Manafort/Gates Indictment; Popadopoulos Plea

Manafort/Gates Indictment  GO TO:  https://www.justice.gov/file/1007271/download

Popadopoulos guilty plea GO TO:  https://www.justice.gov/file/1007346/download   The facts are fairly well laid out.

Trump Campaign Foreign Policy Adviser Pleads Guilty In Russia Probe

WASHINGTON ― A foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to FBI agents.

WASHINGTON ― A foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to FBI agents.

George Papadopoulos, 30, pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, but the case wasn’t unsealed until Monday, when two other Trump associates were indicted by a federal grand jury.

Papadopoulos reached a plea deal with prosecutors, and has since been cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Prosecutors’ statement of the offense alleges Papadopoulos “made material false statements and material omissions” during a Jan. 27 interview with the FBI. He was arrested July 27. Prosecutors agreed to recommend between no prison time to six months under the plea agreement.

Papadopoulos told the FBI an overseas professor had “told him about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails,’ but stated multiple times that he learned that information prior to joining the campaign,” according to court documents. In fact, Papadopoulos was contacted after he learned he’d be joining the campaign, and the professor only mentioned the “thousands of emails” after he’d been on the Trump campaign for more than a month.

The professor, the statement indicates, had “substantial connections to Russian government officials” even though Papadopoulos claimed the professor was “a nothing.”

Papadopoulos, The Washington Post reported earlier, is a 2009 graduate of DePaul University. Previously, he was an adviser to Ben Carson’s presidential campaign and was the U.S. representative at the Geneva International Model United Nations in 2012.

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/nyt-manafort-gates-told-surrender-mueller-probe-122235635--politics.html

This is a developing story. Check back for updates at YAHOO

• This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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Illinois House overrides veto of bill requiring monthly reports on state’s debt

Chicago News 10/25/2017, 09:25pm

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza meeting with the Sun-Times Editorial Board in September. File Photo. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Tina Sfondeles

SPRINGFIELD—Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is one step closer to gaining the ability to get a closer look at the state’s giant pile of unpaid bills on a monthly basis — a move the Democrat achieved with unanimous support on Wednesday in an Illinois House veto override.

The Illinois Senate plans to take up the override in November.

The Debt Transparency Act would require state agencies to report monthly the amount of bills being held, liabilities that are being appropriated and liabilities that may have late interest penalties. State agencies currently submit their unpaid bills once a year in October.

The state’s bill backlog is at a staggering $16.5 billion, according to the comptroller’s office.

“The one person in the state responsible for managing through any type of fiscal crisis or even good times fiscally has very limited visibility on the financials for the state of Illinois. It doesn’t make any sense,” Mendoza said after the House override.

Mendoza called it “an almost impossible task” to safeguard taxpayer dollars and manage cash or debt management without being able to see the bills more transparently.

Rauner vetoed the measure on Aug. 18, saying “the inclination” to be more transparent about the state’s finances is a “good one.” But he said her bill “more closely resembles an attempt by the Comptroller to micromanage executive agencies than an attempt to get the information most helpful to the monitoring of state government.”

Rauner too said it would divert limited funds and staff attention from their main duties in providing services to Illinois citizens.

Though the veto message appeared to take a political shot at Mendoza, bill sponsor state Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, said the intent of the bill wasn’t a continuation of the Mendoza-Rauner war.

“I know on her end I can attest to this, it was never political. It’s just doing the right thing,” Crespo said.

Also on Wednesday, the House voted to override Rauner’s veto of a bill that would stop employers from asking for wage histories from job applicants. Proponents of the bill said it was intended to try to narrow the pay gap between men and women by keeping low salaries from following them to a next job. The House also voted to override a veto of a bill that requires that cursive writing be taught in schools, with its main sponsor arguing cursive can be used for note taking, signing documents and reading historical texts. The governor vetoed it because he said it was an unfunded mandate on schools. Both of those bills now head to the Senate.

And a bill heralded by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to establish a Student Loan Bill of Rights was also overridden by the House and now heads to the Senate. It was created as a way to address widespread abuses and failures in the student loan industry, which were revealed by Madigan’s investigation and lawsuit against Navient, one of the country’s largest student loan companies.

Above is from:  https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/house-overrides-veto-of-bill-requiring-monthly-reports-on-states-debt/

Women are sending President Trump their birth control bills

Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy,Yahoo Beauty 13 hours ago

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Many women are none too thrilled about the Trump administration’s new rules that roll back the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — the part of Barack Obama’s health care bill that guaranteed insurance plans would cover all forms of prescription birth control with a zero-dollar co-pay for women — and, starting today, they are sending their bills straight to President Trump.

Donald Trump on Oct. 23, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Getty Images)

Keep Birth Control Copay Free campaign created a digital invoice generator for women to send the White House a bill for what birth control would cost should their employers move to end their no-cost contraception coverage.

One simply enters their FDA-approved form of prescription contraception, and the campaign’s online tool calculates the average annual cost — $600 for oral contraceptives, $800 for an implant, and $1,111 for an IUD.  And then the invoice generator immediately sends the bill to Trump and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Women at a birth control protest in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Getty Images)

Each invoice generated through the campaign’s tool will also be submitted to the Federal Register as an official comment opposing the new birth control rules. The comment period on the new rules will end on Dec. 5, 2017.

Kristen Bell, Gloria Steinem, Kate Walsh, Martha Plimpton, Sasheer Zamata, Ana Gasteyer, Margaret Cho, Franchesca Ramsey, and Cecily Strong are just some of the boldface names of women who have come out to endorse the campaign — and would really love for you to send an invoice to President Trump.

The cost of birth control pills is $600 per year. This is an example of the invoice the Keep Birth Control Copay Free campaign will send to President Trump. (Photo: Keep Birth Control Copay Free)

The ACA, known colloquially as Obamacare, made no-cost contraception accessible to 62.4 million American women, saving these women an estimated $1.4 billion annually.

“Women are tired of footing the bill for male politicians’ attacks on essential reproductive health care,” said Amy Runyon-Harms, the Keep Birth Control Copay Free campaign coordinator. “Together, we are pushing back against President Trump’s dangerous political decision to reduce access to birth control, and today we are sending him the bill.”

Polling released in March 2017 by nonpartisan research firm PerryUndem found that 75 percent of all voters consider birth control to be a part of preventive health care for women, with 85 percent of women voters in agreement with that.

Furthermore, 33 percent of women of reproductive age polled said they could not afford to pay more than $10 a month for birth control. Fourteen percent said they could not afford it at any price should they have to pay for it out of pocket today.

And 68 percent of voters said that Congress and President Trump’s top health care priority should be lowering people’s out-of-pocket costs — in other words, the exact opposite of what these new birth control rules stand to do.

Polling released this month by the Small Business Majority found that 71 percent of female small-business owners say health insurance issuers should be required to include birth control coverage in their health plans, with this majority opinion extending across all political, racial, religious, and age lines. And 56 percent of these women business owners said that the ability to access birth control and to decide if and when to have children allowed them to advance in their careers and start their own businesses.

However, Heritage Foundation research associate Melanie Israel told Yahoo Lifestyle this month that the Obamacare mandate was “onerous,” and a ”burden on employers, individuals, and religious organizations who, because of their beliefs concerning the protection of unborn human life, are faced with the decision to violate sincerely held religious or moral beliefs, pay steep fines, or forgo offering or obtaining health insurance entirely.”

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/women-sending-president-trump-birth-control-bills-135938134.html

President Trump may be focused on saving coal miners, but solar continues to be the hot spot in today's jobs market.

Solar employment expanded last year 17 times faster than the total US economy, according to an International Renewable Energy Agency report published on Wednesday that cited data from the Solar Foundation.

Overall, more than 260,000 people work in the solar industry, up by 24% from 2015.

The solar business has benefited from the falling cost of solar energy and generous federal tax credits that make it more affordable for businesses and homeowners to install solar panels.

"It seems to be one of the few areas of high-paying, blue-collar jobs -- and you don't have to learn to code," said Bryan Birsic, CEO of Wunder Capital, a fintech company that allows investors to help finance solar panel installations.

Awareness is also up as Americans concerned about climate change look for cleaner energy options. Elon Musk has helped add to the solar buzz. Musk's Tesla recently started taking orders for solar roofs that is made of shingles to ease concerns that solar panels are ugly.

Most solar workers are in the installation business, the IREA report showed. Other leading jobs include manufacturing, project development, sales and research-and-development.

Related: Elon Musk's plan to make every solar roof beautiful

Men have most of the jobs in solar, but that is starting to change, especially in the sales business. Women now hold 28% of solar jobs, up from 19% in 2013, IREA said. By comparison, women make up just under half of the US workforce.

Solar isn't the only hot part of the clean energy job market -- wind jobs grew by 28%. About one-quarter of the roughly 102,000 jobs in the wind business are in manufacturing.

Both solar and wind scored a big victory in December 2015 when Congress decided to extend renewable tax credits that were set to expire.

The coal mining industry is grappling with far tougher conditions right now. Almost half of US coal jobs have disappeared just since the end of 2011, according to a Columbia University study. Kentucky, a state that overwhelmingly voted for Trump, lost an incredible 64% of its coal jobs over that span.

Attempting to revive coal jobs, Trump has signed executive orders aimed at easing the regulatory burden on the industry. But Columbia's study warned that Trump's regulation-busting is unlikely to spark a revival because coal's main problem is the abundance of cheap natural gas, not regulation.

Related: Why Trump's coal promises are doomed

Besides being better for the environment, the solar industry is considered to be fairly labor intensive.

Wunder Capital's Birsic said that's because unlike fossil fuels, solar energy in the form of sunlight is available in many environments naturally. That allows for more costs to go towards paying workers to install, manufacture and sell solar panels.

"Sunshine is free. You don't have to bring sunshine out there in the desert," said Birsic.

Solar costs have also come down dramatically. Birsic estimates that solar energy was 50% more expensive just five years ago. "It's showing no signs of stopping," he said.

While renewable energy job growth has slowed globally in recent years due to declines in Japan and Europe, IREA believes it will accelerate again. The group predicted that global renewable energy employment will nearly triple by 2030 to 24 million.

"The scales continue to tip in favor of renewables," the report said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published May 24, 2017: 12:52 PM ET

Trump's shiny tax-cut plan has a $1.5 trillion problem

• In the name of tax cuts, Congress is speeding toward a budget plan that lets the government collect $1.5 trillion less revenue for the next 10 years.
• One big problem: The government needs more revenue because millions more Americans retire each year to go on Social Security and Medicare.
• In 2017, 45 million Americans receive Social Security retirement checks. By 2027 — the end of the 10-year period in which the budget would take in $1.5 trillion less — 60 million will.

John Harwood | @johnjharwood

Published 9 Hours Ago Updated 2 Hours Ago CNBC.com

Getty Images

Donald Trump

Congress is speeding toward a budget plan that, in the name of cutting taxes, lets the government collect $1.5 trillion less revenue for the next 10 years.

One big problem: The government needs more revenue as it is — a lot more. The biggest reason is as simple as it is inevitable: Millions more Americans retire each year to go on Social Security and Medicare.

In January, the Congressional Budget Office projected a 2018 budget deficit of $487 billion, rising to triple that size by 2027. The cost of benefits for aging baby boomers propel those rising deficits.

President Trump urges Republicans to speed up tax reform push   8 Hours Ago | 04:35

Already, Social Security and Medicare comprise about 40 percent of federal spending and 8 percent of the economy. The only way for those numbers to go is up.

In 2017, 45 million Americans receive Social Security retirement checks. By 2027 — the end of the 10-year period in which the budget would take in $1.5 trillion less — 60 million will receive them, the system's trustees project.

That rapid growth will continue into the following decade, when the last boomers retire. By 2033, 77 million Americans will be eligible for Social Security.

Because life expectancy keeps rising, a growing share of them will be over 85, the age group requiring the costliest health services under Medicare and nursing home care under Medicaid. And because those boomers had fewer children than their parents, the number of tax-paying workers supporting each retiree will drop from 2.8 to 2.1.

"Federal spending and taxes will have to grow significantly," writes Paul Van de Water, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "This is not a statement of political values. It's a reflection of basic realities."

Other priorities require more federal money, too. President Donald Trump, many Republicans and some Democrats say the Pentagon needs more money to keep up with global threats.

The president, many Democrats and some Republicans insist America's decaying infrastructure needs an upgrade. Those priorities involve long-settled federal commitments, not new programs.

"If we want to maintain traditional American values," says former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, "government will need to be significantly larger."

The Trump administration, predicting tax cuts will set off an economic boom, dismisses the budget's projected $1.5 trillion deficit increase as overly cautious accounting. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claims increased growth will create so much new tax revenue that it will reduce deficits and help pay down the nation's $20 trillion debt.

"It's going to be all growth," Trump told a Fox interviewer last week. "That growth can be staggering."

Yet mainstream economists in both parties, citing evidence of recent decades, say growth won't recoup all the lost revenue.

Greg Mankiw of Harvard, a top economic advisor to President George W. Bush, once described those who say tax cuts will pay for themselves and more through growth as "charlatans and cranks." Glenn Hubbard of Columbia, another top Bush advisor, estimates that individual tax rate cuts might generate enough to cover 30 percent of lost revenue, corporate cuts around 50 percent.

If so, GOP tax and budget plans would require the government — already projected to borrow another $10 trillion over the next 10 years — to borrow even more as boomers draw their checks. If the economics profession proves more accurate than Trump, the national debt will grow higher as the economy grows, not lower.

One option, of course, is for the government to reduce its obligations by cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. But Trump, appealing to his financially squeezed working class supporters, has ruled that out.

The Senate last week voted to let tax cuts create higher deficits. If the House goes along, the GOP tax-and-budget framework will rely on highly speculative revenue projections to finance spending obligations that will keep growing as a matter of demographic certainty.

"This is wishful thinking replacing responsible budgeting," says Maya MacGuineas, who directs the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "It's going to end us up with a mountain of debt."

John HarwoodCNBC Editor at Large

Above is from:  https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/23/trumps-shiny-tax-cut-plan-has-a-1-point-5-trillion-problem.html?__source=newsletter%7Ceveningbrief

Boone County Public Safety Sales Tax

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20171018/boone-county-voters-may-see-public-safety-sales-tax-referendum

Previous referendum failed 55.4% to 44.6%

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20170404/boone-county-voters-reject-public-safety-sales-tax-increase

Boone County Government seeks money from sacred sources?

County Board considers using Maple Crest Memorial funds and a “new” sales tax referendum.  See Cathy Ward’s Facebook postings for details.

Cathy Ward

3 hrs ·

BOONE COUNTY NEWS - Maple Crest Memorials safe for now! Board Chair Karl Johnson last night (Wednesday) quickly moved the plan to use Maple Crest Memorial funds for seed money to a community board back to committee for further review. No vote was taken on the proposed plan - yet. I thank Karl and all of you who responded so quickly to the plan to transfer (raid) these memorials which total about $131,000. I did not hear any support for it except from a few board members. I had called Karl the day after three Admin Committee members approved the plan to express my staunch disapproval. Karl said he had no knowledge of this idea prior to the committee vote. He has never showed any support for this option. However, I am also convinced that your many, many comments on facebook (and in the community) in opposition played a huge part in this move. I am meeting today with the Maple Crest Auxiliary to hear their ideas for these memorials. Many auxiliary members did not know the county had been holding these funds and have for at least a decade. I am relieved by the new review, but I will watch closely to see what happens at the next Adm meeting and share it with you.

.....Also, the board voted to once again to use about $1.3 million of public safety sales tax money to balance the budget. I again voted no. I still don't believe you taxpayers had this in mind when you approved building the new jail. So far, about $22 million has been collected for the jail that cost $9 million. All other jail costs were supposed to be paid from our general fund. While it might be legal, it was not the promise that was made when the referendum was passed about 20 years ago. Other board members argued that we need the money for public safety and other county needs. I have heard that the whole legality of these transfers is being reviewed.

The board also expressed strong support for trying again to pass another public safety sales tax. If approved that would double the amount collect, about $1.3 million more for county coffers each year. The last attempt was defeated last spring. It has been tried three times and failed each time, but supporters say it is getting closer to passing. More to come on that.

Why (Almost) No One Is Charged With Gun Trafficking in Illinois

Why (Almost) No One Is Charged With Gun Trafficking in Illinois

It’s how the laws are written, and trafficking is hard to prove.

by Mick Dumke

Oct. 13, 6 a.m. CDT

Oliver Munday, special to ProPublica Illinois

To understand why it’s so hard to stop the flow of guns across state lines and into cities like Chicago, you have to start with a simple, well-established fact: Firearms are legal products.

Guns aren’t like cocaine. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, most American adults are allowed to have them. That means there are millions of people who can acquire guns legally — and millions of potential sources of guns that may later be illegally sold, traded, loaned or stolen.

ProPublica Illinois is ProPublica’s first regional operation. We publish investigative journalism on key issues across the state of Illinois and in the city of Chicago.

Sign up for our Illinois stories by email.

Regulations and restrictions vary by city and state, and most are loose. As we reported in a story Tuesday, the majority of the guns seized by Chicago police were originally bought out of state.

But even when authorities know a gun has changed hands unlawfully, they often can’t determine its ownership history.

“What comes between that first sale and the recovery is the question,” said Philip Cook, a researcher with the University of Chicago Crime Lab and a professor at Duke University.

It adds up to what some officials describe as a kind of law enforcement version of whack-a-mole: Police and prosecutors spend significant resources targeting people caught possessing illegal guns — who are usually at the end of a lengthy chain of ownership — with little hope of thwarting the illicit gun markets.

In the face of a two-year spike in violence in Chicago, authorities have stepped up their efforts to prosecute gun offenders. Through Oct. 4 of this year, federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois had already brought more gun charges than in any other year over the last decade — with almost three months still to go.

But the vast majority of the defendants were charged with illegal gun possession, according to federal court records. In some cases the guns were allegedly brought to the Chicago area from out of state, but no one was charged with trafficking. The reason: No federal trafficking statute exists.

Local law enforcement officials, meanwhile, lock up thousands of gun offenders every year, almost always on possession charges. Like federal officials, they rarely arrest or prosecute people for trafficking firearms, though such charges carry far stiffer sentences.

While a state trafficking law is on the books, prosecutors say the cases are hard to prove.

Numbers tell the story:

Felon-in-Possession Charge Increased to Nearly 75 Percent of All Gun Charges in 2017

Without a trafficking statute, the "Possession of a Firearm By a Felon" charge is often the best tool federal prosecutors have. See how possession charges have increased to become the majority of all gun charges over the last decade.

NOTES: 2017 figures are through Oct. 4. Three cases that were filed prior to 2007 but reopened during or after 2007 are omitted. SOURCE: United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. (David Eads/ProPublica Illinois)

The most common charge: being a felon in possession of a firearm, which accounts for 73 percent of all gun charges in 2017. The others: using a gun in connection with drug trafficking (17 percent); selling guns without a license (8 percent); and making a false statement in a gun purchase (2 percent).

Over the last decade, the portion of gun defendants facing possession charges has doubled.

Neither the ATF nor the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago would comment to ProPublica Illinois about their approaches to attacking underground gun markets.

Some federal authorities and lawmakers want to create another tool. U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, the Democrat whose district includes parts of Chicago’s South Side and some adjacent suburbs, has cosponsored the Gun Trafficking Prevention Act of 2017, which would ban the purchase or sale of a gun with the intent to transfer it illegally.

She said such a measure would be critical for the Chicago area because surrounding states have looser gun laws than Illinois. Only three Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors, though, and the bill has been buried in committee since it was introduced in March.

“It’s so frustrating,” Kelly said.

At the state level, Illinois prohibits both trafficking guns from out of state and gunrunning, which is the illegal transfer of at least three guns. But police and prosecutors in Chicago almost never charge anyone with those offenses:

• Since 2007, nine of every 10 weapons arrests by Chicago police have been for illegal gun possession, according to the city’s reported crimes database.
• During that time, Chicago police have made more than 27,000 arrests for illegal gun possession, formally known as “unlawful use of a weapon” under state law. But the police have made just 142 arrests for illegal gun sales — and none for gun trafficking or gunrunning — in the last decade.
• Similarly, since 2013, Cook County prosecutors have brought unlawful use of a weapon charges 9,724 times, according to data from the state’s attorney’s office. During the same period, they’ve charged defendants with gunrunning 12 times, and they haven’t charged anyone with gun trafficking.

The Chicago Police Department works with the ATF to trace every illegal gun it recovers, said Anthony Guglielmi, a department spokesman. But most have been sold, stolen or loaned out repeatedly.

“They can be on the street for years,” Guglielmi said. People “don’t get rid of guns here. They bounce around.”

Federal laws limit the ability of authorities to keep records, so no national gun registry exists. Because each state has its own regulations, officials are often unable to determine the entire ownership history of a gun. Without that history, it’s a challenge for local prosecutors to show gun trafficking occurred.

Read More

How Chicago Gets Its Guns

It’s not big trafficking rings. Mostly, it’s through little guys like John Thomas.

“If a car is used in a shooting or robbery, I can easily find out, in a matter of minutes, who owned that car,” said Eric Sussman, a former federal prosecutor who’s now the top deputy to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. “Gun laws are intentionally set up where there is no searchable database.”

Even when authorities learn a gun’s history, building a trafficking or gunrunning case can be tough. The cases take significant time and resources to investigate, and the laws are narrowly written — for instance, only residents of Illinois can be charged with trafficking here, even though most guns in Chicago come from out of state.

“You have to prove that they’re transferring to someone who’s not allowed to have them or they’re transferring them for illegal purposes,” Sussman said. “And that’s a high burden.”

Above is from:  https://www.propublica.org/article/gun-trafficking-charges-illinois

Boone County Board discusses the idea of solar farms

Boone County Board discusses the idea of solar farms

By Kourtney Adams |

Posted: Wed 10:23 PM, Oct 04, 2017  |

Updated: Wed 11:11 PM, Oct 04, 2017

BOONE COUNTY, Ill. (WIFR) -- Creating a solar farm where crops normally grow. Some Boone County neighbors are on board and others, not so much.

Men with Cypress Creek Renewables gave a presentation Wednesday night to share basic information about solar development to equip the committee and community with more knowledge, to determine what they want to see as far as regulations for solar development in the county.

These men say they've been working to draft an ordinance to try to build two solar farms in the county, one along Reeds Crossing Road between Genoa and Spring Center Roads, and the other off of Illinois 173, east of Capron. The company has been sending letters to Illinois farmers throughout the region asking for $1,000 an acre for 20 years if they permit to their company. Some local farmers are concerned about losing farm land and agricultural jobs, but the company says this additional tax revenue could help the county and city services.

"The main concern is losing productive farm land. The site that they are looking at is prime agriculture land, we can't reproduce that. The plant comes in, it subsides in for any reason at all, who's going to decommission it? Who's going to take it apart?” says Capron farmer, Julie Newhouse.

"We've actually already held a few community meetings to solicit opinions, questions and concerns from neighboring property owners because everybody's so new to solar in the state, understandably because there's quite frankly just not much solar development, but we did it in an open process so they know that we're not trying to just stick shovels in the dirt as quickly as we can," says Cypress Creek Renewables Senior Developer, Scott Novack.

Wednesday was the beginning stages of talking about solar development in the county. The next step will be to determine what projects the county wants to move forward with. Newhouse believes we already have an excess of electricity in Illinois and don't need more.

Cypress is trying to build at least three solar farms in the region by 20-19. Newhouse says she hopes the county board will take their time with this decision.

Above is from:  http://www.wifr.com/content/news/Boone-County-Board-Member-449520023.html

Trump administration ordered to enforce methane restrictions launched under Obama

Evan HalperContact Reporter

The Trump administration was ordered by a federal judge Wednesday to immediately enforce Obama-era restrictions on the release of potent methane emissions at oil and gas drilling operations on public land.

The ruling came at the behest of California and other states, which charged the administration is required by law to enforce the new rules intended to cut the release of 175,000 tons of the potent greenhouse gas annually, as well as reduce the emission of associated toxic pollutants. The rules took effect Jan. 17, just three days before President Trump’s inauguration.

The Interior Department had been delaying enforcement as it mapped out a strategy to rescind the new rules, which industry has complained are onerous. An earlier push by opponents of new methane restrictions to kill them in Congress fell short of the needed votes amid a backlash from environmentalists and landowners adversely affected by pollution from drilling.

The ruling was the latest in a series of legal setbacks for the Trump administration, as the courts find flaws in its plans for dismantling executive branch actions taken under President Obama to confront climate change.

The ruling covers nearly 100,000 oil and gas wells on federally owned land. The methane they leak is one of the most potent accelerators of climate change, 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. The new restrictions require the energy companies that own the wells to capture more of the methane and convert it into electricity.

The amount of methane escaping each year is enough to provide electricity for nearly 740,000 homes.

California noted in its lawsuit that delay in enforcing the rules was costing local communities, which are entitled to royalty revenue when the trapped methane is sold to electricity companies. The new rules are expected to generate as much as $23 million in such royalties nationwide.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte in San Francisco ruled the department cannot legally postpone a rule that has already taken effect. She was unconvinced by administration arguments that it would soon have different regulations in place. She ruled that the process of replacing the rules could take months, and ultimately may not stand up to legal challenges.

“No one is above the law,” California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “As a result of this rule’s implementation, oil and gas operators on federal and Indian lands will be compelled to prevent the waste of natural gas.” He added that methane emissions “threaten the health of nearby residents and contribute to climate change.”

California’s lawsuit alleged that the administration suspended the rule five months later without reviewing any public comment or following the other requirements for such a policy change under the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have been under intense pressure from oil and gas companies to scrap the rules. They say the cost of the methane capturing technologies would crush smaller firms, and that the bigger operations that create the most methane are trapping the gas already.

The warnings of economically crushing costs conflicted with Bureau of Land Management findings that the average small business with an oil or gas operation on federal property would see its profit margin reduced by two-tenths of 1% as a result of the rules.

While many prominent Republicans continue to rail against the methane restrictions, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, several conservative lawmakers have grown uncomfortable with the effort to kill the rule.

Some of these lawmakers come from states that already have strong restrictions on methane emissions in place. They are contending with pollution from drilling operations in neighboring states with more lenient policies drifting over their borders, undermining the efforts to clean the air.

The court ruling Wednesday was just the latest legal setback for the administration in its effort to weaken federal environmental rules. Approval of a big coal mine expansion in Montana and a major gas pipeline in Florida were blocked in court recently because the administration refuses to calculate their climate impacts and the associated economic costs. The courts also found illegal an effort by the administration to delay new federal rules requiring oil companies to pay the government higher royalties.

“The courts are once again — for at least the fourth time — telling the Trump administration that it cannot simply ignore environmental laws and regulations that are already on the books,” said an email from Kate Kelly, public lands director at the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group. “The administration’s ‘stay and delay’ tactics, through which it is allowing industries to bypass pollution controls and dodge royalty payments, are patently illegal.”

Above is from:  http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-methane-20171004-story.html

Solar power is the fastest growing source of global energy

Business

Rachel England,Engadget 45 minutes ago

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Solar power was the fastest-growing source of global energy last year, overtaking growth from all other forms, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The spurt is largely attributed to lower prices and changing government policies encouraging a shift away from traditional power sources, such as coal. China, for example, has played an important role in renewable energy's prominence, accounting for almost half of all new solar panels installed worldwide.

Many experts are heralding a "new era" in solar photovoltaics (PV), anticipating that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology up until 2022. In fact, the IEA has admitted it had underestimated how fast green energy was growing, noting that many countries are set for a solar boom in the coming years. India's renewable energy capacity is expected to double by 2022, overtaking the EU.

However, the IEA has said that despite these encouraging figures, there are uncertainties ahead. Donald Trump's pledge to revive coal has put the country's position as the second fastest-growing renewables market in jeopardy, especially if the US International Trade Commission were to impose tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels. However the forecast for now, according to the IEA, remains bright.

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/solar-power-fastest-growing-source-031600101.html