XL Pipeline
Candidate Trump said that the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar-sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas, would boost energy independence, put Americans to work, and be built with U.S. steel. The truth is that the Keystone oil would be sold on the global market, create almost no permanent jobs in the United States, and rely on foreign steel. On March 28, Trump issued executive orders aimed at undoing other key elements of President Obama's climate record: the Clean Power Plan; a moratorium on new coal leases; restrictions on methane emissions; and a requirement that federal agencies consider the social cost of climate damages in their decision-making. [1]
Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, is skeptical of Trump's claim that he can bring back the coal industry. In an interview with the Guardian, Murray said that government regulations aren't what killed the industry; it was increased automation of coal mining and competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy.
Contrary to President Trump trying to do away with measures to lessen global warming and switch from a fossil-fuel to a renewable energy future, China is going in an opposite direction. The Chinese Premier announced at the annual National People's Congress on March 5 that China was canceling 50 gigawatts -- roughly equivalent to 50 large power plants -- of coal-fired electricity production. Fully one-sixth of China's coal-fired power capacity may be either shut down, or in the case of planned capacity, not get built, according to Zhang Chun, a senior researcher at the independent publication, "chinadialogue."
China's decision to scale back on coal could strand $1 trillion worth of assets, according to a study by the Smith School of Energy and the Environment at Oxford University. There is a strong consensus among the world's climate scientists that only one-third of the world's remaining coal, gas and gas reserves can be burned while still limiting the increase in temperature to two degrees Celsius.
Ferguson Cops
The Ferguson Police Department in Missouri routinely issues orders that have no legal basis and then arrests civilians who refuse those orders for 'failing to comply.' "It's a neat little circular bit of authoritarian reasoning." "This great land of ours was founded by men who, to borrow a phrase, refused to comply, who not only resisted lawful orders but rebelled against the government that issued them." "In fact, smuggling was so embedded in colonial society that British officers complained they couldn't find anyone to enforce the law who wasn't somehow connected to it." "Between 1710 and 1760, as the population of the colonies quintupled to over 15 million, the total number of customs agents rose from 37 to 50." [2]
"Like the customs officers who interdicted smugglers to bring in traffic, the police in Ferguson were ordered to write tickets to bring in money. That kind of law enforcement had nothing to do with public safety or welfare, and the public knew it." "In 2009, in a city of just 21,000, there were 24,000 traffic cases in the Ferguson municipal court, and by October 31, 2014, that figure had grown to 53,000." "By 2015, fines and fees would make up more than one-fifth of the city of Ferguson's total revenues." "But for subjects of authoritarian rule, humiliation is the permanent state of existence." [3]
Jeff Sessions' Tectonic Shift
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions is leading the Justice Department through a tectonic shift, threatening more deportations and [bringing back] the decades-old failed 'War on Drugs.' " "Before long, right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation began referring to 'The Ferguson Effect' claiming consent decrees or any other types of judicial or civilian oversight of police actually increases crime by tying the hands of law enforcement. This argument has no basis in fact." [4]
The statute that governs these investigations and consent decrees is the Law Enforcement Misconduct Statute, 142 U.S.C. 1414, was enacted as part of the 1994 crime bill as a result of the Rodney King assault and the acquittal of those officers in the first trial. Shereilyn Ifill, the president and director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said: "[It] authorizes the attorney general to investigate unconstitutional policing, to engage in these consent decrees. To the extent that he [Sessions] is a law-and-order attorney general this is the law he's willing to completely ignore."
Footnotes
[1] Mark Hertsgaard, "Climate's Trump Card," The Nation, April 17, 2017.
[2] Chris Hayes, "Policing the Colony," The Nation, April 17, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan, "Sessions' review on consent decrees alarming," The Albuquerque Journal, April 15, 2017.
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