Politics and Such

David Bernell Some things benefit from greater awareness and attention. Combating racial inequality, fighting cancer. And some things get worse if people don't pay enough attention. The looming question and threat in American politics right now is if enough people will take action to protect American democracy against the still-rising anti-democratic, authoritarian turn of the Republican party, which may very well take and preserve the power of a well-organized minority at the expense of others.  Sometimes, however, the goal is to get to the point in which people don't need to care about a topic, because the problem is solved or the issue is settled.  Several years ago when I was out of town for a few days with one of my kids, my wife decided to change some things around the house: move furniture around, get a couple new things, put up some bookshelves. I came back to a very different looking place. During the process of making the changes, which my wife did with a friend, my ...

David Bernell   The Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. the EPA said that the Clean Power Plan established under the Obama Administration exceeded the authority of the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions from existing power plants. It did not take away the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but it placed constraints so that regulations can only cover individual power plants, not the entire electric power sector as a whole.   The Clean Power Plan never went into effect. In 2016 the Supreme Court put a stay on the rule until the courts could sort out the question of the EPA's legal authority. The issue became moot because the Trump Administration scrapped the Clean Power Plan in favor of its own rule on CO2 emissions from power plants: the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Plan. But the West Virginia case continued to work its way through the courts. Then the day before Trump left office, the DC Circuit Court invalidated ACE. What this meant is that the i...