Transparent Or Opaque

If you are not familiar with the EPA “Environmental Protection Agency” of the U.S., it was officially started in 1970 by President Nixon as an agency to provide expert advice to the president on environmental matters.  Since the birth of the EPA we have hit several milestones in not only our environmental history but also in protecting the common health of the population. Over the years with the use of science the EPA has researched and helped protect the American people from destroying our environment and health by ways of water and air pollution, pesticides used in farming our foods, cleaning up land waste and combating and bringing awareness to the silent killer Radon along with a lot more environmental and health threats.  Currently the EPA is conducting scientific research towards the Clean Air Act, Climate Change, and Production of safer chemicals, radiological contamination due to homeland security threats and the mailing of anthrax.

This all sounds like very important work right? Well Administrator Scott Pruitt who was nominated to the EPA by President Donald Trump recently moved to pass a rule limiting what science and research the EPA can use.  He is claiming that the rule is to enable “transparency” in the in the “secret” science used by EPA making all data available to the public and discrediting past long-standing landmark studies that are unable to provide this information. The problem with this is studies such as the harmful effects of air pollution and pesticide exposure involve confidentiality from physicians on medical history with proof of the harmful effects. Pruitt feels the science and testing should be reproducible and that’s another problem. The problem is ethics it is unethical to expose humans to these dangers in order to reveal the side effects. The past studies were one on individuals seeking treatment for these things before we knew they were harmful, that’s how we learn from our past mistakes.  This rule could make decades of studies unusable. Not cool!

It’s interesting that the word “transparent” is the one chosen by Pruitt. The man who is under scrutiny by congress for using America’s credit card for several questionable purchases, one being a $43,000 soundproofs phone booth. A man making secret phone calls then questioning the EPA’s “transparency” seems a little hypocritical don’t you think?

What is the agenda here? I think money could be a huge possibility considering the EPA’s pull for restrictions on fossil fuel industries.  Trump has already lifted several restrictions put in place by the Obama administration to protect our environment.  It all sounds like a bunch of shady business to me. The public's opinion and comments as of April 25th are limited by 30 days before the rule is officially in effect. What do you think?

Call It How You See It!

In blogger "Are you My Government" post  “We The PeopleCall B.S.” he detects fear in the words of President Trump when he tweets that "THE SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED". I also agree that our President is scared. I think he is scared on both sides of the spectrum, worried that his statement could possibly be untrue with the up rise of young peoples voices who will undoubtedly vote to repeal the Second Amendment of our constitution. Also scared that if the amendment is not repealed that the only direction our number of mass shooting in the United States is going is up. Either way this falls back on him. The control is already lost what we need is someone with the courage to gain it back and the only way to do so is to change. Change undoubtedly means the loss of high dollar donors, which is a price Trump isn't willing to pay.

When the blogger points out the sub-message of the movement being that the students have a voice and they are learning to use it. I agree and it took something happening in their generational era to spark and interest and motivate action. But if we really think about it this is wear all of our actions begin, usually starting with something happening to us or our families, our friends, our money, our taxes, our jobs. These students experienced tragedy and they are fighting back.

I also agree with the statement "young people have always had a voice but rarely use it." Its not that they don't realize they have a voice it’s that they are waiting to find something to stand up for and I believe they have now found that reason. When Emma Gonzalez makes the comment in her speech about elders looking down on them thinking "That us kids don’t know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works, we call BS." This is so powerful and as a young adult I feel that what she is saying is that the government mistakes our silence and ignorance and that’s where they've made their mistake.