An Amazing Coincidence

        I had hoped I could relax a bit  before getting back on the horse, but, nooo, the new POTUS wouldn't have that,  so here goes.

        The trouble with most populist rhetoric is that it is much like a healthy, verdant  lawn with the grass a bit too high. All seems lush, green and attractive until you step in the dog shit. From this opener I could go into an analysis of the inaugural address, which contained more than a fair ration of such dung, but my purpose here is not that. George Will, a devout Republican has already deconstructed the rambling string of epithets and specious ramblings better than ever I could.  I am as much, or more, concerned with the changes already apparent on the White House web site, beginning with  the absence of any Climate Change mention or policy whatsoever.

        Equally perplexing and more well hidden in obfuscatory language is the possibility of two major perversions of power. The first is Trump's antipathy to the Clean Water Act. Apparently we really don't need to insure an unpolluted water supply. Likewise the plans to scrap current EPA standards  limiting coal fired power plant stack gasses, prime sources of carcinogens.  After adjusting for age, sex, race, median household income, and residence, a recent study indicates that there were  11%, 15%, and 17% increases in estimated rates of hospitalization for asthma, ARI, and COPD, respectively, among individuals over age  10  living in the same  ZIP code as a coal-fired power plant. There is zero similar correlation for Nuclear power plants!

        Not only carcinogens but wait, there's more! According to a recent Scientific American study: "Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radioactivity than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy."  The annual exposure to persons with otherwise identical factors is 3 times greater for a person living 50 miles from a coal fired plant than 50 miles from a nuclear power plan. So yeah, Donny, screw that nasty old EPA regulatory shit so more Kentuckians can die from black lung.

        But let's go on to my real topic today, public lands. Trump and various sycophant Westerners rant and rail about "Public" lands as if they had been stolen from the previous "owners,"  and from a social science aspect, they're correct. However, the owners I mean are Native Americans who really didn't believe land could be owned. In reality, "Public Land" means the entire public of the USA , all of us, not some bucolic tax scofflaw like Cliven Bundy. It is telling that even Sean Hannity had to abandon his efforts to confer sainthood  upon this semi literate frontier shitheel and his useless clan. Bundy whined, almost daily during his week of fame, of his "Constitutional" rights to use our (public, remember?)  land to graze his cattle without regard for whatever damage they might do by recreating Dust Bowl like overgrazing conditions.

         If Bundy and friends truly  understood either the Federal constitution or that of his home state of Nevada, and if they had any sense of introspection, they should be mortified. To begin, the Nevada constitution contains these words: ....That the people inhabiting said territory (Nevada) do agree and declare, that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within said territory, and that the same shall be and remain at the sole and entire disposition of the United States."  Even Cliven Bundy should grasp that this means the land was never the property of anyone in his state if it wasn't so in 1864. Oops! Having become the sole proprietors of this land, the people via their elected representatives in Congress have managed it ever since. Far from being burdensome to the states as some westerners have falsely claimed, the BLM is funded by people like Bundy who agree  to lease some of it for a specifies time at a specified price for grazing (or logging, or whatever). Relative to buying cattle food or raising fodder crops , like dairy and beef farmers all over most of America do, government leases are a bargain, that is unless like Bundy, you think it ought to be free.

       But wait, that's just the first part of the dilemma and by no means the worst. Trump has segued from :"Give the land back to the people" which actually means "Take it from most of us in favor of a few who never owned it," into "Open it for petroleum and other exploration." This unfortunately means a lot of ecologically sensitive regions are in danger. this specific mentions vastly  increased use of fracking!

        Now the big finish: Remember , this is public land, so if oil or mineral wealth is found on it, it belongs to the whole nation, right? Of course not.  It will simply transfer even more economic power and undeserved riches to the large petroleum corporations which will undoubtedly get these franchises to explore the subsurface. If we were desperate for fossil fuels this might make more (never a lot of) sense, but adjusted for the cost of living, as manifested in the historic Consumer Price Index, a fair measurement, right now gasoline costs almost exactly the  same as it did in 1956. It must be noted that this has been accomplished without public land giveaways or scrapping EPA regulations.  So, now we have a SecState nominee who was the CEO of Exxon. Wow, how's that for coincidence?