The W(why)TF did Trump do this? thread

ThatBoyNick · Jul 21, 2020

Os Trigonum said: ↑

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-...ving-federal-environmental-impact-assessments

Improving federal environmental impact assessments
By Mario Loyola, Opinion Contributor — 01/17/20 09:30 AM EST

Last week, the Trump administration proposed significant improvements to how agencies implement one of the most important laws you’ve never heard of: the National Environmental Policy Act. Passed in 1970, “NEPA” requires federal agencies to conduct extensive environmental impact studies before they do virtually anything that could have a significant impact on the environment. That includes everything from Forest Service management plans to federal funds for major highway projects to the permits that agencies issue for pipelines and coal mines.

Under a Carter-era regulation, NEPA has grown into a behemoth of red tape. Environmental reviews average 4.5 years, and seven years for highway projects—just to produce a single Environmental Impact Statement (or “EIS”). That’s years of bureaucratic process before a single bulldozer breaks ground. Of course, the resulting EISs often run into the thousands of pages.

NEPA’s basic purpose of ensuring that agency decisionmakers are cognizant of the potential environmental impacts of their actions thus falls by the wayside. Americans spend billions of dollars every year for agencies to create encyclopedias of environmental facts and figures far more detailed than is useful for agency decisionmakers. In practice, the purpose of NEPA has become litigation defense—as activist federal courts and environmental advocacy groups have learned to use NEPA as a way to slow down or block large projects on the most minute technicalities.

The negative impact on job creation is incalculable. Companies have to be prepared to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on a single project because of delays that are not only lengthy but totally unpredictable. NEPA thus creates third-world levels of risk for large-scale investments, often to the detriment of the environment itself, as even ecological restoration projects and renewable energy projects drown in NEPA’s ocean of red tape.

Because all projects suffer from a NEPA process that has grown far beyond what the statute itself requires, the Obama administration took the initiative with important procedural improvements such as FAST-41, which established a Permitting Council to oversee the federal authorization process for the largest infrastructure projects. The Trump administration took these process improvements to a new level with its One Federal Decision initiative in Executive Order 13807 (August 2017).

The proposed rulemaking, published by the White House Council on Environmental Quality last week, would codify key elements of the One Federal Decision policy. EISs would have to be completed in no more than two years, and would have to be no longer than 150 pages except in rare cases. Federal agencies would be required to agree on a joint project schedule at the outset, so that companies and workers can have some certainty about when key decisions affecting their future will be made.

Other important improvements would help return the NEPA process closer to what Congress intended when it first enacted the law. Refined definitions of key terms would ensure that NEPA is triggered by actions that are truly federal, not just tangential federal support of state or local projects where the federal agency has no real control over outcomes. Proposed changes would clarify that agencies must study their own alternatives, not those of the project applicants, a source of major delays in years past.

Likewise, proposed changes would require agencies to study the reasonably foreseeable effects of their actions, rather than speculating about potential impacts far downstream or upstream from the project itself, where the agency has no authority to prevent the potential effects or the effects would occur regardless of the federal action. Agencies would no longer have to spend copious amounts of time studying global effects to which the proposed action has only a negligible contribution, helping to leave those larger policy issues—such as climate change—to Congress and the president, where they belong.

Another important change would require stakeholders to inform agencies of any objections they may have to the EIS while the agency can still act on them, rather than waiting for a lawsuit to throw the kitchen sink at the agency action as many environmental advocacy groups do today for no other reason than to create more delays.

NEPA is one of our country’s most important laws. It has made federal agencies and the private projects they oversee much more environmentally sustainable, helping to preserve the blessings of our natural environment for future generations.

But after 40 years, it has become clear that NEPA’s benefits can be enhanced while significantly reducing the unnecessary burdens and costs that the NEPA process imposes on the public. The Trump administration’s common sense proposals to improve the NEPA process will help ensure the continued success of this important law long into the future.

Mario Loyola is senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. From 2017 to 2019, he was associate director for regulatory reform at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

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Trump Overhauls Key Environmental Law To Speed Up Pipelines And Other Projects

The 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It requires federal agencies to consider the environmental effects of proposed projects before they are approved. It also gives the public and interest groups the ability to comment on those evaluations.

Keystone XL, the Dakota Access and the Atlantic Coast pipelines.

But environmental groups warn the new rules will sideline the environmental effects of pipelines, highways and other projects.

"What the Trump administration is doing is fundamentally changing those regulations and really gutting them," says Sharon Buccino, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

What's more, Buccino says the law was designed to give a voice to communities long hurt by pollution from highways, pipelines and chemical plants that are disproportionately located in their neighborhoods.

"NEPA gives poor and communities of color a say in the projects that will define their communities for decades to come. Rather than listen, the Trump administration's plan aims to silence such voices," says Buccino.
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Clean air, land, and water for our kids? No thanks, that stuff is for non-American socialist chumps !

NewRoxFan · Jul 22, 2020

A very special guest appearance by republican ted yoho, who cannot even man up enough to admit he was wrong and apologize to a colleague for a despicable insult...

Backstory:

AOC accosted, called ‘f—ing b****’ by Republican lawmaker Ted Yoho

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was accosted and called a “f—ing b****” by a fellow member of Congress on the steps of the Capitol, she confirmed Tuesday. The incident, according to The Hill, occurred Monday when Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), joined by Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), was coming down the steps of the Capitol after voting. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), meanwhile, was walking up the steps to cast her vote. Yoho told AOC in “a brief but heated exchange” that she was “disgusting” for her recent remarks tying poverty and unemployment to the recent spike in crime in New York City. The progressive darling, according to the outlet, told Yoho he was being “rude.”The two then kept walking their respective ways, but Yoho remarked after taking a few steps, “f—ing b****.”
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https://nypost.com/2020/07/21/aoc-accosted-called-f-ing-b****-by-republican-ted-yoho/

CCorn · Jul 22, 2020

He has a bright future with the Trump admin if they win re-election.

NewRoxFan · Jul 22, 2020

AOC doesn't accept...

KingCheetah · Jul 22, 2020

Rep Yolo

NewRoxFan · Jul 22, 2020

yoho is such a weaselly coward...

edwardc · Jul 22, 2020

What Joke of a man

Os Trigonum · Jul 22, 2020

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/22/us-...millions-of-doses-of-coronavirus-vaccine.html

The U.S. will pay Pfizer and biotech firm BioNTech $1.95 billion to produce and deliver 100 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine if it proves safe and effective, the companies announced Wednesday.

It was the largest such deal between the government and companies racing to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

Under the agreement, the U.S. can acquire 500 million additional doses, the Department of Health and Human Services said. Germany-based BioNTech and Pfizer are jointly developing four potential vaccines.

If one of the vaccines proves safe and effective in a large phase three trial and receives regulatory approval, HHS said Pfizer will begin to deliver doses to locations across the U.S. at the government’s direction. The vaccine would then be made available to Americans “at no cost,” HHS said. It’s unclear who the first doses of the potential vaccine would go to and how that decision would be made.

The companies previously said they expect to begin a large trial with up to 30,000 participants later this month, if they receive regulatory approval.

Shares of Pfizer were 3.8% higher in early trading Wednesday and BioNTech stock was up 4%.

The companies announced earlier this month preliminary data for vaccine candidate BNT162b1, the most advanced of their four potential vaccines. Researchers said the early-stage clinical trial showed the BNT162b1 vaccine produced some neutralizing antibodies, which researchers believe is necessary to build immunity to the virus.

Health officials have previously warned that one of the greatest challenges of rapidly rolling out a vaccine will be obtaining the supplies necessary to produce enough doses. That includes syringes and transport media. However, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” later Wednesday that the government has bolstered the supply chain so the companies can at least produce enough initial doses to vaccinate the U.S.

“We’re not concerned about supply chain,” he said. “We’ve secured that to be able to ensure that we’ll be able to vaccinate the American people once we get vaccines that are demonstrated safe and effective to the FDA’s gold standard of approval or authorization.”

The deal was signed as part of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to accelerate development and production of vaccines and treatments to fight the coronavirus.

“Through Operation Warp Speed, we are assembling a portfolio of vaccines to increase the odds that the American people will have at least one safe, effective vaccine as soon as the end of this year,” Azar said in a statement. “Depending on success in clinical trials, today’s agreement will enable the delivery of approximately 100 million doses of vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.”
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NewRoxFan · Jul 31, 2020

LOL, in this short clip, how many times did trump lie?

deb4rockets · Jul 31, 2020

This pretty much sums up the W(WHy)TF did Trump do this question.

And this.....wanna be Dictator

RayRay10 · Aug 3, 2020

So...point was that Biden left Pennsylvania...

KingCheetah · Aug 3, 2020

RayRay10 said: ↑

So...point was that Biden left Pennsylvania...

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Wut?

TWS1986 · Aug 3, 2020

RayRay10 said: ↑

So...point was that Biden left Pennsylvania...

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bobrek · Aug 3, 2020

RayRay10 said: ↑

So...point was that Biden left Pennsylvania...

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I suppose Trump has abandoned New York since his residence is in Florida.

NewRoxFan · Aug 4, 2020

Did trump go half=cocked with the Lebanon explosion info?

NewRoxFan · Aug 4, 2020

Deckard · Aug 4, 2020

bobrek said: ↑

I suppose Trump has abandoned New York since his residence is in Florida.
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And he’s abandoning Florida after abandoning North Carolina. Maybe he should have his convention in Oklahoma.

RayRay10 · Aug 5, 2020

RayRay10 · Aug 5, 2020

RayRay10 · Aug 5, 2020

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