Her philosophy — “Not being a scientist, I rely on the ones that are” — is quite rare these days. As extreme as Pruitt is, he’s in line with Republicans like House Science Chair Lamar Smith and Senate Environment and Public Works Chair James Inhofe — climate-denying senators who use their positions to confuse the public and block progress on climate action.

Still, Whitman pointed out the possibility for pushback to Pruitt’s anti-conservation agenda from hunters and ranchers within the GOP’s base, and possibly the more moderate Republicans she has had conversations with in Congress (Whitman declined to name those politicians).

For those still fooling themselves into thinking that Trump means it when he tells interviewers he has an “open mind” on climate science and environmental protection, his appointments should be telling.

“I never thought Trump was particularly an ideologue, but the picks have been a very conservative mindset,” Whitman said. “That will tell you he is quite serious about the anti-government pronouncements he made.”

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George W. Bush EPA chief slams Trump’s pick

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Trump will nominate ExxonMobil’s CEO to run U.S. foreign policy.

by LandonH3214 Posted on December 10, 2016

This may sound like a hyperbolic joke, but unfortunately it isn’t: Rex Tillerson will join Trump’s cabinet of corporate chieftains as secretary of state.

Much like Trump’s picks to run other key cabinet departments such as Treasury, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development, Tillerson has no experience in government.

What he does have is 41 years of experience working at our largest oil company, including 12 years running it. Tillerson typically maxes out in donations to Republican candidates and he has a cozy relationship with Trump’s favorite petrostate kleptocrat, Vladimir Putin.

Like Trump himself, Tillerson brings an array of potential conflicts of interest to his future job. Green groups are already raising questions about some of them.

How does he feel about U.S. sanctions on Russia, which cost his company lucrative drilling contracts? And what about the Paris agreement, which the U.S. State Department led the way in negotiating and which set carbon emission reduction goals that would force ExxonMobil to keep much of its massive oil and gas reserves in the ground? Trump opposes the climate deal anyway, but how might Tillerson’s oil business background influence the administration’s global climate policies?

Then there’s the fact that Tillerson’s company is currently under investigation from state attorneys general for allegedly lying to the public about the science of climate change. As 350.org Executive Director May Boeve put it in a statement, “Tillerson deserves a federal investigation, not federal office.”

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Trump will nominate ExxonMobil’s CEO to run U.S. foreign policy.

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Bipartisan Group Raises Red Flags About Trump’s Conflicts of Interest

by Charline46P Posted on December 9, 2016

Mother Jones

A bipartisan coalition of Washington ethics watchdogs—including one of Hillary Clinton’s most vocal critics—is calling on President-elect Donald Trump to divest himself of his sprawling business interests.

“By combining your presidency with your family business enterprises, you will create ongoing conflict of interest and credibility problems for your presidency,” reads an open letter the group sent to Trump Friday. “Questions will regularly arise as to whether your domestic and foreign policy positions are being taken on behalf of the interests of the American people or the financial interests of the Trump family, which will necessarily diverge on numerous occasions from those of the nation as a whole.”

The letter was signed by 29 different individuals and groups. The list contains a who’s who of Washington watchdog groups. It also includes six former Republican elected officials and Richard Painter, who served as the top ethics lawyer in George W. Bush’s administration. But perhaps the most eye-popping name on the list is Peter Schweizer, the head of the Government Accountability Institute—a conservative group whose board has included Trump adviser Stephen Bannon. Schweizer is the author of Clinton Cash, a best-selling book that was the basis for much of the controversy over Clinton’s involvement with the Clinton Foundation. Schweizer was particularly critical of the foundation’s acceptance of large gifts from foreign donors who appeared to be seeking favors from the Clintons.

Even before he has taken office, Trump’s transition effort has already been dogged by conflict of interest accusations, including questions as to why his daughter has sat in on meetings with foreign leaders and his involvement with hotels in Argentina, Turkey, China, and Taiwan.

Trump has said he will hold a press conference next week in which he will explain how he he will separate himself from the daily “business operations” of the Trump organization. But this won’t be enough, the letter says.

Although congressional Republicans have appeared reluctant to take any steps to investigate Trump’s personal finances, the letter’s signers urge Trump to take the issue seriously.

“Republicans and Democrats called for similar strong measures regarding the Clinton Foundation if Hillary Clinton were elected president,” the letter says. “It is no less important for you to take the steps set forth in this letter with The Trump Organization now that you will be entering the Oval Office.”

The full letter can be read here.

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Bipartisan Group Raises Red Flags About Trump’s Conflicts of Interest

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