junk science Wonder how many researchers can get away with publicly attacking the President and get a federal grant at the same time?
NEJM
editor Jeffrey Drazen has decided to risk his and his journal’s
reputations to defend air quality lies coming from the Harvard-based EPA
air quality mafia. Game on. Here’s the grant to Drazen. Note the dates.
Let's see how long it takes some activist Court to throw a hissy fit and block this one.
Townhall Katie Pavlich |Posted: Mar 28, 2017 3:41 PM
Flanked by more than two dozen coal miners at the Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump signed an executive order officially rolling back President Barack Obama's climate change agenda.
"My administration is putting an end to the war on coal," Trump said. "I want to thank the miners. You know, my guys get enough thanks. These guys haven't had enough thanks. They've had a hard time."
"We’re going to have safety, we’re going to have clean water, we’re going to have clean air, but so many [regulations] are unnecessary, so many are job-killing,” Trump continued.
Vice President Mike Pence, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Energy Secretary Rick Perry were also on stage.
"We see coal miners who have been sidelined without a thought given to their future. This executive order will begin the process to unravel the red tape that has been keeping us on the sidelines," Perry said.
"Our nation can't run on pixie dust and coal," Zinke added. "The world is safer when America is strong, and our strength relies on energy."
The executive order rescinds Obama's Clean Power Plan, which was implemented to put coal power plants out of business through impossible emission compliance regulations. It also opens up gas leases on federal lands.
Thank You Ms Pavlich, Townhall, and President Trump.
GMO reliance on toxic chemicals spawned a profusion of Super Weeds
How much herbicide is safe for human consumption? How much is safe for young children? How much will Americans wind up consuming? Since the 1990s,
when a National Research Council (NRC) panel warned lawmakers that
exposing fetuses and young kids to these compounds can cause lifelong
damage at doses that wouldn’t hurt their parent, federal law has
required the EPA to protect children from pesticides — chemicals that
kill weeds, insects or other harmful organisms. EPA spiked the amount of 2,4-D deemed it“safe” for children by an increase of 41 times
Under the Obama administration, the EPA radically lowered its safety
standards for pesticide/herbicide exposure. In 2005, under the Bush
administration, the EPA set the acceptable “safe” daily intake of 2,4-D
at 0.005 mg/kg. Under EPA’s new safety standards U.S. children ages 1
to 12 could consume 2,4-D (Agent Orange) “safely” at levels 41 times
higher.
That amount of 2,4-D is deemed unsafe by the World Health
Organization, Russia, Australia, South Korea, Canada, Brazil and China.
For decades the EPA had considered that exposure level dangerous. Agent
Orange is the defoliant used in Vietnam which has been linked to
Parkinson’s disease, hypothyroidism and other health problems.
Over the years, federal and university researchers
showed 2,4-D was worrisome on its own. Studies found increased odds of
developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma,
hypothyroidism and Parkinson’s disease among people who used the
chemical as part of their jobs… the WHO’s cancer research agency ruled
that 2,4-D is a possible carcinogen.” Even some scientists who have spent their professional lives
eradicating weeds oppose the new genetically modified crops and the
chemical future they foreshadow.“Those herbicide increases are
not OK,” said David Mortensen, a professor of weed and applied plant
ecology at Pennsylvania State University. “To me, that is unconscionable
that we can be OK with that, and I’m not an anti-chemical radical.” “But the Obama administration’s EPA now says it is safe to allow
41 times more 2,4-D into the American diet than before he took office.
To reach that conclusion, the Tribune found, the agency’s scientists
changed their analysis of a pivotal rat study by Dow, tossing aside
signs of kidney trouble that Dow researchers said were caused by 2,4-D.”
(Chicago Tribune)
GE produce depends on high volume use of herbicides The essential element in the production of genetically
engineered crops is poison in the form of pesticides and herbicides.
Initially Monsanto promised that GE crops that have been bred to
tolerate glyphosate, widely known as Roundup, will reduce the use of
herbicides. Glyphosate has served as the linchpin of Monsanto’s GMO
business: Roundup is used as a weed killer in 80% of 120 million acres
of GMO crops globally. Roundup Ready seeds are infused with glyphosate
which is absorbed into the plant’s cellular structure – its DNA – in
order to kill weeds and unwanted plants. The chemical cannot be removed
from GMO crops and other plants by washing, peeling, baking or brewing
grains.
Pigweed, glyphosate-resistant “super weed” a farmer’s nightmare
The weed killer, Roundup has spawned the proliferation of super weeds. Inasmuch as Mother Nature does not take kindly to efforts aimed
at suppressing natural evolution, the intensive use of glyphosate in
biotech agriculture has resulted in the proliferation of “super weeds”
which are also resistant to Roundup spraying; they grow 8 feet tall with
stems as thick as baseball bats. Super Weeds have become farmers’
nightmare as a vicious cycle has taken root in biotech agriculture.
Farmers are encouraged to use increased quantities of ever more toxic
chemical combinations on food crops.
“In the US, where approximately 90 percent or more of all cotton, soy, and corn plantings are of glyphosate-tolerant GMO varieties, the acres of farmland harboring glyphosate-resistant weeds nearly doubled between 2010 and 2012, from 32.6 million acres to 61.2 million acres.” (Modern Farmer, 2016) “Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops created an environmental disaster
by causing infestation of tens of millions of acres of farmland with
herbicide-resistant weeds and spurring an enormous increase in pesticide
use.” (Attorney Paul Achifoff, Sustainable Pulse, 2017)
EPA approved increasingly toxic chemical weapons for use in GMO food crops During Obama’s presidency the EPA approved two especially controversial herbicides are: Monsanto’s XtendMax, a repackaged old chemical, Dicamba; and Enlist Duo,
Dow Chemical’s combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D; the primary
component of Agent Orange (which also contained the lethal chemical
dioxin; and became infamous during the Vietnam War). In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
an independent panel of the World Health Organization classified each
of these poisonous chemicals – glyphosate and 2,4-D –as “probably” and
“possibly” carcinogenic in humans. (Read AHRP post: Scientific review of pesticide cancer risk ignites war against scientists)
“The EPA quietly approved Monsanto’s XtendiMax on November 11, 2016, when all news outlets were focused on the presidential election outcome.
“One of the major disadvantages of dicamba compared
to glyphosate is that it is much more “volatile,” meaning it easily
becomes airborne and drifts away from where it is applied. Historically,
dicamba has been used in agriculture primarily as a pre-emergent
(applied to the soil to kill weed seeds prior to planting a crop), since
it could not be applied directly to crop plants.”(Modern Farmer, 2016)
The volatility of dicamba drifts between farmers’ fields
has caused massive damage to crops not targeted by the poison –
soybeans, tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, rice, peas, peanuts,
cotton, alfalfa even peaches. Dicamba drifts have led to shootings that
left one farmer dead. (EPA Challenged in Court over Approval of Monsanto’s New Toxic Pesticide, Sustainable Pulse, Jan 23 2017) Monsanto invested
$1 billion in producing its new dicamba formula, and expects 15 million
acres to be planted with dicamba-resistant seeds in 2017 and 55 million
acres by 2019. Monsanto distributed its dicamba-resistant seeds before
it marketed the supposedly “less volatile” spray. The long-term
consequences are unclear, though it is more than likely that many weeds
will develop resistance to dicamba as it is sprayed on a wider scale.
Indeed, a recent University of Arkansas study
(2016) found that the dreaded pigweed weed, when sprayed with low doses
of dicamba became resistant to the full legal dose after just three
generations.
“The research [ ] was conducted in the greenhouse [ ]
resulted in a dicamba-resistant pigweed [it] illustrates how multiple
resistances have developed. One pesticide quits working and so we
replace it with another, and so on and so on, until you are left with a
weed population or insects for that matter that can tolerant multiple
modes of action. This is the inevitable result of using a single
effective mode of action to control a given pest…the finding strongly
suggests that there will be sizeable evolutionary consequences.”
(Arkansas Agriculture study)
Center for Biological Diversity Scientists: Science is Real. Extinction is Forever
“We can’t spray our way out of this problem. We need to get off
the pesticide treadmill. Pesticide resistant superweeds are a serious
threat to our farmers, and piling on more pesticides will just result in
superweeds resistant to more pesticides. We can’t fight evolution—it’s a
losing strategy.” Nathan Donley, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity (EcoWatch, Jan 2017)
In Jaunary 2017, Farmers and conservation groups filed a federal
lawsuit on Friday challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval
of Monsanto’s new “XtendiMax” pesticide. They objected to the approval
as it ushers a massive increase in use of the toxic pesticide. The suit
charges that it will increase risks to farmers, community health, and
the environment. Because these same crops are also engineered to
withstand applications of Monsanto’s Roundup, the overuse of that
glyphosate-based pesticide will continue at current high levels. (Read:
Sustainable Pulse, Jan. 23, 2017)
In 2014 and 2016, EPA approved registration ofDow Chemical’s herbicide Enlist Duo, composed of a combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D (Agent Orange).
“an herbicide product containing
2,4-D and glyphosate, was first registered in 2014 for use on
genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybean crops in 6 states, and
later in an additional 9 states. At this time [2016], EPA is amending
the registration to allow use on GE cotton in those 15 states and extend
the use of Enlist Duo on GE corn, soybean and cotton to an additional
19 states.” (EPA Registration of Enlist Duo)
So how did the EPA make the determination that it was safe to
increase U.S. children’s exposure to 2,4-D at levels 41 times higher
than previously considered safe?
A Chicago Tribune investigation uncovered evidence documenting EPA scientific misconduct The investigation by Patricia Callahan uncovered documented
evidence of corrupted science by EPA scientists who “paved the way” for
the agency to reduce safety standards – in particular standards to
protect children from ingesting harmful levels of poison.
Dow’s own scientists’ findings in a 2005 animal feeding study were
altered by EPA scientists. Dow’s scientist reported that ingestion of
2,4-D at a high dose showed that rats fed 2,4-D experienced thyroid
hormone changes, reproductive effects in male rats, and kidney lesions.
The kidney problems occurred even at lower doses. The Tribune reports that in a poster presentation in 2010, Dow scientists acknowledged that “exposure-related kidney lesions occurred at a lower dose in male rat offspring than in their parents.”
EPA scientists who reviewed the data, at first agreed with Dow’s interpretation; but then EPA scientists embraced “an alternative interpretation ofthe data.” They
discarded (“tossed aside”) evidence of adverse biological data
documented by Dow scientists. They subsequently described in their
report, that the kidney damage was “not treatment related.”
They did so, even though kidney damage at low doses had been confirmed
by at least five studies submitted to the EPA in the 1980s.
Furthermore, EPA scientists also violated standard scientific
practice by altering the way safe toxicity levels in humans is
extrapolated from the animal toxic levels to determine the dose at which
“there was no statistically or biologically significant indication of a toxic effect.” It is the most important measure in a pesticide toxicity study, called NOEL (“no observed adverse effect level“)
EPA dropped the mandatory calculation safeguarding children since the
1990s; and chose as their no-adverse-effect level a dose at which rats
actually suffered toxic effects. EPA disregarded the toxic effects and
determined that the “safe” level for 2,4-D could be spiked from a NOEL
dose of 0.005 mg/kg to a dose of 0.007 mg/kg. The actions taken by the
EPA researchers were to facilitate EPA approval ofDow Chemical’s herbicide Enlist Duo, a combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, the pediatrician who chaired the NRC panel is
so alarmed by the potential increase in children’s exposure to 2,4-D
that he is calling for the federal National Toxicology Program to assess
the safety of the mix of weedkillers that would be used on new
genetically modified crops. His year long entreaties to EPA
Administrator Gina McCarthy to reject the “notoriously toxic herbicide”
fell on deaf ears. [Dr. Landrigan’s research showing the damaging
effects of lead in children, resulted in its removal from paint and
gasoline.]
A petition to
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was filed by a coalition of
environmental protection advocacy groups, including Environmental
Working Group and Natural Resources Defense Council (Oct. 2015) In the
course of the litigation, a document Dow had submitted to the U.S. Patent Office revealed that
“Dow made contradictory claims to different parts of
the U.S. government.” Dow had misinformed the EPA by claiming the
combination herbicides in Enlist Duo was no more toxic than each
separately. But in its patent application, Dow stated that the mixture
of chemicals offers “synergistic herbicidal weed control.” (Busted:National Public Radio, Nov. 2015)
In light of the information subsequently submitted by Dow to the EPA
about the synergistic effects, the EPA rescinded its approval of Enlist
Duo (Nov 2015) acknowledging that:
“EPA is in receipt of new information regarding potential synergistic effects between the two ingredients on non-target plants, EPA seeks a voluntary remand in order to reconsider the Enlist Duo registration in light of the new information… specifically,
Dow did not submit to EPA during the registration process the extensive
information relating to potential synergism it cited (in applications)
to the Patent Office; EPA only learned of the existence of that
information after the registrations were issued and only recently
obtained the information. EPA can no longer be confident that Enlist Duo
will not cause risks of concern to non-target organisms, including
those listed as endangered..”
When the EPA approved Enlist Duo, officials ignored more than 400,000
comments on the Federal Register against the marketing of Enlist Duo,
and ignored the objections by 35 members of Congress:
“We were concerned to learn that, during this
process, EPA dismissed a key study linking 2,4-D to kidney abnormalities
based on one scientist’s analysis, and in doing so, effectively gave
the green light for 41 times more of the chemical to enter the America
diet than was previously allowed. “Given the widely-known adverse impacts of 2,4-D on human health
and the environment, and with little understood about the implications
of combining 2,4-D and glyphosate, EPA should use the utmost caution in
assessing the safety of Enlist Duo before approving it for continued
use…. The public deserves to know how EPA intends to address all of
these concerns.” (Chicago Tribune, February 2016)
In January 2016, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Dow
and rejected EPA’s request to vacate its 2014 approval of Enlist
Duo.The three-sentence order did not elaborate on the judges’ reasoning.
Amidst employees in tears following the election of Donald Trump,
the Environmental Protection Agency is offering counseling sessions on
“dealing with change.”
Axios obtained slides from one of the 45-minute seminars, entitled, “Feeling pressured? Worried about change at EPA?”
Topics included “How to deal with change,” “How do you keep your
composure and make better decisions under pressure?” “How can you spend
your energy more wisely—and have more as a result?” and “How do you
recognize and eliminate harmful habits that cause you stress?”
The agency’s Employee Counseling and Assistance Program held the
sessions, which also covered “How can you stop yourself from getting
hurt and/or angry?”
A spokesperson for the EPA told Axios that the counseling was part of
regular training available to employees, and that “dealing with change”
was “just one of the more recent ones that were offered.” EPA employees are still coming to work in tears more than two months after Trump’s victory.
It appears not all EPA employees are distraught that a Republican is
now in the White House. One EPA employee reached out to the Washington Free Beacon to
say he disagrees with the coworkers he has witnessed crying at work,
saying, “There’s at least one EPA employee who’s absolutely thrilled to
have Trump in office.”
The former leader of President Donald Trump’s EPA
transition team said Thursday he expects the president to slash the
agency’s budget and staff.
Myron Ebell, the director of the Center for Energy at free market
group Competitive Enterprise Institute, told reporters that Trump is
considering reducing by magnitudes the agency’s workforce. It currently
stands at 15,000 employees nationwide.
“Let’s aim for half and see how it works out, and then maybe we’ll
want to go further,” Ebell said, referring to his wish to see the EPA
slashed by at least half. He left Trump’s transition team last week, but
was at one time on the president’s short list to head the agency.
Half of the EPA’s budget is transferred to state and local areas to
update infrastructure projects and environmental cleanup efforts. Ebell,
who is a long-time EPA critic and climate skeptic, said the cuts would
likely fall on the remaining half of the agency’s budget, which supports
a portion of federal employees.
“President Trump said during the campaign that he would like to
abolish the EPA, or ‘leave a little bit,’” he said. “I think the
administration is likely to start proposing cuts to the 15,000 staff,
because the fact is that a huge amount of the work of the EPA is
actually done by state agencies.” Keep reading…
(CNSNews.com) – Eighteen states have filed a lawsuit against the federal government over Final Rules that expand the definition of “critical habitat” to include areas that are currently unoccupied by any threatened or endangered species.
The Final Rules, Listing Endangered and Threatened Species and Designating Critical Habitat, which were published in the Federal Register on February 11 and went into effect March 14, expand the definition of “critical habitat” to include areas in which “species presence or habitats are ephemeral in nature, [or] species presence is difficult to establish through surveys (e.g. when a plant’s ‘presence’ is sometimes limited to a seed bank).”
“The Final Rules are an unlawful attempt to expand regulatory authority and control over State land and waters,” argues the multi-state lawsuit, which was filed November 29th in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama against Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and the National Marine Fisheries and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.
The Final Rules allow the Services to declare areas occupied critical habitat that are not occupied by the species and that could not support the species were it moved there“The Final Rules allow the Services to declare areas occupied critical habitat that are not occupied by the species and that could not support the species were it moved there, on the supposition that one day the essential physical and biological features might develop and the species might return,” according to the lawsuit.
“The ESA [1973 Endangered Species Act] cannot support this interpretation," it added, noting that the Final Rules make it “easier for the Services to designate unoccupied areas critical habitat than it is to designate occupied areas.”
The ESA defines critical habitat as “specific areas within the geographical area occupied by the species at the time it is listed…on which are found those physical or biological features essential to the conservation of the species.”
But the Final Rules would allow the federal government “to designate areas as occupied critical habitat… even when those areas are neither occupied nor contain those features,” thus extending federal authority over areas where there may be only “indirect or circumstantial evidence of occupation ‘during some portion of the listed species’ life history’,” the lawsuit pointed out.
“Under this interpretation, [the federal government] could designate entire States or even multiple States as habitat for certain species” in contravention of congressional intent, the lawsuit maintains.
It would also allow federal agencies “to declare that almost any activity destroys or adversely modifies critical habitat under the theory that such activity might prevent the eventual development of the physical or biological characteristics necessary to support an endangered or threatened species,” the lawsuit argued.
The state attorneys general further argued that the Final Rules will “impede” conservation efforts in their states.
“Statutory and constitutional limitations on the authority of federal agencies protect citizens from the intrusion of the federal government into areas where local knowledge is critical to designing effective rules and policies. The preservation of habitat critical to threatened and endangered species is one of those areas,” they argued.
“By displacing local regulatory authority, the Final Rules impede, rather than advance, efforts to protect endangered and threatened species around the country.”
The Final Rules on critical habitat were made in response to President Obama’s Executive Order 13563, in which he directed federal agencies to update their existing regulations.
"Washington bureaucrats have gone beyond common sense by seeking to expand their control to private property adjoining the habitat of an endangered species solely on the basis that these areas might one day be home to a threatened species," Strange said in a Nov. 29 statement announcing the lawsuit.
“The Obama administration is hiding behind bogus rules to perpetrate land grabs, kill energy projects and block economic development,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a party to the lawsuit, said.“This is nothing more than yet another end run around Congress by a president who is desperate to establish his environmental legacy by any means necessary before his time in office ends.” Thank You Ms Hollingsworth and CNS.
President-elect Donald Trump will name restaurant CEO Andrew Puzder to be the next labor secretary, a source said Thursday.
Puzder, who runs the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s,
supported Trump during his campaign, praising him as a “pragmatic
centrist” and “negotiator.”
Puzder also served as one of the candidate’s economic advisers.
He was seen at Trump Tower on Wednesday. Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, has been a vocal opponent of raising
the minimum wage and of ObamaCare, arguing that both are job-killers.
There was no immediate comment from the Trump transition team.
and
(CNN)Oklahoma
Attorney General Scott Pruitt is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice
for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, his former campaign
manager told reporters Wednesday.
“Attorney General Pruitt has great qualifications and a good record
as the AG of Oklahoma, and there were a number of qualified candidates
for that particular position that the President-elect interviewed and he
settled on Attorney General Pruitt and we’ll look forward to the
confirmation hearing,” Kellyanne Conway told reporters Wednesday.
The move elevates a fierce EPA critic — Pruitt had sued the agency over
its regulations of power plants — to the position of EPA administrator.
It’s a signal the Trump administration is intent on reversing
President Barack Obama’s moves to curb climate change. In a statement
Thursday morning from the Trump transition team making the nomination
official, Pruitt was quoted as saying,
“The American people are tired of seeing billions of dollars drained
from our economy due to unnecessary EPA regulations, and I intend to run
this agency in a way that fosters both responsible protection of the
environment and freedom for American businesses.”
Thank You NY post and Nick.
"opponent of raising
the minimum wage"
Aside from being a job killer, raising the minimum wage is perhaps the most insidious Tax Increase on Everyone with 2 cents to rub togetherimaginable.
Economics 101:
The more you have of any given commodity the Less each individual unit of that commodity is worth. In the minimum wage case the commodity is Dollars. Contrary to Govt. Spendocrat opinions, Dollars have to be backed up with something beyond slogans like "Investing In The Future". Raising the wage by Government mandate also raises the Price of whatever the workers are producing. This results in people who've worked for years and Saved their dollars having the Purchasing Power of their dollars lowered. This means Every dollar in Every savings account in America and around the world will buy Less.
It's not making us richer. It's a Tax.
As for the current EPA's obsession with Climate Change:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has employed the prestigious National Academy of Sciences to whitewash the EPA's illegal experiments on human beings. Naturally, the sordid activity is all being conducted in secret.
Several years ago, we detailed for American Thinker readers how we had discovered that the EPA was violating virtually every law enacted and regulation promulgated for the protection of human experiments since the development of the Nuremberg Code.
The story begins in the 1990s, when the EPA began regulating fine particulate matter (P.M.) in outdoor air. These regulations were justified on the basis that they would prevent 15,000 premature deaths per year. The supposedly scientific studies underlying the rules could not be challenged at the time because the EPA refused to provide Congress and independent researchers with the key underlying data. Also, the relevant laws and their judicial interpretation did not provide a way to challenge EPA science in court.
Though the EPA got away with issuing the rules, it knew they were vulnerable to challenge because the underlying studies – all dubious statistical correlation studies – didn't actually show that P.M. killed anyone. Neither did animal toxicology studies, no matter how much P.M. the laboratory animals inhaled. So the EPA decided to back up its statistical claims by testing extremely high doses of P.M. on real, live people.
Over the next 15 years, the EPA began quietly experimenting on elderly subjects (up to age 80), asthmatics, people with heart disease or metabolic syndrome, and combinations of the aforesaid by placing them in a sealed chamber and making them inhale high levels of P.M. as well as diesel exhaust, smog, and even chlorine gas. At one point, the EPA even experimented with children by spraying high levels of diesel exhaust particulate up their noses.
Though none of these experiments produced any biological response indicating that P.M. is in any way harmful, the EPA relied on its statistical studies to make even more grandiose claims about the supposed dangers of P.M. The EPA claimed that any inhalation of P.M. could cause death. It claimed that death could occur within hours of inhalation or after decades of inhalation. In 2011, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson testified to Congress than P.M. caused about 570,000 deaths per year in the U.S., more than 20 percent of all U.S. deaths.
The EPA continued its experiments.
We found out about the experiments in September 2011, when the EPA finally published a report about an alleged health effect caused by P.M. Agency researchers exposed an obese 58-year-old woman with heart disease to a high level of P.M. The experiment was stopped when the woman's heart began to beat irregularly. She was taken to the hospital, where she remained overnight. The EPA's report chalked up the event to the exposure to P.M.
Although the EPA's conclusion was obviously faulty (the woman had a pre-existing heart condition that caused the arrhythmia) and has since been debunked by other research, the report led us to inquire about how exactly the woman came to be exposed to high P.M. by EPA researchers.
After several Freedom of Information Act requests and pressure from Congress, we learned that although the EPA had declared P.M. essentially the most deadly substance known to man, the agency was intentionally exposing individuals it thought would be most vulnerable to the effects of P.M. in order to support its statistical claims about P.M. lethality and its regulations.
The problem for the EPA is that if P.M. is as deadly as the agency claims, then these experiments are fundamentally unethical and illegal. Humans cannot be treated as guinea pigs for the purpose of advancing a regulatory agenda. Compounding the illegality of the experiments is the fact that the EPA never informed the study subjects that it believed that the experiments could kill them. This conduct violated federal and state laws requiring that physicians and researchers obtain informed consent prior to experimenting on humans – not that anyone could actually consent to illegal experiments in the first place.
(Read the snippets we excerpted out of the FDA antipsychotic drug labels, and don't bother with the FDA links. They got house cleaned shortly after we called them on it.)
(Though the mechanism of action is unknown, . . .)
After a federal lawsuit and much bad press, the EPA inspector general (I.G.) took up the case in October 2012. Eighteen months later, the I.G. concluded that the agency had indeed failed to warn study subjects that it believed that the experiments could kill them while inexplicably ignoring the issue of whether the experiments were fundamentally illegal and unethical. No matter, though. Media reports of the I.G.'s limited finding tremendously embarrassed the agency – so much, in fact, that something had to be done.
Enter the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
The NAS was formed in 1863 by Congress and President Lincoln to advise the government on science. It has a bifurcated structure. The actual NAS has evolved into an honorary membership organization for elite and politically well connected scientists. The actual advice-giving part of the NAS is a separate non-profit organization called the National Research Council (NRC), which hires itself out to federal agencies to provide scientific advice. In providing that advice, however, the NRC does not rely on the prestigious NAS membership. Instead, it enlists second- and third-tier (or worse) scientists eager to build their résumés and improve their standing in academia. Despite the decidedly hack nature of NRC advice, it is marketed as if it were coming from the collective wisdom of the prestigious NAS membership.
After the embarrassing I.G. report was issued, the EPA decided to avail itself of the benefit of the NAS-NRC charade. Not only did it hope to whitewash the I.G. report, but it was hoping to conduct the process in secret. It almost worked.
We were notified about what was going on by a source who only inadvertently learned of the EPA-NAS scheme near the end of the process. From what we have learned so far, it looks as though the EPA contracted with the NAS-NRC in early 2015. A committee of mostly academics was formed and began meeting on June 1, 2015. There was no public notice of the formation of the committee, and though the meeting was supposed to be open to the public, there was no public notice. So the "public" meeting was attended only by the committee members, NRC staff, and the EPA. Four more meetings were held, the last one in April 2016. None open to the public.
When we learned of the NRC committee in June 2016, we hurriedly provided comments to the committee docket and requested the opportunity to present information to the committee – a reasonable request, given the circumstances. We were the ones who had discovered and exposed the EPA's wrongdoing. We are the ones most familiar with the facts. Based on a review of the committee docket, it was clear that the EPA had provided the committee with selective, misleading, and incomplete information. Two months later, we are still waiting for the NRC to respond to our request.
In the end, this entire sordid episode raises two main issues. First, to whom is the EPA lying? If P.M. is really as dangerous as the EPA claims, which claims it uses for its regulations, then the agency has committed felonious acts against its human guinea pigs. The only way the EPA has not committed these crimes is if P.M. is not as dangerous as the EPA claims, in which case the agency has lied to the public and Congress and has grossly overregulated P.M.
There is no third possibility here. The EPA has seriously lied to someone.
The other issue is one for the NAS as an organization. The prestigious group is being used in a covert effort to whitewash the EPA's dishonest and illegal conduct – a far cry from its chartered mission and probably what its elite scientist members expect or would support. Now that the scheme has been uncovered, it should think twice before it self-immolates doing the EPA's dirty work.
John Dunn, M.D., J.D. is an instructor in emergency medicine at Fort Hood, Texas and adviser to the American Council on Science and Health and the Heartland Institute. Steve Milloy, MHS, J.D., LLM publishes JunkScience.com and is a senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Law Institute.
Thank You Mr Dunn, Mr Alloy, and American Thinker.
Do you donate money to the Sierra Club? Does this vid make you uneasy about where you money went? Want to meet more of Mair's ilk? http://www.sierraclub.org/board/meet For and Through Mair and others like him the Obama EPA is putting real working people, (their supposed constituency, Marx and Engels Proletariet) in the coal industry out of business. For Fiscal year 2013 the Sierra Club told the Federal Govt on line 22 that they ended the year with a positive asset balance of over $64 million. Here's the site which provided that link: https://www.activistfacts.com/organizations/194-sierra-club/
We've had leftists try to blow us off by telling us that Agenda 21 is only a theory. http://www.nachumlist.com/agenda21.htm And thank you Mr Mair for your Stunning performance. Stunning.
Global Warming Skeptics are not 'Normal People'. EPA Chief Diagnoses Dissenters Soviet Style. frontpagemag June 26, 2015 by Jamie Glazov
Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov disappeared from public view in early May, 1984 after he had begun a hunger strike to get permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to travel to the U.S. for heart surgery. In the Soviet paradise, wanting one’s anti-Soviet wife to live, and, worse still, to be saved by evil capitalist surgeons and not by the holy surgeons of the Soviet utopia, was, clearly, an exercise in abnormal psychology.
Sakharov was undoubtedly “mentally ill.” No wonder, therefore, that Soviet authorities forcibly confined him in a closed ward of the Semashko Hospital in Gorky, where he was force-fed and given drugs to alter his state of mind. This is how Soviet authorities believed they would get the Soviet dissident to not only stop caring about his wife, but to also make a public recantation about his abnormal anti-Soviet views – a gambit in which they ultimately failed.
The Soviet system had a long and cruel record of perverting psychiatry to abuse political dissidents. Labelling many thought-criminals ”insane,” the communist regime institutionalized them under horrifying conditions in mental hospitals and force-fed them dangerous and mind-shattering drugs. Dissidents such as Pyotr Grigorenko, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Esenin-Volpin, Vladimir Bukovsky and Natalya Gorbanevskaya were among the brave heroes who did not elude this grotesque form of Soviet barbarity. Grigorenko was forcibly committed to a special psychiatric hospital for criticizing the Khrushchev regime. Brodksy was sent to mental hospitals for not writing the right kind of poetry; his treatments involved “tranquilizing” injections, sleep deprivation and forced freezing baths. Esenin-Volpin was institutionalized in the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital for his anti-Soviet thoughts. Bukovsky was also confined to the same psychiatric hospital for “anti-Soviet agitation.” Gorbanevskaya was committed to a psychiatric hospital for, among other “abnormality” crimes, attending the 1968 Red Square demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
And now enter the leftist totalitarians of the Obama stripe. While anti-Soviet ideas caused dissidents to be confined to psychiatric institutions in the Soviet Union, the soil is now being fertilized for the same process in the American leftist land of Alinskyite hope and change. Indeed, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy consoled leftists worldwide this past Tuesday, engaging in Soviet-style labeling vis-à-vis global warming dissidents that would have made Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov proud. Addressing an audience at a White House summit, she stated that “normal people,” and not climate skeptics, would win the debate on global warming. She made the comment in the context of why the EPA had issued a recent report on global warming’s negative impacts on public health, stressing that, “It’s normal human beings that want us to do the right thing, and we will if you help us.”
The contention that global warming skeptics are not “normal people” is, of course, a normal sentiment coming from a leftist. The Left, as the history of the Soviet regime and other communist regimes has well revealed, breathes it oxygen by labeling. The opponents of the messianic utopian cause are always “evil” and/or “mentally deranged” to one extent or another. And these labels are very effective in demonizing and dehumanizing dissidents — especially when the labels have that little inconvenient limitation of not having any relationship to the actual facts. There is enough evidence to suggest, after all, that man-made global warming is the myth that the skeptics say it is. A strong presentation of the facts by Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield on this score can be found here and here.
Gina McCarthy’s totalitarian attitude toward global warming skeptics parallels, of course, the Soviet mindset that forced Soviet dissidents into psychiatric hospitals and to be force-fed drugs. McCarthy and her superiors in the Obama administration do not, at this point, have the power to put the skeptics they are labeling into asylums, and to be administered “tranquilizing” injections and immersed into ice baths, but it is clear from their own words what their desires are – and what path they are clearing for the brave new world.
The spheres of powerlessness and dehumanization being built by the Gina McCarthys of the Obama administration, to which dissidents and the opponents of “hope and change” are being banished, are somewhat of a personal issue for this writer. My father, Yuri Glazov, was a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at Moscow State University who became a “skeptic” about the Soviet paradise in which he lived. He attended human rights demonstrations in Moscow on behalf of political prisoners and signed letters of protest against Soviet political repressions. For not being “normal” in this particular regard, he was fired from his work and received a labor card with a special secret code that meant that he was blacklisted and could not receive employment anywhere in the country. The activities he had engaged in could land a Soviet citizen in the gulag or a psychiatric hospital for decades. But we were the lucky ones. The ones who got away.
My family never forgot, obviously, those who we left behind — and Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Esenin-Volpin, Vladimir Bukovsky and Natalya Gorbanevskaya were and are among our friends, and the torment they endured for not being “normal” remains etched in history and in our hearts, and we gauge very clearly the pernicious ideological seeds that spawned their persecution and suffering.
My family escaped a totalitarian hell to come to a free country to now face, in the most tragic and bizarre sense, the ideological cousins of our tormentors. The Left and its totalitarian gate-keepers are now in solid power here, slowly but surely building the prison walls and “psychiatric” spaces designed for the treatment of abnormal skeptics. Gina McCarthy and her ilk must be called out for exactly who they are — and for what they are intending to do. The unimaginable cruelties that Andrei Sakharov endured in the Semashko Hospital in Gorky in the mid-1980s must never be forgotten and must never leave our hearts, for they are the dividing lines in the battle between good and evil, despite the labels that try to camouflage the truth.
(CNSNews.com) - A study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2.1 million black-owned businesses in the United States, found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan would increase black poverty by 23 percent and cause the loss of 7 million jobs for black Americans by 2035.
The study also found that the EPA' plan would increase Hispanic poverty by 26 percent and cause the loss of 12 million jobs for Hispanic Americans by 2035.
The EPA proposed the Clean Power Planon June 2, 2014 to cut carbon emissions from power plants. The National Black Chamber of Commerce commissioned the study to evaluate the potential economic and employment impacts of the plan on minority groups.
National Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford explained the results of the report, “Potential Impact of Proposed EPA Regulations on Low Income Groups and Minorities” at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Parents across America who struggle to keep their young rambunctious kids clean now have a new obstacle: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
As part of its effort to help save the planet from the dangers of taking too many baths, the EPA’s WaterSense program is trying to convince kids they should avoid bathtubs in favor of showers, which it says is a far more efficient use of water.
“To save even more water, keep your shower under five minutes long—try timing yourself with a clock next time you hop in!” the “WaterSense for Kids” website says.
In addition to convincing kids to stay away from the tub, the EPA’s website instructs children to be careful not to give plants or the yard too much water, to ask parents to use car washes that recycle used water, and to avoid using hoses whenever possible. The EPA even suggests kids conduct experiments with parents to test toilets for leaks.
When kids aren’t busy timing their showers to ensure they remain as unclean as possible and training to be future plumbers, they can “test” their “water sense” by playing EPA’s Pac-Man-inspired online game starring the “water-efficiency hero,” Flo. The goal of the game is to move Flo, a cartoon water drop, “through water pipes and answer water-efficiency questions while avoiding water-wasting monsters.”
There’s nothing kids hate more than those darn water-wasting monsters.
You can add this pathetic attempt by the EPA to brainwash kids into feeling guilty every single time they flush the toilet to the long list of ridiculous efforts the federal agency has made recently to control every aspect of Americans’ lives.
In February, the EPA announced it had serious concerns over the expansion of the Keystone Pipeline, a project projected to create thousands of jobs. “Construction of the pipeline is projected to change the economics of oil sands development and result in increased oil sands production, and the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, over what would otherwise occur,” the EPA said.
In March, it was revealed the EPA provided a $15,000 grant to the University of Tulsa to develop a device that could “modify” hotel guests’ behavior by monitoring shower times and water use, adding a whole new creepy dimension to the concept of “big brother.”
The EPA has a responsibility to ensure the United States’ environment is not absolutely destroyed by human development, and it’s reasonable to say all Americans have a legitimate right to ask its government to protect certain lands, waterways, and natural resources from abuse. But the EPA has consistently gone far beyond what’s reasonable, entering into a realm of regulation development that attempts to bring the nation back to the 17th century.
Teaching our children to conserve nature is important, but unreasonable and unsanitary mandates from bureaucrats in Washington, DC—who, by the way, expel countless tons of carbon dioxide in their behemoth urban office buildings—hinder economic and cultural growth and mislead impressionable kids into believing it’s a grave sin to take a bath or wash the family car with a garden hose.
Justin Haskins(Jhaskins@heartland.org) is the editor of The Heartland Institute, a leading free-market think tank headquartered in Chicago and the editor-in-chief of theNew Revere Daily-Press. Opinions are his own.
"You can add this pathetic attempt by the EPA to brainwash kids into feeling guilty every single time they flush the toilet to the long list of ridiculous efforts the federal agency has made recently to control every aspect of Americans’ lives."
NIMH, Dateline 2011:
don't bother trying the next link. After we reposted it in 2011, someone did some URL moving so the numbers wouldn't look so blatantly bought and paid for ridiculous.
"Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.1 When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people.2 Even though mental disorders are widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion — about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 — who suffer from a serious mental illness.1 In addition, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada.3 Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Nearly half (45 percent) of those with any mental disorder meet criteria for 2 or more disorders, with severity strongly related to comorbidity.1
In the U.S., mental disorders are diagnosed based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV).4"
This is the US Federal Dept of Political Diseases, the NIMH.
26.2% IN ANY GIVEN YEAR.
They Claim that only 6% suffer from 'serious mental illness'.
Any 'Mental Illness' is a Bureaucratic Gateway into being manufactured into a 'Serious Mental Illness'.
Unlike the Industry's Govt. Division, our backlinks on this blog work.
Here's what treating a non-serious mental illness as well as a serious mental illness entails, with no successes, ever.
And the Winner IS: (Italic Emphasis is In the original)
"People who are classified as SMI i.e. with schizophrenia or bipolar often experience violent incidents following a diagnosis of SMI, even though they don’t consume alcohol or use street drugs, nor having a past history of violence or command hallucinations to harm others."
Yes, you read that Right. The violence erupts Following the Diagnosis, from people Without a previous history of violence.
Observations in prison have also associated neuroleptic treatment with increased aggressive behaviour. Inmates were better able to control their aggression until they were prescribed neuroleptics and then the aggression rate almost tripled.12
And speaking of Govt. URL housekeeping, the same "Uhh, Those links don't go there anymore" happened after we linked to the FDA's Antipsychotic labels.
Mental Health: Comes With Free Sudden Death But you should make your kids feel guilty for taking a bath, because, . . . Climate Change, . . . EPA. 26.2% of America is Nutz, but these EPA Bureaucrats are the geniuses we should obey blindly and without question.
“This is nothing more than yet another end run around Congress by a president who is desperate to establish his environmental legacy by any means necessary before his time in office ends.”
and
Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov disappeared from public view in early May, 1984 after he had begun a hunger strike to get permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to travel to the U.S. for heart surgery. In the Soviet paradise, wanting one’s anti-Soviet wife to live, and, worse still, to be saved by evil capitalist surgeons and not by the holy surgeons of the Soviet utopia, was, clearly, an exercise in abnormal psychology.
The spheres of powerlessness and dehumanization being built by the Gina McCarthys of the Obama administration, to which dissidents and the opponents of “hope and change” are being banished, are somewhat of a personal issue for this writer. My father, Yuri Glazov, was a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at Moscow State University who became a “skeptic” about the Soviet paradise in which he lived. He attended human rights demonstrations in Moscow on behalf of political prisoners and signed letters of protest against Soviet political repressions. For not being “normal” in this particular regard, he was fired from his work and received a labor card with a special secret code that meant that he was blacklisted and could not receive employment anywhere in the country. The activities he had engaged in could land a Soviet citizen in the gulag or a psychiatric hospital for decades. But we were the lucky ones. The ones who got away.
Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov disappeared from public view in early May, 1984 after he had begun a hunger strike to get permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to travel to the U.S. for heart surgery. In the Soviet paradise, wanting one’s anti-Soviet wife to live, and, worse still, to be saved by evil capitalist surgeons and not by the holy surgeons of the Soviet utopia, was, clearly, an exercise in abnormal psychology.
The spheres of powerlessness and dehumanization being built by the Gina McCarthys of the Obama administration, to which dissidents and the opponents of “hope and change” are being banished, are somewhat of a personal issue for this writer. My father, Yuri Glazov, was a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at Moscow State University who became a “skeptic” about the Soviet paradise in which he lived. He attended human rights demonstrations in Moscow on behalf of political prisoners and signed letters of protest against Soviet political repressions. For not being “normal” in this particular regard, he was fired from his work and received a labor card with a special secret code that meant that he was blacklisted and could not receive employment anywhere in the country. The activities he had engaged in could land a Soviet citizen in the gulag or a psychiatric hospital for decades. But we were the lucky ones. The ones who got away.