Trump is NOT the answer

[Ratszinger]

Posted by onawah (here)
Scott Pruitt and Brett Kavanaugh Have Something in Common
From Environmental Working Group by Scott Faber, Vice President of Government Affairs
MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2018

( Beginning this post with the following comment from Autumn, which I wholeheartedly echo:

Posted by AutumnW (here)
And those who are pro-Trump, understand that those who are not, are concerned about how this plays out, based partly on historic parallels. And they are not just worried for themselves, most are worried for the world, in general.

I will add that are A LOT of hyperlinks in this article (I've included just a FEW) offering well-documented proof of all assertions, particularly Pruitt's and Kavanaugh's voting records, as you will see if you go to the links.)

"It’s not just that they both believe that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the power to regulate greenhouse gases. Or that the EPA lacks the power to regulate air pollution that starts in one state and ends in another. Or that EPA can ignore the “co-benefits” of regulating mercury pollution from coal plants. Or even that both think it’s just fine to dump mine waste into streams.

It’s that they both lied about their environmental records when seeking Senate confirmation.

Pruitt, the infamous former EPA administrator forced in July to resign by multiple scandals, lied over and over again to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He lied about everything from his efforts to weaken Illinois River water quality standards to his role in an Oklahoma egg farm. He even lied about whether or not he had weighed in on mercury pollution regulations. He said he had not, but two filings bore his name. Pruitt’s lies were so bold, EWG asked the Department of Justice to investigate. https://cdn.ewg.org/sites/default/fi...206.1485979205

Brett Kavanaugh’s lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee, during hearings on his Supreme Court nomination, are even bolder.

Kavanaugh testified that as a federal appeals court judge he ruled for the environment in “many” cases. The truth is that in 16 out of 18 cases he ruled for more air and water pollution, and in 17 out of 18 cases he ruled for less protection for endangered species.

Kavanaugh ruled that it’s OK for factory farms to pollute the air of their neighbors and that it’s OK to dump hazardous waste. When Pruitt sought to delay rules to reduce methane emissions, Kavanaugh sided with polluters. When the EPA sought to replace fluorinated chemicals known as HFCs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Kavanaugh complained that the proposed rule pulled the rug out from under polluters – even though replacement chemicals are readily available.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/lissa-l...-good-business

In fact, few judges have as consistently ruled for polluters and against public health. But when asked about his environmental record, Kavanaugh told the Judiciary Committee that he had ruled in favor of the environment in a “large number” of cases.
https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysi...h#.W7LyeWhKgdW
In particular, Kavanaugh cited a case related to air emissions from cement plants. In reality, Kavanaugh ruled against cleaner air in the case.

A lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who represented environmental groups in that case, said Kavanaugh not only ruled for more air pollution from cement plants. He also set a dangerous precedent by ruling that the federal Clean Air Act did not include an important “anti-backsliding” provision.
https://twitter.com/jwalkenrdc/statu...73563962486789
The other cases Kavanaugh cited were decided on procedural, not substantive, matters. Though he once ruled that a case challenging climate rules was premature, he has since repeatedly ruled that EPA lacks the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Kavanaugh’s penchant for lying before the Senate is not limited to his record on the environment.

It also seems clear that he lied to the Senate about his roles, during his time in the George W. Bush administration, that he played in the judicial nominations of William Pryor and William Pickering, in the warrantless wiretapping program and in the detainee program.

He also misled the Senate about his role in the Starr investigation of President Clinton. His testimony last week was also filled with misleading statements.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/u...act-check.html
An editorial in The Boston Globe put it bluntly: “Brett Kavanaugh’s a liar. He lies about little things. He lies about big things. He lies under oath.”

That may not matter to President Trump, who The Washington Post says has made “more than 5,000 false or misleading claims.” But it matters to the American people, and it should matter to the senators whose vote could put him on the Supreme Court."

I find this entertaining at best. All presidents lie! Every last one of them has numerous false and misleading statements without exception. Read my lips! Please! I love how in the last line we try to make Trump unique! He is not a unique liar. Clinton, Obama, heck every candidate that ever got up there in front of us to run for office trying to get our vote lied to us. Find a new argument. "This one is stale. I did not have sexual relations with that woman!"

There are counter arguments to every topic you brought up that you conveniently left out here. EPA has a report one way or the other for every topic they are involved in depending on which side funded it. The tit for tat never ends and it's always like this. If they can't find big things to pick on for their opposition candidate to make them look bad or like a liar they immediately seek out all number of little things they can add up to create a new case to use to stall things further. Its just another angle of an old attack method used successfully by the old guard and people are growing quite sick of it personally. Show me a report that says one thing you can find a report that turns that right around to paint a completely different picture to present to the public.

[ichingcarpenter]

Posted by Ratszinger (here)
There are counter arguments to every topic you brought up that you conveniently left out here. EPA has a report one way or the other for every topic they are involved in depending on which side funded it. The tit for tat never ends and it's always like this. If they can't find big things to pick on for their opposition candidate to make them look bad or like a liar they immediately seek out all number of little things they can add up to create a new case to use to stall things further. Its just another angle of an old attack method used successfully by the old guard and people are growing quite sick of it personally. Show me a report that says one thing you can find a report that turns that right around to paint a completely different picture to present to the public.

OK......... show me your data that Trump is good for the environment vs your opinion.......tell me about his asbestos policies

Mod note from Bill: I repaired the quote, showing that it came from Ratszinger above, and wasn't just your own words, which the formatting of the post made it seem like. Please don't hesitate for a moment to ask for any guidance about quoting (which is often important for clarity!). A fairly clear guide is in the FAQs, here:

• How do I quote what another member has written?

[onawah]

Exactly my point!

Posted by Ratszinger (here)
I love how in the last line we try to make Trump unique! He is not a unique liar. Clinton, Obama, heck every candidate that ever got up there in front of us to run for office trying to get our vote lied to us.

[onawah]

Trump's new NAFTA deal would prolong his polluting legacy
From the Sierra Club
https://www.sierraclub.org/press-rel...cing-pollution
"Today, the Trump administration released the text of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. The administration has notified Congress of Trump’s intent to sign the proposed deal later this year, setting the stage for a potential fight over the deal in the next Congress. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal includes weak environmental terms that have historically enabled outsourcing of pollution and jobs, fails to make any mention of climate change, and includes special handouts to oil and gas corporations.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:

“Donald Trump’s incoherent trade policy has produced a pro-polluter proposal that would perpetuate NAFTA’s damage to our communities. Trump’s version of NAFTA would encourage further outsourcing of pollution and jobs, offer special handouts to corporate polluters like Chevron and ExxonMobil, and cement Trump’s polluting legacy for years after he has left office. The proposal not only fails to mention climate change – it would prolong NAFTA’s contribution to the climate crisis. The proposal as a whole falls far short of the minimum changes that are essential to halt NAFTA’s threats to our air, water, and climate. If this proposal -- hastily sealed to score political points -- remains as is, the Sierra Club will vigorously oppose it, while continuing to fight for a genuine replacement of NAFTA that puts people and the planet first.”

###

An Environmental Audit of Trump’s NAFTA Deal

During the NAFTA negotiations, leading U.S. environmental groups outlined minimum changes that must be made to NAFTA to halt the deal’s environmental damage. See here for these minimum environmental criteria.

A review of the text of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal reveals that it falls far short of these baseline criteria and would pose significant threats to our air, water, and climate. In short, the deal:

Supports further outsourcing of toxic pollution and jobs: The deal’s lack of binding environmental standards would allow more corporations to evade U.S. environmental policies by shifting jobs and toxic pollution to Mexico, where environmental policies are weaker. For example, the lack of any binding lead pollution standards means that corporations would still enjoy NAFTA’s incentives to dump their lead waste in Mexico, which has contributed to job loss in the U.S. and toxic lead poisoning in border communities.

Denies climate change: The deal fails to even mention climate change. This denialism leaves intact NAFTA’s incentives for corporations to dodge the hard-fought clean energy policies of U.S. states by moving to Mexico, eliminating jobs and perpetuating climate pollution. This climate loophole only reinforces the U.S.’s status as the world’s largest outsourcer of climate pollution.

Rolls back the environmental standards of past trade deals: The deal takes a significant step backwards from the environmental protections included in the last four U.S. trade deals by failing to reinforce a standard set of seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) that protect everything from wetlands to sea turtles. The deal includes standard enforcement language for only one of the seven MEAs, while using weak language for two MEAs and failing to even mention four of these essential environmental agreements.

Includes weak environmental terms: The environment chapter is primarily filled with non-binding terms that mirror the weak words of the polluter-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership. For example, the text “recognizes that air pollution is a serious threat to public health,” but then fails to include a single binding rule to reduce the air pollution that NAFTA has exacerbated. Much of the language appears designed to greenwash the deal, not to rectify NAFTA’s threats to wildlife, ecosystems, or clean air and water.

Copies a failed enforcement system: Even the strongest language will only be effective if enforced. The deal essentially replicates the same failed environmental enforcement mechanism from past U.S. trade agreements. Not once has the U.S. used this mechanism in past trade deals to bring a case against a U.S. trade partner for environmental abuses, despite widely documented violations.

Offers a dangerous handout to Chevron and ExxonMobil: The deal makes progress in curtailing the overreaching corporate rights in NAFTA’s “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system...but then uniquely offers those egregious rights to notorious corporate polluters. This special handout is available to all U.S. oil and gas corporations that have, or may at some point have, government contracts for offshore drilling, fracking, oil and gas pipelines, refineries, or other polluting activities in Mexico. That means, for example, that Chevron and ExxonMobil – the two largest corporate climate polluters in history and repeat users of ISDS – would be allowed to challenge environmental protections in Mexico by relying on the same broad corporate rights that they have used to successfully challenge public interest policies from Ecuador to Canada.

Encourages fracking: The deal preserves a NAFTA rule that effectively bars the U.S. government from determining whether gas exports to Mexico are in the public interest. This automatic gas export guarantee facilitates increased fracking in the U.S., expansion of cross-border gas pipelines, and growing dependency on climate-polluting gas in Mexico.

Offers corporate polluters a new way to weaken environmental policies: The deal’s “good regulatory practices” rules could give corporate polluters a new way to delay, weaken, or halt new environmental regulations. The rules offer corporations extra opportunities to challenge proposed regulations before they are finalized, and to ask that existing regulations be repealed. These deregulatory rules could make it harder to reverse the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks once Trump leaves office, which could extend his polluting legacy for years."

[onawah]

Methane poses a grave danger to our planet
(From NRDC's updates, today. From what I have gathered, carbon dioxide as a threat is a non-issue, but methane and other pollutants from the oil and gas industries are another matter.)

"While climate leaders gathered at the Global Climate Action Summit last month, President Trump announced yet another climate-wrecking rollback that poses catastrophic consequences for the fight against climate change.

Trump and Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler are proposing to weaken the common-sense Waste Prevention Rule that stops the oil and gas industry from unnecessarily leaking massive amounts of potent, climate-warming methane gas and other toxic pollution.

Methane is the second-biggest driver of climate change after carbon dioxide, trapping more than 80 times as much heat in the atmosphere, pound-for-pound, as CO2. And the oil and gas industry is the largest industrial source of methane emissions.

Trump's attempt to weaken these methane protections is a blatant giveaway to his fossil fuel allies at the expense of the American people, our clean air, our health, and the future of our planet.

The EPA is accepting public comments on this dangerous rollback, so we need your help to flood the agency's inbox with letters of public opposition.

Stand with NRDC and urge the EPA to reject Trump's reckless rollback of important protections to prevent wasteful leaks of climate-warming methane gas.

Take action: https://act.nrdc.org/letter/methane-...254563..gk5RwD

Trump and his allies first proposed rolling back methane standards for new oil and gas operations back in March 2017. But NRDC and our partner groups sued in court, arguing that the rollback was a violation of the Clean Air Act, and won.

NRDC will do everything in our power to stop this brazen attack on our climate — including fighting back in court again if we must. But we also need to mobilize massive public opposition to this dangerous and callous move.

Oil and gas operations are incredibly wasteful, leaking millions of tons of methane and burning off vast amounts of natural gas each year. Under Trump's proposed rollback, the EPA estimates that 380,000 tons more methane will be released into the air annually— the equivalent of the yearly climate pollution of more than 2.6 million cars.

Toxic air pollutants released alongside methane can also trigger asthma attacks and increase cancer risks for those nearby. Weakening these standards will increase health risks for neighboring communities that depend on those protections to keep the air they breathe clean.

Join us in urging the EPA to reject Trump and Wheeler's disastrous plan to dismantle the Waste Prevention Rule, which regulates methane emissions, at the expense of our public health, clean air, and climate.

Americans overwhelmingly support federal efforts to cut methane pollution. Even fossil fuel companies have acknowledged that they can live with and operate around these common-sense regulations.

This attack on clean air is, of course, just one in a growing onslaught of efforts by Trump and his allies in Congress to roll back critical climate protections introduced under the Obama administration — including the landmark Clean Power Plan and lifesaving clean car standards — all for polluter profit.

NRDC is ready to fight back through whatever means are necessary. But for now, will you stand with us and call on the EPA to reject Trump's reckless oil and gas giveaway before it's too late?

Thanks for all that you do."

Sincerely,
Rhea Suh
President, NRDC

[AutumnW]

I think we can all safely conclude that the reality is we have outsourced pollution to China and if industry returns to the U.S. we will get it back. There is a possibility that there is just enough of a regulatory structure remaining it could put the brakes on some of the excesses of trashing the environment.

Americans will be much less tolerant of what the Chinese have put up with too. That just might have an effect. Ever hopeful!

[Merlinus]

Presidents are selected, not elected.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

This article will elaborate on the above quote

https://steemit.com/freedom/@tsbloye...ed-not-elected

[onawah]

War on children's health
White House Strikes Discussion of Impacts of Climate Change on Children’s Health from Draft EPA Rule
https://www.ewg.org/release/white-ho...e#.W7ULHGhKgdU
OCTOBER 3, 2018

WASHINGTON – "The White House removed key language documenting the heightened risks climate change presents to children from a draft EPA proposal to repeal a rule to reduce heat-trapping chemicals leaking into the atmosphere, according to new documents first reported by E&E News.

The chemicals, known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, are used in refrigeration and air-conditioning appliances and are a significant contributor to the depletion of the ozone layer. President Obama, as part of his plan to combat global warming, issued a rule aimed at reducing the amount of HFCs released from appliances that use them as coolants.

Among the passages the Trump White House struck from the original rule from the Obama administration.

Certain populations and life stages, including children, the elderly and the poor, are most vulnerable to climate-related health effects.

Impacts to children are expected from heat waves, air pollution, infectious and waterborne illnesses, and mental health effects resulting from extreme weather events. In addition, children are among those especially susceptible to most allergic diseases, as well as health effects associated with heat waves, storms and floods.

“Every day we see more evidence that this administration is actively working against the health and safety of the most vulnerable Americans – our children,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Tragically, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Trump administration is waging a war on children.”

The report on the deleted language from the climate rule comes just days after the head of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection was placed on administrative leave with no explanation, fueling speculation that the office itself is on the chopping block.

The EPA is also fighting a federal court ruling ordering the agency to ban of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which can cause brain damage in children at even low doses. Former EPA chief Scott Pruitt, in one of his first major decisions as the agency’s administrator, vacated an expected ban of the pesticide just weeks after meeting with the head of Dow Chemical, which manufactures the chemical.

“E&E’s scoop is a chilling reminder that for all of this administration’s anti-science, anti-kids’ health acts we know about, there are others that remain hidden,” Cook said. “We are seeing rollbacks of public health and environmental protection that could take years to restore.” "

[onawah]

From Organic Consumers Assoc.
10/4/18
"ACTION ALERT
Wrong Choice
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is an agency that operates under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Its mission statement is: Protecting the public’s health by ensuring the safety of meat, poultry and processed egg products.

You would think that the person in charge of an agency whose mission is to protect your right to safe food would be someone with an independent scientific background.

You’d think. But Trump has just tapped a scientist with a long history of looking out for the interests of corporations—like meat and pharmaceutical industry giants Cargill, Merck and Perdue—for the position of under secretary of the FSIS.

There’s already reason to suspect that the FSIS isn’t protecting your meat. A recent report by Consumer Reports raised questions about drug residue contamination in meat and poultry after its analysis of residue testing conducted by the FSIS revealed alarming levels of multiple drugs, including some that are strictly prohibited in meat production. Instead of shutting down offending meat producers and warning consumers about what the agency’s testing found, FSIS officials accused Consumer Reports of getting it wrong. But Consumer Reports stands by its work, as outlined in this letter to the USDA.
https://consumersunion.org/wp-conten...-6-AM-2018.pdf
The last thing we need are more industrial meat cheerleaders in charge of food safety."

TAKE ACTION: Tell your Senators: Don’t put a scientist-for-hire in charge of food safety!
https://advocacy.organicconsumers.or.../7235/action/1

And this:
Knock, Knock, Knockin'
10/4/18
"Last week, staff from OCA and Citizens Regeneration Lobby (our 501(c)(4) lobbying arm) joined other groups in Washington, D.C. for a day of lobbying for better Farm Bill policies.

It was a day of knocking on doors, talking to members of Congress, pushing for policies that support the kind of farmers and farming that produce healthy, organic food, healthy local economies and a clean environment.

We saw glimmers of hope. But we have a long way to go before we get a Farm Bill that stops subsidizing industrial polluters, and starts promoting regenerative alternatives.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, farmer, author and activist Wendell Berry, quoting agricultural journalist Alan Guebert, said:

“Alan Guebert was right when he said in one of his columns that this farm bill will be much like the last one insofar as it will not address the real problems of agriculture. Those problems, as you know, are soil erosion, soil degradation, the pollution of waterways by sediment and toxic chemicals, various ecological damages, the elimination of small farms, the destruction of the cultures of husbandry and the ruin of country towns and communities. And maybe we should add specifically the curse of overproduction, which at present, as often before, is the major and the cruelest problem.”

Guebert paints a realistic picture of today’s industrial agribusiness model—and a pessimistic outlook for the future of the Farm Bill.

We can do better. But it will take more of us letting Congress know what we want when it comes to our food, our rural communities, our environment.

With your help, we’ll engage more farmers, more retailers and more consumers like you in efforts to convince Congress that the future of agriculture is regenerative.

Let’s keep knock, knock, knockin' on Congress' doors!"

[onawah]

The Arctic Refuge is in danger of seismic testing
Stand with the Arctic Refuge
The Wilderness Society
10/4/18

TAKE ACTION› https://p2a.co/To6t4Bs

"The Trump administration is trying to open the Arctic Refuge to drilling and now one company wants to take them up on their offer. SAExploration intends to conduct seismic testing for oil in the refuge. The testing would disturb denning polar bears and their cubs, and scar one of the last untouched wilderness areas in the U.S.

Tell SAExploration's CEO and leadership team that seismic testing would do irreparable harm to the Arctic Refuge.

Seismic testing requires destructive 90,000-lb “thumper trucks” that send shock waves into the ground. If that weren’t enough, vehicle caravans and weekly relocations of huge worker camps would damage the refuge’s fragile tundra.

Speak out for the Arctic Refuge's polar bears and other wildlife. Tell SAExploration's CEO and leadership team NOT to conduct seismic testing in the Arctic Refuge."

[onawah]

EPA turns its back on children's health
From Pesticide Action Network
http://www.panna.org/blog/epa-turns-...farmer-justice
10/5/18

"Well if it wasn’t clear before, it’s crystal clear now. This administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) isn’t protecting children.

Yes, that’s a harsh charge. And yes, EPA officials are denying it, loudly protesting that children’s health remains a top priority. But the agency’s recent actions very clearly indicate otherwise.

What brain-harming pesticide?
Last week, the administration appealed a recent court decision ordering EPA to (finally!) ban chlorpyrifos. In response to a legal challenge by PAN and our allies, the judges gave agency officials 60 days to ban this brain-harming pesticide.

It’s true that federal agencies don’t usually move that quickly — but in this case it was entirely doable, since all the paperwork is already done. EPA was poised to ban chlorpyrifos in March 2017, in response to a legal petition we filed with partners back in 2007.

Enter Administrator Scott Pruitt (since resigned in disgrace), who decided to do Dow Chemical’s bidding and put the brakes on banning their product. He didn’t, however, bother to provide any evidence refuting the findings from EPA’s own scientists that the pesticide was too dangerous for children, and should be withdrawn.

Hence our most recent legal challenge. It turns out our public agencies aren’t allowed to make decisions on a whim. We’re confident that the court will hold firm on their decision that EPA should, in fact, do their job and ban chlorpyrifos.


What children’s health expert?
Then came the news that the head of EPA’s small but mighty Office of Children’s Health Protection (OCHP) was asked to turn in her badge. Dr. Ruth Etzel, a respected epidemiologist and pediatrician, was put on “administrative leave” with no explanation.

OCHP had been increasingly sidelined under this administration as they tried to do their work of ensuring children’s unique vulnerabilities were considered by every office across the agency.

It looks like Dr. Etzel’s departure signals further marginalization — or dismantling? — of the office, which was established in 1997. Outraged children’s health advocates across the country are raising a ruckus. The American Academy of Pediatrics delivered a letter to Acting Administrator Wheeler calling for Dr. Etzel’s reinstatement, with more than 130 groups (including PAN) signed on.

In an op-ed in the New York Times earlier this week, Dr. Philip Landrigan and Dr. Lynn Goldman sounded the alarm about the dangers of losing this office that advocates for children’s health within the agency: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/o...en-health.html (that article is copied below)

It is a small but highly effective program that protects the health of all Americans by protecting the most vulnerable among us. Dismantling it could do irreparable harm.

So those official statements that children’s health remains a “top priority” for EPA? We don’t think so."

ACT NOW! URGE EPA TO BAN CHLORPYRIFOS
http://www.panna.org/take-action/epa...os-ban-overdue

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/o...en-health.html
A Bad Move That Could End Up Exposing Kids to Chemicals
Without explaining why, the E.P.A. has sidelined its top children’s health advocate.

Oct. 2, 2018
By Philip J. Landrigan and Lynn R. Goldman
Dr. Landrigan and Dr. Goldman are physicians long involved in public health policy.

"Last week, the leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency took aim at its own Office of Children’s Health Protection by placing its director, Dr. Ruth Etzel, a distinguished pediatrician and epidemiologist, on “administrative leave.”

At first glance, the action might look like mere bureaucratic shuffling, though the agency, while saying she was not facing disciplinary action, offered no explanation for the move.

But we worry that it signals one of two actions: closing the office, which has argued for tougher regulations on industrial pollutants, or minimizing its role in rule-making. For its part, the E.P.A. says children’s health programs are not in jeopardy. But there is no question that if Dr. Etzel is pushed aside, the chemical industry will benefit and America’s children will be harmed.

In 1993, the National Academy of Sciences reported that children and especially infants in the womb are profoundly different from adults in how they are harmed by exposure to pesticides and other chemicals. The academy’s Committee on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, of which one of us (Dr. Landrigan) was chairman, concluded that children are not merely little adults. They are uniquely sensitive and keeping them healthy requires special protections.

Exposure to even low levels of toxic chemicals during pregnancy and in the first years after birth can damage children’s brains and other developing organs, leading to increased risk of learning disabilities, A.D.H.D., dyslexia, autism and breathing and reproductive problems. Laws and regulations aimed at protecting adult health do not protect children. The academy committee urged that federal pesticide law be fundamentally restructured to shield infants in the womb and young children from chemical harm.

Since then, Congress has passed two laws that contain explicit provisions protecting children’s health. One of them, the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, directed the E.P.A. to impose a child-protective safety benchmark in setting standards for pesticides used on food crops, a requirement that has reduced pesticide applications and led to the banning of several highly toxic chemicals.

The safeguards for children’s health embedded in these laws are much needed in the United States today. Air pollution remains a problem and will worsen if the Trump administration succeeds in increasing coal combustion and relaxing vehicle emission standards. More than 80,000 chemicals are being used in food packaging, clothing, building materials, furniture, carpets, cleaning products, cosmetics, toys and baby bottles. They are also widespread in the environment. Among children aged 1 to 5, for instance, some 500,000 are estimated to have elevated levels of lead in their blood.

Exposure to chemicals is linked to a wide array of pediatric diseases. Lead and mercury can cause brain damage with loss of intelligence. Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are linked to reductions in children’s intelligence and alterations in behavior. Baby boys exposed in the womb to phthalates, a chemical used in plastics, are at risk of birth defects in their reproductive organs and behavioral abnormalities. Prenatal exposure to brominated flame retardants, used in electronics and furniture, is linked to I.Q. reduction and shortening of attention span.

Prenatal exposure to the insecticide chlorpyrifos is associated with reduced head circumference at birth, developmental delays and cognitive impairments. The regulatory story of this chemical is particularly instructive about the E.P.A. under President Trump. Last year, Scott Pruitt, the agency’s administrator at the time, declined to remove chlorpyrifos from the market despite the recommendation of the agency’s own scientists, based on health studies that suggested it was harming children. In August, a federal appeals court ordered the agency to ban the chemical.

To shield children from these hazards, the E.P.A. formed the Office of Children’s Health Protection in 1997, a year after passage of the Food Quality Protection Act. For more than two decades this office has played an outsize role in safeguarding children’s health. It has worked with teachers and school boards to improve air quality in schools. It helped push the E.P.A. to strengthen risk assessments for carcinogens. It educates pediatricians, obstetricians and parents about how to reduce infants’ chemical exposure.

It has also insisted that the E.P.A.’s plan for enforcing the 2016 Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act protect children’s health. That law requires, among its other mandates, a risk-based review of all chemicals in commerce. In recent months, the office has played a critical role in trying to protect children from atmospheric mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants as the Trump administration reconsiders an Obama-era rule regulating those discharges.

The Office of Children’s Health Protection plays a vital role in safeguarding America’s children — born and unborn — against toxic environmental hazards. It is a small but highly effective program that protects the health of all Americans by protecting the most vulnerable among us. Dismantling it could do irreparable harm."

Philip J. Landrigan is the director of the Global Public Health Initiative at Boston College. Lynn R. Goldman is the dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University and a former assistant administrator at the E.P.A. for toxic substances.

[onawah]

Russian Asbestos Giant Praises Trump Administration Actions to Keep Deadly Carcinogen Legal
https://www.ewg.org/release/russian-...7#.W7fBxmhKgdX
(I wonder if Russia is taking a sarcastic jab at Trump, but thanks to them at least for pointing out one more instance of the Trump Admin being short-sighted, penny wise, pound foolish, and putting profits before the common good. How many billions have been spent on removing asbestos from buildings, and how many have suffered from asbestosis? Some staggering statistics here: "Another thing Canada and the U.S. have in common is something neither is proud of. They still allow the use of asbestos, which costs each country billions of dollars each year in asbestos-related occupational disease. According to the Globe and Mail, “the economic burden of lung cancer and mesothelioma from work-related asbestos exposure in Canada amounts to an average of $818,000 per case.” That’s around $1.7 billion per year and the Globe notes that this is likely an underestimate. Other sources, such as the medical journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, estimate the annual cost at $2.35 billion. For a country of close to 37 million people, the economic burden is more than taxing." From https://www.mesotheliomagroup.com/09...tos-costs.html ) And that doesn't take into consideration the billions more spent on removing it from old buildings and disposing of it safely.

"WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 2018

WASHINGTON – One of the world’s biggest producers of asbestos, a Russian company with ties to Vladimir Putin, is praising President Trump for allowing asbestos to remain legal in the U.S.

The company’s applause for Trump comes as Russia is poised to become the leading importer to the U.S. of asbestos, which causes diseases that kill an estimated 15,000 Americans a year. A recent study led by Jukka Takala, president of the International Commission on Occupational Health, found the death toll from asbestos exposure may be much higher, at nearly 40,000 Americans a year and more than 255,000 a year worldwide.

On June 25, the asbestos producer Uralasbest posted photos on its Facebook page of pallets of its signature product, chrysotile asbestos, wrapped in plastic adorned with Trump’s image. Trump’s picture is at the center of a large red seal declaring: “APPROVED BY DONALD TRUMP, 45th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

In an English translation of the post, Uralasbest said:

Donald is on our side! … He supported the head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who stated that his agency would no longer deal with negative effects potentially derived from products containing asbestos. Donald Trump supported a specialist and called asbestos “100% safe after application."

Pruitt resigned as EPA administrator last week, after an 18-month tenure marred by ethical scandals, profligate spending of taxpayer dollars and aggressive attempts to roll back public health protections. One of his last decisions was to exclude so-called legacy uses of asbestos from the scope of an ongoing safety assessment. He also declined to ban new uses of asbestos. The Obama administration had designated asbestos a priority for a new safety assessment under the nation’s new toxic chemicals law.

Trump has long rejected the scientific consensus that asbestos is so dangerous that there is no safe level of exposure. In his 1997 book, “The Art of the Comeback,” the future president claimed asbestos is “100 percent safe, once applied.” In 2012, he tweeted that if asbestos had not been removed from the World Trade Center, the twin towers “would never have burned down” in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Not to be outdone in showering adoration on Trump, Kostanai Minerals, the largest chrysotile asbestos producer in neighboring Kazakhstan, shared the post on its own Facebook page.

Uralasbest claims its asbestos mine in the Ural Mountains city of Asbest is the largest in the world. According to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, in 2010, Putin met with the head of the Uralasbest workers union, who said he “promised to support Russian producers of chrysotile, especially in situations where we find ourselves under political pressure at the international level.” The Center also reported that Kostanai Minerals has received financial backing from state-controlled banks in both Russia and Kazakhstan.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, in 2016, roughly 95 percent of the asbestos imported into the U.S. came from Brazil, with the rest coming from Russia. The Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission estimate that 705 metric tons of asbestos came into the U.S. in 2016, compared to 343 metric tons the year before.

But in November, Brazil joined more than 60 other nations and banned asbestos. Brazil’s ban leaves Russia, Kazakhstan and China as the world’s dominant asbestos producers. With Brazil no longer providing the vast majority of asbestos to the U.S., Russia and Kazakhstan could fill the void.

“Vladimir Putin and Russia’s asbestos industry stand to prosper mightily as a result of the Trump Administration’s failure to ban asbestos in the U.S.,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Helping Putin and Russian oligarchs amass fortunes by selling a product that kills thousands each year should never be the role of a U.S. president or the EPA, but this is the Trump administration. Russia’s interests are Trump’s interests, and any clear-eyed American knows it.”

“By allowing asbestos to remain legal, the Trump administration would be responsible for a flood of asbestos imports from Russia and other countries into the U.S., as well as the wave of illnesses and deaths that will continue for years to come,” said Linda Reinstein, co-founder and president of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization. “Americans know Putin does not have their interests at heart, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that neither does Trump.”

Trump and Putin are scheduled to hold a one-on-one summit in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16. The agenda for the meeting has not been made public, but it is safe to assume talks over trade between the two countries could be part of the discussion."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lqDgp8IYg78

[onawah]

During Kavanaugh Craziness, News About DeVos Gets Lost
From: Education Opportunity Network
10/11/18
http://educationopportunitynetwork.o...evos-gets-lost

U.S. President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos make “U” symbols with their hands while posing with the Utah Skiing team as they greet members of Championship NCAA teams at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 17, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

"While the serial outrages of the Trump administration continue to make headlines and whip up popular protests, there’s a danger that the more mundane activities of his cabinet officials and their underlings are being ignored.

Take US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, for instance, whose nomination drew a history-making opposition and set off an avalanche of ridicule in social media and late-night comedy, but who now operates largely out of public view behind a security screen that is projected to cost the taxpayers nearly $8 million over the next year.

What’s largely being overlooked behind all the lurid headlines and endless insults are all the ways in which officials like DeVos are quietly at work continuing to use our tax money to advance a deeply troubling agenda.

Doing the Koch Brothers’ Bidding

In her latest low-profile appearance, DeVos and her high-priced security detail paid a friendly visit to Koch Industries in Wichita, Kansas without telling local officials, the media, or any other public outlet. The purpose of her stopover was to meet with a select group of representatives of Youth Entrepreneurs, a Wichita-based non-profit group founded by Charles and Liz Koch.

Youth Entrepreneurs, according to an investigative report by the Huffington Post, provides high school curriculum designed to inculcate students in the blessings of unfettered capitalism and libertarian ideology. Among the teachings included in the program’s lesson plans and classroom materials are that “the minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Public assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.

“Charles Koch had a hands-on role in the design of the high school curriculum,” the reporter reveals, based on leaked emails from a Google group left open to the public. “The goal … was to turn young people into ‘liberty-advancing agents’ before they went to college, where they might learn ‘harmful’ liberal ideas.”

While the purpose of DeVos’s trip to Youth Entrepreneurs remains unclear, it fits a pattern of DeVos using her visits to select education programs in order to feed her propaganda campaign for market-based education reform and privatizing public schools.

Selling the Education ‘Reform’ Lie

Another recent trip brought the DeVos caravan to New Orleans to drop in on two charter schools – nearly all taxpayer-supported schools in New Orleans are charter schools – and praise the district for being “a great example of what can be if people embrace change.”

The schools were carefully selected to build her narrative of market-based reform, the ideology that remade New Orleans schools after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

But as Louisiana-based public-school teacher Mercedes Schneider explains on her personal blog, the charter schools DeVos chose to visit are hardly representative of the conditions of New Orleans public schools under the reform regime.

First, both schools are among the few A-rated schools, based on state rankings, in a sea of D- and F-rated schools. Further, the two schools have much higher percentages of white students than is typical in a district that is overwhelmingly populated by black and brown students.

So what DeVos really illustrates by her visits to these New Orleans schools isn’t how reform produces what works but how reform creates “incredible racial inequity” Schneider correctly concludes.

Stoking the Charter School Industry

It’s important to note how the rhetoric DeVos employs in her propaganda campaign for market-based education reform gets reflected in the policy decisions made by her department.

As Politico reports, USDoE recently awarded $399 million in federal grants to expand and support charter schools across the country.

The grants, made through the Charter Schools Program, which has enjoyed a $40 million boost under the Trump administration, went to individual charter school operators and various state education agencies and nonprofit groups that either help secure funding for charters, push for their expansions, or advocate for the charter cause.

Even a cursory scan of some of the recipients warrants deeper scrutiny.

For instance, among three Alabama charter schools that received $1 million each in grant money, two have already been the subjects of multiple lawsuits.

Birmingham charter Legacy Prep – which recently changed its name, postponed its opening date, and has yet to find a building – just settled a messy court case with its founder – a Baptist church pastor – over who had authority over the school’s operations and whether the school’s governing board was properly constituted.

The court settlement follows closely after the Alabama Public Charter School Commission won its effort to overturn the Birmingham district school board’s original denial of the charter’s application. The district board had ruled last year that the school’s application did not meet the requirements of the district’s request for charter proposals.

So now, thanks to DeVos and her department, federal funds are going to a charter school under suspect leadership, with no building, that the district doesn’t want.

Similarly, another Alabama charter with a million dollar grant, University Charter School in Livingston, had to hurdle a lawsuit to open its doors.

In May, the county board that oversees the district filed suit to prohibit the charter’s authorizer from operating the school in a former high school that the district sold to the authorizer with the specific condition not to open a charter school in the building.

Here again, federal dollars are funding a charter startup in a local community that does not want it. So much for DeVos’s promises to curb the “overreach” of the federal government in education.

Supporting Rightwing Cronies

Another charter school grant winner on the list that deserves a closer look is the American Heritage Academy in Idaho.

The school’s founder Frank Vandersloot is a conservative billionaire, with a net worth of $1.9 billion, who was a finance co-chair of Mitt Romney’s 2012 failed presidential campaign and has given money to Florida Republican US Senator Marco Rubio, former Republican presidential candidates Carly Fiorina, the Republican National Committee, and state Republican parties across the US, according to a report in Forbes.

Vandersloot made national headlines in 2015 when he sued Mother Jones magazine for defamation after the news outlet published an article detailing his efforts to oppose gay rights.

Vandersloot has hosted a closed door meeting with President Trump at the headquarters of his company, Melaleuca. The company – which sells diet, personal care, home cleaning, and cosmetic products – has been compared to Amway, the mega-company DeVos is heiress to, in that it employs a multi-level marketing strategy.

Vandersloot and DeVos are, in fact, connected through their participation in a multi-level marketing trade group that has been active in promoting legislation that attempts to limit the Federal Trade Commission’s ability to investigate and prosecute multi-level marketing scam operations.

All the Things We Don’t Know

None of this is to consider whether Vandersloot’s charter school, or any of the other charter school grantees, may or may not be worthy institutions, but shouldn’t taxpayers know more about why the school deserves our money?

Should we know, for instance, why grant money will go to a North Carolina charter, the Charlotte Lab School, that touts racial diversity in its mission, yet has a student population that is two-thirds white in a district where only 30 percent of the students are white?

Should we know more about why a federal grant is going to a Kansas City charter school, Scuola Vita Nuova Charter School, that is located at an Italian Cultural Center and had to pay $30,000 to former principal who filed lawsuit claiming the school’s founder made her fire her same-sex partner who also worked at the school?

Because of DeVos’s general lack of transparency, what we’re left with, instead of answers, are more questions and a well-founded suspicion that her purpose in office is to purloin as much public money as she can into the hands of private interests while justifying it as a much-needed reform.

Perhaps if there’s a Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives after the upcoming midterm elections, there will be inquiries to reveal the inner machinations of DeVos’s department. But in the meantime, she and her associates toil away behind a shroud of scary headlines, and that’s just the way they want it."

[Deux Corbeaux]

I hope this will not be too far off topic, as this issue originated from far before the Trump administration.....

But since onawah mentioned in post #613 the "Charter School Industry", I was reminded of the Islamic influence many Charter Schools in the US are under.

There are more than 140 charter schools in the US affiliated with the Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Gülen left Turkey in the late 1990s and now directs his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Part of his empire consists of a thriving network of more than 140 charter schools in 26 states that sell themselves to parents as a secular and more academically rigorous alternative to public schools.

As the second largest chain of charter schools in the United States, Gülen schools rake in tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars every year.

----

"MUSLIM IMAM RIPS-OFF U.S. CHARTER SCHOOLS"




WOULD YOU BELIEVE THAT THE SECOND LARGEST CHARTER SCHOOL COMPANY IN AMERICA, THAT HAS RECEIVED $2.1 BILLION IN TAXPAYER MONEY, IS RUN BY A KNOWN RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND IS PROTECTED BY HIS POWERFUL LOBBYING OF U.S. POLITICIANS?

WOULD YOU BELIEVE THAT THIS GROUP, HIZMET, HAS BEEN INDICTED AND CONVICTED OF MANY CRIMES AND YET STILL OPERATES AND LAUNDERS U. S. TAX DOLLARS TO TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS?

Hizmet is Fethullah Gulen’s educational cult that has made massive donations to U.S. politicians and has hijacked the U. S. charter school movement with his 167 “public” charter schools.


Here is a short list of crimes that Gulen’s Hizmet (FETO- Fethullahci Teror Orgutu) U. S. charter schools have been convicted of:

* Gulen charter schools in four states are under FBI probes for fraud, forgery of documents, unlawful profits and irregularities.

* Three charter schools in California, operating under the name Magnolia, could be shut down for bringing unqualified teachers from Turkey using temporary work visas.

* Magnolia schools also engaged in poor financial management and inconsistent and incorrect internal policies.

* Magnolia was accused of fraud and financial malfeasance worth over $18 million.

* Hizmet charged with fraudulent relations with the North American University, another alleged Hizmet institution.

* Concept Schools (Hizmet) fraudulently funneled $5 million from federal grants to Gulenists with which they had “close ties.”

* Money laundering and fraud.

* Failed yearly audits.

* Periodic insolvency.

* Excessive funds spent on immigration for unqualified male Turkish teachers.

* Misappropriation of public funds.

* Inappropriate commingling funds.

* Funneled public funds from schools to shell entities.

* Widespread abuse and fraud of the H1B visa program.

* Discrimination against non-Muslim students and families
.
* Use of fake lotteries for enrollment.

* Segregating girls from boys and mandatory hijabs for all females.

* Loose internal controls.

* Cheating on standardized tests.

* Lying about student data concerning college attendance.

* Bullying Jewish and non-Muslim students.

* Discrimination against students with special needs


READ MORE https://aim4truth.org/2018/07/01/mus...arter-schools/

[onawah]

Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the Rule of Pampered Princelings
Naomi Klein
October 10 2018
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/10/...erited-wealth/

(Some obvious bias in this article, since left wing billionaires are not included in the targeting, but interesting in that it is claimed a good amount of research has gone into gathering evidence that Trump has lied about how much he inherited and how much he earned. Betsy Devos is mentioned at the end of this quote.)

“BORING.” That was Donald Trump’s instant verdict on the New York Times’s blockbuster investigation into the rampant tax fraud and nepotism that undergirds his fortune. Sarah Huckabee Sanders heartily concurred, informing the White House press corps that she refused to “go through every line of a very boring, 14,000-word story.”

Welcome to a new political PR strategy premised on the shredding of the American mind — you don’t want to even try to read that interminable article; check out my Twitter feed instead, and this viral video of me saying rabid things.

The Times investigation, published as a standalone supplement on Sunday, is about as boring as a car accident. It shows in lavish detail that Trump’s creation myth is and always has been a work of fiction. No, he did not take a “very, very small” million-dollar loan from his father and use his deal-making acumen to parlay it into a $10-billion global empire, while paying the original loan back with interest.

Trump has been sucking on a spigot of his father’s cash nonstop since he was in diapers, becoming a millionaire by middle school. According to the Times, when all was said and done, “Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.” Moreover, “much of it was never repaid.” As for the rest of the mythology, not only was he spending his father’s money, he blew much of it on disastrous deal after disastrous deal. Only to be bailed out by his father’s millions time and time again.

Rather than bothering to deny any of this, Trump and his surrogates have simply spun a new creation myth. No longer the scrappy, self-made man, Trump is being reincarnated in real time as the chosen son, with he and his father acting as partners in wealth creation. “One thing the article did get right,” Sanders said, clearly reading from notes, “is it showed that the president’s father actually had a great deal of confidence in him. In fact, the president brought his father into a lot of deals and made a lot of money together. So much so that his father went on to say that ‘everything [Trump] touched turned to gold.’”

This shift is more significant than it first appears. After a couple of years of hobnobbing with Saudi monarchs and Queen Elizabeth II, the president appears ready to embrace his true identity as a scion of a dynasty who did not build his fortune by himself, but who is, instead, the product of an especially blessed family that passes a magic touch through the generations.

What makes the Times’ revelations more important is that they are a rare window into an even larger story about the growing political and economic role of inherited money in the United States — the culmination of decades in which a handful of sons and daughters of bequeathed wealth waged a fierce and relentless battle of ideas against the very concept of equality and majority rule, all based on the same corrupting belief in their own inherent superiority.

Trump may be the highest profile of such heirs to wield political power, but he never would have gotten where he is without the ideological scaffolding carefully put in place by other scions of dynastic families — from the late John M. Olin and Richard Mellon Scaife in the ’80s and ’90s to Charles and David Koch and Rebekah Mercer today. These are the key figures who bankrolled the think tanks, financed the extreme free-market university programs, and funded the tea party shock troops that moved the Republican Party so far to the right that Trump could stomp in and grab it.

It was their project that created a fake consensus about the need for the radical deregulating of markets and dismantling of environmental protections, for lowering corporate taxes and eliminating the “death tax” — and paying for it all by dismantling so-called entitlements. It was an effort that always required harnessing the emotional power of racism (think “welfare queens”), as well as the parallel construction of a highly racialized system of mass incarceration to warehouse the poor (and profit from them, of course). The Trump presidency — never mind the economic populism he bellowed on the election trail— is the near-perfect embodiment of this agenda.

A great deal of excellent investigative journalism has gone into tracking the money behind this sprawling class war, most notably by Jane Mayer in her indispensable “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.” Mayer showed that though figures like the Kochs are highly ideological, the policies pushed by these wealthy families also happen to directly benefit their bottom lines. Laxer regulations, lower taxes, weaker unions, and unfettered access to international markets tend to do that.

Much less attention, however, has been paid to the implications of so much of this financing coming not just from unfathomably rich people, but people born that way. And yet it is striking that the figures at the dead center of this campaign were not Chicago school economists, nor were most of them self-made business leaders who had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. They were, like Trump, pampered princelings whose fortunes had been handed to them by their parents.

The Koch brothers were raised in luxury and inherited Koch Industries from their father (who built his fortune constructing refineries under Stalin and Hitler). Scaife was an heir to the Gulf Oil, Alcoa Aluminum, and Mellon Banks fortunes and grew up in an estate so lavish it was populated with pet penguins. Olin took over his father’s weapons and chemicals company.

And so it goes, right down to Betsy DeVos, who was raised by billionaire Edgar Prince and married into the Amway fortune — and who has devoted her life to dismantling public education, now from inside the Trump administration. And let’s not forget Rupert Murdoch, who inherited a chain of newspapers from his father and is in the process of handing over his media empire to his sons. Or relative newcomer Rebekah Mercer, who has chipped off a chunk of her father Robert’s hedge fund fortune to bankroll Breitbart News, among other pet projects. In short, these people are Downton Abbey lords and masters, playacting as Ayn Rand heroes.

Of course, there are some self-made billionaires, like Sheldon Adelson, who have helped bankroll the revolution on the right. But when it comes to the battle of ideas — the careful investments in pro-business academic programs at elite universities, the extreme right-wing think tanks, the strident media outlets, and now the harnessing of big data and “machine learning” in Republican political campaigns — the role of inherited wealth cannot be overstated."

Much more at the link:https://theintercept.com/2018/10/10/...erited-wealth/

[Flash]

Deuc Corbeaux, your article on the Gulen schools is true. I would add that the Hizmit/Gulen group are a powerful religious business group in Turkey, quite strict in religious terms and quite devious in business (like many businesses). Here, secular has no place, with them, everything is religious, even their very successful businesses.

Yet nothing is straight with them. And in Some islamic interpretations of the Koran, you can lie, steal, fool your neighbour, misrepresent, all of this is part of the approved ways of doing the jihad (religious holy war) in foreign Territories.

[Hervé]

Posted by Deux Corbeaux (here)
[...]
There are more than 140 charter schools in the US affiliated with the Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Gülen left Turkey in the late 1990s and now directs his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Part of his empire consists of a thriving network of more than 140 charter schools in 26 states that sell themselves to parents as a secular and more academically rigorous alternative to public schools.

[...]

Posted by Flash (here)
Deuc Corbeaux, your article on the Gulen schools is true. I would add that the Hizmit/Gulen group are a powerful religious business group in Turkey, quite strict in religious terms and quite devious in business (like many businesses). Here, secular has no place, with them, everything is religious, even their very successful businesses.

Yet nothing is straight with them. And in Some islamic interpretations of the Koran, you can lie, steal, fool your neighbour, misrepresent, all of this is part of the approved ways of doing the jihad (religious holy war) in foreign Territories.

About Gulen and his other activities:

• Re: Turkey shoots down Russian jet near Syrian border
• Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Putin, and World War III
• Re: Military coup in Turkey: 'coup attempt' by part of army fizzled
• Re: Military coup in Turkey: 'coup attempt' by part of army fizzled
• Re: Alleged FBI Insider Leaks All - Clinton Foundation Exposed - Involves Entire US Government

[Deux Corbeaux]

Posted by Hervé (here)

Posted by Deux Corbeaux (here)
[...]
There are more than 140 charter schools in the US affiliated with the Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Gülen left Turkey in the late 1990s and now directs his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Part of his empire consists of a thriving network of more than 140 charter schools in 26 states that sell themselves to parents as a secular and more academically rigorous alternative to public schools.

[...]

Posted by Flash (here)
Deuc Corbeaux, your article on the Gulen schools is true. I would add that the Hizmit/Gulen group are a powerful religious business group in Turkey, quite strict in religious terms and quite devious in business (like many businesses). Here, secular has no place, with them, everything is religious, even their very successful businesses.

Yet nothing is straight with them. And in Some islamic interpretations of the Koran, you can lie, steal, fool your neighbour, misrepresent, all of this is part of the approved ways of doing the jihad (religious holy war) in foreign Territories.

About Gulen and his other activities:

• Re: Turkey shoots down Russian jet near Syrian border
• Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Putin, and World War III
• Re: Military coup in Turkey: 'coup attempt' by part of army fizzled
• Re: Military coup in Turkey: 'coup attempt' by part of army fizzled
• Re: Alleged FBI Insider Leaks All - Clinton Foundation Exposed - Involves Entire US Government

Thanks Hervé. Really very good information about Fethullah Gulen and more.

Especially the video in the last link you gave, which I hereby will repost. Hope you don't mind.

WikiLeaks, Hillary-Gulen Intimate Ties & How Clintons Gave Birth to Mullah Gulen’s Terrorist Network

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tctl8FNasFo

[onawah]

Good info re Gulen, but perhaps a new thread should be started.

[onawah]

Trump’s War on Children’s Health Escalates at Wheeler’s EPAFrom Environmental Working Group

(Whether or not Trump can be held personally responsible is not the point--the point is that his Admin is doing this, and it needs to be stopped.)

By Alex Formuzis, Sr VP Communications and Strategic Campaigns and Robert Coleman, Project Manager
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2018
https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysi...ent=1539700611
"Under President Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly betrayed its responsibility to safeguard the health of children. But in recent weeks, the hostile actions of the president and Andrew Wheeler, the EPA’s acting administrator, have escalated into nothing less than a war on children’s health.

Since early summer, the White House and Wheeler have made a barrage of decisions that will directly harm the health of America’s children, including generations not yet born. Here are the ones we know about – keeping in mind that some only came to light because of journalists’ investigations:



Fighting to keep legal a nerve-agent pesticide that causes brain damage in kids

One of the first decisions of the Trump EPA was former chief Scott Pruitt’s scuttling of a scheduled ban of the highly toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos. The agency’s own scientists said it was dangerous to children even at very low levels. Exposure to chlorpyrifos disrupts the brain’s nervous system, causing tremors and diminished IQ levels in children.

The chemical agriculture and pesticide industries hailed the decision, but public health advocates, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, pleaded with the EPA to enact the ban as scheduled. On Aug. 10, a federal appeals court ruled that Pruitt’s decision violated federal law and ordered the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos within 60 days.

But Wheeler and Trump are fighting back. The EPA has refused to obey the court’s order. On Sept. 25, the Justice Department filed a petition on behalf of the agency, calling on the court to overturn its earlier ruling and leave chlorpyrifos legal.

Repealing the rule that reduces air pollution from neurotoxic mercury

On Sept. 30, The New York Times and The Washington Post detailed Wheeler’s scheme to repeal an Obama-era rule that has cut emissions of mercury and other heavy metals, such as lead and arsenic from coal-fired power plants, by 70 percent.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin known to harm the nervous systems of children and fetuses. Mercury in the air settles in the ocean, where it is ingested by tuna and other fish. When people eat the fish, they also ingest mercury, which can be passed from mother to fetus in the womb.

Repealing the Clean Power Plan, which would have protected kids from respiratory disease

On Aug. 21, Wheeler released the Trump administration’s replacement for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which sought to significantly reduce dangerous, ozone-depleting pollution from power and petrochemical plants.

In 2015, the Obama EPA estimated that the Clean Power Plan could prevent between 1,500 to 3,600 premature deaths annually and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children. Trump’s EPA later increased the estimated number of preventable premature deaths to 4,500 a year.

The proposed repeal would mean 36,000 premature deaths and more than 600,000 cases of childhood respiratory disease each decade, according to Harvard University experts on the human impact of public health policies.

Dismissing EPA’s top children’s health official

On Sept. 25, Wheeler abruptly and with no apparent reason placed the EPA’s top children’s health official on administrative leave. Dr. Ruth Etzel was made to hand in her badge, key and cellphone, and sent home.

A leader in children’s environmental health for 30 years, Etzel had been tapped in 2015 by President Obama to run the Office of Children’s Health Protection, whose stated goal is to “ensure that all EPA actions and programs address the unique vulnerabilities of children.” Her dismissal came amid rumors that the office she headed will be closed.

Sidelining Etzel is “the opening gambit in a plan by this administration to dismantle EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection,” said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, one of the nation’s leading pediatric experts and the dean of global health and director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Refusing to adopt health-protective standards for widespread drinking water contaminants

On June 20, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR, released a study concluding that the “minimal risk level” for exposure to toxic fluorinated chemicals, known as PFAS, should be up to 10 times lower than the level recommended by the EPA.

Studies have linked the two most notorious PFAS chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, to reduced effectiveness of childhood vaccines, developmental defects and other serious health problems, including cancer. EWG estimates that PFAS chemicals may contaminate the drinking water of more than 100 million Americans.

The White House and the Pruitt EPA sought to block release of the ATSDR study, fearing a “public relations nightmare.” Since its release, a number of states have acted to set much lower legal limits or health advisories for PFOA, PFOS and some other PFAS chemicals.

But under Wheeler, the EPA has stuck with its previously recommended level for PFOA and PFOS, which is not legally enforceable, and has issued no health guidance on other PFAS chemicals.

Ignoring the impacts of climate change on children’s health

On Oct. 3, E&E News reported that the White House had removed key language documenting the heightened risks that climate change presents to children from a draft EPA proposal to repeal a rule to reduce heat-trapping chemicals leaking into the atmosphere. Among the passages struck from the original rule from the Obama administration:

Impacts to children are expected from heat waves, air pollution, infectious and waterborne illnesses, and mental health effects resulting from extreme weather events. In addition, children are among those especially susceptible to most allergic diseases, as well as health effects associated with heat waves, storms and floods.
Once a coal lobbyist, always a coal lobbyist

Wheeler’s actions came as no surprise. Before he was tapped to replace Scott Pruitt, who was forced to resign in disgrace, Wheeler was a top lobbyist for the coal industry. One of his clients was coal giant Murray Energy, which paid Wheeler and his firm more than $3 million to represent the company in Washington. Before his time as an advocate for the fossil fuel industry, Wheeler was a longtime top aide to Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the leading climate change denier in Congress.

“In normal times, a zealous fossil fuel apologist and the top official in charge of protecting children’s health from pollution would be two separate people with conflicting agendas,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “But this is the Trump administration, where a former top coal lobbyist now runs the EPA.”

“At every step since taking over the agency, Wheeler has done the bidding of polluters and foiled efforts to safeguard children’s health,” said Cook. “When Wheeler’s time at EPA ends, more children will be exposed to dangerous pollutants, but Wheeler will no doubt return to the warm embrace of the fossil fuel industry, with an ‘atta boy’ for a job well done.” "