Deregulate!

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This too needs a bout of deregulation. Oh wait..

Nearly a year after the record-breaking rupture at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Los Angeles, which prompted thousands of people to evacuate and released 97,100 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere, a White House task force has issued a report on the state of the country’s natural gas storage.

It’s a troubling picture. The report found that “while incidents at U.S. underground natural gas storage facilities are rare, the potential consequences of those incidents can be significant and require additional actions to ensure safe and reliable operation over the long term.” The Aliso Canyon leak, for instance, can be blamed on both poor design and lack of monitoring.

The report offers 44 recommendations to protect health and the environment from the risks of natural gas storage and was authored by staff from the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the EPA, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and other agencies. “This new report accurately describes the serious safety and environmental hazards involved with these crumbling links in our energy infrastructure.

The challenge now is taking action,” said Mark Brownstein climate and energy vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund. “We need stronger safety standards at both the state and federal level, and to make sure that state and federal officials are working together to close the gaps in the safety net,” he said.

New analysis of natural gas storage warns of ‘significant’ consequences from leaks

And as a side note, we don't really need investing in infrastructure either..

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Speaks for itself..

Air pollution is world’s single biggest environmental health risk, according to the WHO, and is getting worse, with levels of toxic air rising 8% in the last five years. Over three million people a year die as a result of outdoor air pollution – six every minute on average – and this is set to double by 2050 as fast growing cities expand. Indoor air pollution, mainly from wood or dung stoves, causes another three million deaths a year.
Children are especially at risk, the Unicef report says, because they breathe more rapidly than adults and the cell layer in their lungs is more permeable to pollutant particles. The tiny particles can also cross the blood-brain barrier, which is less resistant in children, permanently harming cognitive development and their future prospects. Even the unborn are affected, as the particles inhaled by pregnant women can cross the placental barrier, injuring fetuses.


Three hundred million of the world’s children live in areas with extreme air pollution, where toxic fumes are more than six times international guidelines, according to new research by Unicef. The study, using satellite data, is the fist to make a global estimate of exposure and indicates that almost 90% of the world’s children - two billion - live in places where outdoor air pollution exceeds World Health Organisation (WHO) limits. 

Unicef warned the levels of global air pollution contributed to 600,000 child deaths a year – more than are caused by malaria and HIV/Aids combined. Children are far more vulnerable to air pollution, Unicef warned, pointing to enduring damage to health and the development of children’s brain and urging nations attending a global climate summit next month to cut fossil fuel burning rapidly.

300 million children live in areas with extreme air pollution, data reveals | Environment | The Guardian

Ok, a temporary high because of fireworks, but PM2.5 is a real killer and comes from diesel, coal.

It’s particulate matter: the toxic, asthma-inducing residue from millions of sparklers and fireworks, set off Sunday night as part of the Hindu festival of lights. In New Delhi on Sunday night, a local air quality monitoring system was showing levels of 410 micrograms of ultrafine particulate matter (PM) per cubic meter. That’s twice the amount of PM2.5 as recorded on October 29 by a state monitoring program — and nearly 10 times more the World Health Organization’s guidelines suggest for human health. PM2.5 — made up of particles roughly a third the diameter of human hair — is considered particularly dangerous to human health. The World Health Organization recommends exposure to no more than 10 micrograms per cubic meter on an annual average basis, and no more than 25 micrograms per cubic meter for a daily average.

International guidelines consider it a long-term hazard to breathe air that has more than 10 micrograms of ultra-fine particulate matter per cubic meter. Some 2 billion children are regularly exposed to air quality that exceeds that limit. “Poor children are among the most at risk,” the report says. The World Health Organization estimates that 2.1 million deaths could be prevented each year, across all age groups, by meeting global air quality guidelines for PM2.5.

Delhi shrouded in smoke after Diwali celebrations

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The aloe vera gel many Americans buy to soothe damaged skin contains no evidence of aloe vera at all. Samples of store-brand aloe gel purchased at national retailers Wal-Mart, Target and CVS showed no indication of the plant in various lab tests. The products all listed aloe barbadensis leaf juice — another name for aloe vera — as either the No. 1 ingredient or No. 2 after water.  There’s no watchdog assuring that aloe products are what they say they are. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t approve cosmetics before they’re sold and has never levied a fine for selling fake aloe. That means suppliers are on an honor system, even as the total U.S. market for aloe products, including drinks and vitamins, has grown 11 percent in the past year to $146 million, according to Chicago-based market researcher SPINS LLC.

No Evidence of Aloe Vera Found in the Aloe Vera at Wal-Mart, CVS - Bloomberg

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Here is a catalogus of deregulation proposals from the Freedom caucus, a bunch of right wing zealots driven by blind ideology that sees no benefits to any regulations, only cost and/or special interest money. Whether from climate change, kids school lunches, food safety, food labeling, employee rights, opioid addiction (which we have in significant part thanks to the pharmaceutical industry), for profit schools, financial regulation, etc. etc. you name it, any regulation that protects people from being scammed or externalities to be internalized, that's simply not possible in the Freedom caucus world.

Terriffic and well research lengthy article, below only a fraction:

To get a flavor for what’s in store, there is one line in the extensive document really worth reading. The Freedom Caucus places each of 228 regulations slated for elimination into a grid, one of whose columns is cost — and in most cases they do, indeed, provide an estimated cost of compliance with the regulation divorced from any discussion of the benefits. When it comes to Rule 211, network neutrality, however, they simply state: “All regulations carry costs, which are inevitably passed on to consumers in one form or another.”

It’s not clear exactly where the Freedom Caucus got this idea or why they think it’s true, but as a broad philosophical statement it’s admirably clear and concise. The network neutrality rule’s proponents say that given the lack of competition in wireless broadband markets, requiring infrastructure owners to treat all internet traffic the same is useful in promoting competition among online services and minimizing infrastructure monopolists’ ability to extract monopoly profits. One might or might not agree with that analysis, but from a normal person’s point of view it would at least be a question worth asking.

The Freedom Caucus view, by contrast, is that all you really need to know about Network Neutrality regulations — or any other kind of regulation — is that it is a regulation and all regulations, by definition, are costly. It’s simply not possible to imagine a rule that corrects for negative externalities, asymmetrical information, imperfect competition, myopia, or any other problem in a socially beneficial way.

The Freedom Caucus is proposing to root out nearly every program in the federal government intended to address climate change — targeting some 73 rules and regulations in all.

The caucus targets obvious stuff for removal, like the Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping Obama-era regulations to cut carbon dioxide from power plants, trucks, and aircraft, as well as rules to reduce methane leaks from oil and gas operations. (With one exception: The caucus does not target fuel economy rules for cars and light trucks, which automakers have been complying with for years and are set to rise through 2025.)

But the document goes far beyond that: The caucus would scrap a variety of Energy Department energy efficiency rules on washing machines, air conditioners, and dozens more appliances. It would cancel all US contributions to the international Paris climate accord — including aid to developing countries — and eliminate the State Department’s special envoy for climate change. And it scraps a Pentagon mandate to pursue biofuels and other energy alternatives.


First lady Michelle Obama has fought fiercely to improve nutrition and curb the obesity epidemic — both symbolically and through legislation. Now her work is in peril under the forthcoming Trump administration.
The House Freedom Caucus wants to repeal some of the key rules Obama championed to improve school nutrition and transparency in the food industry.
In particular, the caucus wants to claw back the school breakfast and lunch nutrition standards in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, and remove the new Nutrition Facts Panel requirements, which were scheduled to go into effect in July 2018.

House conservatives' sweeping plan for Trump's first 100 days, explained - Vox

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Growth at all cost, or simply the power of lobbying dollars, another regulation looks to be going at the environment's expense..

According to the Department of the Interior, the new rule would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests over the next 20 years. The regulations stipulate that mining companies avoid mining practices known to pollute and damage waterways, such as mountaintop removal mining. The 2008 rule currently allows mountaintop removal mining — wherein mining companies remove all the vegetation from a mountaintop and then blast that mountaintop open with explosives — to take place within 100 feet of streams, so long as the streams only flow for part of the year.

The rule also requires mining companies operating near streams conduct more frequent monitoring and testing before, during, and after mining operations take place. Coal companies have been vocally opposed to the new rule, arguing that they create too much burden for mining companies. The National Mining Association described the rule as “duplication and interference” and called on Congress to swiftly overturn the rule by passing a Congressional Review Act.

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to act swiftly as president to undo regulations on coal mining, and promised to undo “job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy.” It’s likely the new stream rule will be one of the first Obama-era regulation that he and the Republican-led Congress set about dismantling.

New rule protecting waterways from coal mining will be early target of Trump administration

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It looked at the four companies that made headlines in September 2015 for drug price hikes: Turing Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Rodelis Therapeutics. The report came to the conclusion that the four companies essentially all had the same business model.  That business model centered around a few key factors: Making sure the company was the only drugmaker producing the drug. Setting that drug as the "gold standard" in the industry. Entering just a small market.  Selling the drug through a "closed distribution system" (those are the specialty pharmacies). Setting the price as high as possible.

Senate Aging committee report on drug pricing - Business Insider

You know, these companies with the 500% or even 5000% price hikes for rare medicines they didn't even develop themselves..

But it should all be deregulated, of course. This is just an exercise of free market economics, and that is good by definition.

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The US is in the midst of a harrowing opioid painkiller and heroin epidemic, which led to a record number of drug overdose deaths (more than 52,000) in 2015. Unlike other drug epidemics, the current one did not start with an illicit substance. It began with legal drugs: opioid painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet, which were heavily marketed by pharmaceutical companies to sell as much of their product as possible.
The marketing, which downplayed the risks of opioids, was so misleading that in 2007 Purdue Pharma, producer of OxyContin, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for it.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration claimed in 2003 that Purdue’s marketing was “aggressive, excessive and inappropriate” and “very much exacerbated” abuse and criminal trafficking of opioids. But instead of learning the lessons of the American opioid epidemic, a new report by Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girion, and Scott Glover of the Los Angeles Times suggests that drug companies are simply taking their message to a global audience. 

We’ve seen this story before: As Americans smarten up to a dangerous drug’s risks, the drug companies take their product to other parts of the world. Over the past few decades, the US has started to win the fight against tobacco. After the US surgeon general’s 1964 report linked tobacco to lung cancer and heart disease and aggressive education campaigns followed, smoking rates in the US have drastically dropped. The percentage of US adults who identified as current cigarette smokers fell from more than 42 percent in 1965 to less than 17 percent in 2014. 

Given that as many as 540,000 people die from tobacco-related causes every year, this trend has saved a lot of lives and should continue to do so. But what was good for public health was bad for tobacco companies. So they began pushing their product outside the US and Europe. Not only have they aggressively marketed cigarettes but they’ve fought anti-tobacco laws and regulations abroad — like mandatory labels that would warn consumers about the risks of tobacco use. The result is that tobacco companies have seen profits surge, even as their business in the US and Europe declined..

Painkiller companies are now globally exporting addiction for profit — just like Big Tobacco - Vox

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Free market is not always best..

But economists are far less optimistic about what an unfettered market can achieve in education. Only a third of economists on the Chicago panel agreed that students would be better off if they all had access to vouchers to use at any private (or public) school of their choice. Continue reading the main story While economists are trained about the value of free markets, they are also trained to spot when markets can’t work alone and government intervention is required.

Free Market for Education? Economists Generally Don’t Buy It - The New York Times

There were many problems with for profit schools in the US, some of these offered really crappy courses, spend fortunes on often misleading marketing and left students in substantial debt without having improved their futures by much, or in some cases not at all. These schools are also heavily dependent upon Federal student aid (up to 90% of their revenue), so it's private profits, socialized loss here.

Regulation was introduced and has cleaned up the sector, but how much of that will stand with the new government remains very much to be seen. The parabolic share price increases of many of them after the Trump election might be an indication..

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And the fossil fuel sector is another one that will likely be deregulated. We already know that just fine particle pollution kills like 7M people a year worldwide, and now this:

People living near a busy road have an increased risk of dementia, according to research that adds to concerns about the impact of air pollution on human health. Roughly one in 10 cases of Alzheimer’s in urban areas could be associated with living amid heavy traffic, the study estimated – although the research stopped short of showing that exposure to exhaust fumes causes neurodegeneration.

Living near heavy traffic increases dementia risk, say scientists | Society | The Guardian

Private profits, socialized losses once more. And then people get sick and find out they might not have healthcare anymore, or small print says their policy won't cover it..

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Deregulate all new drugs, it's a barrier to innovation!

What do you do when a pharmaceutical company creates a drug that doesn’t do what it says it does, the FDA approves it, and literally thousands of people die? 

The Los Angeles Times found that contrary to marketing claims that “one dose” of OxyContin “relieves pain for 12 hours, more than twice as long as generic medications” but consistent with Purdue’s own internal research, “the drug wears off hours early in many people.”

“Over the last 20 years,” write Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girion, and Scott Glover, “more than 7 million Americans have abused OxyContin, according to the federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The drug is widely blamed for setting off the nation’s prescription opioid epidemic, which has claimed more than 190,000 lives from overdoses involving OxyContin and other painkillers since 1999.” At the same time, as Purdue notes in a one-page statement responding to detailed questions from the Times’ reporters, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “approved OxyContin as a 12-hour drug.”

Purdue: Drug Company or Genocidal Maniac?