BONUS: EPA puts public health, environment on back burner... huh? what?
NYT columnist David Brooks believes going it alone will cost U.S. dearly
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My junior high school in Seymour, Conn. stood just feet from the Naugatuck River.
During the first warm days of spring we often had to shut the windows because of the smell.
The Naugatuck was a major industrial waterway with factories discharging their waste directly into the river. It wasn't unusual to see the river change colors multiple times during the day from green, to blue to yellow and red.
When I attended school there from 1968 to 1970, it was so polluted it was considered a "dead" river from the dumping of chemicals from the brass and rubber industries upriver.
I remember playing softball during recess and when a ball was hit into the river, students refused to stick their hands into the water to get the ball.
Pollution was a problem and our environment was a mess.
The Environmental Protection Agency was created by President Richard Nixon on Dec. 2, 1970. The Clean Water Act followed in 1972 and played a critical role in addressing the water pollution in the Naugatuck.
In the decades since, the water quality of the Naugatuck River improved as factories shut down and environmental policies were enacted.
Jack Walsh, a lifetime resident of nearby Derby, Conn and co-chair of the Naugatuck River Greenway Steering Committee, called the Naugatuck River “one of the greatest environmental clean-up efforts in the United States.”
Since those long ago junior high days, the river no longer smells and has become a bustling ecosystem with many different species of wildlife, plants and fish.
On Wednesday, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, announced the EPA would retreat from that mission of protecting the environment and the health of citizens to "lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business."
During a 2 minute and 18 second video, Zeldin announced the agency was rolling back dozens of provisions to protect the environment, paving the way for more environmental disasters, worse air and water pollution and the return of acid rain to the Adirondacks. At no point did Zeldin's mention "protecting" the environment or public health."
He might as well have announced mandatory smoking for children.
It's a reminder of why governments are different than businesses because the goal is to look out for the greater good of the people.
We here in the Capital District and beyond have some experience with environmental problems with PCBs in the Hudson River, contaminated wells, cancer clusters, acid rain and air pollution from local paper mills.
What was especially startling was how transparent Zeldin was in prioritizing corporate profits over people's health.
Did those of you who voted for President Trump locally plan on the health of your families, friends and neighbors to be compromised so your heating bill could be less expensive?
Consider that the next time you visit a loved one in intensive care.
Even the United States Chamber of Commerce endorsed the plan to cripple the environment.
“American businesses were crippled with an unprecedented regulatory onslaught during the previous Administration that contributed to higher costs felt by families around the country,” the national chamber said, despite a booming economy. “The Chamber supports a more balanced regulatory approach that will protect the environment and support greater economic growth.”
But this isn't balanced, this an elimination of all standards.
Does the Adirondack Regional Chamber of Commerce feel the same way? Perhaps someone could ask when it holds its monthly mixer at Glens Falls Country Club on April 8.
There is a general consensus the federal bureaucracy is rife with too many rules and regulations, but I'd argue you can never be too careful when it comes to the environment and your health.
And that's without even considering the calamity of world-wide climate change.
The United States is the top contributor of carbon dioxide producing green house gases causing climate change. If you hadn't noticed, last year was the warmest on record and the U.S. experienced 27 weather-related disasters costing more than $1 billion.
In 1980, there were three.
The agency's future mission is to repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands, and the legal basis that allows it to regulate the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.
Yeah, we're screwed.
For those of here in upstate New York, Zeldin promised to get rid of the "good neighbor rule" that required Midwest-burning coal plants to address its pollution before it was carried downwind to places like the Adirondacks and killed our pristine lakes and rivers.
Have a kid with allergies?
An elderly parent with respiratory problems?
It's going to get worse now because Zeldin promised to overturn limits on soot in those coal-burning smokestacks that were linked to respiratory problems.
He has promised to end the limits on poisonous mercury.
Worst of all, Zeldin announced the EPA would not use its legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to climate change. Zeldin will go down in history as the man who set us down the road to extinction. It won't matter because there will be no one to record the history.
Former EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy told the New York Times it was “the most disastrous day in EPA history. Rolling these rules back is not just a disgrace, it’s a threat to all of us. The agency has fully abdicated its mission to protect Americans’ health and well being.”
Experts immediately pointed out that Zeldin's actions would lead to increases in "asthma, heart attacks and other health problems."
There is hope that legal challenges will curtail this threat, but that will delay any implementation of standards to fight climate change.
Back in Seymour, I worry the Naugatuck will return to its colorful, odoriferous past, but thankfully children will not longer be exposed since the junior high school was closed years ago.
The building was converted into senior apartments.
We're in trouble
I consider conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times to be one of the most thoughtful thinkers in media today.
He does not panic or react instantaneously to the world around him. He gives everything careful consideration.
That's what makes his Thursday column - It isn't just Trump; America's whole reputation is shot - something of a concern and one of mandatory reading for all of us.
Education demise
The federal Education Department is on track to reduce its workforce by half after it announced it was firing more than 1,300 of its 4,133 workers on Tuesday.
The intent was to give local schools more control over education policies. But since we vote on school budgets and boards of education locally, there should not be much change in policies. We already have that control. Where the cuts might be felt is when students apply for federal grants and loans to go to college. Those monies might either disappear or be more difficult to obtain.
It's another blow to middle class families.
The New York Times reported this week that only about 10 percent of funding for public education comes from the federal government and those monies are directed at low income and disabled students (special needs).
Where the Department of Education has been important is measuring progress in educational standards so that schools can improve their programs and educational quality.
This past week, at least 100 federal workers who focus on education research and student testing were let go at a time when reading and math scores had reached record lows.
How schools measure the quality of their education in the future is unclear.
Dose of perspective
Some thoughts from New York Times columnist Bret Stephens about the cuts to federal government.
- A gutted I.R.S. work force won’t lower your taxes: It will delay your refund.
- Mass firings of thousands of federal employees won’t result in a more productive work force. It will mean a decade of litigation and billions of dollars in legal fees.
- High-profile eliminations of wasteful spending (some real, others not) won’t make a dent in federal spending. They’ll mask the untouchable drivers of our $36 trillion debt: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense.
White House media
The current administration is choosing which reporters attend events and cover the White House daily. It's kind of like the home team in an NFL game choosing to use referees that are on its staff.
The New York Times's Peter Baker gave this context last week:
"You're seeing basically inherently political organizations masquerading as news organizations, calling themselves news organizations, and injecting themselves into our pool. And for the viewer at home watching this, it's confusing."
Medical research
Substack columnist Heather Cox Richards had this to say about the administration's recent cuts to medical research:
The wholesale destruction of the U.S.A.’s advanced medical research, especially cancer research, by firing scientists, canceling grants, banning communications and collaboration, and stopping travel is also radical and seems unlikely to leave Americans healthier than before.
Yesterday, news broke that the administration canceled $800 million worth of grants to Johns Hopkins University, one of the nation’s top research universities in science and medicine. Meanwhile, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has cast doubt on the safe, effective measles vaccine as the disease continues to spread across the Southwest.
Also today, the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees supplemental food programs, announced it was cutting about $1 billion in funding that enables schools and food banks to buy directly from local farms and ranches. This will hit farmers and producers as well as children and food-insecure families.
A day later, Johns Hopkins announced it was cutting 2,000 jobs because of the loss of the federal grants.
One final word
One final word from Heather Cox Richardson about the definition of a modern-day Republican:
"In 2025 the Republicans in charge of the United States of America are not the conservatives they call themselves; they are the dangerous ideological radicals (philosopher/writer Edmund) Burke feared. They are abruptly dismantling a government that has kept the United States relatively prosperous, secure, and healthy for the past 80 years. In its place, they are trying to impose a government based in the idea that a few men should rule."
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
As you allude to in the reference to the Chamber of Commerce’s gathering at the Country Club, it is NOT a center/moderate organization. It is a cutthroat free-market capital organization founded to prevent workers from gaining power. Sure, they wear suits and top hats and keep a hanky to polish their monocles, but they are rarely on the side of ensuring just government powers by consent of the governed. They work to be a power behind puppet leaders.
And while it is great that David Brooks gives everything careful consideration after it is too late, many of us give consideration to the probable effects of bad policy before it advances. For that we get smeared as over-reacting, panicking.
Looking at the record, while millions of us formed an immediate opinion that the Iraq War of GWB was unjustified and irresponsible, David Brooks supported it. Perhaps we all “panicked”, but history shows we were absolutely correct, and GW Bush’s War on Terror led in a straight line to legal justification for torture (“enhanced interrogation”), abductions, black sites, Guantanamo Bay, and general subversion of the Constitution in ways that gave us the possibility of a Donald Trump for President.
Middle-of-the-Roadism is not thoughtful balance of all sides. It is, in fact, a brake on expanding justice.
Your sobering statements on what Trump and his cronies and thugs have wrought upon America are spot on.
With even all that there's Pam Bondi stating that her department will come after protesters at Tesla dealerships. Or Rubio canceling the contract with Yale University's research lab that was tracking Russia's kidnapping of Ukrainian children and unilaterally deciding that foreign born persons, even those that are legally here, who criticize Trump or his MAGA movement should be arrested and deported. Or RFK, Jr. once again implying that vaccines cause autism as he promotes a brand of hamburgers. Or Noem requiring Canadians be registered when they enter if they plan to stay for more than 30 days. Or Hegseth removing references to accomplishments of women, Blacks, LGBTQ and Hispanics from DOD sites, such as Arlington National Cemetery. Or Musk's DOGE Backpack Boys canceling leases, contracts and funding for scientific research, historical sites, federal offices and buildings.
Democrats are failing in finding and taking a unified stance or even a voice to oppose these corrupt and destructive actions. Republicans stand by and obediently applaud as Trump destroys American democracy and institutions such as the Kennedy Center and altering America's history.
One sign of hope though, is that more and more loud and peaceful protests are taking place with people challenging their elected officials. But, I wonder, will it be enough to halt the dark trajectory that the Trump Administration is sending America down?