Soak the Rich and Save Our Infrastructure
An article in today’s New York Times online demonstrates that hundreds of billions of dollars can be raised simply by modestly increasing the rate of taxes that the top 1% of the American people pay. The amounts are astounding: raising the top tax rate from 33% to 40% would bring in $157 billion a year. Since the top 1% make $1.2 million a year, it is laughable to argue that such persons would feel a serious pinch unless they were already spending more than they were making. There is a certain degree of pain involved in raising taxes, but if the pain is needed to fix our crumbling infrastructure, to give just one example of where we are falling short, then let us have the pain fall on the smallest percentage and those least likely to feel the pinch.
Such sentiments would carry the day in a moment if we were living in a real representative democracy. How could the desires of the 1% outvote the needs of the other 99% ?? Simple. Careful research examining the structure of our government reveals that it behaves like an oligarchy of rich people. This research is objective, comprehensive, and convincing to any reasonably open minded person. The conclusions are plain as the nose on your face even without objective research.
The reasons why our country behaves like an oligarchy of rich people are also easy to see: our system of campaign financing makes certain that only candidates who favor the needs of the rich receive any significant money backing. On the Republican side, this is blatantly obvious, but on the Democratic side, the malign influence of big donors works subtly to temper the impulse towards aiding the majority.
Gerrymandering aids the Republican cause by diluting and concentrating adverse votes into contorted districts. Although the voting totals favored the Democrats in 2012, they lost the majority they had held in the House. The division of the Senate, with 2 votes for each state, large or small, also favors conservative states with small populations as compared to liberal states with large populations. If the Senate were composed with proportional representation, California would have ten senators.
A combination of factors makes the House and Senate unrepresentative of the the mass of people at large. The President is more a representative of the majority of all the people, although the Electoral College still introduces some imbalance.
A concerted propaganda effort by the rich, rabidly conservative Koch brothers in combination with a few of their wealthy friends has put the icing on this cake of deception, corruption, and bought influence by the wealthy. For thirty years, the Kochs have been secretly funding groups whose sole function is to spread deceptive propaganda that hammers at the themes of libertarianism and government support of business aids. Every kind of phony organization has been tried, from think tanks to speaking tours to panels of experts to radio hosts to direct mail advertising.
Every device that favors the aggregation of wealth by those who already have a superabundance has been used, and used successfully, but despite the propaganda and naked violence a few people have dared to speak out. Our next President will face a persistent storm of counterpressure from the forces of wealth, and there will be no help from Congress or the Supreme Court. The oppressed will need to be patient a few years longer, until demographic changes overwhelm the conservative districts that now reliably send reactionaries to Washington. In 2020 or 2024, things will be different. Maybe we’ll get the first Hispanic President.
We tested the hypothesis that an altered community of gut microbes is associated with risk of colorectal cancer (CRC) in a study of 47 CRC case subjects and 94 control subjects. 16S rRNA genes in fecal bacterial DNA were amplified by universal primers, sequenced by 454 FLX technology, and aligned for taxonomic classification to microbial genomes using the QIIME pipeline. Taxonomic differences were confirmed with quantitative polymerase chain reaction and adjusted for false discovery rate. All statistical tests were two-sided. From 794217 16S rRNA gene sequences, we found that CRC case subjects had decreased overall microbial community diversity (P = .02). In taxonomy-based analyses, lower relative abundance of Clostridia (68.6% vs 77.8%) and increased carriage of Fusobacterium (multivariable odds ratio [OR] = 4.11; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.62 to 10.47) and Porphyromonas (OR = 5.17; 95% CI = 1.75 to 15.25) were found in case subjects compared with control subjects. Because of the potentially modifiable nature of the gut bacteria, our findings may have implications for CRC prevention.
Recent studies have shown that individuals with colorectal cancer have an altered gut microbiome compared to healthy controls. It remains unclear whether these differences are a response to tumorigenesis or actively drive tumorigenesis. To determine the role of the gut microbiome in the development of colorectal cancer, we characterized the gut microbiome in a murine model of inflammation-associated colorectal cancer that mirrors what is seen in humans. We followed the development of an abnormal microbial community structure associated with inflammation and tumorigenesis in the colon. Tumor-bearing mice showed enrichment in operational taxonomic units (OTUs) affiliated with members of theBacteroides, Odoribacter, and Akkermansia genera and decreases in OTUs affiliated with members of the Prevotellaceae and Porphyromonadaceae families. Conventionalization of germfree mice with microbiota from tumor-bearing mice significantly increased tumorigenesis in the colon compared to that for animals colonized with a healthy gut microbiome from untreated mice. Furthermore, at the end of the model, germfree mice colonized with microbiota from tumor-bearing mice harbored a higher relative abundance of populations associated with tumor formation in conventional animals. Manipulation of the gut microbiome with antibiotics resulted in a dramatic decrease in both the number and size of tumors. Our results demonstrate that changes in the gut microbiome associated with inflammation and tumorigenesis directly contribute to tumorigenesis and suggest that interventions affecting the composition of the microbiome may be a strategy to prevent the development of colon cancer.
Given the trillions of microbes that inhabit the mammalian intestines, the host immune system must constantly maintain a balance between tolerance to commensals and immunity against pathogens to avoid unnecessary immune responses against otherwise harmless bacteria. Misregulated responses can lead to inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease. The mechanisms by which the immune system maintains this critical balance remain largely undefined. Here, we demonstrate that the short-chain fatty acid n-butyrate, which is secreted in high amounts by commensal bacteria, can modulate the function of intestinal macrophages, the most abundant immune cell type in the lamina propria. Treatment of macrophages with n-butyrate led to the down-regulation of lipopolysaccharide-induced proinflammatory mediators, including nitric oxide, IL-6, and IL-12, but did not affect levels of TNF-α or MCP-1. These effects were independent of toll-like receptor signaling and activation of G-protein–coupled receptors, two pathways that could be affected by short-chain fatty acids. In this study, we provide several lines of evidence that suggest that these effects are due to the inhibition of histone deacetylases by n-butyrate. These findings elucidate a pathway in which the host may maintain tolerance to intestinal microbiota by rendering lamina propria macrophages hyporesponsive to commensal bacteria through the down-regulation of proinflammatory effectors.
Gut commensal microbes shape the mucosal immune system by regulating the differentiation and expansion of several types of T cell. Clostridia, a dominant class of commensal microbe, can induce colonic regulatory T (Treg) cells, which have a central role in the suppression of inflammatory and allergic responses. However, the molecular mechanisms by which commensal microbes induce colonic Treg cells have been unclear. Here we show that a large bowel microbial fermentation product, butyrate, induces the differentiation of colonic Treg cells in mice. A comparative NMR-based metabolome analysis suggests that the luminal concentrations of short-chain fatty acids positively correlates with the number of Treg cells in the colon. Among short-chain fatty acids, butyrate induced the differentiation of Treg cells in vitro and in vivo, and ameliorated the development of colitis induced by adoptive transfer of CD4(+) CD45RB(hi) T cells in Rag1(-/-) mice. Treatment of naive T cells under the Treg-cell-polarizing conditions with butyrate enhanced histone H3 acetylation in the promoter and conserved non-coding sequence regions of the Foxp3 locus, suggesting a possible mechanism for how microbial-derived butyrate regulates the differentiation of Treg cells. Our findings provide new insight into the mechanisms by which host-microbe interactions establish immunological homeostasis in the gut.
Results
We transplanted fecal microbiota from three CRC patients and three healthy individuals into germ-free mice, resulting in six structurally distinct microbial communities. Subjecting these mice to a chemically induced model of CRC resulted in different levels of tumorigenesis between mice. Differences in the number of tumors were strongly associated with the baseline microbiome structure in mice, but not with the cancer status of the human donors. Partitioning of baseline communities into enterotypes by Dirichlet multinomial mixture modeling resulted in three enterotypes that corresponded with tumor burden. The taxa most strongly positively correlated with increased tumor burden were members of the Bacteroides, Parabacteroides, Alistipes, andAkkermansia, all of which are Gram-negative. Members of the Gram-positive Clostridiales, including multiple members of Clostridium Group XIVa, were strongly negatively correlated with tumors. Analysis of the inferred metagenome of each community revealed a negative correlation between tumor count and the potential for butyrate production, and a positive correlation between tumor count and the capacity for host glycan degradation. Despite harboring distinct gut communities, all mice underwent conserved structural changes over the course of the model. The extent of these changes was also correlated with tumor incidence.
Conclusion
Our results suggest that the initial structure of the microbiome determines susceptibility to colonic tumorigenesis. There appear to be opposing roles for certain Gram-negative (Bacteroidales and Verrucomicrobia) and Gram-positive (Clostridiales) bacteria in tumor susceptibility. Thus, the impact of community structure is potentially mediated by the balance between protective, butyrate-producing populations and inflammatory, mucin-degrading populations.
A review of recent microbiome studies on human and mouse colon cancer models shows numerous different microbial species and groups associated with cancer. Lack of consistency in species findings relates partly to location studied; microbiomes differ dramatically from region to region. However, certain specific genes appear in association with tumors rather than being confined to individual species. Most interesting are the mouse models in which transplanting certain tumor-associated colon microbiomes into germ-free mice induces inflammation and colon cancers. Tumorigenesis could be suppressed, partially, by treatment with antibiotics that killed tumor-inducing bacteria.
Researchers also found that butyrate production by commensal bacteria resulted in T-cell differentiation and reduced inflammation, reducing tumor counts, and glycan degradation (associated with mucin) was positively associated with tumors.
Here is the evil underside of the money pumped into political campaigns: 501c4 groups authorized by the IRS as nonprofits with anonymous donors, claimed by the groups to be engaged in spending on “social welfare.” They are supposedly making videos shown on television as education for the public but in many cases their sole video output is clearly advertisements for a particular candidate.
An example is Senator Marco Rubio. A nonprofit group, with anonymous donations of $18 million so far, has spent $5.5 million, so far, exclusively on videos shown on TV promoting his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President. The donations are of course “anonymous” but it is well known that Rubio has courted Sheldon Adelson, a casino mogul. Rubio has gone so far as to support a ban on Internet gambling, a position which Adelson favors because such gambling represents competition for his casinos in Las Vegas. No doubt there are many other positions that Rubio supports which Adelson favors. Lower taxes on wealthy people are one example. Regulations that favor Adelson’s position and profitability in Las Vegas are another.
Rubio is depending completely on this nonprofit, run by close associates who were formerly part of his formal campaign, so completely that he hasn’t spent any of his campaign’s money on TV advertising. Even his super PAC hasn’t laid out anything for TV ads.
We don’t know, of course, that Adelson is Rubio’s only wealthy supporter. It is possible that several people are behind Rubio, but we won’t know by perusing the source of TV ads promoting him. The IRS is overextended and has little time available for investigating 501c4 organizations. In fact, the IRS has suffered political setbacks related to its policies in evaluating such groups. A scandal in which IRS employees were alleged to use discriminatory criteria in deciding which groups to investigate was manufactured in an attempt to prevent the IRS from investigating controversial conservative groups. The 501c4 groups are clearly abusing their tax-exempt status in another attempt to shift the costs of their propaganda to the taxpayers.
Rubio’s positions on the issues are almost identical with the other Republican candidates. He opposes “Net neutrality” because he claims that it would be too much regulation on Internet providers. He says the corporate tax rate should be reduced to 25%. while retaining all of their deductions; there should be only two individual federal tax rates, 15 and 35 percent, and taxes on capital gains should be eliminated, since the current tax treatment of capital gains is not liberal enough. He proposes freezing all federal spending at 2008 levels except defense spending, which should be increased. He demands repeal of “Obamacare” (the ACA) and its replacement with tax credits and “fewer regulations.” He also wants to ban abortion after 20 weeks.
This post was inspired by an article in the New York Times discussing Rubio’s activities and his spending on TV ads.
Benghazi
On September 11, 2012, a group of over 100 armed men attacked the compound in Benghazi occupied by the US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and killed him and another man, Embassy Information Management Officer Sean Smith. A subsequent attack on a CIA compound in Benghazi, where the surviving five Embassy officers had retreated, killed two Embassy security officers. The Accountability Review Board, a State Department review board, provides an excellent timeline describing everything that happened in the attacks in its report.
One detail of historical importance is that the previous US Embassy in Benghazi was stormed and burned in June 1967, during the Arab-Israeli war of that year. One would guess that that previous incident would have clued people in that Benghazi is a dangerous place. Unfortunately, many of the Embassy staffers in Libya spent only a few days there because of the way assignments were structured, so long-term thinking wasn’t a priority.
Today, Politifact published an assessment of Hillary Clinton’s claim this morning that there have been seven Congressional investigations into the attack– or at least Clinton’s culpability in relation to the attack– so far, with the special Select House Committee investigation announced in May 2014 making number eight. Obviously her claim is correct. The rest of her statement, however, may be open to interpretation, which is why I took a look at the case.
There has been, in fact, no finding of a need for disciplinary action or criminal finding of liability with regard to Mrs. Clinton’s behavior over Benghazi. Wikipedia has entries on the attack and on the House Select Committee, if you want to argue about it. To a radical Republican, however, Wikipedia is merely a tool of the devil. Any attempt on my part to review the right of center literature on Benghazi would cause terminal outrage, so I decided not to tax my already over-strained tolerance abilities on such a small issue.
Two things are clear from today’s reading: the State Department has severe mission-itis, and the Republicans (the Koch brothers in particular) have spent millions of their own and the taxpayer’s money trying to pin blame on Hillary Clinton. First, the Accountability Review Board’s report shows that there were indications that something was going to happen in Benghazi that would have been noticeable to a curious intelligence officer. Second, the Republicans (especially the Koch brothers) have millions to spend on spreading negative propaganda about Hillary Clinton, and they have the influence within the government (their majority representation in the House being one example) that makes it possible for them to set up endless politically motivated investigations into the alleged wrongdoing of senior Democrats who might run for President.
In fact, the new Select Committee specially set up to investigate the situation that the Select Committee on Intelligence was about to report on, was announced in May 2014, just before the previous Select Committee was about to release its report. The new Select Committee spent a great deal of time taking the deposition of a political buddy of the Clintons, Sidney Blumenthal, because it discovered that he had sent emails to Hillary Clinton about the situation in Libya. Blumenthal had no first hand knowledge of what happened in the Benghazi attacks, and he was not employed by the government. He was, however, offering advice to Clinton in regards to a Media Matters (a liberal web site) piece about Benghazi, and he was employed by the Clinton Foundation.
The exciting find of the new Select Committee was their discovery that Clinton had used a private email server for both her personal and business emails when she was Secretary of State. It’s not important that other government figures who had to handle classified information also used private email servers, or that her server was located in her basement and thus relatively immune to breakins (unlike official State Department servers.) What is important is that it sounds odd to the uninitiated public.
By the way, the first House Select Committee, when it released its report in November 2014, “exonerated the Obama administration of wrongdoing in response to the attack” (Politifact.) It also concluded that “officials did not intentionally mislead the public… in the days following the attack.” So that report just wasn’t good enough, which is one reason another committee had to be drafted. The other reason being that the issue had to be kept before the public until the Presidential Election next November.
The Democrats have made themselves easy targets for the propaganda put out by radical Republicans, first by leaving Hillary out there all alone as the only certain candidate for President, and second, by being too careful in their choice of message. Just tell the unvarnished truth, and let the Republicans get twisted up in the lies.
Two outside investigators looking into the death of Tamir Rice have concluded that a Cleveland police officer, Tim Loehmann, acted reasonably in deciding last year to shoot when he confronted the 12-year-old boy carrying what turned out to be a replica gun.
This is absurd. The driver of the police car (who did not shoot) stopped his car unreasonably close to Tamir Rice, and then the passenger policeman got out and shot Rice within two seconds of the car stopping. How can he claim that it is reasonable to delay only two seconds before shooting?? That’s not enough time to give a warning and wait for a response. In the videos, Rice clearly did not make any movements after the police car stopped. How can this instant shooting be considered reasonable when Rice was not making any threatening movements?
Once again we see the Alice-in-Wonderland point of view of police reviewing shootings by their colleagues. Only a policeman could consider this policeman’s behavior reasonable. Their point of view ignores the humanity and reality of Rice’s point of view. Here is a person (12 years old) who has a “gun” in his waistband, not in his hand. Any “furtive” movement of his hands is purely in the imagination of the shooter, and could not have been observed and patiently responded to in the time allowed.
Why is this policeman so afraid of a twelve-year-old black boy with a gun (that could not have been visible to the policeman) that he has to shoot him instantly without giving him a warning? The only answer is that policemen are deathly afraid of all black men because of their training– not by experience, because policemen don’t get shot very often. How is it that a policeman can’t tell the difference between an aggressive, death-defying “active shooter” and a sub-teenage boy who is just playing around and couldn’t possibly have acted aggressively in the time available for observing him?
It is clear that the policeman shot Tamir Rice instantly just because he was black. There is no other explanation. If he was white, he would still be alive today. The policeman assumed Rice’s aggressive and lawless intent without any other information other than that he was black and he “had a gun” (the dispatcher failed to mention the 911 caller’s qualifier that the gun “was probably fake”) which is a simple equation: black plus “has a gun” equals policeman’s right to shoot without warning and without giving him time to surrender peacefully or taking the time to observe him to see if he is aggressive or behaving dangerously.
This is injustice of the worst kind, akin to the exoneration of the policeman who took down Eric Garner with an illegal choke hold (for supposedly selling loose cigarettes, which the policeman did NOT observe Garner actually doing) and then ignored his complaints that he couldn’t breathe. The policemen who left Garner lying on his stomach and crying that he couldn’t breathe were equally culpable. This was homicide, not justifiable, and not accidental; excessively aggressive arrest, illegal choke hold, negligence, and ignoring plain duty to protect a helpless man once he was handcuffed. There is no excuse for this behavior.
There must be regulations that specify serious consequences for this kind of treatment of people, whether they be black, white, or purple polka-dotted. These regulations must be enforced. Reading the regulations to every officer at every roll call is the only way to drill it into their heads that they cannot get away with murder just because they are policemen.
As record ocean temperatures cause widespread coral bleaching across Hawaii, NOAA scientists confirm the same stressful conditions are expanding to the Caribbean and may last into the new year, prompting the declaration of the third global coral bleaching event ever on record.
via NOAA declares third ever global coral bleaching event.
Corals can recover from mild bleaching, but severe bleaching events are frequently fatal. Dead coral reefs degrade and erode away, leaving coastlines with less protection from storms and less habitat for fish and the other marine animals that make a reef a lively place.
The current bleaching events are affecting Hawaii and will spread to the Caribbean, from the US Virgin Islands to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico and as far south as the Leeward and Windward Islands. The strong El Nino in the Pacific will cause warming and bleaching in the Indian Ocean and the southeastern Pacific Ocean after the beginning of 2016.
Bleaching was monitored from satellite visualization, and confirmed by divers observing local conditions. NOAA used this data to create a forecast for coral bleaching conditions worldwide. Global bleaching was first predicted in July 2015. Current conditions come immediately after serious bleaching and coral death in the Main Hawaiian Islands last year and overwhelming bleaching and death in the remote Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the worst ever seen at Lisianski Atoll.
The first global bleaching occurred in 1998, and the second in 2010. This widespread bleaching began in 2014 and is expected to continue into 2016. The first event was associated with a strong El Nino which was coincident with record high world temperature spikes which were not equaled or surpassed until 2010, when another El Nino occurred.
Coral bleaching is associated with high ocean temperatures. Other than bringing the ocean temperature down to normal, mutations that enhance the coral’s ability to tolerate the heat are the only answer to these devastating events that will exacerbate the effects of global warming.
No New Ebola Cases Were Reported in the Past Week; Some Other Epidemic will Cause a Population Crash
West Africa has had its first Ebola-free week, with no known cases, since the epidemic began in March 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday.
via No New Ebola Cases Were Reported in the Past Week, Health Agency Says – The New York Times.
The Ebola epidemic appears to be subsiding, after affecting 17,757 people in Guinea and Sierra Leone (12,048 laboratory-confirmed cases) and killing 6,489 of them. Liberia had the second-most cases, with 10,666 total cases but only 3,151 laboratory-confirmed cases. The total of cases in other countries was 36, including one who has been hospitalized in Britain just recently for a relapse. Four cases were reported from the United States. There have been no cases in Liberia since September 3, 2015, when the country was declared virus-free (for the second time) by WHO. (See CDC reports of case totals)
During the early phases of the Ebola outbreak last year, some people claimed that a million victims were possible, even probable. Such predictions did not take into account the odd proclivities of the Ebola virus, particularly its tendency to rapidly lose its lethality after repeated transmission from person to person, and its low infectiousness except when the body is teeming with virus just before death. The practices that encouraged spread, mainly intimate contact with the highly infectious corpse before burial, were limited to the cultures of the local peoples, and not difficult to restrain with adequate education (although some were highly resistant to change and conducted funeral ceremonies in secret.)
Our conclusions are that Ebola, while a dangerous disease, is not the world-beater that some have fantasized. Although it is tempting to see in rapidly-spreading epidemics the one that will kill everybody, the pandemic, it isn’t time yet. There are indications that the pandemic is coming: overpopulation, chronic hunger and malnutrition, armed conflict, rampant selfishness, under-funding of public health and epidemiology research.
The human population boom that has gripped the world for the last hundred years (since the development of effective public sanitation measures) has led to the extinction of many other species, some of whom were already threatened, but many previously booming themselves, such as the passenger pigeon. A human population crash would appear to be just around the corner, unless we do something to reverse the effects of the boom upon the Earth.
A nurse who almost died after contracting ebola is in a serious condition in hospital after the virus reactivated.Pauline Cafferkey was flown by military plane from Scotland to London, where she was last night in a specialist isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital.Her relapse – only the second case ever recorded
Source: Nurse in serious condition after ebola relapse – World – NZ Herald News
The first case of recorded relapse was not the only case of persistent Ebola. A case of transmission from a husband to wife resulted in the wife’s death, leading to the discovery that the virus persisted in the man’s testes and was transmissible through semen. The Ebola virus has also been recorded as persisting in the eye and causing uveitis.
Elephants Never Forget nor get Cancer
Have you ever wondered if elephants get cancer? Well, they don’t, and two research papers out recently suggest why elephants are resistant to cancer. There is a gene, TP-53, that is critical to cell mechanisms for cancer resistance. This gene is involved in triggering apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in response to damage in the cell’s chromosomes or critical cell machinery. Humans have one (paired) copy of this gene, and elephants have at least 20 copies, all of which have evolved to increase the cell’s sensitivity to important injuries. The elephant cell is more likely to undergo apoptosis and die off in response to injuries that could result in mutations and uncontrolled cell growth.
As a result of their advanced immune systems, elephants have a cancer death rate of less than 5%.
What about human death rates from cancer? Out of 2.5 million deaths in the US in 2013, 584 thousand were from cancer, or about 22%. Heart disease was the leading cause of death, with 611 thousand, while “chronic lower respiratory disease” claimed 149 thousand. Accidents beat out stroke, with 130 thousand versus 129 thousand. Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease each got between 84 thousand and 49 thousand, and finally suicide, with 41,149 deaths.
So there is plenty of room for improvement in the human genome, although the improvement in this case will involve much more than simply increasing the number of TP-53 genes. In the future we may be able to lift sections of the genomes of certain advanced animals for our own use. That is, in addition to the genes that we will synthesize to improve on normal functions or add new functions.
There is no reason to think that our evolutionary advancement in cerebral capacity is matched by advancement in all other capacities. For example, our tender skins are unprotected by any fur, and our nails are pitifully inadequate in a fight. Our muscles are far less powerful than those of the chimpanzee, and we cannot run as fast as a horse nor climb a tree like a monkey. In muscle strength alone, we have seen mutations in both man and animals that increase muscle mass by blocking myostatin (a newly discovered hormone that regulates muscle growth.)
The only advantage we really have is the size of our brains and the quality of our thoughts.
Scalia Strikes Again: Michigan vs EPA
The Supreme Court recently, by a 5-4 majority headed by A.J. Scalia, struck down an EPA regulation that would have reduced mercury emissions from coal-fired electric power plants significantly on the excuse that the EPA ignored cost considerations when making the rule, supposedly costing the industry 9.6 billion dollars while “quantifiable benefits” were supposedly only $4-6 million a year.
Justice Kagan, in her dissent, however, stated that the “measurable benefits” would be “up to” $80 billion a year, and at least $30 billion. In addition, she described the multiple stages in the EPA rule-making process in which cost-benefit considerations were explicitly considered. The only stage at which cost-benefit considerations were rejected was at the initial stage: deciding whether to regulate mercury emissions at all. When the levels of regulation were considered, the EPA made it clear that, if costs exceeded benefits, the coal plants would not be expected to spend money on mitigating mercury emissions.
So what is the dramatic difference between “quantifiable benefits” and “measurable benefits”?? There are the 4,500 premature deaths a year and the half a million days of work lost; perhaps those are not “quantifiable”? It seems that the benefits of limiting mercury emissions are not limited to mercury reduction: particulate and sulfur emissions are also reduced, resulting in dramatically greater benefits. The majority of the Court refused to consider those “ancillary” benefits, because they are achieved in the process of reducing mercury, which is the only pollutant mentioned in the initial regulation. That is the difference between “quantifiable” and “measurable”, if you can believe it. Thus, you don’t get any credit for reducing other pollutants if your first impulse was to reduce just one.
It seems that the Court is angry at the EPA for being too effective: the antipollution regulations, which have to be bad in the Court majority’s eyes, have yielded extra unexpected benefits that can’t be to the credit of the regulations because they were unintentional.
The majority, with Justice Thomas submitting a concurring opinion, seems to think that it is reining in a federal agency that is running wild. In reality, it is finding an excuse to deal a setback to an agency that has been doing its job, albeit extremely slowly. This is typical of conservative thought. They have made a conclusion before reviewing the evidence; afterwards, they have gone through the documents looking for a way to excuse their conclusion. See the texts of the decision, handed down June 29, 2015, at https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-46#writing-14-46_SYLLABUS
