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Friday TOON Roundup 2 - The Rest
Undecided
Chrispie
Johnson
Putin
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Donald Trump and the Climate Change Countdown
By Elizabeth Kolbert ,
In August, 2015, when President Obama announced the final version of the Clean Power Plan—the centerpiece of his effort to combat climate change—he quoted a speech that Martin Luther King, Jr., gave at Riverside Church, in April, 1967, opposing the Vietnam War. “I believe ‘there is such a thing as being too late,’ ” the President said, in a ceremony in the East Room. He liked the line so much that he repeated it, a few months later, at the opening of the international climate negotiations, in Paris: “For I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late. And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us.” Speaking about climate change this past summer, in Yosemite National Park, he invoked it a third time.
The line came to mind yet again this week, when oral arguments against the Clean Power Plan were heard in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Twenty-seven states, led by West Virginia, together with a passel of oil and coal companies, have sued the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent the plan from going into effect. There is, indeed, such a thing as being too late, and the plan’s opponents—who were the very folks who made the plan necessary—seem determined to delay until that point, and perhaps beyond it. As Dr. King observed, in a context that was at once very different and not so different, procrastination is “the thief of time.”
Depending on how you look at things, the Clean Power Plan is either extraordinarily complex—the final rules take up more than fifteen hundred pages—or pretty straightforward. Basically, the plan requires each state to figure out a way to reduce the carbon-dioxide emissions from its power plants. Because each state is starting out with a different energy mix, each one has been given a different goal; those that now rely heavily on carbon-intensive coal are subject to less stringent restrictions than those that are starting out with more natural-gas plants or wind turbines. It could be contended that this approach penalizes precisely those states that have done the most to reduce their emissions, but, for the most part, it’s the states that have made the least effort that are now suing.
All in all, the plan is supposed to reduce emissions from the nation’s power sector by about thirty per cent by 2030. (This is using a baseline of 2005 emissions.) The plan is central to the commitments made by the United States at last year’s climate conference in Paris. Without the power-sector reductions, it will be pretty much impossible for the country to live up to its pledges, and if the U.S. doesn’t live up to its pledges then it’s unlikely other countries will, either, and—well, you get the picture. As William Ruckelshaus and William K. Reilly, both Republicans and both former E.P.A. heads, noted in an Op-Ed in support of the plan that ran in the Times on Monday, “the consequences will be drastic if the United States and other countries do nothing.”
more
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/donald-trump-and-the-climate-change-countdown
Donald Trump's Fortune Falls $800 Million To $3.7 Billion
By Chase Peterson-Withorn and Jennifer Wang
Despite decades of precedent among presidential candidates, Donald Trump has been steadfast in his refusal to release his tax returns. “You don’t learn that much from tax returns,” he said at the first presidential debate on Monday, where he claimed that he has been getting audited by the IRS almost every year for 15 years. “You will learn more about Donald Trump by going down to the federal elections,” Trump suggests, “where I filed a 104-page essentially financial statements of sorts.”
A lot of Trump critics have argued that he’s afraid that his tax returns will show he’s not a billionaire. Highly doubtful. First, Trump’s income will not directly correlate with the value of his assets, the debt on them or his stake in each. Second, FORBES has been scouring Trump’s fortune for 34 years. Sometimes he’s up, sometimes he down–and for much of the 1990s he was out of the three comma club.
FORBES’ new investigation into Trump’s wealth pegs his fortune at $3.7 billion, down $800 million from a year ago. A softening of New York City’s real estate market, particularly in retail and office, where valuations are trending down, has diminished his estimated net worth. New information was also a factor. Of the 28 assets or asset classes scrutinized by FORBES, 18 declined in value, including his trademark Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, his downtown jewel 40 Wall Street and Mar-a-Lago, his private beachfront club in Palm Beach.
more
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/2016/09/28/the-definitive-look-at-donald-trumps-wealth-new/#547256977e2d
LOOOOOSERRRRR!
Chris Christie should be impeached in bridge scandal
By Richard Cohen September 28 at 10:40 AM
If the New Jersey legislature acts fast, it will have time to impeach Chris Christie. The governor’s term expires in January 2018, which is only about a year from now, and impeachment is a laborious process, so someone ought to get this thing going. A former Christie ally says Christie knew his cronies had closed three lanes of the George Washington Bridge, creating a massive, four-day traffic jam — delaying commuters, children on the way to school and the occasional ambulance transporting some unfortunate individual who might not appreciate that his life was being jeopardized to punish a Christie political foe. We all have to die, but not for Chris Christie.
As it turned out, the only death was to Christie’s presidential ambitions, which was fitting. According to prosecutors, government witnesses and the hunches of countless New Jersey politicians, Christie was trying to show what a wonderful GOP presidential candidate he would be by winning a huge second term as governor. To do this, he was lining up endorsements by Democratic mayors who, in the scheme of things, normally endorse Democrats. This is a tradition.
The mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., was a Democratic mayor who was refusing to endorse Christie. He needed to be punished, some Christie people deeply felt, and so the bridge-closing scheme was allegedly concocted. Fort Lee, as it happens, is the western terminus of the George Washington Bridge, which is one of the busiest in the world. Traffic would back up, and Fort Lee itself would suffocate in awful fumes and nothing would ever move again. The recalcitrant mayor would see the error of his ways and would become appropriately meek in the presence of Christie.
It is not alleged that Christie knew of the scheme in advance. It is alleged that he knew about it as it was happening. It is further alleged that he thought it was funny — but then he chuckles at Donald Trump also. All these allegations — with the exception of the one about Trump — were made under oath in open court by the former Christie ally, who says he is one of those who came up with the scheme. If he is being truthful, then Christie ought to be impeached if only for choosing idiots as aides.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/09/28/chris-christie-should-be-impeached-in-bridge-scandal/?utm_term=.af72b0623331
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