Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan has dismissed more than 40 key science advisers appointed by former President Donald Trump, a move he says will restore trust in the agency and reduce the influence of business interests over environmental regulations. “Resetting these two scientific advisory committees will ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific…
Michael Regan, the new administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, has confirmed that new climate regulations are a top priority for a once embattled agency. Regan says he is tasked with “rebuilding the morale” at an agency that was the target of many of former President Donald Trump’s rollbacks. “I hope that EPA will be…
According to an Associated Press report released today, rollbacks on anti-pollution rules and waste have likely already resulted in countless deaths tied to heart, lung disease, and premature births. “Thousands of oil and gas operations, government facilities and other sites won permission to stop monitoring for hazardous emissions or otherwise bypass rules intended to protect health and the…
The Environmental Protection Agency announced it would suspend enforcement of environmental regulations because of the coronavirus pandemic. The EPA made the decision following “an influx of requests from businesses for a relaxation of regulations as they face layoffs, personnel restrictions and other problems related to the coronavirus outbreak,” according to The New York Times, which broke…
Unsurprising coming from a man who has bragged about sexually assaulting women, his message is an endorsement of the rape of our Earth.
As sea levels rise and storms become more severe and as rates of chronic illness go up due to environmental pollution at least we know who to hold responsible.
While the new president is taking harsh steps to cut off transparency, the good news is that Democrats and the agencies themselves are fighting back.
“EPA’s report confirms what experts and the science show: that fracking operations put our drinking water at risk. “
Trump’s choices are unqualified, but they were chosen for their desire to eradicate federal agencies, not their level of competence or expertise.
This Circuit Court ruling will help ensure that the worst industrial polluters are on the hook for cleaning up their own contamination.
Methane emissions from fracking are the ‘most significant near-term threat’ of global warming.
The fossil fuel industry said no more regulations and the conservative justices obediently complied
Paul Goser (R-AZ) claims that McCarthy committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” by trying to define and protect Americans’ clean water supply
As the leading industrial nations in the world are working feverishly to combat climate change, Koch-Republicans work to further the damage
Some will call this a win for President Obama or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which it is. But it’s really a win for all of us who are based in reality and thus realize that poisoning our environment is killing people.
Take heart my Hispanic and Latino brothers and sisters. You’re not the only ones whose presence in the U.S. makes Republican’s skin crawl. At least if the parsed bigotry of South Carolina Republican Representative Trey Gowdy and some of his colleagues and constituents is any indication.
The Kochs will have an even greater reason to hate the Internal Revenue Service because due to a devious, and illegal, Koch plot to affect legislation neutering enforcement power of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service is beginning an investigation into an illegal Koch tax deduction.
What is missing from the long list of Koch demands to abolish virtually the entire government is exactly how it will help Americans.
It appears that although Earth Day is an annual event celebrated worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection, only Republicans are capable of using the day to perpetuate their anti-environment agenda in service to the Koch brothers.
As the nation commemorates Earth Day 2015 this week with a variety of observances, activities and awareness campaigns, it’s the perfect time to renew calls for bipartisan cooperation to address climate change.
To make matters that much worse, the over 2 million gallons of toxic water the oil and gas industry disposes of daily is pumped into the aquifer and poisons the diminishing underground supply at an alarming rate; so much so that well over a hundred (at last count) drinking-water wells have been shut down by state water regulators and the EPA due to oil waste-water contamination.
Boehner and Republicans are also intent on defeating President Obama’s climate change initiatives on myriad fronts such as stripping the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions from coal-fired electricity generating plants, or the air and water pollution related to coal mining. If Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are so intent on comparing America to China, they should embrace the President’s climate change agenda and follow the communist nation’s latest effort.
Speaker John A. Boehner boasted that Republicans primary duty was not to make laws, but eliminate them for their wealthy donors’ benefit. Now, the sitting Senate Majority Leader has went a step farther and issued a call to governors to become ‘law breakers’ to benefit the fossil fuel industry that bought control of Congress for Republicans.
The idea that Republicans would ever go along with further regulating the oil industry is laughable, and funding? Forget about it
Unwilling to do anything to help Americans, John Boehner concocts some more self-serving lies to blame Obama for his own failings
In the final analysis this is government of, by, and for the people, not a group of oil-drenched Koch-whores in Congress
Under attack and exposed, the Kochs have gone on the offensive, with their minions singing paeans of praise for our “benevolent” overlords
Republicans and the Koch brothers make no secret that next to taxes, there is no part of the federal government they despise more than the EPA, so it is a major slap in their faces that it was the agency they hate above all others that delivered the death knell of their 8 billion-dollar dream project.
Of all the reasons to not build the Keystone pipeline, one that is often overlooked, and ignored by the corporate media, is the real and present danger of a break in TransCanada’s rupture-prone pipeline the company claims is safe and environmentally friendly.
Republicans want to replace the laws of physics and say, “This is how reality works now” but you can’t legislate reality out of existence
Once again, President Obama has out-maneuvered Republican plans to further wreak havoc on the nation, and although a clean funding bill would have been ideal, it was never going to happen because Republicans.
There has been an ongoing Republican crusade to eradicate any legislative accomplish this President supported since the Koch brothers took control of the House after the 2010 midterms.
Whatever the reason, the so-called compromise appropriations bill is an affront to the American people, and revealed that many Democrats are what Howard Dean labeled “Republican-lite.”
To accomplish their goal of controlling the government, the Koch brothers have had to climb in bed with fundamentalist Christians intent on using the government to control and subvert women’s rights.
Now that Republicans will have control of both houses of Congress, they will start, immediately, passing legislation to revert back to Bush-era economics and undo the economic progress of the past six years.
To ensure that the “right kind of scientists” are doling out advice on environmental protections, Republicans in the House passed legislation to guarantee that oil industry scientists loyal to the Kochs, and not independent scientists, serve on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board.
Our right-wing brothers and sisters who go fiddlesticks berserk over the possible presence of the dreaded Ebola, but most likely live in close proximity or downwind of a chemical that makes the largely manufactured (1 death in the U.S.?) Ebola threat look like a hangnail.
What makes newspapers actions more despicable is that they are not owned by the Kochs, but they are using so-called “opinion and editorial” pages to promote Republican candidates, and push Kochs brother ideology and vision for America as the country’s salvation.
Jeff Denham is a typical teabagger-Republican in that his campaign rhetoric is dictated by the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and founded on monumental lies meant to frighten his supporters into voting against their own best self-interests; which they do with great enthusiasm.
Jindal is not only “acting” stupid about the reality of evolution and climate change, he is also feigning ignorance of America’s ascension as the biggest coal, oil, and natural gas producers and exporters in the world.
The anti-science crowd loves science that gave them automobiles, medicine, electricity, sanitation, and ability to communicate easily with any location on Earth, and they depend on medical science to eliminate threats to their lives. It is curious, then, that when the preponderance of scientists from around the world warn them of an existential threat to their health, well-being, and their nation’s survival, the extremists claim it is “an attack on their way of life.”
Republicans have claimed the new rules are a devious EPA scheme to seize private citizens’ land, and issued letter to the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers citing their opposition to specific details in the EPA’s proposal that do not exist.
The truth is that since teabaggers became de facto leaders of the Republican Party, they have contemplated various schemes to shutdown Washington.
McConnell asserted that belief in, and support for, the government is “an act of true radicalism,” something that makes the Founding Fathers and the great majority of Americans “true radicals.”
If any American thinks the Republicans will not follow through on their shutdown threat, they are deluded because McConnell’s own words encapsulated the entire conservative mindset when he promised that “Obama won’t like it, but that will be done. I guarantee it.”
Republicans in the House and Senate are so angry at the President over new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal-powered power plants that they are threatening to withhold previously agreed-on funding for the government unless the EPA regulations are eliminated by September 30.
Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is contemplating a 2016 run for the White House, appeared on CNBC Monday morning to talk with Squawk Box host Joe Kernen. The interview did not go well for Perry.
Texas Republicans want to “fix” the economy by getting rid of NASA, the air force, the Federal Aviation Administration and every other government agency established after 1776.
In the House of Representatives, Republicans signaled to the world that not only are they not discussing the veracity of man-made climate change, they signaled to the world they are smarter than climate scientists and officially denied that what 97% of climate scientists say is wrong and that there is no climate change threat.
The fact that not adhering to regulations kills workers never seems to bother Republicans, or their business sector supporters which is why they vehemently oppose regulations; especially those enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
Republicans are methodically defunding the Environmental Protection Agency to either abolish the agency or eliminate its ability to protect Americans from poison in the water they drink and toxins in the air they breathe.
Late Sunday night, January 26, one of my submissions entitled “The Real World Story of Human Lives Sacrificed at the Altar of Deregulation” was posted on PoliticusUSA. This is part two.
I went to one of those “poisoned citizens” meetings the other night. It was a community meeting called by a couple of outside law firms that have just sued a number of corporate polluters for freely releasing their deadly environmental cargo upon unsuspecting and vulnerable neighbors. The community gathering was held in a Spartanburg,…
Republicans began 2014 the same way they started the past three years; working solely for their special interests’ campaign donations and against the American people.
As doubts remain about the safety of West Virginia drinking water, Republicans were so certain there are sufficient regulations to keep the water supply safe, they passed three bills to eliminate the EPA’s authority over states.
The recent West Virginia chemical spill should be a stark reminder that Republicans’ greatest assault of all is on Americans’ water supply that is about to get a lot worse.
Freedom Industries knew the 70 to 80 year-old tanks were in desperate need of replacement and did not want to spend the money to repair them because regulations did not require them to.
The political attention of most Americans has been concentrated on the latest developments at HealthCare.gov. Meanwhile fracking explodes.
Fortunately for Virginians who embrace the Constitution’s guarantee of separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and equal rights, attorney general Ken Cuccinelli was defeated.
The dirty energy fascist Koch Brothers are planning to make tens of billions of dollars off the KeystoneXL pipeline before the tar ever enters American territory.
The threat of a government shutdown and credit default Republicans promise are not about spending, debt and deficit, or even the ACA; it is about ending the nation’s representative democracy.
The GOP’s debt ceiling demands are a composite Ryan budget, Koch policy meeting demands,”and ALEC social policy reform package all rolled into one ransom note, and the people are the big losers.
The more science discovers about how the universe works, the more regressive Republican thinking becomes. Dragons were real and prove the authority of the Bible. The proof? Dinosaurs of course!
Republicans are signing on to a new pledge to Charles and David Koch to oppose any legislation relating to climate change unless it is accompanied by an offsetting amount of tax cuts.
As economic stewards, Republicans have shown themselves to be abject failures on every front whether it is driving millions of Americans into poverty or creating hardship for businesses.
When obstruction for obstruction’s sake is the Republican reason for serving in government, any fantastical reason suffices to block the President’s choices.
A bipartisan group of Senators decided that the oil industry should makes decisions reserved for the Executive Branch and they introduced a bill giving Congress supremacy over the President.
The increased oil production is not all good news for Americans though, because the glut of oil is keeping gas prices curiously high.
When Romney said that no-one asked to see his birth certificate, he really told Americans that he is a pandering racist who thinks too highly of himself.