By Manuela Tobias on Thursday, August 10th, 2017 President Donald Trump’s threats against North Korea and tweets about the United States’ powerful nuclear arsenal have raised the specter — however small — of nuclear war.
But some members of Congress argue that the current process by which the president can order a nuclear strike is illegal.
“Our view is the current nuclear launch approval process is unconstitutional,” U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif, said on CNN on Aug. 8, 2017. Lieu has filed a proposal to require congressional approval before the president could launch a first nuclear strike.
“Right now one person can launch thousands of nuclear weapons, and that’s the president. No one can stop him. Under the law, the secretary of defense has to follow his order. There’s no judicial oversight, no congressional oversight,” Lieu said.
Lieu, a colonel in the Air Force reserves, is generally correct about the president’s power to initiate a nuclear strike. The constitutionality, however, is a more complex question. We won’t rate Lieu’s claims on the Truth-O-Meter, but we did think it was important to provide context to his statement and the law.
Nuclear launch process
The current nuclear launch approval process was enshrined after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to end World War II. President Harry Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 to give the president full responsibility over the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
(As an aside, Lieu’s argument wouldn’t apply in cases when Congress formally declares war, since the president has a longstanding right as commander-in-chief to decide how to wage war.)
So the current nuclear launch approval process doesn’t include the same checks and balances as other executive branch decisions. The launch process allows the president to use nuclear weapons with a single verbal order. Some experts believethe president doesn’t need to consult with the defense secretary. The president’s order cannot be overridden.
Unconstitutional?
The U.S. Supreme Court has never weighed in on the question of whether the current nuclear launch approval process is legal. Not surprisingly, we heard mixed opinions from legal scholars.
The Constitution allows the president to use significant military force without congressional approval if it’s in self-defense. But would it be constitutional for the president to respond to a conventional bombing with a nuclear strike? What about a state-sponsored act of terror?
These questions have no definitive answer.
The murkiness is due in some part to the framers not foreseeing the capability for mass destruction that nuclear weapons guarantee, said Samuel Issacharoff, a constitutional law professor at New York University. But, he said, the narrow design of a founding document doesn’t necessarily make a president’s unilateral military action — nuclear or non-nuclear — unconstitutional.
“The best one can say is that the constitutional scheme may be poorly designed
for modern circumstances,” he said.
War Powers Resolution The discussion gets even more complicated if the president considers a pre-emptive strike rather than a retaliatory strike.
The Constitution does give Congress the authority to declare war, which it hasn’t done since World War II. But presidents before Trump — and including Trump with his April airstrikes in Syria — have initiated war or war actions without express congressional permission.
In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution requiring that in the absence of a war declaration by Congress, the president report to Congress within 48 hours of introducing armed forces into hostilities and remove forces within 60 days if Congress does not approve.
A simple reading, then, could give Trump a 48-hour window of unilateral power.
But the War Powers Resolution hasn’t stopped longer military interventions. President Bill Clinton sent U.S. troops into the former Yugoslav republic of Kosovo in 1999, and they remained in place despite the failure to receive congressional authorization.
The Korean War
There’s a final wrinkle to all of this: Some experts say that Trump could circumvent the need for Congress to declare war against North Korea, because the United States is already at war with North Korea.
The Korean War (1950-3) ended with an armistice, but the two parties never signed the peace treaty scheduled in Geneva in 1954 formally ending the war.
“In the absence of some new legal instrument that makes fighting the war improper, you can say that the president has whatever authority he had before,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
But there’s a caveat to that, too. Congress approved funding to fight the Korean War, but never formally declared war. That was done by the United Nations.
EPA fines collected against polluters dropped 60% under Trump, report says, By Miranda Green, CNN August 10, 2017 Washington (CNN) The amount of money the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing polluters they’ve sued for breaching federal regulations has plummeted by 60% under President Donald Trump, a report released Thursday has found.
Between January and July, fines resulting from settlements have been significantly lighter on polluters’ pocketbooks on average compared to previous administrations in the same time period, according to a report released by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental watchdog nonprofit group.
EIP found that between Trump’s first day in office through the end of July, the Department of Justice collected a total of $12 million in civil penalties from companies sued for breaking pollution control laws. During President Barack Obama’s first seven months, his administration collected $36 million in penalties. President George W. Bush’s administration collected $30 million and President Bill Clinton collected $25 million, according to EIP’s analysis, which is not adjusted for inflation…….http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/10/politics/epa-lawsuits-dip/index.html
Nuclear Engineering International 10th Aug 2017, One of the conclusions of my most recent article on China was that many ofthe negative factors which have affected nuclear programmes elsewhere in
the world are now also crucial there.
The last year has confirmed that this was a reasonable judgement. Despite five new reactors starting up in 2016,
to bring the number in operation to 36, with combined generating capacity
of 32.6GWe, it is clear that the programme has continued to slow sharply.
The most obvious sign is the lack of approvals for new construction.
Although there are 21 units under construction, representing 23.1GWe, there
have now been no new approvals for 18 months. Other signs of trouble are
the uncertainties about the type of reactor to be utilised in the future,
the position of the power market in China, the structure of the industry
with its large state owned enterprises (SOEs), the degree of support from
top state planners and public opposition to nuclear plans.
There are a few possible explanations for the slowdown in approvals. Delays in imported
Generation III reactor designs (the Westinghouse AP1000 and Areva EPR) have
no doubt concerned regulators. Problems with the AP1000 projects at Sanmen
and Haiyang are more serious, as this reactor was destined for most of
China’s future reactor sites. Now hot testing is complete the first
Sanmen unit may go into operation before the end of 2017, but this will not
bring forward a flood of new approvals.
The Chinese have suffered a severe dent in their confidence about the AP1000, not helped by Westinghouse’s
bankruptcy. The authorities will want to see clear evidence of successful
operation before authorising more units. If they do, the first will be at
the existing two sites, but there are several others that have been ready
to go for several years now. http://www.neimagazine.com/opinion/opinionnuclear-in-china-why-the-slowdown-5896525/
With ‘fire and fury,’ Trump revives fears about his possession of nuclear codes, SF Gate, Marc Fisher and Jenna Johnson, The Washington Post, August 9, 2017
As with most things Trump, the furor over the “fire and fury” has divided the nation in two – those who believe the president is a loose launchpad, impulsively blurting whatever flits through his mind, and those who believe his inflammatory talk is a wily combination of politically savvy instincts and a gut-driven populism that simply aims to please.
When President Donald Trump went off script Tuesday to deliver a startling threat to North Korea – “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” – it was as if the nation relived the most lurid themes of the 2016 campaign in one chilling moment.
Last fall, Hillary Clinton’s campaign used as one of its final weapons a TV ad featuring a longtime nuclear missile launch officer who warned against voting for Trump: “I prayed that call would never come. Self-control may be all that keeps these missiles from firing.”
Then, quick-fire, a series of clips of Trump on the stump: “I would bomb the s— out of them.” “I want to be unpredictable.” “I love war.” The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death,” Bruce Blair, the retired launch officer, says in the ad. “It should scare everyone.”
It very nearly did: Voters made clear last fall that they trusted Clinton vastly more than Trump on the use of nuclear weapons – by 57 percent to 31 percent in a Fox News poll in October, for example.
But Trump voters often said that their reasons for supporting him outweighed their sense that he could be dangerously impulsive – and they repeatedly expressed confidence that the national security apparatus would keep him in check…….
August 10, 2017 (Mainichi Japan) MITO, Japan (Kyodo)— Ibaraki Gov. Masaru Hashimoto said Thursday he will not consent to restarting the sole reactor at the Tokai No. 2 nuclear power plant in Tokaimura, which went offline in March 2011 just as a nuclear disaster unfolded in neighboring Fukushima Prefecture.
Hashimoto’s pledge, coming on the day his campaigning for a seventh term as governor officially got under way, goes further than his previous stance on the issue, in which he had set conditions for a restart.
“I will not approve a restart,” Hashimoto said at an event marking the start of his official campaign for the Aug. 27 gubernatorial election. “I will steer in the direction of not accepting nuclear power,” he told his supporters….. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170810/p2g/00m/0dm/075000c
Donald Trump’s nuclear fixation – from the 1980s to now, BBC, Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter 10 August 2017 “…….The president’s recent nuclear sabre-rattling shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated incident, however. Mr Trump has displayed a keen interest in the utility of atomic weapons for decades…..
his thoughts on atomic weaponry reflect a certain strain of Cold War arms-race enthusiasm and diplomatic brinkmanship.
Last December President-elect Trump emphasised that the US had to “greatly strengthen and expand” its nuclear weaponry and would “outmatch” any adversaries.In August MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough reported that candidate Trump had asked his foreign policy advisors several times why the US couldn’t use its nuclear weapons – a claim the Trump campaign denied.
The report, however, followed on the heels of an April 2016 town hall forum exchange between Mr Trump and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who asked him why he had refused to categorically rule out the use of nuclear weapons.
“Would there be a time when it could be used?” Trump replied. “Possibly. Possibly.”
When pressed on the risks of openly talking of using nuclear weapons, Mr Trump said: “Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?”(The US no longer makes new nuclear warheads. It maintains its current arsenal.)
He repeated that he is not going to take any of his “cards off the table”.
Digging back further, in 1990 Mr Trump gave an interview with Playboy Magazine in which the topic of atomic weaponry came up.
“I’ve always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it’s a very important element in my thought process,” Mr Trump said. He called it the “ultimate catastrophe” and compared it to an illness no one wants to talk about it.
“I believe the greatest of all stupidities is people’s believing it will never happen,” he continued, “because everybody knows how destructive it will be, so nobody uses weapons. What [expletive].”
In 1984 – at the height of the Cold War – Mr Trump even told a Washington Post interviewer he wanted to be put in charge of US-Russia nuclear arms negotiations.”It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Mr Trump said. “I think I know most of it anyway.”
Around the time of this interview a computer game called Balance of Power, which simulated the Cold War struggle between the US and Soviet Unions, became a surprise hit.
Players could sabotage, scheme and sabre-rattle up to the brink of nuclear war. The trick was you were never quite sure how close you could get before the missiles started flying. Escalation could lead to inadvertent annihilation.
And if it did, this was the message, displayed in white letters on a black screen: “You have ignited an accidental nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure.”
If Mr Trump’s past comments are any guide, he appears to be making the calculus that the US nuclear arsenal is ineffective if adversaries don’t believe the nation is willing to pull the trigger. It’s all part of the “unpredictability” strategy he repeatedly touted during his presidential campaign (and plugged again in a recent tweet).Mr Trump – and his Defence Secretary Jim Mattis – have spoken of how the US will prevail in any military confrontation with North Korea. Largely left unmentioned amid the bluster, however, is the danger that an extended standoff could spin out of control and the high cost in human lives – in civilian lives on both sides of the Korean demilitarised zone and for US military personnel – that any such conflict would entail.
How Congress Is Cementing Trump’s Anti-Climate Orders into Law These efforts are mostly flying under the radar, but they could short-circuit lawsuits and make it harder to restore environmental protections. Inside Climate News, Marianne Lavelle 31 JULY 17,
How NRDC will fight Trump’s attack on our environment.
President Donald Trump marvels at his own velocity when he boasts about dismantling the Obama climate legacy. “I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before,” he said at a recent White House event.
But while Trump focuses on speed, his allies in Congress appear increasingly concerned about the durability of the president’s fossil fuel directives.
In recent weeks, they have advanced a handful of legislative measures that echo and extend various presidential orders meant to boost coal, oil and gas production and set aside consideration of climate change.
These moves may seem redundant, but they could provide bulletproof armor during future challenges to Trump’s agenda.
“They are … covering their bases by trying to legislate the rolling back of these safeguards because the process to repeal, undo or rewrite a regulation is as lengthy as the public process that helped establish the standard in the first place,” explained Melinda Pierce, chief lobbyist for the Sierra Club. “And, of course, any attempt to roll back environmental or public health standards can and will be challenged in court.”
“The Trump administration is attacking every environmental and health protection we have,” said Sara Jordan, legislative representative for the League of Conservation Voters. “If these legislative proposals get passed, it will make it that much harder for the next administration to restore environmental protections.”
That’s why Congressional Republicans are racing to write his instructions into law.
“We need to put the legislative stamp of approval on what the Trump administration is doing,” said Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) during a recent debate on the House floor.
The House already has voted to fast-track Trump’s withdrawal of a clean water rule and to streamline future environmental reviews over cross-border pipelines like Keystone XL. Now, GOP members are pushing forward legislation to bolster Trump’s revival of federal coal leasing, and to bar government regulatory agencies from considering the future damages caused by greenhouse gas pollution.
‘A Very Slippery Slope to Government by Fiat’
The courts have already started chipping away at the Trump administration’s edicts. A federal appeals court ruled July 3 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot simply suspend an Obama-era rule on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. And a federal judge ruled last month that the Army Corps of Engineers had moved too hastily to permit the Dakota Access pipeline project, without considering environmental justice impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
Environmental groups, states, and tribes have planned or filed lawsuits over virtually every aspect of the Trump energy agenda. “We’re going to meet them in court, we’re going to sue them, and we’re going to prevail,” Mitchell Bernard, chief counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a video the environmental group produced.
But Congress could short-circuit that litigation strategy with measures like the provision passed by the House last week allowing withdrawal of Obama’s “Waters of the U.S.” rule without public notice, comment or any of the other requirements that apply to federal departments and agencies. The Trump administration already has begun rescinding the rule, which was written to protect wetlands from dredge and fill material and created new permitting and reporting requirements that the oil, gas and coal industry abhor. The rider that the GOP tucked into an $800 billion budget bill would hurry the repeal and reduce possibilities for legal challenge……….
These Efforts Are Flying Under the Public Radar
Most of the legislative proposals shoring up the Trump energy agenda originate in the House, and their fate is unclear in the Senate, which already has rejected an effort to undo Obama-era methane regulations by legislative fiat, and where appropriators are less tolerant of budget riders.
Still, Senate negotiators may feel pressured to go along with some provisions to pass budget legislation that would keep the government up and running after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
Senate supporters of the Trump energy agenda already have introduced their own version of the “Ozone Standards Implementation Act” that the House passed on July 18. That bill would help EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt delay implementation of the Obama administration’s standards regulating smog emissions for a year. The House-passed legislation would give states until 2025 to comply with the revised standards and would change long-standing law to allow the EPA to revise the standards every 10 years instead of every five.
Both the NRDC and a coalition of environmental, health and labor groups have published online running tallies of budget provisions that affect regulations, but they lament that the Congressional efforts to cement the Trump agenda have not received attention while the health care repeal effort and Russia investigations crowd out media coverage.
Trump files notice to withdraw from Paris deal, plans instead to promote fossil fuels, REneweconomy, By Mark Hand on 7 August 2017 ThinkProgress The Trump administration formally notified the United Nations of its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on Friday, explaining that the United States instead plans to work with countries to help them gain access to fossil fuels……..
The goal of expanding access to fossil fuels is part of Trump’s new “energy dominance” agenda where his administration will work with fossil fuel companies to turn the United States into an oil, natural gas, and coal exporting powerhouse.
The administration also wants to continue to export fracking technology developed in the United States to other countries.
The letter sent to the United Nations has no legal weight nor does it begin the process of withdrawing the United States from the pact of nearly 200 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather, it is a political document that affirms Trump’s proclamation in June that the Paris agreement is a bad deal for the nation, the New York Times reported Friday.
According to the terms of the Paris agreement, no country can begin the withdrawal process until three years after the agreement enters into force and the withdrawal would not take effect for one year after that date.
The Paris agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016. Therefore, the United States cannot fully withdraw until November 4, 2020, one day after the next presidential election.
The next president could decide to rejoin the agreement if Trump does not win a second term………
Since June, the California legislature voted to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program until 2030. The U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted several climate and energy resolutions advancing renewable energy, committing to sustainable infrastructure development, and standing by the Paris agreement.
A network of cities, states, businesses, and colleges have united to declare “We Are Still In,” and provide a platform for local leaders to support the commitments of the Paris agreement.
IF SCE&G AND Santee Cooper were free-market businesses, they’d probably be out of business in the wake of South Carolina’s nuclear meltdown. Or they’d have new management. Or they would have abandoned their nuclear reactors years ago — if they had ever started building them.
If SCE&G were even just a regular regulated monopoly — one that didn’t have the Legislature’s blessing to charge ratepayers $1.4 billion, and keep charging us even more, for electricity we will never receive — it probably would have walked away from the project much sooner. Or, like every other regulated monopoly in the nation without such legislative protection, never started it.
But state law reduced SCE&G’s risk and made it financially and psychologically easier for the company to pursue a high-risk plan to build the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in decades. And state law allowed Santee Cooper to join the venture without even the modicum of oversight that SCE&G had.
Santee Cooper is not regulated by the Public Service Commission, and its management answers to a politically appointed board whose members cannot be removed unless they break the law. Both conditions need to change. The governor should be able to remove his appointees for any or no reason, and the utility should be subject to the same regulation as privately owned utilities. And serious questions need to be asked about whether President Lonnie Carter deserves to be the highest-paid person in state government — or even remain employed.
What to do about the laws that govern SCE&G is less clear — and figuring that out needs to be the focus of legislators when they begin hearings later this month on how a $14 billion nuclear-construction project fell apart after both companies’ ratepayers sank more than $2 billion into it.
Was the whole concept of that law flawed? Are we guaranteeing irresponsible decision-making when we allow a regulated monopoly to charge customers up front for nuclear and coal-fired production facilities, and keep charging them even after the project is abandoned? Or would that mechanism, which is intended to reduce interest costs, make sense if the utility had to put more of its investors’ money at risk?
What about the Public Service Commission? Did commissioners have enough room to turn down any of the nine rate increases they approved for SCE&G? The law allows them to reject increases if there has been “a material and adverse deviation from the approved schedules, estimates, and projections” — which certainly happened here — but only if the utility was “imprudent” in failing to anticipate or avoid the changes.
If the commission didn’t have enough authority to reject rate increases, that needs changing. If there was enough authority but commissioners failed to use it, then perhaps it’s the commissioners who need changing.
Or did legislators — who elect commissioners to the well-paid political posts — make it too clear that they were not to reject rate increases? If so, we need to change how commissioners are selected. (Yes, legislators would need to change as well, but that’s up to voters.)
The Office of Regulatory Staff is supposed to conduct “on-going monitoring” of nuclear construction projects and “review and audit” rate requests, hiring outside experts as needed. Did it have the authority it needed to protect the public? If not, that needs changing. (The law that created that office, by the way, requires it to protect the “public interest,” which includes “preservation of the financial integrity of the state’s public utilities and continued investment in and maintenance of utility facilities.”)
If the office has sufficient authority, did it do its job but get overruled by the PSC? If not, then perhaps that staff needs changing, and perhaps the way it’s selected. The executive director is nominated by a legislative committee and technically appointed by the governor, sort of like magistrates.
What happens when SCE&G builds the new capacity that nuclear reactors will not provide? If it builds a natural gas plant, it won’t be allowed to charge ratepayers for construction unless or until the plant produces electricity. But should SCE&G ever be allowed to charge us for a facility that replaces an abandoned facility we’ve already paid $1.4 billion toward?
And what about the whole idea of monopolies? I doubt we’ve reached the point where small carbon-based or alternative-energy plants can provide everyone in the state access to electricity, which we’d need before we could switch to a free-market system. But a lot of people believe that time is coming. If lawmakers are going to spend a lot of mental energy on our state’s energy future, they ought to start thinking about how we get to that place, and what we do once we’re there.
Finally, a question legislators will avoid if we let them: Should a monopoly be allowed to make campaign donations to the legislators who have the power not only to revoke its monopoly status but also to shield it even more from the consequences of its decisions? And if so, how on earth do you justify that?
Ms. Scoppe writes editorials and columns for The State. Reach her at cscoppe@thestate.com or (803) 771-8571 or follow her on Twitter or like her on Facebook @CindiScoppe.
Legislators call for refunds from nuke projecthttp://counton2.com/2017/08/03/legislators-call-for-refunds-from-nuke-project/ By Associated Press, August 3, 2017, COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina legislators want to bar SCE&G from continuing to collect money for a now-scuttled multibillion-dollar nuclear power project customers have been paying for since 2009.
A bipartisan group of legislators announced Wednesday the creation of an Energy Caucus that will work to overhaul how utility requests are reviewed.
South Carolina Electric & Gas and state-owned Santee Cooper decided Monday to abandon construction of two nuclear reactors. A project accounts for 18 percent of SCE&G’s residential electric bills. Utility executives said Tuesday none will get refunded. They are seeking permission from state regulators to recoup an additional $5 billion over 60 years.
Legislators created the system allowing that to happen in 2007.
But Energy Caucus members say the utility’s request should be rejected, and customers should be refunded.
Guardian 2nd Aug 2017, Until recently, few of us were familiar with the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the international organisation that governs many aspects of nuclear energy activity in member states. Brexit, and the rapidly retracted “leak” that Britain may seek “associate membership” of Euratomhas suddenly brought Euratom to the fore.
The precise legal situation regarding the UK’s continued membership of Euratom is contested, but there is much to learn from the history of this relationship: over the past six decades the UK has attempted to become an associate member or full member of Euratom five times.
Since joining in 1973, any nuclear treaties with other nations (including any signed before that date) were placed under the aegis of Euratom. This means that if Britain leaves Euratom, all its complex nuclear treaties with the United
States, the rest of Europe and many other nations across the world will need to be re-ratified in national legislatures before Britain is no longer a member.
This is a large international legislative task, and requires quick action before the Article 50 process ends in just over a year. If the treaties are not re-ratified by national parliaments, then, depending on the treaty, the UK could be in breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and a worst-case scenario could have a variety of very serious consequences
including: stopping work on Hinkley C, halting the movement of nuclear fuel, and even ending the import of medical isotopes for cancer treatments. https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2017/aug/02/our-60-year-relationship-with-euratom-offers-hard-lessons-for-brexit-negotiators
According to state law, governors have five business days upon receiving a ratified bill from the S.C. General Assembly to either sign or veto the measure in question. If they do nothing, the bill becomes law at the end of the fifth business day.
when a governor chooses this option, they are effectively signing the bill. Which is exactly what Sanford did back in 2007.
SC #NukeGate: Mark Sanford Has A Problemhttps://www.fitsnews.com/2017/08/02/sc-nukegate-mark-sanford-has-a-problem/By FITS , 3 Aug 17, You would think the failure of a multi-billion nuclear power project in the Midlands region of South Carolina (a.k.a. #NukeGate) wouldn’t be a problem for a politician hailing from the Palmetto State’s coastal regions.
But in this case you’d be wrong …
For those of you just waking up from a 72-hour nap, South Carolina was rocked by the news that a proposed nuclear power facility in Jenkinsville, S.C. would no longer be built. The decision to kill the V.C. Summer nuclear project – which wiped out 5,000 jobs and threw the state’s energy future into turmoil – was made by the Palmetto State’s government-run utility, Santee Cooper.
That decision has created a nightmare for SCANA – a private sector utility that was partnering with Santee Cooper on the project.
SCANA had raised rates on consumers to help subsidize the construction of these reactors – while Santee Cooper was in the process of raising rates to support its obligations related to the project. Just a week before deciding to walk away from the V.C. Summer project, in fact, Santee Cooper specifically cited “costs associated with nuclear construction and other system improvements” as one of the stated rationales for its proposed rate increases.
Talk about sandbagging …
Anyway, as we’ve noted previously people are pissed. They want answers. They want to see their bills lowered. And they want their money back.
They also want to know how on earth their government allowed this to happen …
All of which brings us to congressman Mark Sanford and a little piece of state law known as Act 16 of 2007, a.k.a. the so-called “Base Load Review Act.”
Passed during Sanford’s second term as governor of South Carolina, this legislation permitted utilities in the Palmetto State to raise rates on consumers for the purpose of financing the construction of – among other things – nuclear facilities.
Basically, this law was the gateway through which hundreds of millions of dollars of ratepayer money flowed toward the V.C. Summer project.
So did Sanford sign this law? No, he did not. Did he veto it? No, he did not.
Hold up … are we messing around with our readers here?
Because this hardly seems the time for that …
What’s the joke? Where’s the punch line?
There is no joke – nor is there a punch line. In the Palmetto State, there is a third option. According to state law, governors have five business days upon receiving a ratified bill from the S.C. General Assembly to either sign or veto the measure in question. If they do nothing, the bill becomes law at the end of the fifth business day.
For those of you who’ve forgotten, this was the “out” taken by former S.C. governor Nikki Haley back in 2011 when she got crossed up on an “economic development” deal involving online distributor Amazon.
As we noted then – and will remind our readers now – when a governor chooses this option, they are effectively signing the bill. Which is exactly what Sanford did back in 2007. This particular piece of legislation hit his desk in the S.C. State House on April 26 of that year – a Thursday. Sanford did nothing with the bill, and so on the following Thursday – May 3, 2007 – it became law without his signature.
Could a decision made a decade ago cost him his congressional seat?
State representative Katie Arrington – who is considering running against Sanford for South Carolina’s first congressional district (map) next spring – took note of the former governor’s decision on her Twitter page.
In responding to the outrage against Santee Cooper and SCANA, Arrington tweeted “you should also be just as upset with Mark Sanford for allowing a law that put ratepayers on the hook.”
Is she correct? Yes …
As the fallout from this failed nuclear project continues cascading across the Palmetto political landscape, expect to see Sanford face his fair share of criticism related to this deal (and justifiably so).
Tillerson says he and Trump disagree over Iran nuclear deal, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-retaliation-economy-idUSKBN1AH4S1 Yeganeh Torbati, 2 Aug 17, WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged on Tuesday that he and President Donald Trump disagree over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and said the two men discuss how to use the international agreement to advance administration policies.
Trump at times vowed during the 2016 presidential election campaign to withdraw from the agreement, which was signed by the United States, Russia, China and three European powers to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting most Western sanctions.
Trump has preserved the deal for now, although he has made clear he did so reluctantly after being advised to do so by Tillerson.
“He and I have differences of views on things like JCPOA, and how we should use it,” Tillerson said at a State Department briefing, using the acronym for the deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Tillerson said that Washington could “tear it up and walk away” or stay in the deal and hold Iran accountable to its terms, which he said would require Iran to act as a “good neighbor.”
Critics say the deal falls short in addressing Iran’s support for foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, arms shipments around the Middle East and ballistic missile tests.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tillerson’s remarks.
Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month that he predicts Iran will be judged “noncompliant” with the Iran deal at the next deadline in October, and that he would have preferred to do so months ago.
Tillerson expressed a more nuanced view of the deal’s potential benefits on Tuesday.
“There are a lot of alternative means with which we use the agreement to advance our policies and the relationship with Iran, and that’s what the conversation generally is around with the president as well,” Tillerson said.
European officials would likely be reluctant to re-impose sanctions, especially the broader measures that helped drive Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program in the first place, he said.
New U.S. sanctions on Iran in July were a breach of the nuclear deal and Tehran had lodged a complaint with the body that oversees the pact’s implementation, a senior Iranian politician said.
Tillerson acknowledged that the United States is limited in how much it can pressure Iran on its own and said it was important to coordinate with the other parties to the agreement.
“The greatest pressure we can put to bear on Iran to change the behavior is a collective pressure,” he said. Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; editing by Grant McCool
Dahr Jamail | Scientists Warn of “Biological Annihilation” as Warming Reaches Levels Unseen for 115,000 Years, July 31, 2017 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report“…..Denial and Reality
There’s never a dull moment in the denial world these days.
In Florida, that state’s extremist ACD-denying Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation making it easier for Florida residents to challenge science that is taught in public schools, so if an ACD-denying parent doesn’t like a science textbook that teaches the basic physics of how greenhouse gases work, the book could end up being banned.
Trump-appointed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, an ACD denier and pink slipped 38 members of the EPA’s Board of Scientific advisors, which is merely a drop in the bucket compared to dozens of other major environmental roll-backs the Trump administration has pulled off thus far, including forcing NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] to erase human activity references to greenhouse gases in its Annual Greenhouse Gas Index.
Energy Minister Alvaro Nadal said Tuesday the license for the Santa Maria de Garona plant in northern Spain would not be renewed as there was too much uncertainty surrounding the plant’s viability.
Production at the 46-year-old Garona was halted in 2012 when its operator, Nuclenor, objected to a new tax. Its board recently failed to reach agreement on keeping the plant open.
Environmentalists have long claimed that the plant is outdated, although Spain’s Nuclear Security Council this year said it could continue operating.
Spain has seven other nuclear reactors that produce some 20 percent of the country’s electricity.
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