Who will make the decisions for our future?
Important Context As California Burns, Here’s What You Need to Know About Trump EPA Pick Former NY congressman Lee Zeldin has a mixed record but is loyal to Trump. Amanda Magnani Jan 10, 2025 Unlike Trump’s first EPA pick, Scott Pruitt, who had a long history of suing the EPA during his time as Oklahoma’s attorney general, Zeldin is not known for his experience in climate and environmental policy. But he does have one attribute Trump looks for in his picks: loyalty. Zeldin was one of the first Republicans to endorse Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2016, and he hasn’t left his side ever since. He served as part of the former president’s defense team during his first impeachment trial. He voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election and even texted the president’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with suggestions as to how to discredit them the day before the race was called for Joe Biden. On January 6, 2021, the day a mob of angry Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, he gave a speech stressing already debunked claims that poll watchers were denied access to vote-counting. Zeldin stuck with Trump despite his 88 indictments.
The EPA is not supposed to consider business, only the effects to public health.
Climate Scientist Peter Kalmus Fled L.A. Fearing Wildfires. His Old Neighborhood Is Now a Hellscape Democracy Now! Jan 10, 2025 Peter Kalmus: “I think everyone needs to understand and I wish the New York Times would have let me make this point that this is going to get worse. I can see that today just as clearly as I could see how a hotter and drier and more fiery Los Angeles was getting I think in the future if we don’t change course for it quickly and maybe it’s even too late to avoid some of these much more catastrophic impacts but II’m fully expecting heat waves to start appearing that where 100,000 people die and then maybe a million people die and then maybe more after that as things get hotter and hotter because there’s no there’s no upper limit right, like we keep burning these fossil fuels, fossil fuel industry keeps lying, the planet just keeps getting hotter, these impacts just keep getting worse it’s not a new normal – a lot of climate messaging centers are on this idea that it’s a new normal – it’s a it’s a staircase to a hotter more hellish Earth and you know a lot of climate impact predictions have erred on the side of least drama it’s hard for even scientists to wrap our heads around how everything is changing right now on planet Earth.”
I recommend reading the book (or listening to the audiobook), Dark Money by Jane Mayer.
Jane Mayer, Dark Money. The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, January 2016 Fink was fascinated by the nuts and bolts of power. After studying the Kochs’ political problems for 6 months he drew up a practical blueprint ostensibly inspired by Hayek’s model of production, but impressed Charles by going beyond where his own 1976 paper on the subject had left off, called The Structure of Social Change. It approached the manufacture of political change like any other product. As Fink later described it in a talk, it laid out a three-phase takeover of American politics. The first phase required an investment in intellectuals, whose ideas would serve as the raw products. The second required an investment in think tanks, that would turn the ideas into marketable policies. And the third phase required the subsidization of citizens’ groups that would, along with special interests, pressure elected officials to implement the policies. It was, in essence, a Libertarian production line, waiting only to be bought, assembled, and switched on. Fink’s plan was tailor-made for Charles Koch who deeply admired Hayek, and approached both business and politics with the systematic mindset of an engineer. While some might find it disturbing to regard the democratic process as a factory, Charles soon adopted the approach as his own. As he told Brian Doherty, the libertarian writer, to bring about social change requires a strategy that is vertically and horizontally integrated. It must span, he said, from idea creation, to policy development, to education, to grassroots organizations, to lobbying, to political action. Before long libertarian wags had dubbed the Kochs’ publicity-shy multi-armed assembly line, the Kochtopus, a name that stuck.