March 27, 2019: Bad News for Humans, Also Bird and Bees

 

3/27/19: You know what America needs? Less government regulation! More opioids! And more toxic chemicals in our water! 

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What could go wrong for humans!

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We get another wakeup call regarding business ethics this week when we learn that there is always a company out there that lives by one guiding rule. If customers will buy it, and it might harm or kill them if they do, that company will still gladly sell it if it reaps a fat profit. 

First, a bit of good news: The State of Oklahoma (not exactly known to be crawling with socialists who want to cut the nuts off capitalists) wins a $270 million judgment against Purdue Pharma. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter had sued Purdue and others, including Johnson & Johnson, for fueling the opioid crisis “with aggressive marketing of the blockbuster drug OxyContin and deceptive claims that downplayed the dangers of addiction.” 

Then the bad news: No court settlement will bring back the 200,000 Americans who are estimated to have died from opioid overdoses in the last twenty years.

 

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IF OPIOIDS don’t get you, maybe pesticides for breakfast will. David Bernhardt, Trump’s new choice to head the Department of the Interior, has stepped in and blocked regulations to control use of two pesticides: malathion and chlorpyrifos. It turns out, after years of study, that scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service determined those chemicals were so toxic “they jeopardize existence [emphasis added]” for 1,200 species of endangered birds, fish and other animals. You know. First you spray the crops to kill pests. Then the chemicals get into the food chain. 

What could go wrong for humans!

 

Dow, which makes the pesticides, insists they’re perfectly safe, just like cigarettes used to be. Or opioids! Just to boost that narrative along Dow donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration. 

Bernhardt then stepped in (you get what you pay for) and with pretty much zero knowledge of the science, killed the new regulations. 

So have some pesticides for lunch too! 

 

FUN FACT: In a new book about Barbara Bush, we learn that she kept a Trump countdown clock next to her bed until the day she died. The red, white, and blue clock, which kept track of the time left until January 20, 2021, was a gift from a friend who knew how deep the former First Lady’s disdain was for our current president. 

In fact, her disdain goes back to the 90s, when she wrote in her diary, “Trump now means Greed, selfishness and ugly.”

Bad for the birds and the bees and for you.

July 18, 2019: Big Coal Lobbyist Running EPA - High-End Russian Hookers Running Business Out of Trump Tower Miami

 

7/18/19: Andrew Wheeler, the rebranded Big Coal lobbyist, continues to run the EPA as if the initials stand for “Every Pollutant Allowed.” 

Despite warnings from EPA scientists, Wheeler and the political hacks he brought in to run the agency, decide not to ban chlorpyrifos. The chemical is linked to serious health effects in children. This is seen as a victory for the chemical industry – and farmers. 

Children? 

Not so much.

 

According to EPA experts, now ignored with Wheeler at the wheel, “Chlorpyrifos can cause cholinesterase inhibition in humans at high enough doses; that is, it can overstimulate the nervous system causing nausea, dizziness, confusion, and at very high exposures (e.g., accidents or major spills), respiratory paralysis and death [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted].” 

Other recent EPA decisions allowed the increased use of pesticides that beekeepers say, “decimate beneficial insects,” and rolled back regulations regarding the use of asbestos, a known carcinogen.

 

Meanwhile, “Snowball” Jim Inhofe gives a speech on the U.S. Senate floor. He claims that the “Trump Administration may go down as one of the truly great environmental administrations” in the history of our country. He has a chart, showing that since 1970 combined emissions of the six most common pollutants have declined by 74%. Apparently, all environmental progress in the last half century is the result of the efforts of Donald J. Trump. 

To prove his point – that the United States needs to do nothing more to protect the environment, because the environment is doing great – Snowball Jim cited the work of Richard Lindzen of MIT. Lindzen, he said, has been “calling out climate alarmists for years.” 

It takes almost no effort to find a letter in which 22 leading scientists at MIT make clear. Lindzen’s positions regarding climate change and contributing pollutants are pretty much BS. (See: 8/29/19.)

Andrew Wheeler - probably thinking about how much he hates bees.

 

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A “HIGH-END Russian hooker ring” is broken up in Florida, operating out of Trump Tower Miami.  

You can’t make this up.