Point of No Return? Republican's Environmental Agenda

EPA nominee Scott Pruitt addresses the 2014
Annual Meeting of ALEC (Yes, that ALEC)

Being somewhat superstitious by nature, it comes as something of a relief to have Friday the 13th off - even if it does mean I have to work on a chilly Saturday when we're expecting snow.

Tonight it's supposed to dip back down into the upper 20's here in central New Jersey, a far cry from yesterday when it got up into the lower 60's.

Last night I stepped out for a few beers at my local, as I stood outside in a short sleeve shirt admiring the exceptional brightness of January's full moon (also known as the Wolf Moon), I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that this is the last full moon under a rational president with actual experience as an elected leader.

It was, to say the least, a rather sobering thought that sent a chill down my spine.

Experiencing mild spring-like weather in the middle of January reminded me that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump's new pick to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, is on record as denying the scientific consensus that human activity affects global warming.

Pruitt, a former college baseball player whose professional resume includes stints as a lawyer, general managing partner of a AAA baseball team, state politician and attorney general, is not a scientist - so maybe he should read Jeff Goodell's interview with James Hansen, the former head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

As Goodell notes in his RS article, Hansen, one of the world's leading experts on climate change and the first scientist to present hard data that human activity related to the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the Earth's atmosphere, warns that mankind is dangerously close to a 'point of no return' unless massive systematic changes to how we govern ourselves, consume energy and appropriate resources can be enacted.

As Hansen observes, "We're close to that point of no return, Whether we've passed it or not, I don't know...We've passed it in the sense that some climate impacts are going to occur, but we have not necessarily hit the disastrous level, which would knock down global economies and leave us with an ungovernable planet. But we are close."

Seriously, what part of "ungovernable planet" do Republicans who deny climate change not get?

Chart tracking temperature changes as recorded by four
international science agencies including NASA & NOAA

According to studies of climate change research conducted by NASA (folks who actually ARE rocket scientists), "Multiple studies conducted in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97% or more of actively publishing scientists agree: Climate warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities." 


But Scott Pruitt disagrees with stuff like scientific research based on facts.

Pruitt was one of a group of Republican attorneys general from other states with Republican governors and majority-Republican legislatures that formed secretive alliances with some of the nation's biggest energy companies to challenge federal regulations that protect water, soil and air from pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and production.

As Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton reported in a New York Times article back in December, Pruitt is on record as saying, "Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connections to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged - in classrooms, public forums and the halls of Congress."

Actually, it's not a debate, but that's the mindset that this lackey of the fossil fuel industry and member of the American Legislative Exchange Council will bring to the EPA - nominated by a man who thinks climate change is a "hoax."

Clinton email Obsession? GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz

But it's not just the federal regulatory agencies that will be impacted by radical conservative ideology.

You can be certain that the Republican-majority 115th Congress is already at work chipping away at laws that protect environmental safety, or making it more difficult to hold those who commit environmental crimes accountable.

Increases in subsidies to oil and natural gas companies are almost a given.

Remember the crusading Republican Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz who chairs the powerful House Oversight Committee?

Same guy who did everything he could to theatrically draw out a Congressional investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a personal server to store emails during the presidential campaign season?

Despite multiple Congressional investigations of the same issue for over a year, in addition to a lengthy and highly public FBI investigation that concluded that nothing illegal had taken place, Chaffetz recently announced that he will continue his dogged pursuit to further investigate Clinton's emails.

As CNN reported, Chaffetz said, "Just because there was a political election doesn't mean it goes away." 

But what's interesting about Chaffetz's apparently unquenchable thirst for the truth is that it magically (and for conservatives) conveniently seems to coincide with the broader partisan political needs of the Republican Party.

Republicans stopped investigating this?

Oh and speaking of thirst...

Just one day after the Trump transition team cancelled a planned December 15th press conference where the new PEOTUS would lay out a plan to sever his ties from his hundreds of businesses amid public outrage and media frenzy over his potential unprecedented conflicts of interest, Chaffetz quietly and quickly decided to end a Congressional investigation into the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.


Which of course was caused by Republican Governor Rick Snyder and other state Republican politicians and officials who stripped Flint citizens of the right to govern themselves by appointing an "emergency manager" for the city who ordered Flint's fresh water supply to be switched to the polluted Flint River.

Why?

As part of an effort to slash state spending on government in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy; fiscally irresponsible efforts which have proved disastrous in Kansas and were designed by none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Remember, the Flint water crisis resulted in people dying, and exposed thousands of Flint residents to toxic levels of lead poisoning - and it's still going on.

Republicans on Capitol Hill famously fought efforts to provide $600 million in federal funding to fix Flint's toxic water supply system before eventually approving $170 million in relief.

Flint residents still get drinking water like this

So Jason Chaffetz ended a House Oversight investigation into an environmental crime of monumental proportions that affected 100,000 people and is still happening now as you read these words.

But he's continuing a bogus partisan witch hunt over how Hillary Clinton stored her private email correspondence when she was Secretary of State over three years ago?

That, and the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA pretty much sums up the Republican stance on the environment in a nutshell and as hard as it is to imagine, James Hansen could be right.

The inauguration of Trump a week from today along with the clown car of kleptocrat cabinet picks he's bringing with him, coupled with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, plus a conservative-leaning Supreme Court doesn't bode well for our environment.

Should Trump follow through on his campaign pledge to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and causes other large-scale fossil fuel burners like China and India to pull out, it could very well mark the beginning of the 'Point of no return' for our environment and the climate.

All in the name of narrow-minded political ideology and short-term financial profits for a small fraction of the Earth's population.

"Making America Great Again?" Not so much.

The Republican Now Or Never

The Circus co-hosts Halperin, McKinnin &Heilemann

The reviews for The Circus, Showtime's new weekly documentary-style analysis of the 2016 presidential campaign trail produced in cooperation with Bloomberg Media, have been somewhat mixed.

But I don't think it's really fair to make a final judgement about any TV or cable show after only a couple episodes.

Like a good stew, the contents of a show need time to blend together and simmer and I don't think The Circus is quite done cooking yet; and I mean that in a good way.

In a recent review of the show, Salon.com's Steve Almond called it "straight pundit porn"

And to a degree it is.

But while Almond uses wit and sharp eye to sum up the show nicely, his well-written review of the show stuck me as a bit harsh given that they're only two episodes in.

As a political junkie, I'm not looking for 60 Minutes or Frontline when I tune into The Circus; I'm hungry for an interesting and entertaining take on the 2016 presidential campaign trail that I don't get from CNN, MSNBC or network news - and for me it delivers a nice Sunday night snack.

The Circus is ably hosted by seasoned Beltway observers John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, who both co-wrote the searing expose of the 2008 presidential race, "Game Change", and the perpetual hat-wearing ex-Democrat-turned-conservative political adviser and former George W. Bush confidant, Mark McKinnon - all three share good chemistry.

It runs a breezy 28 minutes as the constantly-moving cameras move back and forth between the three hosts meeting to dish on various aspects of the presidential race, and, more interestingly, following some of the leading presidential candidates around from week to week as they traverse the American terrain of the campaign trail.

It offers a refreshing glimpse of the candidates themselves, not just at the podium delivering the usual mix of predictable sound bites and political shtick - but up close and personal where they are bot more vulnerable and open than we usually get to see them in carefully edited 10-second video clips, or on stage in debates.

If a quick inside glimpse of the 2016 presidential campaign trail is your thing and you have access to Showtime, I suggest you check out a couple episodes.

Obama being interviewed by Glenn Thrush on Monday

With the critical Iowa and New Hampshire primaries just around the corner, influential mainstream and moderate conservatives are gearing up their efforts to try and stitch together the tattered pieces of a Republican party fragmented by months of being driven by an extremist faction.

In an interview with Politico's Glenn Thrush on Monday, President Obama, contrasting the tone of the Republican party during his 2008 race against Senator John McCain with today's Republican party, the president said the GOP in 2016 has moved so far to the right of the political spectrum that it's now "unrecognizable".

It's nice to hear him say that but it's not like the President really needed to point that out to us; or to Republicans for that matter.

As the approaching Iowa and New Hampshire primaries bring the 2016 presidential race closer to reality, it's not just Democrats, liberals or centrist voters of both parties who find the idea of a right-wing extremist like Donald Trump or Ted Cruz getting the 2016 Republican nomination for president repugnant.

The staunchly conservative editors of The National Review made headlines (and irked some of the Tea Party Republicans) when they came out against Donald Trump last Thursday.

Conservative author Charles Krauthammer

Even conservative author and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer questioned the wisdom of the Republican party nominating Donald Trump during an interview with Bill O'Reilly on Monday.

The large block of moderate Republicans who sat back and remained relatively quiet over the course of Obama's two terms as the far right Tea Party-Libertarian wing became the mouthpiece of the party and hoisted the flag of it's divisive ideology over the GOP have only now really begun to stir.

From the very start of Barack Obama's presidency, Republican lawmakers made it crystal clear that their legislative strategy for the duration of his term in office would be a simple one.

To use their position in office to oppose any initiative he proposed.

Regardless of what motivated this unprecedented partisan opposition, one thing history will be clear on is that this Congress chose not to act on major issues that impact the American people when it had the chance to do so.

Just last March, Republican Senators stymied the president's calls for massive (and critical) infrastructure spending by blocking a $478 billion spending bill that was proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

The lead poisoning of the water supply in Flint, Michigan was a result of Republican Governor Rick Snyder's circumventing the democratic process in cities like Detroit and Flint by appointing "emergency managers" to oversee large urban areas suffering from decades of neglect by the state and federal government - then run them like businesses.

Those decisions, so en vogue in 2010 as the wave of Tea Party hysteria broke over the nation and swept conservative businessmen into political office with no political experience.

These men (and women) shared an irrational hatred of government, a fervent belief in anti-labor union "Right to Work" laws and a "starve the beast" philosophy of slashing government spending to finance lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens - what they unleashed upon the country in the name of "conservative values"epitomizes the glaring philosophical failures of the 21st century Republican party.

Just look at the state of the economies of states with similar-minded Republican governors; Louisiana, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey....the list goes on.

The moderate Republicans who stood by and allowed their party to be hijacked by these wing-nuts  find themselves in an awkward position.

They realize Donald Trump and Ted Cruz may poll well among conservative primary voters, but pitted in a national election, their right-wing extremism and open tolerance of racism and anti-immigrant hysteria is going to be a huge turnoff for the majority of Americans.

The smart Republicans realize the White House won't be won by systematic voter suppression and vilifying Mexican immigrants and Muslims - conservatives just don't have the numbers.


Especially not with candidates like Trump and Cruz who skew so far right on the political spectrum they scare the centrist voters needed to win enough electoral college votes to win the White House.

As was widely reported this summer, in 2014, the majority of American births were racial and ethnic minorities, a Republican party governed by the racist ideals of Donald Trump isn't going near the White House in 2016 - and could lead to an unmitigated disaster for the GOP in the Senate, House and in state houses across the nation.

That's where the fear and anxiety that Trump deals in comes from - the massive gerrymandering and voter suppression by Republicans across the country is a futile attempt to avoid that reality.

The smart Republicans, the ones who face reality, understand this.

Governor John Kasich

Hence the recent endorsement of moderate Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich for the crucial February 9th New Hampshire primary on Monday by The Boston Globe.

The demographics of this nation are changing much faster than Republicans can enact laws to legalize discrimination, suppress votes and block non-white foreign nationals from entering the United States.

Watch in the coming weeks as more and more resources begin to quietly flow to more moderate candidates like John Kasich and Jeb Bush; remember the Koch Brothers and the conglomerate of shadowy conservative libertarian billionaires described by author Jane Mayer in her book "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" want a candidate they can control - someone who needs their billions.

Donald Trump doesn't need their billions, he is a billionaire.

That enough is sufficient to seal his fate in the 21st century Republican party.

For Republicans who are content to continue trying to rely on the votes of a single demographic in this country, and want to retake the White House 2016, it's really basically now or never.