Foxconn Smog Disaster approved by EPA's Pruitt, who overruled staff! Goodbye Racine...

I thought there was something crazy about the EPA's Foxconn decision to promote smog:

Wow. Hey Trump voters, you think those temporary tax cuts are worth all this? The Trump selling point, of course, is that he's keeping his promises., well then who cares...

Trump EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will save Foxconn from having to make expensive improvements in an area with some of the state’s dirtiest air. Pruitt also pared back the list of counties with dirty air in Illinois and Indiana, a decision that could add to Chicago’s chronic problems with pollution linked to asthma attacks, heart disease and early deaths.

Pruitt insists he just using the data and existing laws to make decisions, but every solution to prevent harming Wisconsinites got bypassed:

The areas removed from the list were suggested by Republican elected officials...If Pruitt had followed the EPA staff report, Foxconn and other industrial sources of smog-forming pollution in Racine County would have been required to install more effective pollution-control equipment, scale back production or broker costly emissions-trading agreements with cleaner facilities.

To be fair, Walker did search for what he calls "balance"...I don't think he found that yet. In a Trumpian twitter post:

“We continue to search for ways to balance between environmental stewardship and a positive, pro-jobs business environment.”

"Racine, Live here at your own Risk:" Does it really matter who or what state helped create the smog problem, seriously? Blaming Chicago makes it all go away?

Walker blames Chicago for making the air unhealthy to breathe in parts of Wisconsin. However, an EPA staff analysis of industrial pollution, traffic patterns and weather patterns concluded Wisconsin is at least partially responsible for its own smog problems, and documents filed with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources show Foxconn would be a major new source of smog-forming pollution.

Republicans Welcome you to the 1970's: Freedom, sickness, suffering and premature deaths...here we come...:

Pruitt has said one of his top priorities is delegating more authority to states to enforce environmental laws, though one of the reasons the EPA was created in 1970 was states either were unwilling or unable to hold polluters accountable.

Health groups note that most of the country met earlier smog standards far more quickly and at significantly lower costs than expected.

The Obama EPA estimated that most of the nation would meet the new smog standard by 2025, with the biggest improvements in air quality coming from cleaner cars, trucks and power plants required by other federal regulations the Trump administration is attempting to unravel.

Wisconsin Republicans want to eliminate all of Wisconsin’s state air pollution regulations! They really do!!!

Seriously, I nearly spit out my coffee this morning when I heard the WPR headline below...

Under the proposal, the state Department of Natural Resources would have the option to reintroduce those regulations.

Optional? What's the big deal? One of the Senates most backward and clueless Republican legislators ever, Sen. Duey Stroebel, said this in the most nonchalant way...

"All we're asking is that our scientists at the DNR just take a look at all the things that they regulate above and beyond the EPA, and make sure that it still makes sense," said Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, one of the bill’s sponsors. "If it does, we'll regulate it. If it doesn't, based upon what the scientists say, we won't." Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute support the bill.

So what's not to like? Yup, it'll be just that easy to reinstate a regulation if our anti-science Republican legislature and depleted DNR staff think we've made a balanced decision weighing the unfair cost to business against the remotely possible environmental benefits. What's the beef?

At least we'll always have the EPA standards as a backup...?

Republicans Roll Back Environmental Protections in Wisconsin at the same time EPA Rolling Back Everything Else: Just by coincidence, this coal industry story hit the fan:

EPA's Rick Perry and Murray Hug!

The Trump administration is rolling back regulations on coal-fired power plants.

A memo written by Robert E. Murray, a longtime Trump supporter who donated $300,000 to the president’s inauguration (and) the head of Murray Energy, presented Mr. Trump with a wish list of environmental rollbacks just weeks after the inauguration ... the White House has completed or are on track to fulfill most of the 14 detailed requests:

1. Ending regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and ozone and mine safety

2. Cutting the staff of the Environmental Protection Agency “at least in half.” 

3. Overhauling the Labor Department’s office of mine safety.

Here's a look at Murray's list to Trump:

Republicans are in Charge, but not Control (of themselves): None of this is new, as you can see at this link where Paul Ryan has been passing this kind of environmental trash out of the House for years. 

Smog...what you don't know helps businesses pollute, expand and "create jobs."

So what you don't know about smog levels will hurt and maybe even kill you eventually...but try and prove it. You can't. That's free market magic Republicans are now shamelessly pushing. 

As Sheboygan County is trying to become the last full county in Wisconsin to meet federal standards on ozone pollution ... a bill to block the use of an air quality monitor in Kohler-Andrae State Park ... wound ban state funding of the air monitor and ask the EPA to stop using readings that show Sheboygan County exceeding federal ozone limits.

Uh, like it really matters where the pollution is coming from?

The pollution that's registered is from Chicago, Milwaukee, Gary, Indiana, and other southern Lake Michigan cities due to lakeshore winds that often blow from the south or southeast.

Unfair? Polluted air and smog is still bad...right? Republicans are now saying local businesses that pollute should be allowed to add to the rest of the blown in pollution because...that's only fair, right?  

Being over the limit ... Local companies say that's unfair, because most of the ozone pollution registering on the regional monitor is blowing north from Chicago. Dave Gass of the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce says federal law makes it tough for local firms that emit pollutants that form harmful ozone to expand. "I know businesses that have moved operations out of the state..."

Polluters threaten to Move? The Upside Down world of what's Unfair: So it's fair to harm Americans, allowing preventable deaths to occur, so businesses can expand? But how about this:

According to environmental groups, data from the monitor provides evidence for the EPA to go after large polluters from the southern Lake Michigan region.the monitor at Kohler-Andrae helps show when the air is too harmful to breathe.

Republicans "As Is" Consumerism in a Buyer Beware Economy: Besides everything I wrote in my blog post, "Walker's Wisconsin, no longer safe for people...," Republicans have added the word "jobs" to every ridiculous "free market" idea.

Climate Denial and Beyonddddddd......it's a Republican thing:  Smog; Good for Jobs, Good for Children: 

Exhibit A: Pruitt announced Michael Honeycutt as the new head of the Science Advisory Board. Honeycutt has suggested that the health risks associated with smog are overstated.

Exhibit B: Robert Phalen, a smog researcher once famously said that modern air is “a little too clean for optimum health.” He claims children’s lungs need a few irritants to grow hearty, and that pollutants like coal are good for lung defenses. 

Speaking of coal and lungs, this was just reported:

(Trump) "federal mining regulators indicated that they are reconsidering rules meant to protect underground miners from breathing coal and rock dust - the cause of black lung - and diesel exhaust, which can cause cancer."

For the record, Republicans say they're pro-life, yet have policies that kill people (lack of health care, the death penalty, unrestricted gun ownership). Self awareness is not a conservative characteristic:

Air pollution is killing one in six people around the world, and it's more deadly than smoking, wars, malnutrition or obesity.

Trump horrors at the EPA you won't believe, again!!!

Republicans have made their one big talking point meaningless, that Democrats believe the government is the answer!!! Ah, not anymore.

Where Democrats used to think the government in some cases could provide a solution to serious problems affecting Americans (like health care, clean air, water, and food), Republicans have reversed that perspective now by hiring unqualified agency administrators and employees to federal departments tasked with oversight.

Lacking any calming effect, this headline seemed crazy:

Administrator Scott Pruitt is shaking up the EPA's Scientific Advisory Board: Pruitt has moved in a roster of 18 new people who will now make up about half of the agency's 44-member committee. 

That doesn't bode well coming from an opponent of the environment. Here's who is in control now:

Washington Post

1. The new chair of the board, Michael Honeycutt — the director of toxicology at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — suggested EPA air quality regulations and ozone limits are unnecessary, because Americans spend 90% of their time indoors, anyway.

2. Robert Phalen, a smog researcher who once famously said that modern air is “a little too clean for optimum health.” He claims children’s lungs need a few irritants to grow hearty, and that pollutants like coal are good for lung defenses. Phalen told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, "My most important role in science is causing trouble and controversy." Air pollution is killing one in six people around the world, and it's more deadly than smoking, wars, malnutrition or obesity.

Just this week, schools in New Delhi had to close because Indian officials said the city has become a “gas chamber” engulfed in thick smog. In the US, though, air pollution rates have dropped more than 70% since 1970 — the year the EPA was founded.

In it's typically soft coverage of this outrageous adult behavior, the media weighed in:

In a letter signed by dozens of Democrats and at least one Republican, lawmakers voiced concern that Pruitt's changes might compromise the agency's ability to seek out "objective, independent scientific expertise."

Ya think? 

EPA...Pruitt...you won't believe this...

There's no way I can set this up any better than the Washington Post:

That means only corporate research scientist and conservative climate deniers will be guiding the US's environmental future.

In the upside-down logic of Republican bizarro world domination, only this could make sense:

“It is very, very important to ensure independence, to ensure that we’re getting advice and counsel independent of the EPA,” Administrator Scott Pruitt told reporters Tuesday. He argued that the current structure raises questions about their independence, though he did not voice similar objections to industry-funded scientists.

But the EPA is already independent...like the government is supposed to be...or used to be, where policy depended on science and served the American people. It wasn't supposed to be political. Not anymore!!!

But Pruitt has a more clever motive; force scientists to abandon their important possibly breakthrough research.

He noted that researchers will have the option of ending their grant or continuing to advise EPA, “but they can’t do both.”

For the hardcore religious Republican voter that has invested all their faith in Trump and God, in that order, Pruitt's angelic con went something like this:

Pruitt on Tuesday used the Bible to explain his major changes:“In the book of Joshua there is a story about Joshua leading the people of Israel into the promised land after Moses passed away. And Joshua says to the people of Israel choose this day whom you’re going to serve. And I would say to you this is sort of like the ‘Joshua Principle’ that as it relates to grants to this agency, you are going to have to choose either service on the committee to provide counsel to us in an independent fashion or you can choose grants, but you cannot do both.”

And what about corporate scientists...? Will they ever be free from corporate influence?

EPA will not impose a similar litmus test on scientific advisers who receive grants from outside sources.

The likely appointments include several categories of experts — voices from regulated industries, academics and environmental regulators from conservative states, and researchers who have a history of critiquing the science and economics underpinning tighter environmental regulations.

Reagan Republican Agast: The current Republican Party is so far out now that not even Reagan administration officials can make sense of this:

Terry F. Yosie, who was the advisory board’s director during the Reagan administration, said the changes “represent a major purge of independent scientists and a decision to sideline the SAB (Science Advisory Board) from major EPA decision-making in the future.”

Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “The consequences of these decisions aren’t just bad for a few scientists. This could mean that there’s no independent voice ensuring that EPA follows the science on everything from drinking water pollution to atmospheric chemical exposure.”

This all makes sense if you believe the EPA, its scientists, the government are all politically liberal and Democrats. Only hearsay science, anecdotal stories, and special interest scientists know what's really going on. Here's the Bizarro World code from DC Comics, see if you see any similarities:

The possible Pruitt board might include one of the EPA's biggest critics backing coal:

Pruitt said, “If we have individuals who are on those boards, sometimes receiving money from the agency . . . that to me causes questions on the independence and the veracity and the transparency of those recommendations that are coming our way.”

At least three potential appointees ... one of them, Larry Monroe, previously chief environmental officer at Southern who's particular expertise in how the EPA regulated emissions from coal-fired power plants and criticized the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan argued that the plan, intended to reduce carbon emissions, was “unworkable and would increase electricity prices to customers while hurting reliability.”

Nothing about human health, increased premature deaths, or pollution? Oh yea, that's a little hard to prove. 

If you had to take away one important lesson from Republican Pruitt's actions at the EPA, I think this might sum it up:

Michael Honeycutt, head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s toxicology division, who Pruitt announced Tuesday as the new head of the Science Advisory Board. Honeycutt has suggested that the health risks associated with smog are overstated.

Walker's opposition to new EPA smog standards will lead to more children with Autism.

Not only do Republicans want to roll back the new EPA standards that would reduce the particulate pollution contained in localized smog, but they want to get rid of the agency altogether. Yet they might want to rethink that position, since this same pollution is now tied to autism. Yea, right.

Until then, they intend to slow walk changes until they take control, when all of this will just magically goes away. Even if it means peoples lives will be at risk, including developing 3rd trimester fetuses.

Here's what we know about Wisconsin foot dragging:

Nearly five years after the federal government set new standards designed to protect public health from short, sharp spikes in air pollution levels, Wisconsin hasn't made the rules mandatory for all polluters. “The Department (DNR) has not met its statutory obligation to promulgate standards ... consistent with the federal standard,” the Midwest Environmental Defense Center and Clean Wisconsin said in their suit.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “finding of failure” issued to the DNR in August for missing a 2012 deadline for new state rules on “incremental” increases in particles from smokestacks. Rewriting state rules ... should not have been complicated because it would require inserting new numbers into existing rules.

Now, new research has more than substantiated what was already assumed about particulate pollution and autism:

Pregnant women may nearly double their risk of giving birth to a child with autism by inhaling smog spewed by vehicles or smoke stacks, according to a new Harvard study that could help unlock the deepest autism mysteries … fortifies previous scientific findings that linked air pollution to autism. And it offers fresh insights by showing women in their third trimesters seem most vulnerable if they breathe in elevated levels of tiny airborne particles emitted by power plants, fires and automobiles said Marc Weisskopf, the report's senior author and associate professor of environmental and occupational epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. The higher the exposure rate, the greater the risk, he found.