December 7, 2018
By Ron Fonger
Flint -- Only a few court appearances (click here) remain for Flint water crisis defendants before the end of 2018, when a new attorney general takes office and the direction of the prosecutions could change.
Preliminary examinations for four current and former employees of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality resume Monday, Dec. 10, before Genesee District Court Judge Jennifer Manley.
Liane Shekter-Smith, Patrick Cook, Stephen Busch and Micheal Prysby face a variety of charges, all related to allegations of criminal wrongdoing during the water crisis.
Shekter-Smith, the only state government employee to lose her job for her actions during the water crisis, faces criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty....
October 5, 2018
by Jake May
Kettering University (click here) professor Laura Sullivan testifies at the preliminary examination for four current and former employees of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality on Friday, Oct. 5, 2018 at Genesee District Court in downtown Flint.
What?
The Kettering University (click here) facilities staff proactively follows precise procedures to ensure the quality of the University’s water supply. These include safety procedures and independent testing of campus drinking water for general quality purposes. In 2015, amid concerns about the city of Flint’s water supply, Kettering University staff increased the frequency of its independent tests and began sharing those results publicly at kettering.edu/water. Kettering University’s water is safe to drink and no issues with contaminants have been detected....
...Kettering University was recognized by the Harvard University Kennedy School for Public Policy for its response to the water emergency....
I recognize that Kettering had their own concerns about the water on campus, but, what has that to do with the lead contamination in Flint?
I mean no disrespect to Dr. Sullivan, but, what is a mechanical engineer have to do with clean water and service pipes in Flint?
NORMALLY, I would expect to find a person with a degree and experience in biological sciences, agriculture, natural resource management, chemistry, or related disciplines. It is helpful to have an engineering background as a minor aspect of the qualifications employed in such assessments, but, a mechanical engineer isn't what I would call qualified to testify regarding the degree of negligence allowed by Snyder when he dismantled Flint's water supply.
I applaud Dr. Sullivan for taking all her initiatives to help Flint and she could add dimension to the facts surrounding this ecological disaster, but, I would not expect her to carry expert testimony regarding the water or the deaths and maiming of this poisoning in Flint. I think the proceedings are odd and quite frankly easily appealed for any conviction.
Dr. Laura Sullivan, (click here) professor of Mechanical Engineering at Kettering University, has been appointed to the Flint Water Inter-Agency Coordinating Committee by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.
Sullivan’s interdisciplinary role is to continue to build trust between local and state governments, stakeholders in Flint and citizens in the community. The task force is made up physicians, scientists, citizens and expert advisors and serves to advise the city of Flint on how to remedy the current water challenges in Flint.
“My role is to make sure the people of Flint understand that this time things are going to be different,” Sullivan said. “This time, there’s a voice for individuals in this community. I will help lead collaboration between all levels of government and the scientific community in order to achieve an optimal solution for Flint’s water issues.”
On January 6, 2016, the State of Michigan officially declared a State of Emergency due to elevated levels of lead found in sections of the Flint water supply.
Sullivan received her doctorate in Materials Engineering from the University of Texas - Arlington. She has served as a professor at Kettering since 1992. Sullivan is also the faculty advisor for Kettering’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders. In this role, she has helped develop and install filters to remove bacterial contamination in water supplies in the developing world....
November 12, 1991
By Sharon LaFraniere
...William Pelham Barr, (click here) bureaucrat, whose legal career began only 14 years ago with night law classes at George Washington University. President Bush's nominee for attorney general arrives at his confirmation hearings today before the Senate Judiciary Committee through the wildly unusual route of government service.
Legal observers compare Barr's nomination to President Jimmy Carter's selection of Benjamin R. Civiletti, a consummate professional who became attorney general after a similarly rapid rise through Justice Department posts. Like Civiletti, Barr is known as a cool-headed manager without political ambitions.
In 18 months as deputy attorney general, Barr was considered a conciliator at a Justice Department in turmoil during most of Attorney General Dick Thornburgh's (click here) tenure. Department officials say Barr tempered candor with discretion, a strong will with a tolerance for the personalities and views of others.
But the favorable reviews that are expected to win Barr easy confirmation are accompanied by uncertainties for some senators and former Justice Department officials. Is Barr too much an advocate for presidential power? Does his nomination mean the final ascendancy of the White House counsel over the role of attorney general? Barr owes his advancement partly to powerful White House counsel C. Boyden Gray (click here), who controlled the administration's civil rights policy during Thornburgh's tenure....
Rex Tillerson has too much integrity to simply spread rumors for the sake of spreading rumors. He is also very aware of laws and their impact after managing an international petroleum company. Laws were second nature to the CEO.
December 8, 2018
...The biting words came after Tillerson, (click here) in an appearance at a charity event in Houston, said their relationship soured over Trump's repeated demands that Tillerson do things that were illegal.
"So often, the president would say, 'Here's what I want you to do, and here's how I want you to do it,' " Tillerson said at a fundraiser for the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, in his first public remarks about his truncated tenure since he was let go in March.
"And I would have to say to him, 'Mr President, I understand what you want to do. But you can't do it that way. It violates the law,' " he said.
As if to confirm how toxic their interactions had become, Trump praised Tillerson's successor, Mike Pompeo, and dismissed the abilities of Tillerson, who ran Exxon Mobil before stepping down to work for Trump....
In defense of Twitter, I doubt seriously the inventors ever intended it as a tool for politics. Twitter serves many people globally when nothing else is available. It has a noble purpose, it is just that politics seems to have tainted it's purpose.
But, I think Secretary Tillerson is correct in stating not so many words, Americans need to get serious about their country and not act on emotions of the moment. Some take history of the country too far and others simply like an alternate reality. Few seem to want to take the time to understand a subject before they render an opinion.
...saying Trump was elected using modern-day tools to tap into strong emotions, he added, "I will be honest with you. It troubles me that the American people seem to want to know so little about issues that they are satisfied with 128 characters.
"I don't want that to come across as a criticism of him. It's really a concern I have about us as Americans, and us as a society, and us as citizens."...
December 6, 2018
By Coral Davenport
Washington — The Trump administration (click here) on Thursday detailed its plan to open nine million acres to drilling and mining by stripping away protections for the sage grouse, an imperiled ground-nesting bird that oil companies have long considered an obstacle to some of the richest deposits in the American West.
In one stroke, the action would open more land to drilling than any other step the administration has taken, environmental policy experts said. It drew immediate criticism from environmentalists while energy-industry representatives praised the move, saying that the earlier policy represented an overreach of federal authority.
“This is millions and millions of acres of Western land that stretch across the spine of this nation,” said Bobby McEnaney, an expert in Western land use at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “With this single action, the administration is saying: This landscape doesn’t matter. This species doesn’t matter. Oil and gas matter.”
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an association of independent oil and gas companies based in Denver, said in an email, “These plans will conserve the sage grouse without needlessly stifling economic activity.”...
That is a lie. The Sage Grouse is endangered because of LOSS OF HABITAT. Losing more habitat to the petroleum industry will not return greater numbers of viable birds.
In reviewing the report (click here) there is absolutely no evidence of a rebounding species.
The sample sizes from either 1965-2015 and 2005-2015 show a declining species number due to habitat loss. The reporting shows either a 2% to 2.1% decline every one of those years stated leading to approximately 66% drop in populations up to 2015. Sorry, but, no species short of an ant will rebound to a successful number of birds in three years.
The Trump Administration will cause the extinction of the Sage Grouse if it continues along this path.
Once extinct, who care then?
If the METHODOLOGY differs from state to state then there are reasons for it to differ. Trump is trying to say that since the methods of different then the information is faulty. "W"rong. There is no top down method that will work for every state in the country. California is different from Wyoming and they are different from Nevada.
The green color in the picture is historical territory of the grouse and it is diminished by at least 50%. The "scattered" appearance in the above map also indicates within the existing range there are disruptions that allows for continuity. So, the sage grouse is declining because OF THE EXISTING RANGE REMAINING there are significant areas of FRAGMENTATION. That fragmentation impacts on the bird and causes it to lose numbers needed to rebound.
Making claim that the existing REMAINING habitat can be FRAGMENTED MORE is pure idiocy and makes no sense at all. How is a species with fragmented and diminished quality and quantity of habitat going to rebound with more of the same?
My late father would have called him a shyster. Both would have been correct.
December 6, 2018
By Dan Alexander
On the day Donald Trump became president (click here) of the United States, while inauguration festivities were still in full swing, he officially launched his 2020 reelection campaign. Donations poured in from more than 50,000 people across the country. But according to the latest federal filings, Trump still has not donated a penny of his own, while his businesses continued to charge the campaign for hotels, food, rent and legal consulting. That means the richest president in American history has turned $1.1 million from donors across the country into revenue for himself....
...Then there are the payments flowing into Trump Plaza LLC, a Trump-owned entity that has taken in $42,000 of campaign money since November 2017. Although federal filings list the purpose of those payments as “rent,” it is difficult to tell what the campaign is actually renting. Trump Plaza LLC controls a retail space, garage and two brownstones near Third Avenue in New York City. The retail space at Trump Plaza shows no signs of campaign activity, and a non-Trump company seems to sub-lease the garage from Trump Plaza LLC—leaving just the two brownstones. But they are not open to the public, making it difficult to see who the tenants are, and whether they include the president’s campaign....
October 5, 2018
