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Meet the Swamp.
Since Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor, was named by President Trump as a special adviser on regulatory matters, he has been busy working behind the scenes to try to revamp an obscure Environmental Protection Agency rule that governs the way corn-based ethanol is mixed into gasoline nationwide.
All right, so Donald Trump has tasked billionaire Carl Icahn with the task of cutting regulations on American businesses. Billionaire Carl Icahn, ever helpful, has set his sights on ethanol rules as being one of the things most needing reform. Billionaire Carl Icahn may or may not have stumbled on ethanol rules as the thing the Trump Administration should take an axe to based on the fact that he:
is a majority investor in CVR Energy, an oil refiner based in Sugar Land, Tex., that would have saved $205.9 million last year had the regulatory fix he is pushing been in place.
To, ahem, "critics" of this arrangement, it seems like blatant crookery. Billionaire Carl Icahn, however, don't care.
Mr. Icahn, 81, in a series of interviews in the last week, was unapologetic. He said he was not subject to conflict of interest rules because he is an informal, unpaid adviser to Mr. Trump, not an official government employee.
The belief that you don't have to have ethics if you're not getting paid seems endemic, on team Trump. Though the ones cashing paychecks are, we must admit, not doing much better.