and maybe he's starting to see it. I'm personally still not convinced he ever wanted or expected to win. It's going to be like watching the proverbial train wreck, although personally I hate rubberneckers who look for blood at things like that, but I won't be able to ignore the wreck of the Rump.

He's going to be easier to control than Hillary would have even though she would do some of the same things Trump is doing.
Remember that Podesta chose Obama's cabinet, so there is someone picking Trump's.
Some people think that Pence is going to be more a powerful VP then Cheney was.
The elites started coming out of the shadows during Obama's two terms, now they are fully out.
They have been working for what a Trump presidency is going to be for decades.
Hang on, it's going to get very bumpy.

At the end of the article about Bernie and single payer, the journalists asked him why he voted for the ACA if he wanted single payer? Bernie said something rude to him and walked away.
Both him and Warren talk a great game but do they get much accomplished?
Yes Bernie got those health clinics, but what has Warren achieved?
Bueller?

Fri, 12/02/2016 - 10:48pm — GreatLakeSailor

O actually said this!?

But there has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests...

So "truthiness" is the standard to which the top elected Dem aspires, not truth. Duh-fuck?

Lol, I think we all knew that by now, and corporate lackeys blatantly admitting this sort of thing in public really shouldn't surprise us either. Somehow, it still does, though...

Fri, 12/02/2016 - 11:36pm — MarilynW

A whole segment of Americans are going through

real trauma right now. Actually many segments are but I am thinking of those on Medicare and Medicaid, poor people who are old or disabled. The discussion of privatizing these excellent programs must be putting them all on edge. How will they be able to go out in the market place and buy insurance?

As a low-income Canadian, I get Guaranteed Income Support and of course medicare. I can't imagine if these programs were threatened. I would not be able to sleep at night.

What a nightmare Don has unleashed on your country.

The nightmare is entering all countries, or planning to. And Trump, appalling as he is, is only a cog in the machine. We are all in this together; us - the world - against a small fraction of the 1% and their dupes and lackeys.

If Trudeau betrays his country and people by signing the illegal and unconstitutional TPP and other US pre-Fast-Tracked corporate coups - as he just did in signing the also illegal and unconstitutional CETA - the Greeds will go after social programs, btw, as has already begun, with a private company's claim essentially that it's 'unconstitutional' to try to maintain equal access to health-care.

The Canadian health-care system has been systematically starved for privatization since the illegal and unconstitutional NAFTA agreement was enforced and a further cut recently was imposed, just as private providers start suing because 'why should the wealthier able to pay through the nose for our profits have to wait like you plebes for what your tax dollars have already purchased at a far better price' when the 'wait times' (medical 'austerity') were imposed via repeated budget cuts in order to create this situation as grounds for a Constitutional challenge for Medicare privatization and the same disastrous system as Americans have been bilked by.

But actual trade deals involve trade only and do not impinge in any manner on the rights - or steal/pollute the public properties/resources - of the citizens of involved countries. Anything that purportedly claims to 'agree to' anything of the sort is illegal and unconstitutional in placing hostile outsider's profiteering and abuses of citizens and the country within what's claimed to be 'law', domestic law actually pre-existing to protect the public interest from such predators, as does the government we, the public, pay.

This is real life at stake here - corrupt legal games used to subvert the intent of law and democracy cannot be allowed to con us into acceptance of our enslavement and destruction as 'legal and binding' upon the betrayed to-be-dispossessed and enchattled victims. (And if 'enchattled' isn't an accepted form, it ought to be.)

Law which has no respect for the concept of justice and democratic government with no respect for the concept of democracy can be neither functional nor legitimate and certainly merits no respect itself.

Remember that even existing 'trade deals' forced 'harmonization' with the appallingly hazardous and abusive American health, environmental and other standards on Canada, among other things and merely as an example, 'legalizing' the addition of hazardous waste (otherwise requiring the maintenance of hazardous waste sites to keep them isolated) directly to fertilizer sold and labelled only as 'nutrients' to be unwittingly used on lawns, gardens, parks, for food production in Canada as well, so that now we suffer many of the same health issues at similar rates as our neighbours have for so long.

If we are not useful to industry, we are useless eaters and even more disposable than the rest of the 99%, at the moment.

(From 1997, back before journalism was also poisoned by corporate control. And prior to the far more extreme killing spree now permitted Those Who Matter under various and increasingly public/ecology-sacrificing 'trade agreements')
http://www.maebrussell.com/Articles%20and%20Notes/Toxic%20Waste%20As%20F...

Killing Fields? Toxic waste being spread as fertilizer
BY DUFF WILSON
Seattle Times
(reprinted in the San Jose Mercury News 7-5-97, front page)

QUINCY, Wash. — Some farmers blamed the weather for their lousy wheat crops, stunted corn and sick cows. Some blamed themselves.
But only after Patty Martin, the mayor of this small, dusty town 100 miles east of Seattle, led them in weeks of investigation did they identify a possible new culprit: fertilizer.
They don't have proof that the stuff they put on their land to feed it actually was killing it. But they discovered something they think other American farmers and consumers ought to know:
Manufacturing industries are disposing of hazardous wastes by turning them into fertilizer to spread around farms. And they're doing it legally.
"They just call dangerous waste a product, and it's no longer a dangerous waste," Martin said. "It's fertilizer."
An investigation by the Seattle Times has found the practice occurs around the country. Industrial toxic waste is being used increasingly as a fertilizer ingredient.
There is no conclusive data to prove the practice poses any risks, and none to prove its safety.
Experts disagree on the risks and say further study is needed. However, little study is under way.
As things stand now, any material that has fertilizing qualities can be labeled and used as a fertilizer, even if it contains dangerous chemicals and heavy metals.
The wastes come from iron, zinc and aluminum smelting, mining, cement kilns, the burning of medical and municipal wastes, wood-product slurries and other heavy industries.
Across the Columbia River basin from Quincy, in the town of Moxee City, Wash., a dark powder from two Oregon steel mills is poured from rail cars into the top of a silo attached to Bay Zinc Co., under a federal permit to store hazardous waste.
The powder, a toxic byproduct of the steel-making process, is taken out of the bottom of the silos as a raw material for fertilizer.
"When it goes into our silo, it's a hazardous waste," said Bay Zinc President Dick Camp. "When it comes out of the silo, it's no longer regulated. The exact same material. Don't ask me why. That's the wisdom of the (Environmental Protection Agency)." ...

... Regulators in California have been studying the issue for years and still cannot say what constitutes a safe level of lead, cadmium and arsenic in fertilizer.
There is no national regulation of fertilizers in this country. The laws in most states are far from stringent. The regulators are also charged with encouraging recycling, and they work hand in hand with industry.
When EPA Administrator Carol Browner was questioned by Mayor Martin at a children's health conference in Washington, D.C., in February, she said she didn't know anything about toxics in fertilizer.
In other countries, including Canada, regulations are strict. Canada requires tests every six months for metals in recycled waste and micro-nutrient fertilizer.
In the United States, states require one test before a product is regulated, then they never check again.
"In the United States, I hear them say, 'OK, how much can we apply until we get to the maximum people can stand?'" said Canada's top fertilizer regulator, Darlene Blair. "They're congratulating people for recycling things without understanding what the problems are with the recycled material."
The U.S. government and the states encourage the practice in the name of recycling, and, in fact, it has some benefits: Recycling waste as fertilizer saves companies money and conserves precious space in hazardous-waste landfills. ...

http://eweb.4j.lane.edu/article.php?-recid=144

February 1, 1998
Fertilizers that contain toxic waste could make farmlands the next environmental field of battle
BY JOE MOSLEY © The Register-Guard

... Fertilizers containing industrial byproducts have been legally spread on farmlands across the country for more than 20 years, under the protection of federal regulations that permit factories to avoid the high costs of hazardous waste dumps by relabeling their manufacturing residues as "soil amendments."

But the practice has raised recent alarms in Washington state. Farmers have sued a pair of fertilizer companies over the poisoning of their soils, and environmental activists maintain that consumers of everything from broccoli to beef raised on tainted alfalfa have been placed at risk. ...

... "It has to be more than the state of Oregon putting some standards on how much of everything is OK," O'Brien says. "It's going to have to be a full labeling situation, whereby every farmer knows what he or she is spreading on their land. Otherwise, you make farmers the unwitting spreaders of toxic wastes into the food chain, to say nothing of jeopardizing their own farming capabilities."

Flue dust and fly ash from the boilers of paper or steel mills, residue from aluminum smelters, cement kiln dust and tire ash are among the industrial byproducts being added to an estimated 5 percent of fertilizer products nationwide.

Used because it contains some horticulturally beneficial substances, the manufacturing waste brings with it heavy metal "tag-alongs" such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury, as well as dioxin compounds - all unbeknownst to farmers and beyond the reach of state and federal regulators. ...

... The federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 was, in part, an attempt to regulate the disposal of potentially hazardous industrial wastes. It labeled as federal hazards all manufacturing byproducts containing harmful substances, and required that producers dispose of them in specially designed landfills.

Then an exemption was added: Wastes containing plant nutrients such as nitrogen or potassium and "micronutrients" - generally trace minerals such as zinc, iron and selenium - could bypass the costly disposal requirements by becoming fertilizer additives. It was left to individual states to regulate the levels of tag-along substances, and few have done so.

In Oregon, fertilizer regulation falls on the Agriculture Department and is governed by a chapter of state law.

The statutes require that "active ingredients" - beneficial nutrients and micronutrients - be listed by name and percentage on all fertilizer labels. The remaining contents can be lumped together as "inert ingredients."

Chris Kirby, who oversees the department's fertilizer programs, says he has no data indicating how much industrial waste is applied to Oregon farmlands. There are no records indicating which potentially harmful substances can be found in fertilizers sold in the state, and there is no list of companies that dispose of manufacturing byproducts on Oregon farms, he says. "I don't think I have any information that would be quantitative, at all," Kirby says.

Fort James, the Halsey paper mill, is one source of waste-derived fertilizer. Its contributions to the Willamette Valley's agricultural mix include not only the sludge that Malpass spreads on his fields near Harrisburg, but also incombustible ash from its boiler.

The Washington Department of Ecology has tested ash products from paper mills in that state and found dioxin levels of 35 parts per trillion - more than four times the "estimated background soil concentration" of eight parts per trillion. The tests also showed high levels of lead, chromium and zinc. A 1 percent solution of the ash was enough to kill all of the 30 rainbow trout subjected to it in one test.

The Halsey mill's byproducts are distributed by a middle-man company, Agri Tech of Albany, whose president maintains that the substances are safe for farm use. For one thing, Fort James has greatly reduced its production of dioxins by switching from chlorine to hydrogen peroxide in its paper bleaching process, Agri Tech's Dick Severson says.

And even though waste-derived fertilizers are largely unregulated, Severson says the materials his company handles are tested and fall below the maximum toxicity levels that the EPA has set for sewage sludge used on farmland.

"We've found, with the kinds of byproducts we're involved with, that our trace elements are lower than (the levels found) in native soils, in many cases," he says. "The only thing that we really respond to, and look for, is dioxins."

Agri Tech is paid by Fort James and other companies to offer waste products free of charge to farmers to use as soil additives. Agri Tech spreads the materials on farm fields and even plows them into the soil under contracts that still save waste producers much of the millions of dollars that would otherwise be spent at hazardous waste dumps.

"We give a bid, an estimate of our cost, and then it's (the waste producers') determination, based on other options for disposal," Severson says.

As early as 10 years ago, the EPA acknowledged that the use of waste-derived fertilizers was problematic.

"The issue now facing the agency is whether to continue the exemption which would allow this waste to be recycled in a manner arguably at odds with the statutory land disposal prohibitions ... by allowing continued placement of untreated hazardous waste on the land," says an excerpt from the April 8, 1988, Federal Register, where federal agencies report potential regulatory changes.

A follow-up notation four months later indicates that EPA officials decided to leave intact the exemption for materials used as soil additives. The agency reasoned that tag-along substances did not pose a significant health risk "from either a food chain contamination pathway or a groundwater contamination pathway," and that other sources of zinc-rich supplements would contain similar undesirable ingredients.

"After considering the public comment on this issue, EPA has decided not to amend the existing exemption at this time," the agency concluded.

But uneasiness about the use of waste-derived fertilizers has been percolating for the past five years among farmers from Georgia to Washington, where the issue finally boiled over last summer. In August, Washington Gov. Gary Locke called for new legislation requiring the testing and labeling of fertilizer products.

Then, last October, workers at a Washington fertilizer factory reported elevated levels of lead in their blood to the state's Department of Labor and Industries. The same month, a Seattle lawyer filed class-action lawsuits against Cenex Supply & Marketing and Quincy Farm Chemicals, maintaining that the soil on at least two Eastern Washington farms was made unusable by a buildup of toxic tag-along ingredients.

"The land that was ruined by their toxic products won't recover for years, while the farmers and others who poured their hearts and souls into that land may never recover," attorney Steve Berman says in information his firm has posted on the Internet. "Some have lost everything." ...

...
One concern that O'Brien hopes to address as the governor's Task Force on Hazardous Substance Reporting begins its work is the "bio-accumulative" nature of some substances being found in fertilizers.

Several of the heavy metals - as well as dioxin - remain indefinitely in soil, plants and animals. So even if the amounts in additives are less than background levels already in the soil, the effect as other soil ingredients are used or break down is a net increase in toxics.

"It's like we're up to our necks in dioxins, but (regulators are saying) we're not adding very much more, so it's OK," O'Brien says. "The thing is, there is no naturally occurring level of dioxins - it's entirely a man-made phenomenon."

Dioxins have been shown to accumulate in fatty tissues, and O'Brien is unconvinced by some research indicating that plants don't draw dioxins from soil or water.

"It's certainly not true that you can put dioxin into the soil and not put it into the food web," she says. "How do you think cows get it? They eat grass and muck around in the soil." ...

And 'agricultural run-off' into water supplies wasn't even considered here...

If the corporate/billionaire stranglehold on Americans isn't somehow released prior to complete ecological and economic collapse already well into progress, there will be no place left for anyone - not even the billionaires to run to. I've no idea why any of them believe that a precarious, entirely tech-dependent existence off-planet would be 'safe', but then again, they're isolated, ignorant and stupid enough parasites to foul their only nest while killing off their hosts in the belief that once they have all of the money and property, they'll be able to buy another dwelling where one major accident or glitch could kill them all in myriad ways and where the environment outside is also death to them in any emergency loss of habitat.

Bush apparently believed that disposing of scientific evidence would enable corporations to accumulate enough profit to create that new personal 'reality' for the very wealthiest of the somehow-survivors.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/24467/title/EPA-sh...

EPA shuts down libraries

Agency also seeks major cuts in lab costs over the next five years

By Ted Agres | November 2, 2006

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun shutting down its national library network by closing regional research libraries in Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City and reducing access to collections in New York, Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco. While those actions had been expected, the EPA has also shuttered its chemical pollution and toxic substances resource library in Washington, DC, a move that caught observers off guard. The decision to close the libraries is budget-driven. The EPA plans to cut $2 million from the library system's $2.5 million budget for Fiscal 2007. The agency's total budget request is $7.3 billion for the fiscal year beginning October 1. Scientists and research advocates say the library closings are short-sighted because they will jeopardize the EPA's ability to properly assess environmental issues. "Science-based decision making is central to the mission of the EPA, and access to world-class libraries is essential for that," said Craig M. Schiffries, director of science policy at the National Council for Science and the Environment. "Cutting what appears to be a small dollar value relative to the size of the agency will have a disproportionate effect on EPA's ability to achieve its stated mission and goals," he told The Scientist. In addition to the library closings, the EPA is seeking to markedly reduce funding for research laboratories by 2011. A June 8 internal budget planning document directs assistant and regional administrators to develop plans to reduce laboratory physical infrastructure costs by at least 10 percent by 2009 and by another 10 percent by 2011 through a combination of staff reductions and consolidations or closings of lab/field facilities nationwide. EPA spokesperson Suzanne Ackerman said she had no information about the budget document. Budget cuts are a growing concern not only at EPA, but also at other federal agencies, said Robert Gropp, director of public policy at the American Institute of Biological Sciences. "It's a concern across the board, particularly for an agency like EPA that has such a direct impact on public health and the environment," he told The Scientist. "How will they get work done if they scale back on research and people?" On October 20, the EPA closed its Office of Prevention, Pollution, and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) chemical library, a specialized facility whose holdings included information on properties and toxicological effects of pesticides, genetically engineered chemicals and biotech products, as well as emergency planning and chemical risk assessments. The library's paper-only collection was boxed up and moved to a basement cafeteria and five staffers were laid off, according to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit whistleblower group that has been fighting the library closings. Without the library, EPA scientists will have fewer resources to analyze industry requests to bring new chemicals to market, Ruch said. "There was no public announcement, and this library was not in EPA's original closure plan," he told The Scientist. Jessica Emond, the EPA's deputy press secretary, said the closing was part of the agency's "overall strategy for streamlining/consolidating the libraries." "EPA is committed to ensuring unique library materials are available to the general public, the scientific community, the legal community, and other organizations," Emond said in an email to The Scientist. "Physical holdings of the OPPTS chemical library will be made available online, and other services will be made available electronically." As the EPA closes libraries across the country, monographs and paper documents not available electronically will be digitized, the EPA's library plan states, with materials from libraries that have already been closed receiving first priority. Documents pending digitization will be sent to one of three national repositories, from which they can be retrieved through inter-library loan, according to the agency. But the EPA lacks a clear plan and the budget to perform the digitization, Ruch contends. Three senior Democratic congressmen -- Bart Gordon, Henry Waxman, and John Dingell -- have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the EPA's library closing plans, citing "grave concerns" that "access to many documents will be temporarily or permanently lost" due to "inadequate planning and lack of funding for digitizing documents." The GAO plans to begin the investigation later this year or early in 2007. Ted Agres tagres@the-scientist.com Links within this article: EPA National Libraries http://www.epa.gov/natlibra/overback.htm T. Agres, "Budget cuts imperil EPA Library System," The Scientist, March 10, 2006 http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23221/ National Council for Science and the Environment http://ncseonline.org/ "Memorandum: FY 2008 Technical Budget Guidance" http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_13_9_cfo_memo.pdf American Institute of Biological Sciences http://www.aibs.org OPPTS Library http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/library/pubs/collectn.htm Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility http://www.peer.org/ "EPA FY 2007 Library Plan: National Framework for the Headquarters and Regional Libraries" http://www.epa.gov/natlibra/Library_Plan_National_Framework081506final.pdf Letter to Comptroller General David M. Walker requesting GAO investigation http://sciencedems.house.gov/Media/File/ForReleases/gordon_epa-libraries...

http://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/obama-epa-hit-for-bush-era-plan-04...

Obama EPA hit for Bush-era plan

By Eileen Claussen

02/15/11

A vocal contingent in the House is now attacking the current Environmental Protection Agency administrator for the very thing her predecessor in the Bush administration wanted to do.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote a letter to President George W. Bush laying out the legal and scientific rationale for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Johnson explained steps that the EPA would take to begin to do so.

Johnson’s letter surfaced last week at the House Energy and Power subcommittee hearing on proposed legislation to strip EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Remarkably, it proved that Bush’s EPA administrator had reached the same conclusions and planned almost identical actions to what the current EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, has begun implementing.

What exactly does Johnson tell Bush? He insists that the EPA must respond to the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA with a finding that greenhouse gases represent a risk to public health or welfare. This is EPA’s “endangerment finding,” which would be overturned by legislation now being proposed in the House.

Johnson also noted, “the latest climate change science does not permit a negative finding, nor does it permit a credible finding that we need to wait for more research.”

What is most telling is that Johnson states that a positive endangerment finding was “agreed to at the Cabinet-level meeting.” Apparently senior Bush administration officials agreed that climate change poses a risk to our nation’s public health and welfare. ...

... Given these striking similarities, attacks on current EPA actions — that the agency is “an instrument of job destruction” and would “put the American economy in a straitjacket” — now resonate as particularly empty political rhetoric.

How could the right thing to do in the Bush administration suddenly become the wrong thing to do in the Obama administration?

Eileen Claussen served as assistant secretary of state for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. She is now president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/dec/08/nation/na-libraries8

THE NATION
Closure of 6 federal libraries angers scientists
Cost-cutting moves at the EPA and elsewhere deny researchers and the public access to vital data, critics say.
December 08, 2006|Tim Reiterman | Times Staff Writer

The NASA library in Greenbelt, Md., was part of John C. Mather's daily routine for years leading up to the astrophysicist's sharing of the 2006 Nobel Prize for shedding new light on the big bang theory of creation. He researched existing space hardware and instrumentation there while designing a satellite that collected data for his prize-winning discovery.

So when he learned that federal officials were planning to close the library, Mather was stunned.

"It is completely absurd," he said. "The library is a national treasure. It is probably the single strongest library for space science and engineering in the universe."

Mather is one of thousands of people who critics say could lose access to research materials as the government closes and downsizes libraries that house collections vital to scientific investigation and the enforcement of environmental laws. ...

... In Washington, books are boxed at an Environmental Protection Agency library that helped toxicologists assess health effects of pesticides and chemicals. The General Services Administration headquarters library where patrons conducted research on real estate, telecommunications and government finance was shuttered this year, as was the Department of Energy headquarters library that collected literature for government scientists and contractors. ...

... "Crucial information generated with taxpayer dollars is now not available to the public and the scientists who need it," said Emily Sheketoff, head of the American Library Assn.'s Washington office. "This is the beginning of the elimination of all these government libraries. I think you have an administration that does not have a commitment to access to information."

Opponents of the EPA's reductions say they are likely to slow the work of regulators and scientists who depend on librarians and reference materials that are not online.

They fear that some publications will never be digitized because of copyright restrictions or cost. They worry that important material will be dispersed, discarded or lost. And they contend that many people will lose access to collections because they cannot navigate online services.

In addition to shutting its headquarters library and a chemical library in the nation's capital, the EPA has closed regional libraries in Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas that have helped federal investigators track sources of fish kills and identify companies responsible for pollution.

The plans prompted the EPA's own compliance office to express concern that cuts could weaken efforts to enforce environmental laws. EPA employee unions decried the severity of a proposed $2.5-million cut in a library budget that was $7 million last fiscal year. And, at the request of three House committees, the Government Accountability Office now is examining the reductions.

"Congress should not allow EPA to gut its library system, which plays a critical role in supporting the agency's mission to protect the environment and public health," 18 U.S. senators, nearly all Democrats, said last month in a letter seeking restoration of library services until the issue can be reviewed. ...

..."I think we are living in a world of digitized information," said Travers of the EPA. "In the end there will be better access."

Travers said all EPA-generated documents from the closed libraries would be online by January and the rest of the agency's 51,000 reports would be digitized within two years. The EPA, she said, would not digitize books, scientific journals and non-EPA studies but would keep one copy of each available for inter-library loans.

The Library of Congress has digitized more than 11 million items in its collection of 132 million, and it retains the originals. But Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for library services there, said maintaining library space with staff provides important benefits, especially at specialized libraries.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/dec/08/nation/na-libraries8/2

(Page 2 of 2)
THE NATION
Closure of 6 federal libraries angers scientists
Cost-cutting moves at the EPA and elsewhere deny researchers and the public access to vital data, critics say.
December 08, 2006|Tim Reiterman | Times Staff Writer

"The librarians are so accustomed to doing searches and know the sources so well, and it would be difficult for scientists to have the same level of comfort," she said. "So, will they take the information they get and use it rather than being exhaustive in their searches?"

An EPA study in 2004 concluded that the libraries saved millions of dollars a year by performing time-consuming research for agency staff members. The general public also uses EPA's libraries.

When a sanitary district proposed a sludge incinerator along Lake Michigan in Waukegan, Ill., a few years ago, activist Verena Owen went to the EPA library in Chicago, and with help from a librarian researched how much mercury comes from incinerators and its toxicity. Owen said her findings helped a successful campaign to relocate the plant.

When she recently heard the library had gone dark, Owen was outraged: "If I had known about it, I would have chained myself to the bookcase."

The EPA's chemical library in Washington assisted scientists who developed drinking water standards and studied the effects of pesticides. "It allowed scientists to check on what they were being told by companies registering new chemicals," said Linda Miller Poore, a longtime contract librarian there.

In May, after learning the library would close, Poore took a job at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center library in Greenbelt, Md., a facility that supports space exploration and global warming research.

But Poore said she was notified recently that the Goddard library would be closed Jan. 1, leaving its collection available only online. She said she was fired Nov. 17 after telling patrons about the plans. The company that employed her declined to comment.

Mather, the Nobel-winning astrophysicist, said the library's paper collection is indispensable. "If we ended up moving into an age where paper did not exist, we would need the equivalent to reach all the texts and handbooks, and until the great library is digitized, I think we need the paper," he said.

In the wake of complaints from scientists and engineers, the center's operations director, Tom Paprocki, said the library was being funded through March and that officials were exploring whether to preserve part of it.

The discovery of discarded scientific journals last year in a dumpster at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley prompted a union grievance. ...

PEER seems to be gone as a publication? I finally got into archives, but...

There used to be tons of stuff I can't get on search, as I should be used to, by now - stuff regarding an EPA library finally re-opened, being now the size of a phone booth. documents dumped, some salvaged by staff/scientists, and the last I'd heard (some years back, before life intervened with a lot of... unfruitful fertilizer) was little-to-no progress on the digitization with what generally appeared to be the most telling evidence against polluters missing.

https://www.thenation.com/article/junk-science-george-w-bush/

The Junk Science of George W. Bush
It's more fiction than fact.
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
February 19, 2004

... Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration–aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals–are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration’s corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact “for partisan political ends.”

I’ve had my own experiences with Torquemada’s modern successors, both personal and related to my work as an environmental lawyer and advocate working for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Waterkeeper Alliance.

At the time of the World Trade Center catastrophe on September 11, 2001, I had just opened an office at 115 Broadway, cater-corner from the World Trade Center and within the official security zone to which access was, afterward, restricted for several months. Upon returning to the office in October my partner, Kevin Madonna, suffered a burning throat, nausea and a headache that was still pounding twenty-four hours after he left the building. Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s claims that air quality was safe, Kevin refused to return and we closed the office. Many workers did not have that option; their employers relied on the EPA’s nine press releases between September and December of 2001 reassuring the public about the wholesome air quality downtown. We have since learned that the government was lying to us. An Inspector General’s report released last August revealed that the EPA’s data did not support those assurances and that its press releases were being drafted or doctored by White House officials intent on reopening Wall Street.

On September 13, just two days after the terror attack, the EPA announced that asbestos dust in the area was “very low” or entirely absent. On September 18 the agency said the air was “safe to breathe.” In fact, more than 25 percent of the samples collected by the EPA before September 18 showed presence of asbestos above the 1 percent safety benchmark. Among outside studies, one performed by scientists at the University of California, Davis, found particulates at levels never before seen in more than 7,000 similar tests worldwide. A study being performed by Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has found that 78 percent of rescue workers suffered lung ailments and 88 percent had ear, nose and throat problems in the months following the attack and that about half still had persistent lung and respiratory illnesses nine months to a year later.

Dan Tishman, whose company was involved in the reconstruction at 140 West Street, required his crews to wear respirators but recalls seeing many rescue and construction workers laboring unprotected–no doubt relying on the government’s assurances. “The frustrating thing is that everyone just counts on the EPA to be the watchdog of public health,” he says. “When that role is compromised, people can get hurt.”

I also recall the case of Dr. James Zahn, a nationally respected microbiologist with the Agriculture Department’s research service, who accepted my invitation to speak to an April 2002 conference of more than 1,000 family farm advocates and environmental and civic leaders in Clear Lake, Iowa. In a rigorous taxpayer-funded study, Zahn had identified bacteria that can make people sick–and that are resistant to antibiotics–in the air surrounding industrial-style hog farms. His studies proved that billions of these “superbugs” were traveling across property lines daily, endangering the health of neighbors and their herds. I was shocked when Zahn canceled his appearance on the day of the conference under orders from the Agriculture Department in Washington. I later uncovered a fax trail proving the order was prompted by lobbyists from the National Pork Producers Council. Zahn told me that his supervisor at the USDA, under pressure from the hog industry, had ordered him not to publish his study and that he had been forced to cancel more than a dozen public appearances at local planning boards and county health commissions seeking information about health impacts of industry mega-farms. Soon after my conference, Zahn resigned from the government in disgust. ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency

... Political pressure and scientific integrity

In April 2008, the Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work. The survey included chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geologists and experts in other fields of science. About 40% of the scientists reported that the interference had been more prevalent in the last five years than in previous years. The highest number of complaints came from scientists who were involved in determining the risks of cancer by chemicals used in food and other aspects of everyday life.[110]

EPA research has also been suppressed by career managers.[111] Supervisors at EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment required several paragraphs to be deleted from a peer-reviewed journal article about EPA's integrated risk information system, which led two co-authors to have their names removed from the publication, and the corresponding author, Ching-Hung Hsu, to leave EPA "because of the draconian restrictions placed on publishing".[112] EPA subjects employees who author scientific papers to prior restraint, even if those papers are written on personal time.[113] A $3 million mapping study on sea level rise was suppressed by EPA management during both the Bush and Obama Administrations, and managers changed a key interagency report to reflect the removal of the maps.[114] EPA employees have reported difficulty in conducting and reporting the results of studies on hydraulic fracturing due to industry[115][116][117] and governmental pressure, and are concerned about the censorship of environmental reports.[115][118][119]

In 2015, the Government Accountability Office stated that the EPA violated federal law with covert propaganda on their social media platforms. The social media messaging that was used promoted materials supporting the Waters of the United States rule, including materials that were designed to oppose legislative efforts to limit or block the rule.[120] ...

... Conflicting political powers

The White House maintains direct control over the EPA, and its enforcements are subject to the political agenda of who is in power. Republicans and Democrats differ in their approaches to, and perceived concerns of, environmental justice. While President Bill Clinton signed the executive order 12898, the Bush administration did not develop a clear plan or establish goals for integrating environmental justice into everyday practices, which in turn affected the motivation for environmental enforcement.[123]
Responsibilities of the EPA

The EPA is responsible for preventing and detecting environmental crimes, informing the public of environmental enforcement, and setting and monitoring standards of air pollution, water pollution, hazardous wastes and chemicals. While the EPA aids in preventing and identifying hazardous situations, it is hard to construct a specific mission statement given its wide range of responsibilities.[124] It is impossible to address every environmental crime adequately or efficiently if there is no specific mission statement to refer to. The EPA answers to various groups, competes for resources, and confronts a wide array of harms to the environment. All of these present challenges, including a lack of resources, its self-policing policy, and a broadly defined legislation that creates too much discretion for EPA officers.[125]
Authority of the EPA

Under different circumstances, the EPA faces many limitations to enforcing environmental justice. It does not have the authority or resources to address injustices without an increase in federal mandates requiring private industries to consider the environmental ramifications of their activities.[126]
Gold King Mine waste water spill
Main article: 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill

On August 5, 2015, while examining the level of pollutants in the Gold King Mine,[127] EPA workers released over three million gallons of toxic waste water, including heavy metals such as lead and arsenic into Cement Creek, which flowed into the Animas River in Colorado.[128] ...

Same deal followed with Harper, the cheated-in Canadian corporate Con rep, the Alberta oil-spoil boy having the same sort of paymasters as oil rep Bush 2, specifically including the Koch brothers, they having had a 50-year presence in that province.

I love the Tyee, far as I recall, they were about the only publication making mention of something immediately occurring to me - and something only to be expected of Harper, following the same corporate/billionaire orders as did Bush 2 and everyone elected to top office in the US thereafter.

Unfortunately, very little was 're-opened' and much went missing, regarding the EPA libraries, so I dunno why the Tyee made it sound as though it was all restored...

http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2014/01/09/Harper-Science-Library-Closure/

Canada's Science Library Closures Mirror Bush's Playbook
Similar moves by US Republican president met sharp backlash from 10,000 scientists.
By Andrew Nikiforuk 9 Jan 2014 | TheTyee.ca

Calgary resident Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Find his previous articles published in The Tyee here.

The dismantling of some of Canada's most important science libraries mirrors a move by the Republican administration of U.S. President George Bush Jr. to slash federal environmental libraries nearly eight years ago, but with one difference.

Scientists Say DFO's Library Closure Defence Doesn't Add Up

Protests by librarians, citizens, elected representatives and 10,000 scientists forced the Bush administration to not only backtrack on the move but to later reopen the science libraries.

In a stated effort to save taxpayers less than half a million dollars a year the Harper government is now eliminating seven Department of Fishery libraries containing what it calls "one of the world's most comprehensive collections of information on fisheries, aquatic sciences and nautical sciences" and relocating undetermined parts of the collections to two central locations.

More than half a dozen scientists familiar with the libraries told The Tyee that the DFO closures were ill-planned and even chaotic. In at least two cases valuable materials and reports ended up in dumpsters and in another case lenders were not asked to return rare books. More than one scientist compared the haphazard dismantling of the Winnipeg's famed Freshwater Institute Library to a "book burning."

In the face of such criticism, DFO Minister Gail Shea issued a government Jan. 7 press release saying the closures were carried out as planned and all about saving money and improving access through digitization of materials.

But some of the nation's leading biologists and ecologists, including Jeffrey Hutchings, David Schindler and Peter Wells, say very little material has been digitized and that closures will ultimately cost taxpayers millions of dollars as well as valuable infrastructure for science research.

To date the government has refused to answer questions about how much material has been thrown out and how much has been digitized. Nor has the government produced a budget for digitizing materials from the closed libraries. ...

... To ostensibly save $2-million dollars a year (a drop in the bucket for the EPA's $8-billion budget) the Bush administration closed five regional libraries serving 15 states and reduced access to libraries serving another 15 states in 2006.

At the time the EPA operated 26 libraries with more than 500,000 books, 25,000 maps and thousands of reports that scientists and citizens considered an irreplaceable collection of environmental science.

Like the Harper government the Bush administration then defended the closures as an act of modernization that would give "broader access to a larger audience by making agency library materials available through its public website. Retrieving materials will be more efficient and easier to locate by using EPA's online collection and reference services."

But much material, just as Canadian scientists say is happening here, ended up in dumpsters and was never digitized.

A secret memo obtained by Postmedia News on deficit cutting at the DFO makes no mention of digitization or modernization as the rationale for closing the libraries.

It specifically talks about "culling materials in the closed libraries or shipping them to the two locations and culling materials in the two locations to make room for collections from closed libraries."

Just like the "culling" in Canada, the U.S. library closures sparked outrage across the nation.

Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility told the Christian Science Monitor that "We think this is one of several actions the Bush administration is taking to lobotomize the EPA, to reduce its capability, so it's much less able to independently review industry submissions."

Edit to add:

http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/shuttered-epa-libraries-open-door...

For Immediate Release: Sep 29, 2008
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337
SHUTTERED EPA LIBRARIES OPEN DOORS TOMORROW AFTER TWO YEARS

EPA Headquarters and Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City Regional Libraries Re-Open

Posted on Sep 29, 2008

Washington, DC — Under orders from Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tomorrow will again provide access to library services in 15 states and its own headquarters to agency employees and the public. This ends a 30-month campaign by the Bush administration to restrict availability of technical materials within EPA but leaves in its wake scattered and incomplete collections under new political controls of library operations, says Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

On September 30th, the last day of the federal fiscal year, EPA will re-open its regional libraries in Chicago (serving the Great Lakes region), Dallas (Mid-Southern region) and Kansas City (Mid-Western region) after more than two years. In addition, a long-shuttered library in EPA Headquarters will re-open and include a small portion of holdings from what had been a free-standing Chemical Library, for research on the properties and effects of new chemicals, as a “special Chemical Collection”.

In its September 24, 2008 Federal Register notice, EPA promises that these re-opened facilities “will be staffed by a professional librarian to provide service to the public and EPA staff via phone, e-mail, or in person…for a minimum of 24 hours over four days per week on a walk-in basis or by appointment.”

“While we are happy that EPA is re-opening its libraries, we are disturbed that the minds which plotted their closure remain in charge,” stated PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg, whose organization first revealed EPA’s plans to shut libraries and maintained a drumbeat of disclosures until Congress finally intervened and directed the agency to reverse course in December 2007. “Tomorrow, EPA will still accord its own scientists and the public less access to information than it did back in 2005.”

Most of the re-opened new libraries will be housed in less space and one, in Chicago (formerly the largest regional library), will re-open without “permanent furniture and shelving.” PEER notes that during the past two years, EPA further diminished its own informational infrastructure by –

Breaking up collections and disbursing them in a fashion that they may never be reassembled. Most of the re-opened libraries will only provide “core” reference materials;
Banning any technical holdings (called “mini-libraries”) for scientists and specialists that are not subject to centralized control; and
Placing all library acquisition and management decisions under a political appointee.

In response to stinging public and congressional criticism, EPA has undertaken an elaborate “National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information” to develop a new Library Strategic Plan in December 2008, just before the Bush administration leaves office.

“Given its record, the idea that the Bush administration is now sincerely interested in expanding access to environmental information is a bit hard to take,” Goldberg added. “If Congress had not intervened, all of EPA’s remaining libraries would now be on the chopping block.”

###

See the Federal Register notice on library re-openings

Trace the history of EPA shutting down its libraries

Look at EPA attempt at “National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information”

If the mechanisms of corporate control (such as Trojan Horse 'trade deals) and the endless leaching of wealth, power and life by a relative few of the pathologically ignorant and greedy not eliminated at its initial source, the US corporate State, whatever happens there will happen all over the world, right down to the last drop of life-blood wrung from the last surviving organism. And in the case of the last surviving Greeds at that point, that'll be from each other.

Edited to add missed block-quotes. And again for a typo-ed letter.