You may have noticed that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has been rolling out a hell of a lot of new regulations. Earlier this month it was big student loan reforms and a massive improvement in how public lands are managed, then this week we had better pay and working conditions for working Americans, minimum staffing ratios for nursing homes, and even improved service on airlines.
That’s not only because it’s an election year, though Joe & Kamala certainly do like to point out that where the Other Guy rages (and wants to raise inflation!) they’ve been busy making Americans’ lives better. But the bigger reason is that the administration wants to get new rules finalized prior to May, to keep them from being tossed out in the next Congress via the Congressional Review Act, which Donald Trump and his cronies used to reverse a bunch of Barack Obama’s environmental regulations.
. . . The requirement that coal plants find a way to eliminate 90 percent of their emissions by 2032 effectively accelerates the end of coal for power generation, which was inevitable anyway. Roughly 70 percent of US coal plants have already closed, and last year, coal generated only 16 percent of electric power, a new record low. In addition to the emissions rule, three other final rules also impose strict new limits on mercury, coal ash, and pollution of wastewater, to put an end to the environmental degradation caused by coal.
. . . The other option, obviously, would be for utilities to meet coming demand with renewables, as administration officials pointed out when previewing the new rule. Thanks to the IRA’s hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives, carbon-free power generation, including battery storage, already beats the cost of building new gas plants. Going forward, the administration is confident renewables will be the far more cost-effective and reliable way to meet increasing demand by 2032, when the emissions limits fully kick in.
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Oh great. Another article that throws a bunch of stuff at the wall to make Biden look better than he is. Some of which are straight up lies. Student loan debt relief is not reform. A new college student today is still taking out loans and is still expected to pay them without any possibility of discharging them in a routine process. To say future borrowers must hope a future president gives them a financial pardon is not a fucking reform.
This is not the first time the BLM has done conservancy and restoration. The leases are new but this makes it sound like they dealt in nothing but oil leases before this and that's not true.
Non Competes is a great thing but it needs to be banned by law. We watched Trump tear through policies in novel ways and it's likely there just won't be any enforcement by the next Republican president. We need a law like other labor laws that allows workers to take civil action on their own with stiff penalties. But this is also a mischaracterization. Better pay and working conditions are only indirectly linked to competition. Fast food employees are still facing the same shit management and shit pay no matter which company they work for. It was worded this way to push back on his negative Union actions. But Unions don't forget.
Nursing home staffing ratios is cool but I can't help but wonder if it's a Presidential decision? This sounds like something out of the mid-level of HHS?
Airline ticket price clarity definitely doesn't belong on this list. The last one might have been fluff, this one is definitely fluff.
Stop blowing smoke up my ass. The people who vote blue aren't dumb and articles like this just make it worse.
So... It sounds like you're in favour of free-education-for-all?
The sad part is, I can't tell whether you are extreme-right or far-left. That's how weird US politics is today.