Wednesday, November 9, 2016

A good article from C&EN on the consequences of the election

I wanted to send you to some good thoughts from C&EN's Cheryl Hogue and Britt Erickson on President-elect Trump's potential policies and the likelihood of the next Congress being Republican: 
The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and a Republican-controlled Congress portend impacts to the chemistry enterprise. In addition, state ballot measures also decided in the Nov. 8 election will affect the burgeoning analytical testing industry that’s grown around legal marijuana. 
With Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, cuts in federal spending are likely. This means chemistry researchers are apt to see the dwindling of federal grant money from the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department, and other federal agencies. 
Budget cuts would also limit the abilities of federal agencies to regulate, which could trammel the chemical industry’s expectations for modernized regulation of its products. With tightly limited resources, the Environmental Protection Agency could struggle to implement Congress’ revisions earlier this year to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which had strong backing of chemical manufacturers and product formulators. 
Trump has been quiet on the topic of chemical regulation, with one exception. He has spoken out about the benefits of asbestos, a known human carcinogen that activists are calling on EPA to ban under its new TSCA authorities....
More to come soon.

UPDATE: Here are President-elect Trump's answers from ScienceDebate.org.
UPDATE 2: Here's some speculation about the EPA transition team from Scientific American. Mostly climate-oriented comments, deregulation-inclined.
UPDATE 3: Here's an item from the Healthcare page of the official transition website: "Reform the Food and Drug Administration, to put greater focus on the need of patients for new and innovative medical products" 

12 comments:

  1. lol, nice late in the game attempt to smear Trump with "He has spoken out about the benefits of asbestos"

    The guy is a builder, you know. Probably remembers how much less flammable buildings were with it, and how much was spent renovating buildings to remove it despite virtually zero health impact.

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    1. I choose to see this in a charitable light, which is that Hogue/Erickson are looking for thoughts from Donald Trump on chemical regulation, and this is all there is.

      We have no idea what the approach to EPA will be from a Trump Administration. Do you have a suggestion as to where I can look?

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    2. Having seen the results for the miners in Quebec, I strongly disagree with your "zero health impact" comments.

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    3. Yes, those are miners, and I know the mill workers had problems also. Much different than the people in buildings where it was all safely sequestered in the walls. (IIRC it was a big drain on local school districts to rehab schools to remove it a decade back or so)

      Thanks for the charity and the update CJ; I should try to find more policy positions myself.

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  2. From the QA, Trump seems more free market oriented than central control of science.

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  3. While much of what Trump has purported is certainly vile, the call to "clean the swamp" is thought-provoking. It would be nice to "clean the swamp" the Ivory Tower, as well.

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    1. It's the political establishment-media-Hollywood-academia-Wall Street-Silicon Valley swamp, so the Ivory Tower is definitely one part of it.

      Frankly wishing I had more policy background to help out in these endeavors myself.

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    2. Yeah I can see how draining the swamp is going - appointing people like Giuliani, Sessions, and Preibus to position in the administration while his transition team is chocked full of lobbyists.

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  4. Wow, the comments over there are actually pretty red-pilled! Good to see.

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  5. Red pilled? Overall, they didn't think too much of the article, if that's what you meant.

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    1. 'Red-pilled' means 'awoken to the real world', ie they seem aware of the slant of the article I noted in my previous (first) comment.

      The main-stream media has lost a lot of credibility by casting their lot so one-sidedly this year.

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  6. Speaking for myself and no one else -ahem- there are neither Darth Vaders nor Princess Leilas. During the primaries in CA and as an independent, my votes went to Sanders and Jill Stein. That's my choice so please no criticisms.

    Politics is is neither red-piled nor blue. I am "purple". The PTSD (President Trump Stress Disorder is a result of the HRCs (Hypocritically Redundant Candidates).

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20