What's going on with the Executive Departments

[RoseWilder]

 

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is insane: "New EPA documents reveal even deeper proposed cuts to staff and programs"

There is a graphic showing all the cuts. It's insane.

From the article:

Quote

 

In a recent interview, Sen. James M. Inhofe said he would like the department to focus on more traditional environmental concerns rather than addressing climate change.

“What I want them to do is to do what they are supposed to be doing – be concerned about the environment, the water, the air,” he said.    “I’d like to see an EPA there to actually serve people and make life better for them.”

Inhofe said some of the members of the scientific advisory boards scheduled for cuts had political biases. “They’re going to have to start dealing with science, not rigged science. "

 

Inhofe is an ignorant shitweasel. 

Quote

The document also recommends a $28.9 million cut in the enforcement of clean up projects for Superfund sites, places where hazardous materials require long-term response plans.

If you are curious if there are any Superfund sites near you:

https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A lengthy article about one of the weasels: "Mick Mulvaney’s evolution from ‘Shutdown Caucus’ to Trump’s budget salesman"

Quote

When the government last shut down, in 2013, Mick Mulvaney considered himself part of “the Shutdown Caucus” — a group of conservative House Republicans who held such a hard line that they were willing to let the lights go out.

Now, four years later, Mulvaney is on a collision course with his former comrades, responsible for convincing intransigent House Republicans to make a different kind of choice and pass a new spending bill by April 28 to avert another shutdown.

The former South Carolina congressman — who was elected in the tea party wave of 2010 and took pride in rejecting his own party’s budget proposals, one after another — now serves as President Trump’s budget director, making him the administration’s chief salesman over the next month on spending matters.

Once an outspoken leader of the House Freedom Caucus, Mulvaney now is tasked with bringing along the group with which his boss has plainly lost patience. Frustrated by their obstruction on health care, Trump last week threatened to destroy Freedom Caucus members in the 2018 midterm elections, even as Mulvaney is working with them to forge consensus on an agreement to keep the government funded.

But there are clear limits to Mulvaney’s influence, as this month’s embarrassing collapse of the Republican health-care bill laid bare. Some Freedom Caucus members speak privately of Mulvaney’s “philosophic convulsion,” as one put it, and are quick to note that he no longer speaks with the ideological purity they came to respect in him, but rather as an agent of a president on the hunt for a deal.

...

Before coming to Washington, Mulvaney, 49, was a state lawmaker and also owned and operated a South Carolina franchise of Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina. He first got elected to the House by unseating one of Congress’s long-serving lions — John Spratt, then the House Budget Committee chairman — in a district that Democrats had controlled for more than 100 years.

Spratt said he was surprised Mulvaney had pulled off getting appointed budget director, arguing that he has no “real experience in budget-making.”

“I’m still surprised that he was able to pull down a prize like OMB,” Spratt said. “It’s one of the most difficult jobs in the United States. He’s got to prove himself worthy of the job.”

...

 

[RoseWilder]

The Department of Education is a total shit show. What a shock. 

 

[fraurosena]

Question: science, education, climate, environment... what do these words have in common? 

Answer: they are excluded from this administration's dictionary.

Example:

Leaked draft of Donald Trump's plan for environmental agency shows even deeper cuts

Quote

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a new, more detailed plan for laying off 25 per cent of its employees and scrapping more than 50 programmes including pesticide safety, water runoff control, and environmental cooperation with Mexico and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement. [...]

The 21 March plan calls for even deeper reductions in staffing than earlier drafts. It maintains funding given to states to administer waste treatment and drinking water. But as a result, the budget for the rest of EPA is slashed 43 percent.

In a memorandum at the front of the 21 March document, the EPA's acting chief financial officer, David A. Bloom, said the agency would now "centre on our core legal requirements," eliminating voluntary activities on scientific research, climate change and education, and leaving other activities to state and local governments.

Yeah, laying of a quarter of employees is a damn fine way to MAGA, isn't it? 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Seriously? "Trump says DeVos is ‘highly respected’, U.S. education is ‘so sad’ — and there’s more"

Quote

President Trump was asked Tuesday about his education priorities and how he would address “the disconnect” between skills that companies are looking for and what young people entering the workforce are able to offer. This is what he said:

• “If you look at so many elements of education, and it is so sad to see what is coming, happening in the country.”
• He really likes charter schools and doesn’t think they are “an experiment” anymore.
• The Common Core State Standards has “to end” because “we have to bring education local.”
• Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is “doing a terrific job,” is “highly respected” and has “a tremendous track record.”

At the town hall event in Washington, Catherine Engelbert, chief executive of Deloitte, asked him about his priorities “around education” and around “the work of the future.”

She noted that the New York City public high school graduation rate is 70 percent, but the readiness of students for college and career is assessed at 37 percent, and she asked him to explain his education priorities given the extraordinary pace of change in the workplace and the “disconnect between what employers need and what are our students coming into the workforce are prepared to deliver.”

...

He also said that Ivanka Trump — his elder daughter and now White House counselor — and other administration officials are “totally in love” with education issues, and his final words on this subject at this event: “I think we are going to have a great four years.”

Trump’s comment that “it is so sad to see what is coming, happening in the country” is reminiscent of recent remarks DeVos made about public education in the United States. She said last week that U.S. public schools nationwide are in such bad shape that she isn’t “sure how they could get a lot worse.”

...

As for DeVos being “highly respected,” it seems fair to ask among what population. She is a favorite among some school reformers who support the principle of using public money for private education, but her confirmation process to be education secretary belies the idea that respect for her is widespread. Her confirmation by the Senate was assured only after Mike Pence became the first vice president in history to break a tie vote on a Cabinet nominee. She has been booed at visits to a few public schools and is routinely criticized (including on this blog).

So, Betsy's not bad enough, Ivanka is going to take over?

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow: "The left and right agree: Fox News destroyed EPA chief Scott Pruitt over climate change"

Quote

Any expectation that Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, would be able to cruise through an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” over the weekend was dashed within about 10 seconds of the interview.

“Good morning, Chris, how are you?” Pruitt asked host Chris Wallace.

That would be the softest question raised in the entire segment.

“Good,” Wallace replied quickly. And then, in the same breath, Wallace began grilling Pruitt about an executive order President Trump signed last week to dismantle President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which had required states to cut down on overall emissions and sought to limit carbon emissions from power plants.

Wallace noted that the EPA, under Obama's administration, had set a number of health milestones attainable by 2030 — if the Clean Power Plan were implemented. Those included 90,000 fewer asthma attacks, 300,000 fewer missed work and school days, and 3,600 fewer premature deaths per year.

“Without the Clear Power Plan, how are you going to prevent those terrible things?” Wallace asked Pruitt.

Pruitt argued that Trump was “keeping a promise to the American people to roll back regulatory overreach.” He also noted that the Clean Power Plan was subject to a stay by the Supreme Court; he did not mention that he, as former Oklahoma attorney general, was one of several Republicans who had originally filed the lawsuit against Obama's regulations.

“The president's keeping his promise to deal with that overreach, Chris,” Pruitt said. “It doesn't mean that clean air and clear water is not going to be the focus in the future. We're just going to do it right within the consistency of the framework that Congress has passed.”

Wallace was not having it.

“But sir, you're giving me a regulatory answer, a political answer,” Wallace said. “You're not giving a health answer.”

...

“New EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt embarrassed himself repeatedly on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, who kept Pruitt on the hot seat for 14 minutes as he pressed to get past Pruitt’s paper-thin talking points,” Jeremy Symons of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund wrote for the Huffington Post.

Symons went on to fact-check Pruitt's statistics, noting that while the CO2 reductions he cited were accurate, they mostly occurred during the Obama administration as a result of the former president's clean-energy plans.

“It's one thing to dodge the question, but it's especially weak to hide behind the success of Obama's initiative to justify erasing it all,” Symons wrote. “Pruitt’s attempting a complicated trick here — not only trying to sell a bottle of snake oil, but breaking the bottle during the pitch.”

Pruitt received an equally dismal review on Breitbart, which called Trump's new EPA chief out for having “sweated, stuttered, and floundered” through what ultimately was “an entirely needless concession to the enemy.”

“I just watched Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, get eaten alive by Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace,” columnist James Delingpole penned on the right-wing site. “Not only was it an ugly and painful sight but it was also a very dispiriting one.”

Delingpole's argument, however, was that Pruitt did a disservice by not being more assured in defending climate-change skeptics.

“Not only should he have known the most effective answers to give; but he should have been so confident in the rightness and truth of his cause that he should have been able to seize the moment and make the points that really need to be made about President Trump’s environmental policy,” Delingpole wrote. He added that the policy “is being enacted for the good of science, for the good of the economy and the core mission of Making America Great Again.”

...

Of course, Breitbart's issue was that he didn't shovel enough crap...

[fraurosena]

I'm not sure if the Secret Service officially qualifies as a department, but I'm posting this here anyway:

US Secret Service on 'verge of collapse', says former agent

Quote

Protecting Donald Trump's family is putting a major strain on Secret Service agents, a senator from the US leader's Republican Party has claimed. "They are flat worn out," Jason Chaffetz told The New York Times, adding that more staff were needed to keep up with the demands. 

The agency has seen staff levels drop to approximately 250 agents and 350 administrative and technical staff, but it currently has around 40 per cent more people under its protection than in previous non-campaign years.  

Mr Trump's wife Melania and son Barron are currently living in New York's Trump Tower and agents have also been required to guard his four adult children and their families. The US leader has  also requested protection detail for aides like Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway.

As a result, dozens of agents have been temporarily pulled off criminal investigations to serve two-week stints protecting members of the first family. 

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and author of The Fight: A Secret Service Agent’s Inside Account of Security Failings and the Political Machine, told The Independent that as a result, the agency is “on the verge of catastrophic collapse based on attrition rates,” In speaking to former colleagues he said resignations occur “almost daily.” 

 

[Childless]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I'm not sure if the Secret Service officially qualifies as a department, but I'm posting this here anyway:

US Secret Service on 'verge of collapse', says former agent

 

I know I wouldn't put up with this shit for long.  Move your gold digger wife and your snowflake kid into the White House, keep your ass in Washington where it belongs, and tell your worthless adult children to assign other company employees to do the heavy travelling.  Stop costing the tax payers a fortune and inconveniencing hard working people trying to keep you among the living.  Show some respect and appreciation for others.

[Penny]

22 minutes ago, Childless said:

 Show some respect and appreciation for others.

Not in his vocabulary. 

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, Penny said:

Not in his vocabulary. 

Respect? Meh. Respect is for weak, liberals, immigrants 

[JMarie]

On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 6:12 PM, Childless said:

I know I wouldn't put up with this shit for long.  Move your gold digger wife and your snowflake kid into the White House, keep your ass in Washington where it belongs, and tell your worthless adult children to assign other company employees to do the heavy travelling.  Stop costing the tax payers a fortune and inconveniencing hard working people trying to keep you among the living.  Show some respect and appreciation for others.

How many additional cuts will be made to pay for all the extra Secret Service detail?

[GreyhoundFan]

Lovely: "The cost of Betsy DeVos’s security detail — nearly $8 million over nearly 8 months"

Quote

Federal marshals are protecting Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at a cost to her agency of nearly $8 million over nearly eight months, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

The Education Department has agreed to reimburse the marshals $7.78 million for their services from mid-February to the end of September, said a marshals spokeswoman — an average of about $1 million per month.

Marshals will continue providing security for the education secretary for the next four years, or until either agency decides to terminate the arrangement, under an agreement signed last week. There was no information immediately available about what that would cost beyond September.

While the department is spending the additional money on DeVos’s security, members of the in-house security team that guarded previous secretaries remain on the payroll. But they are not guarding DeVos and have not been assigned new duties, said a department employee who was not authorized to speak to a reporter and asked for anonymity.

A department spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he could not comment on personnel decisions. He said the agency deferred to the federal marshals’ threat assessment and determination about what would be necessary to keep the secretary safe and able to do her job.

...

The new outlay is a tiny fraction of the department’s budget, but comes as the Trump administration has proposed slashing the spending plan by $9 billion, or 13.5 percent.

DeVos is the only Cabinet secretary under the protection of the marshals, law enforcement officers who are generally responsible for protecting federal judges, transporting prisoners, apprehending fugitives and protecting witnesses. They also guard the deputy attorney general and Supreme Court justices when they travel.

...

The Marshals Service is hiring nearly two dozen people to guard her, according to a person briefed on the arrangements, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The jobs include 20 positions at the GS-13 level ($95,000-$123,000 annual salary, depending on experience), and 2 positions at the GS-14 level ($112,000 to $146,000 annual salary).

Donahue declined to say how many people are guarding DeVos and whether they are protecting her around the clock, citing concern for operational security. The agency said it has determined that a threat to DeVos’s safety exists, but declined to describe the nature or intensity of that threat.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"EPA staffer leaves with a bang, blasting agency policies under Trump"

Quote

When Mike Cox quit, he did so with gusto.

After 25 years, he retired last week from the Environmental Protection Agency with a tough message for the boss, Administrator Scott Pruitt.

“I, along with many EPA staff, are becoming increasing alarmed about the direction of EPA under your leadership … ” Cox said in a letter to Pruitt. “The policies this Administration is advancing are contrary to what the majority of the American people, who pay our salaries, want EPA to accomplish, which are to ensure the air their children breath is safe; the land they live, play, and hunt on to be free of toxic chemicals; and the water they drink, the lakes they swim in, and the rivers they fish in to be clean.”

Cox was a climate change adviser for EPA’s Region 10, covering Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idaho. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, he’s been very involved in Bainbridge, Wash., coaching youth sports and serving on local boards and commissions. For two decades, the fit 60-year-old rode his bike eight miles to the ferry, then uphill to his Seattle office.

He can get away with being so blunt because he sent the letter on his last day on the job. Yet his views reflect the disgust and frustration among the agency employees he left behind. Interviews with staffers point to a workforce demoralized by President Trump’s and Pruitt’s statements that conflict with science. They are worried about a new, backward direction for the agency and nervous about proposed, drastic budget cuts.

They are also fearful.

Twice during an hour of interviews for this column, EPA workers in different parts of the country asked to communicate with me by using encryption software. All who spoke feared retaliation and would not allow their names to be used.

“It is pretty bleak,” one staffer, an environmental engineer, said about employee morale.

“It’s in the dumps,” said another.

“Pretty much everybody is updating their resumes. It’s grim,” added a third.

They and their colleagues are dedicated to EPA’s mission to “protect human health and the environment.” They fear that Trump administration policies will do the opposite.

Like Cox, they are upset with an administrator casting doubt on the central role carbon dioxide plays in climate change. “You will continue to undermine your credibility and integrity with EPA staff, and the majority of the public, if you continue to question this basic science of climate change,” Cox wrote.

Of course, Pruitt’s position is no surprise for a man who was appointed by a president who called climate change a hoax.

To see the effects of climate change, Cox invited Pruitt to “visit the Pacific Northwest and see where the streams are too warm for our salmon to survive in the summer; visit the oyster farmers in Puget Sound whose stocks are being altered from the oceans becoming more acidic; talk to the ski area operators who are seeing less snowpack and worrying about their future; and talk to the farmers in Eastern Washington who are struggling to have enough water to grow their crops and water their cattle.  The changes I am referencing are not impacts projected for the future, but are happening now.”

...

The EPA did not respond to requests for comment on Cox’s letter, but Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s EPA transition team, did.

Now that Trump is moving toward “radically downsizing the EPA,” Ebell said, “employees who are opposed to the Trump Administration’s agenda are either going to conduct themselves as professional civil servants or find other employment or retire or be terminated.  I would be more sympathetic if they had ever expressed any concern for the people whose jobs have been destroyed by EPA’s regulatory rampage.”

...

Of course the Branch Trumpvidian has to be nasty..."regulatory rampage"??

[candygirl200413]

I honestly feel for them working at the EPA. Especially now they have to remove language like "climate change", but if only it was actually concerning to those on the other side.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sessions orders Justice Dept. to end forensic science commission, suspend review policy"

Quote

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will end a Justice Department partnership with independent scientists to raise forensic science standards and has suspended an expanded review of FBI testimony across several techniques that have come under question, saying a new strategy will be set by an in-house team of law enforcement advisers.

In a statement Monday, Sessions said he would not renew the National Commission on Forensic Science, a roughly 30-member advisory panel of scientists, judges, crime lab leaders, prosecutors and defense lawyers chartered by the Obama administration in 2013.

A path to meet needs of overburdened crime labs will be set by a yet-to-be named senior forensic adviser and an internal department crime task force, Sessions’s statement said.

The announcement came as the commission began its last, two-day meeting before its term ends April 23, and as some of its most far-reaching final recommendations remained hanging before the department.

Justice officials said, for example, that no decision has been made on a call for new, departmentwide standards for examining and reporting forensic evidence in criminal courts across the country. But the department has decided to suspend work on setting uniform standards for forensic testimony.

...

 

[fraurosena]

5 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Sessions orders Justice Dept. to end forensic science commission, suspend review policy"

 

Ha, I was just going to post the very same article. It makes me roll my eyes so badly. What is it that makes them hate science so?

(don't answer that, it's retorical: I know fulll well that they find facts very threatening to their alternative reality)

[Childless]

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Ha, I was just going to post the very same article. It makes me roll my eyes so badly. What is it that makes them hate science so?

(don't answer that, it's retorical: I know fulll well that they find facts very threatening to their alternative reality)

They're not bright enough to understand science, therefore they fear it.

[candygirl200413]

So I just read (granted this is a week late that I saw it) but now Rick Perry is on the NSC? (national security council). http://www.statesman.com/news/local/rick-perry-added-national-security-council-core-decision-makers/zWCr3g9ZZhCTCn3380KOhI/

[Cartmann99]

23 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

So I just read (granted this is a week late that I saw it) but now Rick Perry is on the NSC? (national security council). http://www.statesman.com/news/local/rick-perry-added-national-security-council-core-decision-makers/zWCr3g9ZZhCTCn3380KOhI/

He wears his "smart" glasses now, so why worry?

*drinks wine, sobs a little*

[GreyhoundFan]

"DeVos dials back consumer protections for student loan borrowers"

Quote

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday withdrew a series of policy memos issued by the Obama administration to strengthen consumer protections for student loan borrowers.

The Education Department is in the middle of issuing new contracts to student loan servicing companies that collect payments on behalf of the agency. These middlemen are responsible for placing borrowers in affordable repayment plans and keeping them from defaulting on their loans. But in the face of mounting consumer complaints over poor communication, mismanaged paperwork and delays in processing payments, the previous administration included contract requirements to shore up the quality of servicing. Companies complained that the demands would be expensive and unnecessarily time consuming.

...

DeVos has withdrawn three memos issued by former education secretary John King and his under secretary Ted Mitchell. One of the directives, which was later updated with another memo, called on Runcie to hold companies accountable for borrowers receiving accurate, consistent and timely information about their debt. The 56-page memo called for the creation of financial incentives for targeted outreach to people at great risk of defaulting on their loans, a baseline level of service for all borrowers and a contract flexible enough to penalize servicers for poor service, among other things.

The Obama administration requested routine audits of records, systems, complaints and a compliance-review process. It also directed Runcie’s team to base compensation on response time to answering calls, completing applications for income-driven repayment plans, errors made during communications and the amount of time it takes to process payments. Another memo insisted FSA consider a company’s past performance in divvying up the student loan portfolio.

“In order to have accountability, there must be real consequences when servicers violate the law,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform. “DeVos’s actions today moves us away from true accountability, and creates dangers for the very student loan borrowers the department is responsible for protecting.”

The exhaustive list of demands were a direct response to an outpouring of complaints to the Education Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB, in particular, has documented instances of servicing companies providing inconsistent information, misplacing paperwork or charging unexpected fees. Because the federal government pays hundreds of millions of dollars to companies such as Navient, Great Lakes and American Education Services to manage $1.2 trillion in student loans, advocacy groups and lawmakers argue that more should be required of these contractors.

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Why did Scott Pruitt refuse to ban a chemical that the EPA itself said is dangerous?"

Quote

On March 29, Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, denied a  petition asking for a ban on the use of an insecticide called Chlorpyrifos. The petitioners, Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council, cited studies show that Chlorpyrifos can have serious health consequences, such as damaging the nervous system of infants and children.

Understanding why EPA denied  this petition means focusing on two related factors: the relative powerlessness of the communities affected by Chlorpyrifos and the relative invisibility of the health problems associated with it.

Chlorpyrifos is an insecticide used on corn, soybeans, broccoli, apples, and other row crops as well as on turf, in greenhouses, and other places. It has been in use since 1965, and by some estimates there are about 44,000 farms that use about  6-10 million pounds of Chlorpyrifos each year.

Chlorpyrifos belongs to the same chemical family as sarin nerve gas and works by attacking the nervous system. Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the EPA is charged with establishing maximum limits for insecticide residues in food substances.  Given Chlorpyrifos’ toxicity, the EPA requires “workers handling and applying Chlorpyrifos to wear additional personal protective equipment (chemical resistant gloves, coveralls, respirators), and restricting entry into treated fields for 24 hours up to five days.”

Epidemiological evidence suggests that Chlorpyrifos can cause brain damage to children and even to the unborn. A California study found that pregnant women who lived near fields where Chlorpyrifos was sprayed “were three times more likely to give birth to a child who would develop autism.”

In 2000, Dow Agro Sciences and six other manufacturers of Chlorpyrifos reached an agreement with the EPA to voluntarily discontinue its use for most residential purposes. Carol Browner, then EPA Director, noted that “poison control centers received about 800 calls a year, many involving children, for exposure to products containing Chlorpyrifos.”

Nevertheless, these companies have lobbied the EPA to continue to use Chlorpyrifos in agricultural operations. This is why in 2007, environmental groups petitioned the EPA to ban its use in agricultural use as well. When the EPA dragged its feet, these groups approached the courts, which ordered the EPA to rule on the petition by March 2017.

The EPA denied the petition to ban Chlorpyrifos. This is arguably part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to reduce the regulatory burden on companies.  As Pruitt noted: “we need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on Chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment … By reversing the previous Administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision-making – rather than predetermined results.”

While Pruitt emphasized “sound science,” the EPA’s own internal research notes the harmful effect of this pesticide. Of course, there is a debate about how to balance protecting public health and putting additional regulations on industry. Pruitt’s decision suggests that a ban on Chlorpyrifos does not pass his  cost-benefit test.

But this begs the question of how costs and benefits are calculated, and who bears these costs. As much scholarship has found, poor and marginalized communities tend to be disproportionately exposed to pollution. In part this is because areas with more pollution tend to have cheaper land and housing, which makes them more attractive to poor people. The poor and marginalized also have little political power and thus offer less resistance.

The same logic holds in this case. When the EPA banned the use of Chlorpyrifos for residential purposes, this benefited a wide cross-section of people whose health might suffer if this chemical were sprayed on their lawns.

By contrast, the use of Chlorpyrifos in agriculture primarily affects the people who live near farmland. These families are disproportionately Latino and some studies report that Latino children are disproportionately affected by pesticide exposure. Many of the people affected cannot vote because they are guest workers or undocumented. Consequently, they have less political power and this means that firms and the EPA may be less attentive to the harmful consequences of pesticide use on their health.

...

That's one way to ensure the Repubs stay in charge: poison all the poor people. This is awful.

[Cartmann99]

45 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Sigh: "Why did Scott Pruitt refuse to ban a chemical that the EPA itself said is dangerous?"

That's one way to ensure the Repubs stay in charge: poison all the poor people. This is awful.

Until this chemical can be proven to have had a damaging affect on the fetus of a wealthy white woman, nothing will be done. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sessions tells prosecutors to bring more cases against those entering U.S. illegally"

Quote

Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed federal prosecutors across the country Tuesday to make immigration cases a higher priority and look for opportunities to bring serious felony charges against those who cross the border illegally — the latest in a string of controversial maneuvers to crack down on illegal entry into the United States and expand the Justice Department’s role in immigration enforcement.

In a three-page memo, Sessions directed each U.S. attorney to appoint a border security coordinator to oversee immigration prosecutions and to make immigration offenses — such as crossing the border illegally or harboring those who do — “higher priorities.”

He told prosecutors to consider whether they could bring felony charges against those who had entered the United States illegally multiple times and to evaluate whether they could charge illegal immigrants with aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory two-year prison sentence. He said law enforcement would no longer catch and release undocumented immigrants taken into custody at the border.

The directive signals a more aggressive posture on immigration issues than the Obama administration had taken. Advocates and legal analysts said it raises troubling questions about the Justice Department’s intentions and its use of resources.

“Which prosecutors and agents does he want to divert from the growing threats like terrorism, cybercrime, the opioid and heroin trade, organized crime and cartel activity?” asked Jenny Durkan, who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington from 2009 to 2014. “The ‘surge’ philosophy always requires taking agents, money and prosecutors from other priorities. In fact, the cost of satisfying Washington will reduce the ability of every U.S. attorney to address the greatest threats in their communities.”

...

Already, Sessions said, the Justice Department has posted 25 immigration judges in detention centers along the border, and he plans to add 125 more over the next two years. Those judges, though, handle deportation proceedings — not criminal cases.

“This is a new era,” Sessions said. “This is the Trump era.”

Paul K. Charlton, the U.S. attorney for Arizona from 2001 to 2007, said Sessions’s new directive would simply overburden the U.S. district court system, which is already struggling to handle the volume of immigration cases. He said that when he was U.S. attorney, his office had the highest number of prosecutions in the country, “yet the number of people entering illegally did not dramatically decrease.”

“No one understands better than I do that prosecutions have a deterrent effect, but it’s not a solution. Prosecution and incarceration do not adequately address the real need, which is a reform of the immigration laws,” Charlton said.

As a senator, Sessions vigorously opposed immigration law reform.

Sessions’s memo offers blanket guidance to beef up enforcement, though it is somewhat short on specifics — omitting, for example, how to handle those coming to the United States with their children or those fleeing persecution, said Leon Fresco, who worked in the office of immigration litigation in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.

The Justice Department, Fresco said, could slap asylum seekers with identity theft charges merely for using fake passports to get out of a country that otherwise would not have let them leave, or could jail parents who cross the border with their kids — breaking up the family. That would run counter to the assertion by the homeland security secretary that officials will not separate children from their parents.

“There’s nothing in the memo that talks about the need to be careful about that,” Fresco said.

...

Sigh.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The new White House drug czar has quite an idea for where to put nonviolent drug users"

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Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) will be President Trump's drug czar, according to a report from CBS News. Marino's congressional voting record is that of a hard-liner on marijuana issues, and he recently said that he'd like to put nonviolent drug offenders in some sort of “hospital-slash-prison.”

As drug czar, Marino would oversee the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a branch of the White House that advises the president on drug policy issues. More than anything else, the office sets the tone of an administration's drug policy. Under President Barack Obama, for instance, the office quite publicly retired the phrase “war on drugs,” preferring rhetoric centered more on public health than criminal justice.

Whether that approach continues is something of an open question. Former drug czars from a more militant drug policy era have been publicly agitating to “bring back the war on drugs.” Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is moving to put criminal justice back at the forefront of drug policy.

Marino appears to be in that camp as well, but his views are unlikely to influence the administration's policy in the same ways Sessions's views do. That's because the drug czar's office has traditionally played a limited role in setting policy --instead, it coordinates drug control strategy and funding across the federal government.

Still, with the selection of Marino, another piece of Trump's drug control strategy falls into place. In Congress, Marino voted multiple times against a bipartisan measure to prevent the Justice Department from going after state-legal medical marijuana businesses. (The measure ultimately passed.)

Similarly, he voted against a measure to allow Veterans Affairs doctors to recommend medical marijuana to their patients, as well as against a separate measure to loosen federal restrictions on hemp, a non-psychoactive variant of the cannabis plant with potential industrial applications.

Those votes place Marino well to the right of dozens of his Republican House colleagues who supported the measures. He also voted against a measure that would loosen some restrictions on CBD oil, a non-psychoactive derivative of the cannabis plant that holds promise for treating severe forms of childhood epilepsy.

Asked about marijuana legalization last fall, Marino told a reporter that “the only way I would agree to consider legalizing marijuana is if we had a really in depth-medical scientific study. If it does help people one way or another, then produce it in pill form.” But, he added, “I think it’s a states’ rights issue.”

As a congressman, Marino called for a national program of mandatory inpatient substance abuse treatment for nonviolent drug offenders. “One treatment option I have advocated for years would be placing non-dealer, nonviolent drug abusers in a secured hospital-type setting under the constant care of health professionals,” he said at a hearing last year.

“Once the person agrees to plead guilty to possession, he or she will be placed in an intensive treatment program until experts determine that they should be released under intense supervision,” Marino explained. “If this is accomplished, then the charges are dropped against that person. The charges are only filed to have an incentive for that person to enter the hospital-slash-prison, if you want to call it.”

Forced inpatient treatment in a hospital-slash-prison would presumably include drug users who are not necessarily drug abusers. Only about 21 percent of current marijuana users meet diagnostic criteria for abuse or dependence, for instance. The other 79 percent do not need treatment for their drug use.

Marino acknowledged that implementing such a policy nationwide would “take a lot of money.”

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Good grief.