Tag Archives: programs

As Keystone XL’s fate is decided, activists descend on Nebraska.

Apparently, U.S. Department of Agriculture staff are now supposed to say “weather extremes” instead.

In emails obtained by the Guardian from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a unit of the USDA, a department director told employees to make the following phrasing replacements in their work: “reduce greenhouse gases” with “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient efficiency”; “sequester carbon” with “build soil organic matter”; and “climate change adaptation” with “resilience to weather extremes/intense weather events.”

Basically, any reference to climate change or CO2 is a no-no.

Employees were understandably confused, and some were against the change — including one employee who expressed a desire to maintain scientific integrity. But the USDA insisted that it’s not intending to obscure data and studies, and that similar procedures had been executed under other administrations.

Surprise, surprise — these new procedures began days after Trump’s inauguration. The first email obtained by the Guardian, sent by NRCS Deputy Chief for Programs Jimmy Bramblett on Jan. 24, advised of the new administration’s “shift in perspective” with regard to climate change.

That perspective appears to be: Don’t mention it.

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As Keystone XL’s fate is decided, activists descend on Nebraska.

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Yep, Most of Paul Ryan’s Budget Cuts Come Out of Programs for the Poor

Mother Jones

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A few days ago I guessed that 80+ percent of the cuts in Paul Ryan’s latest budget blueprint came from programs for the poor. Today, CBPP dives a little deeper and puts the number at 69 percent. The cuts come in five categories: health care; food assistance; college grants; other mandatory programs such as SSI, school lunches, and EITC; and miscellaneous discretionary cuts. However, CBPP warns that its 69 percent number is very likely conservative:

In cases where the Ryan budget cuts funding in a budget category but doesn’t distribute that cut among specific programs — such as its cuts in non-defense discretionary programs and its unspecified cuts in mandatory programs — we assume that all programs in that category, including programs not designed to assist low-income households, will be cut by the same percentage.

That’s definitely a risky assumption. In real life, two-thirds of those cuts would almost certainly end up coming out of programs for the poor. We’ll never know for sure because Ryan never has the guts to specify where his cuts would go, but I’m willing to bet that if Republicans were forced to provide line items for all of Ryan’s broad categories, we’d end up back at 80 percent of the cuts hitting those with low incomes.

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Yep, Most of Paul Ryan’s Budget Cuts Come Out of Programs for the Poor

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