Chief Justice Roberts fails to keep the Supreme Court from being a right wing rubber stamp

 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/opinion/supreme-court-epa-ruling.html

Obviously, tRumpzi’s appointments to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have spurred charges that the courts are becoming more politicized.

Maine Writer opinion: Chief Justice John Roberts leads a Supreme Count that has put women's health at risk of death by preventing access to reproductive services and, now, puts public health at risk, by obstructing environmental safety regulations.

The Supreme Court Sabotages Efforts to Protect Public Health and Safety

On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, with its 6-3 ruling in the case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, curtailed the power of the agency to protect the environment, and specifically to require the reductions in emissions that are urgently necessary to limit global warming.

President Donald Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts clashed Wednesday in an extraordinary public dispute over the independence of America’s judiciary, with Roberts bluntly rebuking the president for denouncing a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge.” But, there’s no such thing, Roberts declared in a strongly worded statement contradicting Trump and defending judicial independence. (IMO Justice Roberts has lost control of the conservative Justices.  He should resign!)

In fact, the conservative court’s ruling constrains any effort to tighten restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. It also threatens the Biden administration’s ability to impose new limits on tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks and on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. As the three members of the court’s liberal minority wrote in a stinging dissent, the majority’s decision strips the E.P.A. of the power “to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”

The Biden administration, already struggling to persuade Congress to invest in renewable energy and compelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to push for increased production of fossil fuels, once again finds its ambitious goals for confronting climate change slipping beyond reach. The court’s adversarial posture means that the administration must double down on its efforts to win congressional support for its spending plans. President Biden and Democratic leaders should also press to pass legislation clarifying the E.P.A.’s (Environmental Protection Agency's)  authority to regulate emissions.

John Roberts was friends with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz: Message to Chief Justice Roberts from his mother, "Beware of the (conservative) company you keep."

Thursday’s ruling also has consequences far beyond environmental regulation. It threatens the ability of federal agencies to issue rules of any kind, including the regulations that ensure the safety of food, medicines and other consumer products, that protect workers from injuries and that prevent financial panics.

Chief Justice John Roberts failed to prevent the Supreme Court from becoming an arm of right wing politics.  Roberts must resign.

In 1984, an earlier generation of conservative Supreme Court justices formalized a doctrine of deference to the judgment of regulatory agencies, modestly concluding that judges were neither experts nor elected officials, and therefore ought to leave such decisions in other hands. In Thursday’s decision, the court asserted that the policy of deference applies only to supposedly unimportant regulations. When it comes to “major questions” of regulatory policy, the court said, it would not hesitate to second-guess regulators — and to strike rules that it decided did not have a clear congressional warrant.

The decision amounts to a warning shot across the bow of the administrative state. The Supreme Court’s current conservative majority, engaged in a counterrevolution against the norms of American society, is seeking to curtail the efforts of federal regulators to protect the public’s health and safety. The court already invoked a similar logic during the COVID pandemic to strike down workplace Covid testing requirements and a federal moratorium on evictions. And by refraining from defining a threshold for what constitutes a “major question,” the court is leaving a sword hanging over every new rule.

The West Virginia case has its origins in 2015, when the E.P.A. imposed new limits on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. The agency determined that it was impossible for those plants to reduce emissions to what it regarded as a safe level while producing the same amount of electricity. Burning coal is simply too dirty. Accordingly, it directed companies to cut emissions by reducing output or by shifting to other forms of power generation.

Unfortunately, the rule never took effect. The court stayed its implementation in 2016, and the Trump administration withdrew it in 2019. But the litigants, including the states of West Virginia and North Dakota and a pair of coal companies, pressed ahead with a lawsuit to make sure the rule stayed dead.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, agreed with their claim that the E.P.A. did not have the authority to require companies to shift resources to other kinds of power generation. Mr. Roberts wrote that the court’s longstanding policy in such cases of deference to the agency’s own assessment of its authority did not apply because the stakes were too high. It is a theory long championed by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who explained in a concurring opinion that “administrative agencies must be able to point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ when they claim the power to make decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance.’”

The E.P.A. clearly has the legal authority to set an acceptable standard for emissions, in this case of carbon dioxide, and then to impose restrictions on emitters, in this case coal-fired power plants. The court did not contest these facts. Instead, it ruled that the Clean Air Act does not provide the E.P.A. with sufficient authority to achieve those emissions standards.

Chief Justice Roberts described this conclusion as a defense of congressional authority — an assertion of the primacy of elected officials. But constraining the power of regulatory agencies should not be understood as a shift in the locus of decision-making; rather, it effectively prevents good decisions from being made.

Congress has decided, and with good reason, that regulatory agencies staffed by experts are the best available mechanism for a representative democracy to make decisions in areas of technical complexity. The E.P.A. is the entity that Congress relies upon to figure out how clean the air should be, and how to get there. Asserting that it lacks the power to perform its basic responsibilities is simply sabotage.

It is a telling fact that power producers, in response to market forces, have achieved the shift to cleaner energy that the E.P.A. sought to require in 2015, validating the agency’s assessment of what it could reasonably mandate.

Chief Justice Roberts’s predecessors recognized their own limitations. In the 1984, ruling that formalized the court’s policy of regulatory deference, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that “judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of the government.” Both points are important. The court lacks technical expertise and an electoral mandate. Thursday’s decision asserting a more muscular role is thus a blow to both the public interest and democracy.

Echo editorial from "coal country" ~ Trump coal policy is "no policy"

Coal miners continue to die from lack of investment in health care and the technologies needed to improve their occupational exposures to deadly respiratory diseases, but the Trump administration falsely claims that "coal will (somehow) be great again". 

https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/editorials/article217170045.html
This is an echo editorial 

Trump coal plan kills more than it helps

BY The Lexington Kentucky Herald-Leader Editorial Board

August 22, 2018 

Donald Trump vowed to bring back coal jobs and he has released a plan he says will help.

Too bad that even his own Environmental Protection Agency says his plan would kill and sicken more Americans.

Deregulating emissions standards will result in the release of more soot and smog-forming chemicals that will kill up to 1,400 Americans a year by 2030, EPA documents show. It will also cause an extra 40,000 cases of worsening asthma and 60,000 lost school days by 2030.

And that does not fully factor in the direct impact of environmental degradation and loosen safety regulations on coal communities.

This is not what Eastern Kentucky residents say they want.

Their priority is decent-paying jobs expected to grow with the national economy. It makes no sense to try to jump-start a declining energy source in the face of changing technology and stark economic realities.

Not at such high a cost.

The Trump plan dismantles President Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, aimed to respond to climate change by increasing federal regulation of emissions and promoting cleaner energy, including natural gas and solar and wind power.

Repeal of the Obama plan, when factoring in impact of health costs, would cost the country $1.4 billion to $3.9 billon annually, according to the EPA.

The Trump plan is certain to get bogged down in court challenges, just as the Obama plan has been. Meanwhile, coal communities still need significant investment.

A misguided plan that likely will never be implemented is not the fulfillment of the promise Trump made to Kentucky voters.

Instead, Trump needs to focus less on how to boost flailing coal companies and more on ways to aid coal communities.

Scott Pruitt never was qualified to protect the enviornment

Echo editorial from The Virginia Pilot

EPA's Pruitt a terrible choice ~ He must be fired:

"..made a career out of genuflecting at the altar of oil and gas, industries..."

By The Virginian-Pilot Editorial Board

NOT ~ Scott Pruitt

SHORT OF nominating an actual oil derrick or a landfill to the post, Donald Trump couldn’t have done worse than tapping Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Scratch that: Neither an oil derrick nor a landfill possesses the administrative skills needed to undermine those federal laws and programs established to protect Americans’ soil, air and water, all of which Pruitt has done.

Here’s someone who made a career out of genuflecting at the altar of oil and gas, industries for whom he eagerly carried water while serving as attorney general of Oklahoma.

He once received a letter from Devon Energy, one of the state’s largest energy companies, in opposition to federal limits on methane leaks, and forwarded it to the EPA — replacing little more than the company’s letterhead with that of his office.

It was also in that office that he demonstrated his contempt for carbon emissions limits, among the many other environmental laws he considered an unlawful imposition on the states such as his.

And it was in that office that he made it his mission to dismantle the Clean Power Plan advanced under President Barack Obama, believing it harmful to the economic aspirations of energy companies … er, American workers.

It was therefore an unwelcome, and wholly distressing, development when Trump tapped Pruitt, not simply for a job in Washington, but to lead the nation’s most important environmental watchdog agency.

The president has made a habit of picking as department heads those individuals most committed to sabotaging the very agencies they’ve been asked to lead. Pruitt is arguably the most egregious — the highest-profile rogue in a gallery of them.

Closer to home, his elevation to that influential role posed a particularly ominous menace to this region, home to the second-largest population in the United States facing the threat posed by rising sea levels.

Though land subsidence contributes to that problem, the climate is changing for the worse as a result of human activity — a position that is indisputable by anyone other than the willfully ignorant. Loosening laws meant to curb emissions and lessen climate change is akin to pouring salt in a self-inflicted wound, and Pruitt was all too eager to do so.

And yet, it’s unlikely that his sinister approach to managing the EPA will be Pruitt’s undoing. Rather, it’s almost certain to be a comparatively banal brand of corruption that is infuriatingly commonplace in the highest echelons of the Trump administration.

Since taking the EPA helm, Pruitt has compiled a rather impressive roster of misdeeds.

He ordered construction of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office for no discernible reason. He has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for his personal security detail and air travel, which he demands be exclusively first class.

He took a trip to Morocco on the taxpayers’ dime, using it to pitch that country’s government on the benefits of natural gas. 

Pruitt used a little-known provision in the Safe Water Drinking Act to increase the salaries of two political aides by more than $80,000 combined.

And then there’s his housing situation. Pruitt has been renting a room in a townhome for $50 a day, which anyone familiar with District rental prices would identify as a sweetheart deal. The co-owner of said townhome? The wife of an energy lobbyist.

Now, citizens shouldn’t expect Pruitt to really have to account for these actions.

A Congress led by Republicans has shown little interest in looking into the rampant corruption by members of the Trump administration. And when he’s relieved of his duties — a time that is almost inevitable given the proclivities of this president — he’ll probably land quite comfortably in the corner office of some energy lobbying firm.

But that moment really cannot come soon enough. Having a director of the Environmental Protection Agency wholly uninterested in protecting the environment is a national embarrassment, and Americans deserve much better than the worst option available.

Scott Pruitt has never been qualified to protect the environment. His goal is to create profit margins for rich industrial polluters.

Paying for weather disasters ~ responding without planning

There's no answer about how to budget for weather disasters. 

Frankly, God only knows where the money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) comes from after disasters strike, because the cost of responding to the growing numbers of back to back weather caused havoc in recent years must be exceeding appropriations set aside to pay for recovery efforts.  

Nevertheless, the Trump administration and Scott Pruitt, the Secretary charged with helping to protect the environment, are in denial about how to prepare for the long term impact of weather disasters, lost electricity, spoiled food, death tolls and property damage.  Instead, the Republicans insist the growing number of events must be responded to but not necessarily something that must be anticipated.  

This essay is an interesting perspective, by Amy Davidson Sorkin, in the September 25, 2017 The New Yorker.n 

“In the Dark,” Amy Davidson Sorkin explores how America is dealing with hurricane disasters.  (This link is also a podcast.)

Donald Trump was asked to survey the damage from Hurricane Irma when he went to his estate in Mar-a-Lago, in Florida.  He was asked about the 5 million people in Florida who did not have electricity. But Trump said that repairs to the electrical grid were going well, thanks to what he called "the largest assemblage of human beings ever in one are for power." 

Indeed, in Florida alone, tens of thousands of linemen were on the job, brought in from as far away as California -some of them sleeping in trailers at the Sarasota Fairgrounds, where the Wall Street Journal reported they had named their encampment the Hotel Sarasota.

Similar efforts were under way in Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and in Puerto Rico, where a dilapidated power system had collapsed in the first winds of the storm.  Still, according to one estimate, three out of four Floridians were without power at one point, and a great many remained so for weeks after the storm. In a comparison of NASA space photographs taken of Florida at night, before and after Irma, the clusters of cities and suburbs that are normally illuminated, disappeared into a topography of flooding.  

In some respects, Hurricane Irma was not as devastating as it might have been; Miami and Tampa were spared a direct hit. But, the Keys were left largely uninhabitable, and Jacksonville, three hundred miles to the north, suffered severe, unexpected flooding, illustrating what me be the most important lessor of Irma - how close o the margins many Americans are living. That lesson involved, most glaringly climate change; Irma and Hurricane Harvey, which struck two weeks earlier, are reminders that we live in a era of standardized disaster, with cities sprawling across what are now, effectively, flood plains. But, in other areas, too, relating to infrastructure, income inequality, and health care, Irma provided a case study in precariousness.

As temperatures in Florida reached the middle nineties, the police chief of Hollywood, Florida, announced that eight patients at a rehabilitation center that had lost power and, with it, air-conditioning- had died of what were apparently heat related causes.  The Miami Herald described retirement communities that had no working elevators, and where food and medicines that were supposed to be refrigerated were spoiling.  In another measure of desperation, in Orange County, an emergency crew found three members of a family dead, apparently of carbon-monoxide poising, from fumes emitted by a generator, that had bought and set up; a child in the house had called 9-11.

There were also reminders of the pathology of the federal government's near-bankrupt flood-insurance system, which encourages over development in vulnerable areas, and subsidizes the coverage of many august structures, such as Trump's estate at Mar-a-Lago. Even so, according to the Associated Press, only forty-one percent of homes in Florida's coastal counties have food insurance. 

In many cases, those policies fail to cover damage from mold, which, in the heat, can set in almost immediately and persist indefinitely, compromising a house's structural integrity and its residents' health. In Houston, standing water left from Hurricane Harvey is also breeding clouds of disease carrying mosquitoes.

When Senator Mitch McConnell the Majority Leader was asked how he could square the Republican Party's budget-cutting priorities with the need to respond to the hurricane disasters, he brushed the question aside by saying that America is a "bighearted country", that is always willing "to cover these emergencies." 

But, our political system often has difficulty figuring out what constitutes an emergency. Is it a child missing school because of an asthma attack brought on my mold, or a parent missing a mortgage payment because of a shift skipped during hurricane evaluations?  

Half of all American households live paycheck to paycheck. 

It's alarmingly easy with one moderate gust to get badly off track There was an echo, in McConnell's assertion, of the Republican Party's response to criticisms that dismantling Obamacare would cost millions of people their health which it dismissed with the blithe insistence that Americans will never let other Americans simply die in the street.

When Tom Bossert, Trump's home land security adviser was asked at a press briefing whether the onslaught of hurricanes had led the Trump administration to reconsider some of its environmental policies, such as the abandonment of the Paris climate accords, he said that it would take seriously not "the cause" of the climate change but "the things that we observe." 

That is a prescription for nothing more than repeatedly rushing to rescue, while remaining ill prepared for the long term. 

Secretary Scott Pruitt head of the EPA doesn't want to get "sensitive" about climate change

Similarly when Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that it would be "very-very insensitive" to talk about the climate crisis (OMG!) at this juncture, one could only wonder whose feelings he was most concerned about. "I wish that he would have been here when people ran from high-rises," Miami's mayor Toras Regaldo, said of Pruitt.

Meanwhile, Trump infuriated members of his own Republican party by acceding to a Democratic effort in Congress to tie a Harvey hurricans relief package to a three month extension of the debt ceiling. Hurricane-relief money will be inadequately spent, though, if it does not address the endemic issues that make hurricanes more dangerous - or shore up those aspects of government oversight which mitigated the effects of Harvey and Irma. 

By all accounts, lives were saved by more stringent building codes, which were put in place after Hurricanes Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2005, and whose fastidiousness Trump has decried; and significant parts of the cleanup will be in the hands of the EPA, for which Trump has proposed deep cuts.

America is a rich country and still a lucky one. The linemen are not the only assemblage deployed to respond to the hurricanes. Tens of thousands of members of the military and the reserves were available to assist in the operations.  Our big cities did not drown this time. A more acute harbinger of the face of climate change might be the ravaging of islands in the Caribbean and the floods in South Asia the same week, which killed thousands of people. 

But, with each such storm, the lives of certain Africans get worse in ways that are more difficult to assess. The disasters of the age of climate change may come on like a loud riot, but they can also set in like a quiet rot. ~  (MaineWriter ~ and the 2018 hurricane season will be upon us just in time for the 2018 mid term elections.)

Open letter to Secretary Scott Pruitt to protect public health and environment

Right wing Republicans waste time in denial about the environmental impacts on public health. Indeed, there is a direct correlation between the environment and public health. For example, polluted water can lead to lead poisoning and dirty air increases the acuity of asthma attacks.

Yet, Republicans choose to ignore the negative health impact of extreme weather, carbon emissions and human created pollution on the earth's environment. Nevertheless, a growing number of Americans are calling for more accountability to protect the public health, by defending the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from budget cuts.

Among them is Congresswoman Pingree, of Maine. As a matter of fact, in July 2017, Pingree received the first-ever Environmental Champion Award from Environment Maine for her “consistent, strong, and effective leadership” in protecting public health and the environment in Congress.

Moreover, she on the website "VoteSmart.org", she is on record for supporting a letter written by a group of environmental advocates, addressed to EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt. Unfortunately, Pruitt is leading the Trump campaign to deregulate and to un-fund DEP public health protections.

Chellie Pingree's Political Summary on Issue: Environment

Letter to the Hon. Scott Pruitt, EPA - Boost Emergency Preparedness, Superfund Cleanup:

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree D-Maine

Date: Sept. 19, 2017
Location: Washington, DC

Secretary Pruitt,

We write to you with concern for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) preparedness for the impacts of increased extreme weather events like those that recently occurred in South Texas and the Southeast. 

In particular, we are concerned that efforts to reduce the Agency's staff and budget, along with plans to eliminate climate mitigation and adaptation programs, will leave the agency ill equipped to protect communities from the environmental hazards associated with extreme weather.

Recent news media reports have drawn attention to potential hazards to public health and local environmental integrity due to hurricane-related flooding at Superfund sites, chemical plants and refineries in areas affected by Hurricane Harvey. The rapid development of multiple hurricanes since, one of which was the record-breaking Irma, is an indicator of more threatening storms to come. We know that you have previously identified Superfund site cleanup as a key function of the Environmental Protection Agency and a priority for your time leading the EPA. We would like to know how you intend to prepare the Agency to deal with toxic superfund contamination and other hazards in light of increases in extreme weather.

As such, we ask that you respond to the following:

Your recently developed Superfund plan does not address the issue of extreme weather. 

Under your leadership, how does the EPA plan to address issue of superfund contamination under the threat of increasing extreme weather and natural disasters?

What is your plan for securing other potentially hazardous sites under circumstances of extreme weather?

We also ask that you reconsider the delay of the EPA's Risk Management Plan rule. Had it been in place, it would have better protected the health of police officers and firefighters in Crosby, Texas as they were responding to chemical contamination and fires at the Arkema chemical plant. 

The rule creates increased transparency regarding the possibly dangerous chemicals present at plants like Arkema and would have helped first responders better understand the threats they faced during that incident.

While a ready response is critical, we cannot just plan for the aftermath of disasters, we must also do all we can to protect communities from them in the first place. In addition to causing sea levels to rise, climate change is projected to lead to stronger, more intense storms, such as hurricanes with higher wind speeds, heavier rainfall and more dangerous storm surge. 

That is why we are so concerned about efforts to cut or eliminate climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives that will help protect American communities, saving money and lives. Mitigation of climate change impacts through reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a must for protecting communities. Investment in climate adaptation--the rebuilding of communities and infrastructure so they are better able to withstand extreme weather, flooding and other hazards, is equally important. 

According to the EPA's own reporting, without adaptation, unmitigated climate change is projected to result in $5.0 trillion in damages for coastal property alone in the contiguous U.S. through 2100. This is in addition to the even more important priority of protecting American lives and keeping people safe in their communities. We therefore ask that you reconsider the Administration's proposals to cut, eliminate or rollback critical climate related initiatives and investments that can help protect communities from future storms.

Finally, we are concerned that the Trump Administration's desire to dramatically reduce staff and the overall budget of EPA will impact the Agency's ability to respond and protect communities after extreme weather events. Moreover, while the FY18 appropriations bill that passed the House Appropriations Committee included a modest increase for Superfund remediation, we find it worrying that the President's budget proposed substantial cuts to this important program. In light of recent storms and wildfires, it is clear that EPA will be tasked with vital life-saving cleanup frequently and across the country, especially as United States realizes more and more of the harmful impacts of climate change. It is important that EPA maintain the staffing and funding levels necessary to adequately respond to environmental challenges wherever and whenever it is needed, and to proactively prevent such dangers by cleaning up contaminated sites as aggressively as possible before disaster strikes.

We look forward to receiving the answers to the questions outlined above and to working with you to ensure the EPA is prepared to fulfil its responsibility to protect public health and the environment.

Sincerely,
Source: https://quigley.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/quigley-leads-letter-epa-need-boost-emergency-preparedness-superfund