Energy Sec. Perry warms to coal and old nukes for Trump; thumb on the scale for carbon emissions & toxic waste

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While the drama between Donald Trump and his Secretary of State play out in the headlines, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry is hard at work on what is being called an unprecedented proposal to prop up the coal industry and nuclear power plants that are at risk of closing.Trumpnperry

Following Trump’s goal to shore up aging coal and nuclear power plant operations, Sec. Perry is rapidly trying to make significant changes to the rules the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) follows to regulate power markets.

Specifically thehill.com reports:  Perry wants to increase the payments to troubled coal and nuclear plants by requiring that certain regional electric grid operations pay power plants their actual costs of operating plus a “fair rate of return.”

It would be a significant shift from the bidding process now allowed and would almost certainly raise electricity costs for consumers, critics say of the plan.

But Perry’s idea has garnered significant praise from coal and nuclear industry leaders, who say it could revive plants they say deserve to be paid more. 

They argue that because these plants build up larger fuel supplies than competitors producing electricity from wind and solar power, they should be paid more. 

Energy Secretary Perry is not only attempting to rush the rule change through a process that could normally take year to write and even longer to enact.*  Perry’s proposed changes may also violate FERC’s legal authority which by law [… ] centers on the responsibility to ensure that wholesale power rates are “just and reasonable.” 

Any new regulation would have to demonstrate that without the higher payments for coal and nuclear, rates are unjust or unreasonable. If it fails to do so, a federal court could overturn the new regulation. 

“FERC does not have the authority to just decide that a particular source of generation gets paid differently now because Rick Perry requested it,” said Justin Gundlach, a climate change law fellow at Columbia University Law School.

[*It should be noted that the Obama era Clean Power Plan rules took year to write and don’t enforce emission reduction until 2022.]

When nominated to lead the Dept of Energy, former Texas governor and presidential candidate Perry seemed to have little idea of the massive scope of the agency’s responsibilities. Vanity Fair wrote in an article this summer: Since Perry was confirmed, his role has been ceremonial and bizarre. He pops up in distant lands and tweets in praise of this or that D.O.E. program while his masters inside the White House create budgets to eliminate those very programs. His sporadic public communications have had in them something of the shell-shocked grandmother […]

He seems to have warmed to one task — putting his thumb on the scale for carbon emissions and toxic waste while carrying out climate change denier- in- chief Donald Trump’s orders.

Texas, Maine and Vermont deal with drones

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As of March 2017 there were 770,00 FAA registered drone owners — and that, according to the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (a drone industry trade and lobby organization), was up from 670,000 at the start of the year.240_F_170466826_Ke2eJZddpGLIVUNfrRE3Wimv8aIj5wmG

News this past week included stories that Texas, Maine and Vermont are all struggling to come to grips with different angles on drone regulation in at what might be the start of an age of drones.

The state of Texas has passed a law criminalizing certain drone uses. The Texas law makes it a crime to operate a drone over “concentrated animal feeding operations,” as well as telecommunication facilities and certain oil and gas facilities. It also bars Texas cities and towns from making their own rules regulating drone usage — a measure that has become controversial in its own right.

Supporters of the law say it will protect against aerial poisoning of livestock or power line sabotage. Opponents say the state is protecting industry, oil, gas, and large farming operations from public scrutiny from the air.

Hmm, would the Texas Legislature pass a law protecting a business from public scrutiny?

In Maine, state police drones are now being dispatched to remotely take images of traffic accidents that are being stitched together with software . That state’s police say it saves time and money by cutting a task that pre-drone might have taken as long 24 hours down to 14 minutes. Maine police purchased 200 drones estimated to cost $5,000.00 each[corrected 4/18/18 : Maine bought three DJI Matrice model 200 drones, each costing about $5,000 ].

While Maine  allows remote aerial photographing of crash scenes, drone regulations prohibit their use in criminal investigations without a warrant. Vehicles and people unrelated to the crash must be removed from the police images. The Maine ACLU advocacy director Oamshri Amarasingham questioned how practical it can be for the state police to crop unrelated individuals out of every photo taken at an accident scene. The ACLU says without appropriate protections the new practice could violate the privacy of Maine residents.

And finally Vermont’s drone story involves a man stopped from videoing a high school sporting event from the air. In Vermont, individual high schools are allowed to decide whether or not to permit or ban drones at their sporting events — but the Vermont Principals’ Association says they are banned during the playoffs.

Recently in Montpelier objections were made when […] a licensed Montpelier resident who had asked permission to record a girls soccer game with a drone was asked to stop filming.

“We looked into it and made sure they had a permit or license, and they did,” Montpelier Athletic Director Matt Link said of the person who made the request. “It was OK with the officials before the game, but during the game there was a protest.”

Vermont Principals’ Association Executive Director Bob Johnson mentioned safety concerns over a drone crashing into a crowd. A quick YouTube search shows plenty of compilation videos of crashes. And it isn’t just “pilot” error causing the troubles.  A study in the UK of 150 crash incidents by RMIT University School of Engineering found technical problems were the cause of 64 percent of the incidents, which occurred between 2006 and 2016. Naturally insurance companies are setting their sights on risk management and drone liability.RIMSInfographic

This week it is Vermont, Maine, and Texas hassling through legitimate concerns about expanding drone use by law enforcement and private individuals. There’s plenty more stories like this in sight for all states, cities and towns. And just wait until Amazon unleashes fleets of speedy delivery drones from their airborne fulfillment centers. Time to duck and cover.

New Quinnipiac Poll: 94% of Democrats say Donald Trump is not “fit to serve as president”

National,

Quinnipiac University has new poll out and the results may prove reassuring for anyone in need of an occasional reminder  there’s still a reservoir of sanity in the U.S.

President Donald Trump is not “fit to serve as president,” American voters say 56 – 42 percent, and voters disapprove 57 – 36 percent of the job he is doing as president, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Democrats say Trump is not fit 94 – 5 percent and independent voters say 57 – 40 percent. Republicans say 84 – 14 percent that he is fit. And the poll found Donald that 57% of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing.

us09272017_GRAPHTrumpApprovalThe poll results do remind us that divisions still run deep as ever along not only party but racial and gender lines.

  • White voters are divided, as 50 percent say he is fit and 48 percent say he is not fit. Trump is not fit, black voters say 94 – 4 percent and Hispanic voters say 60 – 40 percent.
  • Men are divided 49 – 49 percent, as women say 63 – 35 percent he is not fit.

On President Trump’s handling of race relations: American voters disapprove 62 – 32 percent of the way President Trump is handling race relations. Disapproval is 55 – 39 percent among white voters, 95 – 3 percent among black voters and 66 – 28 percent among Hispanic voters. President Trump is doing more to divide the country than to unite the country, American voters say 60 – 35 percent. Trumps3strikes

Looking forward, according to Quinnipiac polling, voters also say 49 – 40 percent — including 47 – 34 percent among independent voters — they would like to see Democrats win control of the U.S. Senate next year. Got to hope that comes soon enough. Or is that hope too audacious ?

 

Methodology: The poll was conducted from September 21 – 26, and surveyed 1,412 voters nationwide. Quinnipiac pollsters conducted live interviewers by calling landlines and cell phones. The results have a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

Governor Phil Scott “proudly” tweets on bipartisan healthcare effort after GOP kills it

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I wonder if  Governor Scott was unaware Wednesday that his fellow Republican, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, had already shutdown bipartisan negotiations on Tuesday. The talks — aiming to stabilize health  insurance markets and make a few changes to the Affordable Care Act  — were already history when Scott tweeted the following: Proud to sign onto a letter with Governors from around the country in support of bipartisan health care reform.PhilScott tweeties

After only four meetings Sen. Alexander ended bipartisan talks Tuesday evening — the same day a group of  ten governors  sent their letter to Senate leadership opposing the Graham-Cassidy bill and praising bipartisanship. [Alexander’s] unexpected decision appears aimed at shoring up support for the Senate GOP’s last-ditch plan to repeal ObamaCare, sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), by removing any alternative legislation. The Senate bill is the GOP’s latest and possibly the most damaging anti Affordable Care Act legislation yet.

So was Scott out of touch with what fellow Republican Lamar Alexander is up to in the senate? Or maybe as a blue state Republican he just needed to tweet a quick meaningless look-at-what-I-did about my party’s healthcare bill message. If Scott really supports bipartisan healthcare reform a tweet with a little more kick would have called for Chairman Alexander to re-start his committee’s talks.

Something Fishy: Republican Governors Association secretly launch fake new site

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It seems the Republican Governors Association has decided to quietly start their own online news service. And they only acknowledged the site, launched earlier this summer, as theirs after the Associated Press (a real news service!) made inquires about the mysterious site called The Free Telegraph.somefishynews

[…] It (the Free Telegraph) asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected.

Only after The Associated Press inquired about the site last week was a disclosure [small and tucked away on the bottom of the page] added to The Free Telegraph’s pages identifying the publication’s partisan source.

The governors association describes the website as routine political communication. Critics, including some Republicans, say it pushes the limits of honest campaign tactics in an era of increasingly partisan media and a proliferation of “fake news” sites, including those whose material became part of an apparent Russian propaganda effort during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The RGA, funded in part by the ultra-conservative Koch Brothers, is a solid backer of our own Governor Phil Scott and spent heavily ($3 million in 2016 campaign ads) to get him elected.

Some people may recall that when Vice President Mike Pence was governor of Indiana he started a government-run news service he wanted to control. He later withdrew it, following strong protest (it was dubbed “Pravda on the Plains”).

And now it smells like the RGA has hooked onto a similar fake news tactic. Those Republicans, they just can’t resist the bait of using less-than-factual propaganda to tilt the electorate their way. Something fishy, indeed.

Teflon legacy stubbornly sticks to Bennington

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As we wait for it to dawn on Texas lawmakers that some of the toxic misery that is being visited upon them is due to lax regulation in a business-first state, Vermont is confronting its own history of safety “compromises.”

In an eye-opening series of feature stories, “Teflon Town,” Vermont Digger and the Bennington Banner explore a tale of regulatory failure that belies Vermont’s clean green reputation

Details of this “business friendly” environmental compromise are damning:

For decades, Vermont officials asked ChemFab to test smokestack emissions to determine whether the company was emitting toxic chemicals in the manufacture of Teflon-coated fabrics. One of those chemicals was PFOA, used to bond the Teflon, or polytetrafluoroethylene, to fiberglass fabric. Those tests were never performed. Instead of requiring ChemFab to meet environmental rules, state officials took a conciliatory approach and repeatedly allowed the company to violate emissions standards without penalty.

According to Digger, even though the state learned of the hazards from PFOA as early as 1997, no attempt was made to test the emissions from the ChemFab facility in Bennington for this substance until 2016. This, because the premier producer of Teflon-coated fabrics was considered too important to the Vermont economy to inconvenience with regulatory overbsight that the company claimed (falsely) to avoid in other locations.

•Residents filed hundreds of complaints about a “dirty plastic” odor from the North Bennington plant over a 24-year period.

•The company was supposed to catalog every chemical in the smokestack emissions. Results from testing in 1985, which established the baseline monitoring standards for a 15-year period, were badly executed. The tests were “not representative of stack emissions,” according to Mike Kawahata, the scientist with Environment One Corporation, the contractor for ChemFab that conducted the tests. State Rep. Marie Condon told DEC officials that it appeared ChemFab might be “intentionally withholding damaging information about its toxic emissions.” The state allowed the flawed results to stand.

•In internal memos, the commissioner of the Department of Health and field inspectors for the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation asked senior officials at the Agency of Natural Resources to test for fluorocarbons, including PFOA. The tests were never conducted.

•Regulators recorded dozens of emissions violations from 1984 to 2002, but only one enforcement action was taken during that period.

•ChemFab managers misrepresented pollution control standards in other states and pushed Vermont regulators to relax air quality standards based on false claims. For example, the company said New Hampshire allowed competitors and other ChemFab facilities to operate without any pollution control devices on some smokestacks. In response to pressure from ChemFab, Vermont authorities gave the company tax breaks and waived air quality rules.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for everyone in this instance of environmental protection failure, extending through the administrations of both Democratic and Republican governors.

It’s the same old story we read over and over again: Vermont “has to be more business friendly.” Inevitably, that is the thinly veiled argument for letting big offenders off the hook on regulations while holding small businesses fully accountable.

…And as far as successfully retaining the “valuable” employer was concerned(?)…once again, it’s a familiar story:

Despite numerous concessions from Vermont officials at every level of government, in 2002, ChemFab closed its Bennington factory and moved its headquarters to Merrimack, New Hampshire.

ChemFab cut and ran, but it’s toxic legacy continues to haunt the groundwater in Bennington county sickening residents and undermining property values.

Is that really “business friendly?”

 

VTGOP committee member: “people […] confused as to what the march is all about.”

local/regional, National, , ,

twofacesGOP3When The Atlantic Magazine reached out to GOP state and national committee members for a reaction to Trump’s handling of the violent events at Charlottesville, Vermont Republican National committeeman Jay Shepard offered this contention about the white supremist riot: “In all mob scenes there are people who just happen to be there, who aren’t leaders of organizations and are just confused as to what the march is all about.”

Yes, who among us hasn’t been confused “as to what the march [a Nazi riot]   is all about?”Although, you know, for many people seeing marchers wearing white hoods and flying swastika flags might have been the obvious tell.

[…]The Atlantic reached out to 146 Republican state party chairs and national committee members for reaction to Trump’s handling of the events. We asked each official two questions: Are you satisfied with the president’s response? And do you approve of his comment that there were “some very fine people” who marched alongside the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis?  

The vast majority refused to comment on the record, or simply met the questions with silence. Of the 146 GOP officials contacted, just 22 offered full responses—and only seven expressed any kind of criticism or disagreement with Trump’s handling of the episode. (Those seven GOP leaders represent New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, North Dakota, Alaska, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.) The rest came to the president’s defense, either with statements of support or attempts at justification

Almost a year ago I compared the VTGOP’s mixed enthusiasm for then-candidate Trump to a “mullet” hair style. That is the 1970’s and 80’s haircut style (infamous by the 1990’s) showed the public one “thing” (face) in the front view, yet show a different style or “thing” (another face) in the back: “all business in the front and all party in the back.” In the case of the VTGOP’s emerging mullet, all good ol’ imaginary GOP moderation in the front and just totally Trumpism in the back.

Now the VTGOP is still styling the political equivalent of a “mullet,” i.e., a two-faced approach with Phil Scott sporting some neatly trimmed criticism of President Trump’s “very fine people” remark up front, and Committeeman Jay Shepard showing the rough side in the back. It must be the look they prefer while strutting around under the circus tent.

NewVistas by any other name still a dead cow falling from the sky

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The Valley News reports that David Hall is doing a little bit of rebranding to his New Vistas project. New Vistas is now to be known as Windsorange LLC.DCFFTS It not clear where this rebranding strategy and new name (a mash-up of Windsor and Orange counties) originated but Seven Days reported this spring that Montpelier lobbyist and PR ace Kevin Ellis was on-board with the utopian project and would help woo the local rurals.

The name is a combination of the two Vermont counties, Windsor and Orange, that Hall says he hopes to “improve.”

“What people never caught on to is (that) NewVistas is way in the future, and the first thing that needs to be done is jobs and commerce,” Hall said in an interview last week. “I decided to change the name so that people didn’t think we were trying to do NewVistas right away.” from VNews.com

New Vistas, now known as Windsorange LLC, is the utopian city/state Utah resident Hall has planned for several towns in central Vermont’s Upper Valley. Using the birthplace of the founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith, as its focal point, the futuristic city/state is inspired by the Mormon design for the city of Zion.

The ultra wealthy(former owner of diamond oil drill manufacturer Novatek) Hall  is still buying up parcels of land for what could eventually be a residential community of a more than 5,000-acre home to 20,000 (plus) souls. Nicole Antal, a resident of the town of Sharon (within the area affected by Hall’s planned community) and the blogger who broke the New Vista story, is doggedly reporting Hall’s latest land buys and tracking local opposition efforts on the DailyUV.com.

NewVistas’ name change is only part of the rebranding, as Hall told the Valley News:  [he will be] focusing on offshoots of the research needed to make his self-sustaining communities possible.

“I have lots of expanding businesses under my umbrella,” he said, “and so what my hope is, is to get some good cooperation with other key people in the area” — potential partnerships that could bring to the White River Valley some “good jobs,”

He would not name names of local partners but did say the Vermont Law School — with whom he had hoped to partner — had rejected an association with Windsorange/NewVistas. But Hall  stresses, in what by repetition seems a vaguely threatening way, the long-term or even inevitable nature of his dream community. “[…] so I’ll just wait. My ideas are too far out for most people. But I’m patient. I can wait.”

For the short term, inflicting his massive Windsorange dream community on several small Vermont towns seems as welcome as dead cow falling from the sky.

Monumental removal priorities

National, Uncategorized, ,

For today at least, and for sanity’s sake I plan to limit myself to following reports about  Trump’s latest outburst  of support for white nationalists to 140 character bites — such as the one below.  This time President Trump angrily  went off script — and perhaps the rails to totally reject  criticism of the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville Virginia.

gotta go