On Saturday, Kyle Kulinski, host of The Kyle Kulinski Show on the popular "Secular Talk" YouTube channel, uploaded a video breaking down a report from The New York Times that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "is easing restrictions on lead, mercury and other toxic discharges from coal plants into waterways." As he further explains in the video:
"The [EPA] regulation scaled back the types of wastewater treatment technologies that utilities must install to protect rivers and other waterways. It also pushed back compliance dates, and exempted some power plants from taking any action at all."
Kulinski notes that any coal plant that shuts down before 2028 is exempt from this rule, although he states "that doesn't make them more clean," and that "the water can still become toxic." He calls the regulation "a giant loophole which makes it so that any company can say: 'oh, we're planning on shutting down by 2026 or 2027,' and then [...] they could just not do that," and that they could just be saying that to get out of the regulation. He goes on to point out that the rule will "save the [...] coal [mining] industry $140 to $480 million, and it will also endanger the water of 1.1 million Americans."
Although Kulinski believes that Democrats have a better position on this issue than Republicans, he is not convinced that it will be a prominent talking point for them on the campaign trail. "And I don't know why," he says. "This is a really powerful thing to point out, and would really help [the Democrats] if you're showing how much [the Republicans] don't care about people, and they care about the [coal mining] industry because they're bought by them."
To answer Kulinski's question, perhaps the reason that he believes the Democrats will not bring up this regulation on the campaign trail is because of their own campaign contributions. While it is true, as he stated in the video, that the coal mining industry overwhelmingly donates to Republican candidates (over 95% of money from the industry has gone to Republicans this election cycle), individuals associated with Renaissance Technologies - one of the top five hedge funds owning stock in Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company in the private sector - have given big to Democratic candidates and groups throughout the 2020 election so far. The firm's co-founder, Jim Simons, as mentioned in a previous blog post, has contributed $3 million to Joe Biden's super PAC, Unite the Country. Another super PAC that has received financial backing from Simons is the Senate Majority PAC, which has spent $47.45 million on independent expenditures both for Democratic and against Republican Senate candidates in competitive races. The PAC has taken $5 million from Simons this election. Meanwhile, Renaissance vice president Henry Laufer has donated $500 thousand to Forward Majority Action, a super PAC dedicated to electing Democratic state legislators, as well as $5,600 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and $5,000 to her leadership PAC, PAC to the Future. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has also taken $355 thousand from Wolfgang Wander, a technical staff member at Renaissance, who has been a major donor to several Democratic candidates for Congress, as well as to Biden himself. The DNC has also raked in $150 thousand from the firm's chairman and CEO, Stephen Lee Robert.
Kulinski ends the video by lamenting on the large number of deregulations from the Trump administration - not just from the EPA, but also from other agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - and fears what another four years of endless deregulation will bring.
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