Let the world burn, as long as the profit margins increase:

When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them. But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation’s oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country’s largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

After following these astro-turf organizations and pseudo-scientific industry stink-tanks for so long, this comes as zero surprise. But the sheer ignorance of the Trump administration acquiescing to this campaign, while climate change catastrophes are occurring on a seemingly monthly basis, is still hard to swallow. The irresponsibility is bad enough, but the industry's use of racism against Obama to drive public opinion is nothing less than infuriating:

Along with a history of suppressing African-American voters:

Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who ran the ’96 convention for Bob Dole’s campaign, has hired Bill Greener, who was the GOP’s convention manager that year, according to two sources familiar with the personnel move. Greener starts work in his new role Thursday in Cleveland. A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

For the 1996 convention, Manafort and Greener took cues from television infomercials to direct a fast-paced, entertaining program that reimagined the political convention format and irked many reporters, who felt the tight control eliminated any news value.

Not sure how Greener ended up working with (for?) Andy Yates at Red Dome, but no doubt with his buddy Manafort facing an extended jail term, he's probably low-profiling it for the time being:

LEWIS EFFORT TO HAVE NEW PRIMARY IN NC09 FINDS LITTLE SUPPORT: A proposal for a new primary in the 9th Congressional District was stripped from an elections bill Tuesday after the sponsor said he could not get enough legislators to go along. Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican, wanted a new primary if the State Board of Elections orders a new election in the 9th District. “All indications are that the same activity that is alleged to have occurred concerning absentee ballots appeared to have also occurred in the primary,” Lewis said Tuesday afternoon. “Voters will have the opportunity to start over by selecting a new candidate if they so choose.” The primary was not in the proposal the House will vote on Wednesday. Lewis said he couldn’t get enough legislators negotiating the bill to sign off on the idea. The state elections board has been been investigating allegations of fraud over the mail-in absentee ballots in the November general election.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article222929380.html