Regulation

Study: EPA Being Reshaped To Serve Industry

May 2, 2018 Neela Banerjee, Insideclimatenews.org Educate! Environment, EPA, Regulation

Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency has veered so far from its foundational mission of protecting human health and the environment that it faces the highest risk in its 47-year history of being reshaped to serve industry rather than the American public, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health. The EPA routinely faces criticism from environmental and public health advocates for allegedly quashing science and softening rules to help industry. During the early years of the Reagan presidency in particular, EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch worked to scale back the agency's activities. But the new study, based on interviews with current and former EPA staff and reviews of White House and EPA initiatives, concluded that the agency is now on the edge of "regulatory capture," when industry priorities determine policy rather than the public interest and impartial research.

Hawaii Could Become The First State To Ban Chlorpyrifos

April 30, 2018 Will Caron, Hawaiiindependent.net Create! Hawaii, Pesticides, Regulation

A bill that would put in place several different regulations on industrial agricultural restricted pesticide use has passed it’s biggest hurdle on the way to becoming a groundbreaking law. Earlier today, the bill passed through conference committee with unanimous support from both house and senate conferees, including Maui Senator Roz Baker, who has been a staunch industry ally in the past, leveraging her power to kill previous years’ iterations. But activists organized a strong campaign this session that involved flying in sister island constituents, who are the most likely to be affected by industrial agricultural pesticide use, to testify; coordinating media and messaging between multiple entities; and a strengthened public awareness campaign that was able to create critical mass among the thousands of supporters of these restrictions statewide who phoned in with...

California Is Preparing To Defend Its Waters From Trump Order

January 13, 2018 By Jane Kay, Revealnews.org Resist! California, Regulation, Trump Administration, Water

In its first act to shield California from the Trump administration’s repeal of regulations, the state’s water board has prepared its own rules protecting wetlands and other waters. The proposed new rules, scheduled for a vote by the board this summer, could insulate the state from President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back the reach of the Clean Water Act. That rollback would strip federal protection from seasonal streambeds, isolated pools and other transitory wetlands, exposing them to damage, pollution or destruction from housing developments, energy companies and farms. “When you look at it from a historical perspective, California has lost the vast majority of the wetland resources,” said planner Paul Hann, who oversees the State Water Resources Control Board’s wetlands protection program. “We want to capture the rich diversity of wetlands across the state.

Trump Picks FERC Official With Potential Conflicts Of Interest

January 9, 2018 By Mark Hand, Thinkprogress.org Educate! Energy, FERC, Regulation, Trump Administration

By choosing a longtime corporate attorney to head the nation’s top energy regulatory agency, President Donald Trump stuck to his practice of nominating officials riddled with potential conflicts of interest to high-ranking roles in the U.S. government. As a partner with Jones Day, a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm, Kevin McIntyre’s ties to energy companies that fall under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) jurisdiction were so numerous and ran so deep that his swearing-in as chairman of the agency was delayed to give him more time to sever the relationships. After his first meeting as chairman on December 21, McIntyre explained to reporters that unlike most commissioners, he worked in private practice for almost 30 years representing companies that are regulated by FERC.

California Regulations May Hinder Trump Effort To Renew Offshore Drilling

January 8, 2018 By Ellen Knickmeyer, Talkingpointsmemo.com Educate! California, Offshore Drilling, Regulation, Trump Administration

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In the decades since a 1969 oil spill near Santa Barbara tarred sea-life and gave rise to the U.S. environmental movement, politicians and environmental activists have built up ample ways to make it difficult but not impossible for the Trump administration to renew drilling off California’s coast. The Interior Department said Thursday it plans to open most federal waters off the United States to oil leases. In California, where no new federal leases offshore have been approved since 1984, Gov. Jerry Brown joined governors of Oregon and Washington in vowing to do “whatever it takes” to stop that from happening off the West Coast. State officials, environmental groups and oil-industry analysts say California has solid regulatory and legal means to try to make good on that threat.

Activist Victory Forces EPA To Regulate Neurotoxin

December 30, 2017 Alexandra Jacobo , Nationofchange.org Resist! Activism, Activists, EPA, Lead, Regulation

A federal appeals court in California this week ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must update their antiquated federal lead regulations within 90 days. Advocates for the change have been fighting in court to get the EPA to update very outdated regulations regarding lead, a harmful neurotoxin. The new rules will strengthen lead hazard standards. The EPA has previously concluded that “lead poisoning is the number one environmental health threat in the U.S. for children ages 6 and younger” and that the current standards are insufficient. The previous standards the EPA was using for dangerous levels of lead in paint and dust were 17-years-old. “This is going to protect the brains of thousands of children across the country,” said Eve C. Gartner, a staff attorney for Earthjustice, one of the groups supporting stronger standards.

Net Neutrality Reg Rollback Riles Religious Groups

December 5, 2017 John Eggerton, broadcastingcable.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, Regulation

By John Eggerton for B& C - Religious groups are calling on FCC chairman Ajit Pai not to eliminate the bright-line network neutrality rules, which he has proposed doing at the FCC's Dec. 14 public meeting. That came in a letter Monday from, among others, the National Council of Churches, the Islamic Society of North America and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Saying communications was "one of God’s great gifts to humanity," they said, and suggested net neutrality was needed to protect that gift. "We implore the policymakers at the Federal Communications Commission to retain the existing policies which maximize an open and free Internet," they wrote. "We are concerned about paid prioritization and other policies that will increase costs and limit opportunities for our nonprofit organizations and the communities we serve," they added. "We urge you to retain the existing protections to protect an Open Internet and to use the strongest legal authority to prohibit paid prioritization. Robust net neutrality protections are essential for all sectors of society, including ours." Pai is proposing eliminating the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, instead having the Justice Department take action against any conduct it deems anticompetitive, and the Federal Trade Commission police for conduct that is unfair or deceptive, including holding ISPs to their promises of no blocking or throttling.

New Rules Are Killing Community Banks, Public Banks Can Revive Them

October 31, 2017 Ellen Brown, ellenbrown.com Create! New Economy, Public Banks, Regulation

By Ellen Brown for Web of Debt Blog - At his confirmation hearing in January 2017, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said, “regulation is killing community banks.” If the process is not reversed, he warned, we could “end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country.” That would be bad for both jobs and the economy. “I think that we all appreciate the engine of growth is with small and medium-sized businesses,” said Mnuchin. “We’re losing the ability for small and medium-sized banks to make good loans to small and medium-sized businesses in the community, where they understand those credit risks better than anybody else.” The number of US banks with assets under $100 million dropped from 13,000 in 1995 to under 1,900 in 2014. The regulatory burden imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act exacerbated this trend, with community banks losing market share at double the rate during the four years after 2010 as in the four years before. But the number had already dropped to only 2,625 in 2010. What happened between 1995 and 2010? Six weeks after September 11, 2001, the 1,100 page Patriot Act was dropped on congressional legislators, who were required to vote on it the next day.

Secret NAFTA Negotiations Threaten Climate Regulation

September 28, 2017 Staff, www.foe.org Educate! Climate Change, NAFTA, Regulation

By Staff of Friends of the Earth - Prime Minister Trudeau seeks to preserve a “reformed” but still environmentally dangerous investment chapter in NAFTA. Canada has faced 38 NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Dispute Settlement cases – from an early challenge to Canada’s right to regulate environmentally harmful additives to gasoline through to a current challenge by a U.S. affiliate of Lone Star, a Canadian fossil fuel company suing Canada for $250 million because Quebec imposed a moratorium on fracking under the St. Lawrence River. Trudeau is also seeking a new “regulatory reform” chapter in NAFTA, which would hobble climate and other environmental regulations. This would encourage the fossil fuel industry to continue to file NAFTA investment suits for billions of dollars if climate regulations interfere with their expected future profits. These investor-state provisions must be removed. Together, Friends of the Earth Canada and Friends of the Earth U.S. demand that Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau and Enrique Peña Nieto change course.

Federal Bank Regulator Drops A Bombshell As Corporate Media Snoozes

August 14, 2017 Pam Martens and Russ Martens, www.wallstreetonparade.com Educate! Banks, Corporate Media, New Economy, Regulation

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens for Wall Street On Parade - Last Monday, Thomas Hoenig, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), sent a stunning letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. The letter contained information that should have become front page news at every business wire service and the leading business newspapers. But with the exception of Reuters, major corporate media like the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, the Business section of the New York Times and Washington Post ignored the bombshell story, according to our search at Google News. What the fearless Hoenig told the Senate Banking Committee was effectively this: the biggest Wall Street banks have been lying to the American people that overly stringent capital rules by their regulators are constraining their ability to lend to consumers and businesses. What’s really behind their inability to make more loans is the documented fact that the 10 largest banks in the country “will distribute, in aggregate, 99 percent of their net income on an annualized basis,” by paying out dividends to shareholders and buying back excessive amounts of their own stock.

Newly Released “Monsanto Papers” Add To Questions Of Regulatory Collusion

August 2, 2017 Carey Gillam, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Monsanto, Regulation

By Carey Gillam for The Huffington Post - Four months after the publication of a batch of internal Monsanto Co. documents stirred international controversy, a new trove of company records was released early Tuesday, providing fresh fuel for a heated global debate over whether or not the agricultural chemical giant suppressed information about the potential dangers of its Roundup herbicide and relied on U.S. regulators for help. More than 75 documents, including intriguing text messages and discussions about payments to scientists, were posted for public viewing early Tuesday morning by attorneys who are suing Monsanto on behalf of people alleging Roundup caused them or their family members to become ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. The attorneys posted the documents, which total more than 700 pages, on the websitefor the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, one of many firms representing thousands of plaintiffs who are pursuing claims against Monsanto. More than 100 of those lawsuits have been consolidated in multidistrict litigation in federal court in San Francisco, while other similar lawsuits are pending in state courts in Missouri, Delaware, Arizona and elsewhere.

Biomass Industry’s Hollow Self-Regulatory Scheme Has Been Exposed

July 15, 2017 Adam Macon and Sasha Stashwick, www.alternet.org Educate! Corporations, Profit, Regulation

By Adam Macon and Sasha Stashwick for AlterNet - If we want clean air and a livable planet, cutting down trees for fuel is one of the most counterproductive things we can do. Standing forests are a critical tool in the fight against climate change. Cutting trees down to use as fuel in energy production—known as biomass energy or bioenergy—is one of the most counterproductive things we can do if our goal is clean air and a livable planet. Despite this reality, policymakers around the world have invested heavily in bioenergy. Nowhere is this more true than in the European Union, where bioenergy policies in the U.K. and other member states enable billions in subsidies each year to flow to the balance sheets of large utility companies, padding their profits and financing the conversion of old coal-fired power plants to burn wood. Meanwhile, the evidence of the climate and ecological harm wrought by the biomass industry continues to mount. Yet too many policymakers remain unwilling to acknowledge the impacts of bioenergy and adequately limit its growth. They argue that the industry’s impacts on the climate, forests, and people are still uncertain, that we need more studies, more "proof."

Secret Industry Teams Rolling Back Regulations For Trump Admin

July 13, 2017 Robert Faturechi and Danielle Ivory, www.propublica.org Educate! Regulation, Trump Administration

By Robert Faturechi for ProPublica and Danielle Ivory for The New York Times - We’ve found many appointees with potential conflicts of interest, including two who might personally profit if particular regulations are undone. This story was co-published with The New York Times. President Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations. But the effort — a signature theme in Trump’s populist campaign for the White House — is being conducted in large part out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts. Most government agencies have declined to disclose information about their deregulation teams. But ProPublica and The New York Times identified 71 appointees, including 28 with potential conflicts, through interviews, public records and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Jeff Sessions’ Alternative Facts About Marijuana

March 3, 2017 Tony Newman, www.alternet.org Educate! Marijuana, Regulation, Trump Administration

By Tony Newman for AlterNet - Attorney General Jeff Sessions became the second member of the Trump administration in less than a week to provide “alternative facts” and backward analysis when it comes to marijuana. Yesterday, in a meeting with reporters, Sessions spoke out against marijuana legalization and implied that it’s leading to more violence. “I’m dubious about marijuana. I’m not sure we’re going to be a better, healthier nation if we have marijuana sold at every corner grocery store.” "Experts are telling me there's more violence around marijuana than one would think,” said Sessions. "You can't sue somebody for a drug debt. The only way to get your money is through strong-arm tactics, and violence tends to follow that."

Coalition Sues Challenging Trumps Order On Removing Regulations

February 9, 2017 Phillip Ellis, www.earthjustice.org Resist! Donald Trump, Lawsuit, Regulation

By Phillip Ellis for Earthjustice - Public Citizen, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Communications Workers of America represented by Earthjustice sued the Trump administration today to block an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 30 that directs federal agencies to repeal two federal regulations for every new rule they issue. The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a declaration that the order cannot be lawfully implemented and bar the agencies from implementing the order. The order requires new rules to have a net cost of $0 this fiscal year, without taking into account the value of the benefits of public protections.

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