Is uranium poised for another big bounce? Adam Rodman of Segra Capital Management returns to follow up on his tremendously popular Real Vision interview from late 2017, and to review the key drivers of this most unusual commodity. Rodman explains the big picture, then dives down into the nuances of both the supply and demand sides of the market. Filmed on January 3, 2019 in Dallas.
Why I changed my mind about nuclear power | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxBerlin
Nuclear energy is the only practical alternative that we have to destroying the environment with oil and coal.-Ansel Adams, 1983 (14 min)
Top Trump Donor Agreed to Pay Michael Cohen $10 Million for Nuclear Project Push
Consulting deal with Franklin L. Haney could have been among the most lucrative struck by president’s then-personal attorney
A major donor to President Trump agreed to pay $10 million to the president’s then-personal attorney if he successfully helped obtain funding for a nuclear-power project, including a $5 billion loan from the U.S. government, according to people familiar with the matter.
The donor, Franklin L. Haney, gave the contract to Trump attorney Michael Cohen in early April to assist his efforts to complete a pair of unfinished nuclear reactors in Alabama, known as the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, these people said.
.. Authorities are investigating whether Mr. Cohen engaged in unregistered lobbying in connection with his consulting work for corporate clients
.. Mr. Cohen made several calls to officials at the Energy Department in the spring to inquire about the loan guarantee process, including what could be done to speed it up
.. James Thurber, a professor of government at American University, said success fees are “outside the ethical norms” among Washington lobbyists and are frowned upon.
Century-old court rulings deemed fees contingent on lobbyists obtaining public funds or killing legislation unenforceable and counter to public policy, saying they encouraged corruption, he said. Several lobbyists contacted by the Journal said $10 million was an unheard-of sum to pay a consultant for government-related work.
.. Mr. Cohen’s other consulting clients, including AT&T Inc. and Novartis AG , the Journal has previously reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Those companies said they paid Mr. Cohen a total of $1.8 million since Mr. Trump took office for his insights into the administration. Both have said he didn’t do any substantial work for them.
The Supreme Court Won’t Stop Executive Overreach
Presidential appointees, business advocates complain, routinely overstep the authority given them by Congress in how they write and enforce rules. With the addition of Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, business sees the Supreme Court as a reliable bulwark against executive branch overreach.
.. Judge Kavanaugh believes presidents, unlike regulators, are owed considerable deference, especially on national security and law enforcement. That’s significant because Mr. Trump is now using national security to justify his own economic interventions, especially on trade.
.. Much of the controversy over the administrative state harkens back to 1984, when the Supreme Court decided, in a case involving the Environmental Protection Agency, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. and an environmental group, that when a law is unclear, the court should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of that law.
.. Courts have cited Chevron deference, as this doctrine is known, to grant wide latitude to regulatory agencies, from the EPA to the Department of Labor and the Federal Communications Commission. Many conservatives blame it for a decadeslong transfer of power to the executive branch. They questioned the legality of President Barack Obama’s routine use of executive authority, such as limiting greenhouse gas emissions and suspending some deportations of illegal immigrants, to sidestep Congress.
.. “Chevron is nothing more than a judicially orchestrated shift of power from Congress to the Executive Branch,” he wrote in 2016 in the Harvard Law Review.It encourages the president, regardless of party, to “be extremely aggressive in seeking to squeeze its policy goals into ill-fitting statutory authorizations and restraints.”.. Both parties have agencies they love to hate: For Republicans, it’s the EPA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; for liberal Democrats, it’s now Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For both, it’s the Internal Revenue Service or the Justice Department when the other party controls the White House. In each case, a change of president is usually enough to change the agency’s behavior.
.. Yet even as he rolls back the administrative state, Mr. Trump has pushed the boundaries of presidential authority. He has imposed steep tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel and is planning the same on cars, citing his national security authority under a little-used 1962 law. Mr. Trump is also weighing forcing utilities to buy more coal and nuclear-generated power, also on national security grounds.
In both cases, national security appears to be a pretext to shore up economically beleaguered industries... “There is a pronounced dichotomy between Kavanaugh’s view on deference to agencies as opposed to his view on deference to presidents,” says Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. He says Congress has been progressively marginalized by the expanding authority of both federal agencies, and presidents; Judge Kavanaugh seems to oppose the first and encourage the second... Judge Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in 2015 that the National Security Agency could collect an individual’s telephone “meta data.” Because the purpose was preventing terrorist attacks, he said, it didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure.