Scott Pruitt "Resigns" (Was Fired) As EPA Administrator

 (Cartoon image is by Steve Sack in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)

On Thursday, Trump sent the tweet above, announcing that he had accepted the resignation of Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt. Make no mistake though. Pruitt was fired from that job. He loved the job, and would never have resigned on his own.

Pruitt had piled up a list of ethical lapses that was pages long, and at least 15 investigations into his conduct were under way. Under any ethical presidential administration (of either party), Pruitt would have been fired many months ago. But ethics is not a concern of the Trump administration, and Pruitt was doing what Trump wanted done -- trashing regulations that prevented corporations from fouling our air and poisoning our land and water -- so Trump kept him in the job and ignored the numerous ethical violations.

Pruitt was a friend to the fossil fuel industries and corporate polluters, and he was a climate change denier. That was what Trump liked about him, and putting him in charge of the EPA was like putting a fox in charge of the henhouse. It may take decades to undo the damage Pruitt has done to our environment.

So, why did Trump fire him? If it wasn't for the ethical violations and Trump was happy with him trashing the environment, why was he fired? Simple -- he had become an embarrassment that Trump could no longer ignore. Pruitt was in the headlines too much, taking up headlines and air time that Trump thinks only he has the right to. Trump was getting tired of making excuses for Pruitt and afraid that Pruitt's corruption was starting to taint the Trump administration (even though Trump is the most corrupt individual in Washington).

In the end, Pruitt learned what many other former Trump employees have learned. While Trump demands loyalty, that loyalty is a one-way street (and is never returned). Trump will happily toss an employee under the bus to save himself. On Thursday, Pruitt got tossed under that bus.

Jim Carrey's Satirical Paintings Of Trump And His Allies

Comedian and actor Jim Carrey has taken up painting. His paintings are as effective as satire as anything he could say or write. Below are his paintings of Donald Trump (2), Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, John Bolton, Scott Pruitt, and Rudy Giuliani.

Public Disagrees With Trump/Pruitt On The Environment

These charts are from a new Gallup Poll -- done between March 1st and 8th of a random national sample of 1,041 adults, with a margin of error of 4 points.

There's been a lot in the news lately about the corrupt practices of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, and he is a very corrupt member of Trump's cabinet. But there is something worse about Pruitt -- the policies he has followed and actions he has taken since becoming the head of the EPA.

Pruitt has been in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry for a long time (even before he came to Washington). That is why Trump chose him. Trump doesn't believe in global warming, and doesn't care about the pollution of our air and water. He only cares about the profit margins of his corporate friends. For him, squeezing another few pennies of profit (out of an already record profit) justifies letting industries destroy our environment.

With Pruitt's help, Trump has already overturned many environmental regulations that protected the air we breath and the water we drink. Industries are now free to pollute the water and air. But this is not what a majority of Americans want. About 62% of the public says the government is doing too little to protect the environment. They want more to be done -- not less.

Trump's excuse is that the environmental rules have been too restrictive on business and hurt economic growth. That old excuse doesn't fly with the public though. A substantial majority (57%) wants tougher environmental laws, even if it does somewhat curb economic growth. Our environment is too precious to be sacrificed for corporate profit.

The crazy thing is that even Half of Republicans would prefer the environment be protected (note the chart below). Trump and Pruitt's actions make make some on Wall Street happy, but not most Americans.

This is just one more reason why Republicans must be denied control of Congress this November -- and Trump must be kicked out of office in 2020 (if not sooner).

Trump / Pruitt Purge The EPA Of All Its Scientists

 (These caricatures of Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt are by DonkeyHotey.)

Donald Trump has said he would protect the environment, but that is just another of his many lies.

We know that because of his withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on global warming, his executive orders repealing Obama's clean air and water efforts, and his appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -- a man with a history of opposing EPA actions. While Trump mouths environmental platitudes, it is obvious that what he really wants to do is let corporate polluters off the hook. Now we find that its gotten even worse.

Trump and Pruitt are actively removing all the scientists from the EPA -- those people who tell the truth about pollution and global climate change. They will be replaced with lobbyists and sycophants who mirror Trump's own corporate polluter friendly views.

Here is what Mark Sumner at Daily Kos has written about the purge of scientists:

Scott Pruitt had already moved to replace much of the scientific review boards at the EPA with industry lobbyists. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed at least five members of a major scientific review board, the latest signal of what critics call a campaign by the Trump administration to shrink the agency’s regulatory reach by reducing the role of academic research.
 

And with that minor test run over, Pruitt has moved on to a wholesale purge of scientists from his supposedly scientific agency.

The Environmental Protection Agency has given notice to dozens of scientists that they will not be renewed in their roles in advising the agency, continuing a scientific shake-up that has already triggered resignations and charges from some researchers that the administration is politicizing the agency.

With climate change data hidden or destroyed, Pruitt directly working to raise funds for Republicans, and actions that go beyond accepting climate change to denying basic science, it’s no doubt inconvenient to have people around who know what the hell they’re doing. So that is being remedied. Pronto. And just in case any of those scientists were thinking about saying something Pruitt wouldn’t like, he made sure that wouldn’t happen—at least not on EPA grounds.

None of the subcommittees will have a chair or vice chair, and all committee meetings scheduled for late summer and fall have been cancelled.

Pruitt’s actions completely wipes out the existing Board of Scientific Counselors. It means the whole board can now be reappointed, filled with industry lobbyists and science deniers, and the EPA can then go forward on the basis that “its scientific advisers” tell it that carbon dioxide is good for plants, only God can change the climate, and Donald Trump is nature’s bestie.

President Trump has directed Mr. Pruitt to radically remake the E.P.A., pushing for deep cuts in its budget — including a 40 percent reduction for its main scientific branch — and instructing him to roll back major Obama-era regulations on climate change and clean water protection. 

No clean water. No clean air. Certainly no scientists.

It seems pretty clear that neither Trump nor Pruitt understand what “protection” means. They certainly don’t understand “environmental.”

Conservative Newspaper Says No To Pruitt Heading The EPA

Trump choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (caricatured here by DonkeyHotey). The choice horrified Democrats and environmentalists. They knew Pruitt as an enemy of the EPA, and an official who had long been bought off by the big oil and gas industries.

But it's not just those on the left who oppose the nomination of Scott Pruitt. The traditionally conservative newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, has also come out against Pruitt heading the EPA. Here is the editorial written by that paper's editorial board:

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a veteran of a years-long courthouse campaign to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency, is the wrong choice to lead the agency under President Donald Trump. It's hard to imagine a worse choice, and when his nomination comes to the Senate floor, likely next week, Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz should vote no. 

The post of EPA administrator is a critical one, and no where is that more tangible than here in energy-rich Texas. Many industry voices have already raised toasts to Pruitt's nomination, concluding that his plans to eviscerate the EPA's regulatory oversight of oil and gas companies, and other polluters, will strengthen the state's economic fortunes.

But Cruz and Cornyn must look beyond that short-sighted calculus and vote in the long-term interests of Texas. Put simply, Texas' economy will be stronger over time if its environment is cleaner and if its people are healthier. 

There is room, especially under a Republican president, to adopt a less-aggressive stance at the EPA than has been its posture under President Barack Obama. Not since the agency was created by Richard Nixon in 1970 has it taken on such a wide array of major enforcement actions as it pursued under Obama.

 But there is such a thing as an over-correction, and placing Pruitt in the EPA administrator's seat would be a  reckless example.

Pruitt has spent his career arguing that each state, and not the U.S. government, should monitor companies' compliance with environmental safeguards. Now in his seventh year as Oklahoma's chief legal officer, he has sued the EPA at least 14 times. He would have Americans rely on a patchwork of rules, with enforcement priorities shifting from state to state, despite the obvious inefficiencies that would create for companies whose interests, just like the pollution they produce, regularly cross states lines.

But even as he argued for a larger state role, as attorney general he dissolved that office's standalone environmental crimes unit, which had been responsible for scores of enforcement actions against polluters and others since 1996.

States are often under tremendous pressure to go easy on the industries they regulate. In Pruitt's case, that pressure has too often proved too hard to resist. In 2011, for example, just before an Oklahoma oil company was due to meet with EPA officials in Washington, Pruitt sent a letter on state letterhead arguing that the EPA was grossly overstating the impact of air pollution from natural gas wells in Oklahoma.

"Fantastic!" the company's chief lobbyist wrote to Pruitt soon after, according to a Pulitzer Prize-winning expose by The New York Times in 2014. No wonder the company was excited. The stories also revealed that Pruitt's letter, like many others he wrote as attorney general, had been carefully drafted by the company's lobbyists. 

That kind of coziness was wrong for the Oklahoma attorney general. It could prove disastrous on a national level. And it's just one reason why he's profoundly unsuited to lead the agency charged with safeguarding Americans' health and environment.