All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[tattuchu]

[Tero]

Trump is angry at Mexico. He is giving them one year to stop drugs to US. If they don’t he will punish them with tariffs! What about the wall?
And why not just put tariffs on the drugs? Win win! All drug lords paying tariffs get free membership at Mar-a-Lago. Photos with Trump!

[tattuchu]

Michael Cohen says he has more Trump documents — and offers new assistance to Dem investigators: report

On Thursday, CNN reported that President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen claims to have more unreviewed documents potentially of use to federal investigators, and wants to offer additional cooperation.

“Mr. Cohen was only recently able to access a hard drive with important documents,” wrote Cohen’s attorneys in a letter obtained by CNN. “Said drive contains over 14 million files, which consist of all e-mails, voice recordings, images, and attachments from Mr. Cohen’s computers and phones. To date, Mr. Cohen has located several documents that we believe have significant value to the various congressional oversight and investigation committees.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/michae ... rs-report/

[Joe]

Herman Cain. Imagine that.

Only the best people.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he's recommending Herman Cain, a former pizza executive who dropped his bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination amid sexual harassment allegations, for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board.

"I've recommended Herman Cain. A terrific man, a terrific person. He's a friend of mine," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I've recommended him highly for the Fed. I've told my folks that that's the man and he's doing some pre-checking now and I would imagine he'd be in great shape."
The announcement comes weeks after Trump floated another nominee to fill an open seat on the Fed board: Stephen Moore, a former campaign adviser and distinguished fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
There are currently two vacancies on the seven-member Fed Board.

[Tero]

[Tero]

[Tero]

https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtr ... 8555016193

[Tero]

[Joe]

It's pretty interesting that Mueller's team started leaking after Barr's summary. This part caught my eye.

Mueller Team: Findings Show Evidence that Russia Manipulated Trump Campaign

On Thursday, those concerns continued to leak out to the press, indicating that investigators had qualms with the innocuous way Barr portrayed President Donald Trump and his 2016 campaign.

NBC News’ Intelligence and National Security reporter, Ken Dilanian, explained in a tweet Thursday that “some on the Mueller team say [Mueller’s] findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were was manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation. Some of that information may be classified.”

That would be consistent with all those Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, and adds some urgency to the Tricia Newbold revelations about the abuse of the security clearance process.

This guy is making Milliard Fillmore look good.

[Tero]

Old man yells at...

[L'Emmerdeur]

Say what you will about Trump being an ignorant arsehole who'd be unpleasant to work for, he's putting fucking great policies in place, man. Getting the oppressive regulatory state off the backs of industry to Make America Great Again™!

'Yes, EPA: Regulating Mercury Pollution Is “Appropriate and Necessary”'

The scientific evidence and health data are clear; exposure to toxic and hazardous air pollutants can result in premature death and cause a host of cancers, lung and heart diseases, adverse reproductive outcomes, birth defects, and neurological and cognitive impairments that can have lifetime impacts. In addition to pain, suffering and disability, these health impacts have significant economic, social and emotional costs for patients, their families and their caregivers—from doctors’ appointments, emergency department visits, and medications, to lost workdays, missed school days, and restrictions in daily living.

And it doesn’t take an advanced degree to know that mercury is an especially bad actor—a toxin particularly hazardous to pregnant women, to the neurological development of their fetuses and to young children—causing impairments that can last a lifetime.

None of this is really news. What may be news is that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a change to its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) in the form of a new formula for calculating the human health benefits of reducing some of the most hazardous air pollutants from power plants: chemicals that in even relatively small quantities are potent carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens and neurotoxins. Congress specifically recognized these hazards when it enacted Section 112 of the Clean Air Act.

In a somewhat wonky sleight of hand and one that does not bode well for future clean air protections, the agency has proposed a revision to its own finding on MATS. Incredibly, the agency now asserts that it is no longer “appropriate and necessary” to regulate mercury and hazardous air pollution emitted from power plants under the Clean Air Act. In the U.S., power plants are the largest source of mercury, chromium, arsenic, nickel, selenium and the acid gases hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen chloride. These are highly hazardous pollutants that cause serious harm to humans, wildlife and the environment. And the human health damage is borne disproportionately by people of color and the poor.

In 2012, the EPA estimated that its MATS rule would prevent 11,000 premature deaths and over 100,000 asthma and heart attacks each year, as a result of the co-benefits of the reduction in particulate matter pollution that occurs when plants reduce their mercury emissions. The agency estimated the health benefits of reductions in all air pollutants associated with MATS would range from $37 billion to $90 billion, with compliance costs to industry estimated at $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually.

But the EPA has now decided that the health benefits of controlling MATS emissions are only $4 million to $6 million max, if you don’t (and the agency opines that you shouldn’t) count the benefits of controlling the related emissions. This despite the fact that scientists have concluded that the EPA’s 2011 regulatory impact assessment greatly underestimated the monetized benefits of reducing mercury emissions from power plants. Also notable is the fact that most coal plants have already come into compliance with MATS by installing the necessary pollution control technology.

In suggesting that it is no longer “appropriate and necessary” to regulate mercury and air toxics from power plants, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is basically saying that the health benefits are too paltry to justify the costs.

[Seabass]

Sounds like someone's got Mercury Derangement Syndrome. A little mercury never killed anyone. In my day we used it as medicine. But no, you SJW progressive leftists have got it into your snowflakey little heads that these... "scientists" know better.

[tattuchu]

Back in my day, we used it to make hats! And everybody turned out just fine!

[Tero]

Pardons himself by Barr
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03 ... nald-trump

[Brian Peacock]

Say what you will about Trump being an ignorant arsehole who'd be unpleasant to work for, he's putting fucking great policies in place, man. Getting the oppressive regulatory state off the backs of industry to Make America Great Again™!

'Yes, EPA: Regulating Mercury Pollution Is “Appropriate and Necessary”'

The scientific evidence and health data are clear; exposure to toxic and hazardous air pollutants can result in premature death and cause a host of cancers, lung and heart diseases, adverse reproductive outcomes, birth defects, and neurological and cognitive impairments that can have lifetime impacts. In addition to pain, suffering and disability, these health impacts have significant economic, social and emotional costs for patients, their families and their caregivers—from doctors’ appointments, emergency department visits, and medications, to lost workdays, missed school days, and restrictions in daily living.

And it doesn’t take an advanced degree to know that mercury is an especially bad actor—a toxin particularly hazardous to pregnant women, to the neurological development of their fetuses and to young children—causing impairments that can last a lifetime.

None of this is really news. What may be news is that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a change to its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) in the form of a new formula for calculating the human health benefits of reducing some of the most hazardous air pollutants from power plants: chemicals that in even relatively small quantities are potent carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens and neurotoxins. Congress specifically recognized these hazards when it enacted Section 112 of the Clean Air Act.

In a somewhat wonky sleight of hand and one that does not bode well for future clean air protections, the agency has proposed a revision to its own finding on MATS. Incredibly, the agency now asserts that it is no longer “appropriate and necessary” to regulate mercury and hazardous air pollution emitted from power plants under the Clean Air Act. In the U.S., power plants are the largest source of mercury, chromium, arsenic, nickel, selenium and the acid gases hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen chloride. These are highly hazardous pollutants that cause serious harm to humans, wildlife and the environment. And the human health damage is borne disproportionately by people of color and the poor.

In 2012, the EPA estimated that its MATS rule would prevent 11,000 premature deaths and over 100,000 asthma and heart attacks each year, as a result of the co-benefits of the reduction in particulate matter pollution that occurs when plants reduce their mercury emissions. The agency estimated the health benefits of reductions in all air pollutants associated with MATS would range from $37 billion to $90 billion, with compliance costs to industry estimated at $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually.

But the EPA has now decided that the health benefits of controlling MATS emissions are only $4 million to $6 million max, if you don’t (and the agency opines that you shouldn’t) count the benefits of controlling the related emissions. This despite the fact that scientists have concluded that the EPA’s 2011 regulatory impact assessment greatly underestimated the monetized benefits of reducing mercury emissions from power plants. Also notable is the fact that most coal plants have already come into compliance with MATS by installing the necessary pollution control technology.

In suggesting that it is no longer “appropriate and necessary” to regulate mercury and air toxics from power plants, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is basically saying that the health benefits are too paltry to justify the costs.

The METS calculations rely on certain assumptions which, when codified mathematically, reduce the relative harm to human health to a factored number. Any result less that 1 is considered an avoidable danger to human health. The new formulation of the calculation builds upon the success of the standing formula and merely introduces an additional constant that attempts to codify the effects on industry and human health, meaning the result of the standard METS calculation is multiplied by 1.12 for every $1m donated to the Trump 2020 campaign.