Trump Watch; Racial Profiling; and Corporate Power

I. Trump Watch: Dim Bulbs in the White House
#President Donald Trump's Energy Department rescinds a Bush-era ban on incandescent lightbulbs, which was to have taken effect on January 1. The move will generate 38 million tons of CO2 and  cost U.S. consumers $14 billion a year.

#President Trump wants to change the National Environmental Policy Act so that fewer major infrastructure projects will require environmental review, and the climate consequences will no longer need to be considered. The Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program (ELP) will be part of a large litigation team challenging the rollback.

#Responding to a challenge from the ELP and others, the U.S Court of Appeals from the Ninth Circuit rules that the Trump administration cannot exclude chemicals from risk evaluation just because they are no longer being manufactured.

#The Federal Emergency Management Agency's 2019 National Preparedness Report, an annual review of threats to the nation, does not mention climate change or sea level rise.

#Peter Gaynor, President Trump's nominee to head FEMA, says that he doesn't know why the climate is changing.

#Under a new Trump administration interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the killing of migratory birds by oil spills, chemical contamination, and construction activity will no longer be punished or fined.

#The Department of Transportation announces $900 million in infrastructure grants, 72 percent of which will go to roads and bridges in states that voted for Trump. Funding for mass transit has declined to 8.5 percent of total grants, with pedestrian and bicycle improvements zeroed out.

II. Racial Profiling by the Numbers
91% - Share of those arrested in New York City for violating coronavirus guidelines who are black or Hispanic.

20x - Increased likelihood, from 2010 to 2012, for a black male teenager in the U.S. to be shot and killed by police, compared with  white one, according to ProPublica.

2.6x - Increased likelihood for a black person in the U.S. to be arrested for marijuana possession, versus a white one.

1,356 - Racial profiling complaints filed with the Los Angeles Police Department from 2012 to 2014.

0 - Number of those complaints upheld by the LAPD.

54% - Share of people who thought burning down a Minneapolis police building was fully or partly justified. (Source: Daniel Fernandez, "By the Numbers," The Nation, June 29/July 6, 2020.)

III. Major Corporate Power
"Last August, the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of America's biggest corporations -- announced with great fanfare a 'fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders' and not just their shareholders. They said 'investing in employees, delivering value to customers, and supporting outside communities' is now at the forefront of their business  goals -- not maximizing profits."

A record 76 percent of U.S. adults believe major corporations have too much power.

"The  chairman of  the Business Roundtable is Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon lobbied Congress personally and intensively for the biggest corporate tax cut in history, and got the Business Roundtable to join him. JPMorgan raked in $3.7 billion from the tax cut. Dimon alone made $31 million in 2018."

"The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be -- for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision making; requiring that corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products ( including faulty airplanes) from ever reaching the light of day." (Source: "Corporations Will Not Save Us: The Shame of Corporate Social Responsibility," The PeaceWorker, May 2020.)