No Money for Sick 9/11 First Responders

Eric Boehlert‏--  if you want a glimpse into what a viciously awful entity the GOP has become, they have stood in the way of helping 9/11 first responders FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS

The NY DailyNews article:

The answer no one in Washington could provide Monday was why Congress can't just pass the law that would finally take care of the men and women who ran towards the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. But that was the question on the minds of dozens of responders and people sickened in communities around Ground Zero who arrived on Capitol Hill to pass a new 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. It would permanently replenish the one that is cutting payouts by 50 percent and 70 percent now, and expires in 2020.

"There's people who don't have a pension, who are too sick to work, who don't have insurance now. This is money that they need for their families now," Alvarez said. "If I go, my wife and three boys are going to be OK. That's a stress that I don't have," he said. "When you're fighting cancer, the last thing you want to worry about is money." 

(snip)

The former host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, also lobbied lawmakers with responders. He called it "baffling" that lawmakers won't just pass the new bill. But if he didn't have an answer for why not to just pass it, he did blame a specific "impediment" -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who sets the schedule for bills in the Senate. 

"Mitch McConnell has made this a problem. Only him. And I put the blame and the onus on him because he could fix it tomorrow," Stewart said, remembering that the 2015 Zadroga Act ran afoul of various legislative horse trading that McConnell had a hand in. 

"If tomorrow he said let's do this as a clean bill ... this would be done. And none of these people would have to be here." A spokesman for McConnell simply pointed to the fact that Zadroga did pass in the end, and Stewart at the time expressed gratitude. 

McConnell's Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed the new compensation act will get its vote. "We were able to get up-or-down votes before. We will get one now," Schumer said. "Everyone in the Senate should stand on notice. They're going to have to say yes or no."

Trump Is a Racist Moron, Part Infinity

That's one hell of a way to negotiate with a country whose economy is intimately linked to the US's and who also has bought up trillions of dollars of US debt.

Trump's 6 Main Conjobs

Long piece in the WaPo.

Briefly:

Con No. 1: To borrow billions, Trump lies to inflate his net worth.

Con No. 2: To avoid taxes, Trump lies to deflate his net worth.

Con No. 3: To be a winner, Trump makes losers of those he does business with.

Con No. 4: To win in politics, Trump makes voters believe that his presidency benefits them.

Con No. 5: To avoid accountability, Trump makes the media, and truth, the “enemy of the people.” 

Con No. 6: To stoke fear, Trump recasts perpetrators as victims.

Trump White House to Set up Panel to Counter Climate Change Consensus

Fucking evil assholes

GOP Amoral Fucktards by Seth Abramson

The GOP has a long history of richly rewarding and even lionizing party hacks who commit crimes or other foul deeds—from Oliver North to Gordon Liddy to Katherine Harris to Ken Blackwell—it's amazing we're ever surprised when the party backs scoundrels. Its only ethos is winning. 

1/ The benefit of being in a party that doesn't want or need government to work, because it fundamentally doesn't believe in government and benefits enormously when government fails, is that all you need is to jam the machine's gears so it breaks. You don't have to *do* anything.

2/ So when the GOP finds a criminal who knows how to win, backing that horse fervently offers the dual benefit of increasing Americans' hopelessness that government can ever be honest or work while also ensuring that those atop government aren't honest and do only nefarious work.

3/ We may sometimes think of Trump as a sort of exception in the history of the GOP, but how often does a Republican do something awful and quickly wind up a "hero" of the Republican base? When has the party clearly tossed out its scoundrels? That'd be counter to its philosophy.

4/ Dick Cheney is a hero for orchestrating a ruinous and false conflict that cost thousands of lives. Did the GOP care that Libby was outing agents in our clandestine services? "Owning the libs" has *always* been—my whole life—more important to the GOP than ethics or governance.

5/ I guess what I'm saying is, what if Trump—despite not believing in any Republican "principles" or being anything but the clear anathema of any "moral majority"—is in fact the natural conclusion of the devolution of GOP politics, as in fact the principles never really mattered?

6/ The GOP is now the party of "owning the libs." It doesn't care about immigration; it knows a wall won't reduce illegal immigration. As long as it seats judges who set us back 100 years and finds ways to prove that government doesn't work, it's doing *just* what it wants to do.

7/ 70% of the GOP would lionize Roger Stone in perpetuity if it discovered that he'd secretly worked with Russia to elect Trump, and had thereafter found some sleazy way to get away with it, by pardon or otherwise. And Stone knows it. And Stone is excitedly waiting for sainthood.

8/ When the only "governing" philosophy of a political party is that it hates the government it wants to control, and wants to reverse the progress of the democratic experiment of which it's a part, why should we be surprised when it makes a malignant narcissist into its godhead?

EPA Bows to Coal Industry, Moves to Weaken Mercury & Air Toxics Standards

More environmental evil from Trump and the GOP:

In its latest attack on clean air protections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its new proposal to weaken the Obama-era Mercury & Air Toxics Standards (MATS), putting public health at risk from more than 80 dangerous pollutants, some of which are known to cause brain damage in children. 

"This is an unconscionable rollback to serve the coal industry at the expense of all Americans, especially our children," said John Walke, director of NRDC's Clean Air program. "And it says EPA's just fine with allowing brain poisons mercury and lead and toxic carcinogens to fill our skies." 

The standards were the first national limits on air pollution from coal-fired power plants that release toxins like mercury, arsenic, lead and acid gases into the air. Among those, mercury is especially toxic, especially for pregnant women and their babies. 

The stakes are high: Each year, the standards prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 13,000 asthma attacks and nearly 5,000 heart attacks. In fact, MATS delivers up to $90 billion in health benefits. Nearly everyone supports the standards—including utilities that have already invested $18 billion for pollution-control equipment and are complying with the rules at nearly every coal- and oil-burning power plant in the country. Even Congress is showing bipartisan opposition to a rollback. 

The standards' few opponents include coal and industry executives. In particular, coal tycoon Bob Murray, the head of Murray Energy, has long been pushing for a rollback—going so far as to include it in a wish list to the Trump administration soon after inauguration. Murray has financial ties to the Trump campaign and is a former client of the EPA's acting head Andrew Wheeler.

Killing Butterflies with the Stupid Wall

Most Diverse Butterfly Center in the U.S. to be Bulldozed for Trump’s Border Wall 

The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas is the most diverse butterfly sanctuary in the U.S. Some 200 species of butterflies find a home there each year, including the Mexican bluewing, the black swallowtail and the increasingly imperiled monarch. And, as soon as February, almost 70 percent of it could be lost to President Donald Trump's border wall, The Guardian reported Thursday. "It's going to cut right through here," Center Director Marianna Wright told The Guardian as she indicated where the wall's construction would cut off the center's access to its own land in the Rio Grande Valley at a point 1.2 miles from the border. Wright said the wall threatened to end the center entirely and harm the butterflies and other species like the Texas tortoise, Texas indigo snake and Texas horned lizard that also find refuge on its land.