Roundup (And) The Usual Suspects

Once again, the regime of malignant moron Donald "Rump" Trump, stands up for the health and safety of the American people:

President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency—already accused of being "pesticide cheerleader"—threw its weight behind chemical company Bayer AG on Friday when the agency asked a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court's ruling in favor of a man who said the company's Roundup weedkiller was responsible for his cancer.

The case centers on Edwin Hardeman of California, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2015 after using the glyphosate-based pesticide, made by Monsanto, for years on his property. Bayer acquired Monsanto last year.

A federal jury in July ordered the company to pay Hardeman roughly $25 million in damages, a lower amount than the $80 million a federal judge had ordered months earlier.

The EPA maintains—to the outrage of environmental and public health groups—that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. The federal decision notwithstanding, California in 2017 agreed with the World Health Organization's 2015 classification of glyphosate as a "probable carcinogen." Trump's EPA has pushed back on the state's finding and said that product labels informing users of that cancer risk would [be] "misbranding" and announced in August of this year that the agency would not approve of labels carrying that warning.

We've all seen that Trump's regime is a rat's nest of industry insiders, lobbyists and extremists like Trump consigliere William "Low" Barr and the EPA's Administrator Andrew Wheeler, himself a former coal industry lobbyist.  In case you need to get a quick picture of Wheeler, here's what the Natural Resources Defense Council had to say about him:

Despite his claims to uphold the EPA’s mission, Wheeler has acted in line with his predecessor’s anti-environment agenda. Since his taking over, the agency has moved to weaken federal fuel-efficiency standards, air pollution safeguards, and the Clean Water Rule, which impacts the drinking water supply for millions of Americans. “He’s worked to worsen the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the heat we feel,” Cohen says, “flouting the mission of the EPA at every opportunity.”

Even with Wheeler and Barr on their side, Bayer still faces legal challenges;  as the Common Dreams article points out, there are currently some 43,000 claims related to Bayer's use of glyphosate in federal courts.  However, now that the formerly liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hearing the appeal, is close to having a Republican majority for the first time in memory (thanks, Moscow Mitch McConnell!), the final disposition of this particular case is hard to predict.

Regardless, it turns out "elections have consequences" can have pretty nasty consequences for a lot of innocent people, and that when the Trump regime talks about "environmental protection," they're only talking about protecting the usual suspects -- the environment's polluters, despoilers, and poisoners.

BONUS:  The Washington Post looks at the full scale of Trump's anti- environment attacks, which the malicious moron thinks is a winning political pitch.

(Image:  via NRDC)

What You Get When You Don't Vote - A Continuing Series

In what we expect will be a continuing series of "What you get when you don't vote" posts in the coming months, there's this item:

Oil, gas and coal interests that spent millions to help elect Republicans this year are moving to take advantage of expanded GOP power in Washington and state capitals to thwart Obama administration environmental rules. 

Industry lobbyists made their pitch in private meetings last week with dozens of state legislators at a summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an industry-financed conservative state policy group. 

The lobbyists and legislators considered several model bills to be introduced across the country next year, designed to give states more power to block or delay new Obama administration environmental standards, including new limits on power-plant emissions.

A small but active minority of far-right, knuckle-dragging Republican voters got to the polls all over the country last November.   Our voters didn't.  Here's one result of many to come, we fear.

Water, Water Everywhere Quote of the Day

"...this is the second time in a year in which environmental damage has deprived an American city of its drinking water for a substantial period of time; we recall that Huntington, West Virginia was boiling and bottling thanks to the efforts of Freedom Industries. We have had wars for gold. We have had wars for oil. We next will have wars for water, provided, of course, that there's any left that's fit to drink." -- Esquire.com's Charles P. Pierce, noting in his piece that a warming Lake Erie among other climate factors caused some 500,000 people to go without drinking water in the greater Toledo, OH area.  (The ban on the water was lifted earlier today).  Read the whole article for an idea of how a combination of right-wing inspired deregulation and climate change denial has led to this point in our stewardship -- or lack of it -- of the environment.

The WaPo's Pollution

Some years ago, residents of the Washington, DC area had a clear choice between progressive and conservative newspapers: the Washington Post and the Washington Times (and earlier, the Evening Star), respectively. Sadly, over time, the WaPo has shifted well to the right under the direction of neocon editor Fred "Right Turn" Hiatt. Asshat columnist Michael Gerson, former Bushie speechwriter, is a prime example of how their op-ed page has become a platform for numerous wingut pundits.

Sunday's op-ed column by Gerson blames environmentalists for the lack of progress in environmental protection, not corporate polluters or their enablers in the Bush Assministration (see EPA). As John Cole points out, it's like blaming doctors for not working hard enough with the tobacco companies in fighting cancer. This is what passes for "conservative" thought these days. Shame on the WaPo.

Mr. Responsibility

It comes as no surprise that Preznit Chimpy won't be issuing any regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions before his term of office mercifully ends in January 2009.

Despite a ruling from the Supreme Court last year that ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions were harming human health and welfare, the Bushies are delaying any action on greenhouse gas control regulations until Chimpy exits the Oval Office. Along with the Dickster's editing of Congressional testimony to downplay the impacts of global warming, this ranks up there in the annals of this Assministration's malignant attitude toward the environment, and its own citizens' health.

Dead Eye's Aim On The Environment

Dead Eye Dick Cheney might not be much of a quail hunter, but the mighty Dickster can zero in on environmental testimony that conflicts with his partisan BS. So says former senior EPA offical Jason Burnett, who said that Cheney and his staff edited Congressional testimony to play down the scientific evidence of global warming. Never let science interfere with politics!