Newspaper column: NEPA rules changes will benefit economy and environment

President Donald Trump announced this past week that his Council on Environmental Quality is streamlining the rules for major infrastructure projects — such as roads, bridges, pipelines and power transmission lines — required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970, aiming to cut the approval time for such projects in half.

The council published the changes in the Federal Register on Friday, setting in motion a 60-day comment period. The changes are widely expected to be challenged in the courts by the usual self-styled environmental groups.

Businesses and labor unions hailed the proposal as long overdue, but environmental groups assailed it, saying the changes would contribute to climate change.

In an opinion piece penned for The Hill — Tom Donohue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions — argued that the changes would actually benefit the environment.

“Consistent with its environmental mission, modernizing NEPA will accelerate projects that improve the efficiency of our transportation and distribution systems, thereby reducing traffic congestion and associated emissions,” Donohue and McGarvey write. “It will also spur investment in renewable energy sources and transmission infrastructure, much of which is subject to delays by current NEPA procedures. And timelier implementation of conservation projects will help mitigate environmental impacts, such as damaging floods and wildfires.”

In recent years, major projects have taken an average of four-and-a-half years to be approved. The council aims to cut that to two years. A number of projects have taken far longer to be approved. An airport runway expansion in Taos, N.M., took 20 years. A highway and bridge project in Michigan to cut traffic congestion and, therefore, carbon emissions took 16 years. A Maryland public transit project stretched out for 14 years.

Trump announces changes to NEPA rules. (AP pix)

“We want to build new roads, bridges, tunnels, highways bigger, better, faster,” Trump was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying at a White House press conference, where he was flanked by business and union leaders. “These endless delays waste money, keep projects from breaking ground and deny jobs to our nation’s incredible workers.”

The Journal noted that business groups claim lengthy NEPA reviews are partly to blame for a nearly $1 trillion backlog in transportation projects alone.

Democratic House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva of Arizona said in a press release, “Polluting industries need more public oversight, not less, and supporting this approach means ignoring real-world consequences in favor of Trump administration fairy tales. The courts have been crystal clear that NEPA requires considering climate impacts, so this is just another inevitably doomed effort by this administration to try to illegally rewrite the rules it doesn’t like.”

Nevada Democratic Rep. Susie Lee sent out a Twitter comment saying, “We’ve seen what happens if these major projects don’t have environmental impact reviews. Damaged ecosystems, increased pollution, and increased health risks. We can’t go backwards on this.”

Nevada Republican Congressman Mark Amodei said Friday, “Since we’re only about 24 hours out from the release of the proposed changes, we’ll have more for you next week, but so far the concepts look good.”

Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus tweeted, “While horrific fires create a crisis in Australia, President Trump still tries to deny climate change. It is inexcusable for the Trump Administration to put the President’s corporate allies ahead of our health and safety.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the administration of blocking any federal efforts to confront climate change. “These new guidelines undermine critical building requirements that ensure that our communities are able to withstand the growing threat posed by the climate crisis,” she was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.

Even the liberal Los Angeles Times editorial board, in an editorial condemning the NEPA rule changes, conceded, “In truth, NEPA probably does need a tune-up. The current regulations date back to 1978 and have been amended only once since, in 1986. It’s reasonable to assume that all those years of experience have exposed flaws and shortcomings that could be addressed to improve and expedite the environmental review process. But the Trump administration, with its open denial of climate change and its industry-friendly policies aimed at expanding the production of fossil fuels, is not to be trusted with such a task.”

The streamlining of the bureaucracy will both contribute to economic growth and add infrastructure that will actually cut pollution in most cases. The naysayers are basing their projections of climate crisis on speculation and models that have yet to predict anything accurately.

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

A bit of advice for the president

I considered wading in on the Twitter twaddle between President Trump and the socialist “squad,” but figured enough mud was being splattered on the walls already. What could I add?

But today the morning paper’s columnist Victor Joecks saved me the trouble and said what I meant to say, only far more succinctly:

When your political opponents are rhetorically clubbing each other to death, you stand back, shut up and get out of the way.

Unless you’re Trump, who — blinded by his own genius at shaping political stories — decided this was a great time to criticize AOC and her squad.

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “squad” had engaged in a social media slap fight with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dividing the Democrat Party, and Trump just couldn’t resist wading in and uniting them, resulting in last night’s near-party line vote in the House to condemn Trump.

USA Today recounts: “The resolution, which said Trump’s “racist comments have legitimized fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color,” passed by an overall vote of 240-187.”

When your opponents are squabbling among themselves, let them, don’t unite them, Mr. “stable genius.”

The squad. (UPI pix)

 

Newspaper column: Free speech is not violence

The leftists have yet to learn that the proper response to speech they don’t like is to counter with more speech, reasoned speech. No, their first and constant response is: Shut up!

This is what happened after President Trump criticized a maladroit comment made by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and Muslim, in a speech before the Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said, “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

Trump tweeted a video splicing together Omar’s tone-deaf “some people did something” with footage of the World Trade Towers collapsing. It was captioned, “WE WILL NEVER FORGET.”

A number of Democrats immediately demanded that the video be taken down because it might incite violence against Omar, and Omar herself said she had been subjected to numerous death threats. Never mind that CAIR has been accused of supporting terrorist organizations such as Hamas or that it actually was founded in 1994.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “It is wrong for the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to fan the flames to make anyone less safe.”

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote on Twitter, “The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman — and an entire group of Americans based on their religion. It’s disgusting. It’s shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, another Democratic presidential candidate, joined in by tweeting, “Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won’t back down to Trump’s racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end.”

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, another Democratic presidential contender, criticized Trump during a speech, saying, “This is an incitement of violence against Congresswoman Omar — against our fellow Americans who happened to be Muslim.”

The always outspoken and equally maladroit New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the video an “outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress.”

Fellow Democrat and Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib tweeted that Trump took “Ilhan’s words out of context to incite violence toward her …”

Inciting violence?

We don’t seem to recall Sanders being chastised thusly after a supporter of his candidacy shot up a Republican baseball practice, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Nor do we recall anguish over the many political and media attacks against Trump, despite the number of threats the Secret Service fields.

As for the legal definition of inciting violence, the Supreme Court nailed that in the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio when it struck down an Ohio law making it illegal to advocate violence. The court held, “Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”

Of course some Democrats are hand wringing over the possibility that some crazy person might be incentivized to act out violently due to Trump’s remarks, which clearly did not advocate violence of any kind.. If the crazy person standard is all it takes to silence criticism, then no speech is safe.

As for condoning violence, it was Rep. Omar who wrote a letter to a judge in 2016 asking for leniency for nine men charged with planning to join ISIS.

“A long-term prison sentence for one who chose violence to combat direct marginalization is a statement that our justice system misunderstands the guilty. A restorative approach to justice assesses the lure of criminality and addresses it,” Omar wrote.

“The desire to commit violence is not inherent to people — it is the consequences of systematic alienation; people seek violent solutions when the process established for enacting change is inaccessible to them.”

The answer to solving social and political issues is open and free discussion resulting in actions to combat wrongs, not violence. Using the specter of violence to gag free speech is fundamentally against everything this country was founded on and stands for.

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Editorial: Democrats flunk math with false claims about refunds

The Associated Press reported recently that Democrats have seized on the fact that the average income tax refund is smaller this year “as proof that the Republican-written tax law hurts the middle class.”

Noting the smaller refund checks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote on her blog, “People have already taken to social media, using the hashtag #GOPTaxScam, to vent their anger. Many blame President Trump and the Republicans for shrinking refunds. Some on Twitter even said they wouldn’t vote for Trump again after seeing their refunds slashed.”

By this past weekend the hashtag #GOPTaxScam had shown up online 100,000 times. 

In fact Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a U.S. senator from California, tweeted, “The average tax refund is down about $170 compared to last year. Let’s call the President’s tax cut what it is: a middle-class tax hike to line the pockets of already wealthy corporations and the 1%.”

The liberal website Huffington Post reported, “The average refund check paid out so far has been $1,865, down from $2,035 at the same point in 2018, according to IRS data. Low-income taxpayers often file early to pocket the money as soon as possible. Many taxpayers count on the refunds to make important payments, or spend the money on things like home repairs, a vacation or a car.”

The story noted in passing that the tax code changes meant that in some cases not enough money was withheld by employers. But nowhere did it note that in the vast majority of these cases the total tax bill for 2018 is less than the prior year. People just got to kept it with each paycheck and did not make interest-free loans to the federal government.

Democrats are seizing on something all right, but it is misdirection and bad math.

Though refunds are about 8 percent lower than a year ago, the Tax Policy Center reports income tax payments are being reduced $1,600 on average, thus increasing after-tax income by 2.2 percent. The center noted that about 65 percent of households will get tax cuts averaging $2,180, while about 6 percent will see a tax increase averaging $2,760.

Since people were paying less in taxes, less was withheld.

Nicole Kaeding, director of federal projects at the Tax Foundation, was quoted by National Public Radio as saying, “Don’t judge your taxes by your refund. That’s only one part of the conversation,” adding, “Ideally, you don’t actually want to receive a large refund. Because what you’ve done is given the federal government an interest-free loan. Instead, what would be better is to adjust your withholdings so you get more take-home pay in every paycheck.”

But never let the facts get in the way of a Democrat trying pick your pocket. 

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Who is telling the truth in Kihuen contratempts

Lie detectors at 10 paces, turn and fire.

In order to protect his own hide from allegations of sexual harassment, Nevada’s CD4 Rep. Ruben Kihuen told ABC News that two people who are calling for him to resign over those allegations were aware of the claims back during the election campaign in 2016 and continued to support him.

According to BuzzFeed, a female Kihuen campaign staffer quit in April 2016 shortly after the candidate started propositioning her for dates and sex despite her repeated rejections and twice touched her thighs without her consent.

Reuben Kihuen

The woman said the propositions became more frequent and more aggressive and Kihuen asked her if she had ever “cheated on her boyfriend.” She said the candidate offered to get them a hotel room together while campaigning and she told BuzzFeed, “I said ‘no’ very firmly and he just laughed at me. It was humiliating.”

Kihuen now says both Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Ben Ray Lujan knew about the allegations, looked into them and did not find anything.

In fact the woman said she informed the DCCC as to why she was quitting. Kihuen’s campaign manager told BuzzFeed someone at the DCCC called to say the woman had quit because she felt “uncomfortable” around Kihuen, but there were no specifics and Kihuen denied any wrongdoing.

A spokesman for Pelosi said she was not aware of the allegation earlier and first learned of them from BuzzFeed.

“Congressman Kihuen’s statement is not true,” a DCCC spokesman said. “We were presented with these disturbing facts for the first time last week, and the chair immediately called for his resignation.”

“I’ve been abundantly clear that anyone that is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault, that they don’t deserve to hold public office at any level, and I continue to hold that position,” Lujan said.

Kihuen has said he will not resign. Who is telling or stretching the truth?

 

 

 

Pass the Obamacare repeal and replace and see what happens, Nancy

Nancy Pelosi once famously said of Obamacare: “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”

Now she says of the Republican repeal and replace bill: “Show us the numbers as to how many people will be thrown off.”

Why not wait and see? Can it be any worse than Obamacare, which has driven up costs and not lived up to its promised coverage and cost taxpayers billions of dollars and has driven doctors away?

A summary of the bill says it will dismantle Obamacare taxes that hamper job creation and increase insurance costs. It will keep children on parents’ insurance and not allow insurers to deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. It will give more power to states. Allow individuals to spend their health care dollars as they wish. It will provide tax credits for purchasing insurance, just as businesses get now.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal today, two of the bill’s authors say, “Our fiscally responsible plan will lower costs for patients and begin returning control from Washington back to the states, so that they can tailor their health-care systems to their unique communities. The bill will improve access to care and restore the free market, increasing innovation, competition and choice.”

 

Speech is free, but the soap box to stand on is not

The ink wasn’t dry on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling lifting caps on aggregate campaign contributions in federal races before the usual Democratic suspects started squealing like pigs caught under a gate.

Of course, Harry Reid had to drag out his favorite whipping boys, the Koch brothers, and stomp on them like he was doing a Mexican hat dance.

“The Supreme Court today just accentuated what they did on Citizens United, which is a decision that is one of the worst decisions in the history of that court,” Reid said. “All it does is take away people’s rights because, as you know, the Koch brothers are trying to buy America.”

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (AP photo)

Pay no attention to the union organizations behind the curtain, you know those dozens of unions that contributed far, far more to Democrats then the Koch brothers, who rank 59th in the list of top campaign spenders, ever thought about spending.

If it is possible, Nancy Pelosi may have frothed even more than Harry on this topic, exclaiming, “Our founders risked their lives, their liberty and their sacred honor to create a democracy — a government of the many, not a government of the money. After misguided and destructive court decisions in McCutcheon and Citizens United, it is clear that Congress must act swiftly to restore fairness to our campaign finance system.”

In his opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that the court has long held that Congress may regulate campaign contributions in an effort to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. Therefore, limits on how much one person may give to one candidate are OK, but limiting total spending by that one person is not.

“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests,and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition. …” Roberts writes. “Indeed, as we have emphasized, the First Amendment ‘has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.’”

Roberts added that campaign finance restrictions that pursue objectives other than avoiding corruption are not permissible — such as trying to prevent someone from “buying” the country. He said that injects the government into the debate over who should govern. “And those who govern should be the last people to help decide who should govern,” he noted.