Scott Pruitt has got to go. Call the White House at 202-456-1212 or email the president at www.whitehouse.gov and tell him to fire Scott Pruitt for gross overspending in his total disregard in the use of taxpayer funds and for his ethical violations.
Mr. President please, you said you would "drain the swamp." The swampiest member of the swamp is the head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt. Remember your message to those on The Apprentice: "You're fired!" That's what you've got to tell Scott Pruitt, or as in past firings, just write a tweet. He's spent outrageously, sometimes capriciously but seemingly fraudulently and certainly unethically at the public trough to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of dollars. He's spent on crazy things, including $43,000 for a secure sound proof room, and a twenty person security detail that follows him everywhere, 24/7. He has given his two Oklahoma assistants raises of more than $55,000 in one case and nearly $30,000 in another, money that was taken from an EPA fund that is earmarked for scientists in emergencies.
Four career staff EPA officials and one Trump appointee confronted Mr. Pruitt directly on his abusive spending and they were reassigned. One also contacted White House staff on the matter, which now extends the scandal into the White House because Scott Pruitt is still there, doing his job of dismantling the EPA. Hundreds of people, mostly crucial scientists, have already left the agency and morale is suffering. There is a 30% proposed reduction in the agency's budget with a desire to reduce the size of the agency by 25%, thus making it less capable of performing its function. But that is what this administration is all about, deconstruction of governmental agencies, making them less operational with less ability to serve the citizenry of this country.
There was push back on some of Mr. Pruitt's wilder proposals. A request for a $100,000 a month charter flight membership for the EPA head to travel any time he needed to for agency business was denied as well as a purchase for both a bullet proof $70,000 office desk and a bullet proof SUV. Mr. Pruitt is now the subject of an investigation for ethics violations by the Inspector General of the agency. Mr. Pruitt does not like to be inconvenienced. On one flight to a Colorado gold mine, when his scheduled flight was delayed in Denver, he chartered a jet for an earlier flight and charged $5,719 to the agency for a 40 minute flight. Counter to governmental travel recommendations, Mr. Pruitt insists on traveling first class because he feels his security is otherwise threatened.
For two weeks in June, 2017 he charged taxpayers $120,000 for travel for him and his aids. Then in December Mr. Pruitt spent $40,000 of public funds on first class travel for seven people for a 5-day trip for a one-day meeting in Morocco with a stop-over in Paris for 2 nights (a longer stay than at the meeting site because they missed the 10:30 am morning flight) to lobby that country to switch to liquefied natural gas, though that was not part of the agency's function.
The only port for that in this country is operated by a company controlled by Carl Icahn. Mr. Pruitt rents a condo for $50.00 a night, when he stays there, in Washington D.C. (well below market rates, where his daughter also has stayed) from the wife of a lobbyist for that Carl Icahn controlled company, Cheniere Energy. It must be said that the lobbyist in question works for nine companies with projects before the EPA, one was recently granted permission to pump oil from tar sands in Canada through pipelines into our country. These relationships have resulted in direct conflicts of interest. This includes Mr. Pruitt's contact and numerous meeting early in his appointment to the EPA with Carl Icahn who, shortly after his appointment as an advisor to Donald Trump, had to resign because of his own conflict of interest issues.
Right-wing media is blasting full support over the airwaves for Mr. Pruitt, supporting his agenda, which the president also approves. Therefore, it would be foolish and counter-productive to mention his roll-back and gutting of clean energy issues such as clean water and clean air or the allowing of a pesticide to be sprayed on crops that is neurotoxic to infants and that previously was on a banned substances list. Instead when you call or write stick to the ethical violations and the abusive spending as talking points.
Saturday, Apr 7, 2018 · 9:14:11 PM +00:00
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farmacyguy
Last week Senator Thomas Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, wrote a letter to the EPA Inspector General requesting that allegations be looked into that Samantha Dravis, a top policy advisor to Mr. Pruitt, did not show up for work or attend to any duties, while collecting a full paycheck for most of November, December and January, but did travel on the infamous December Morocco trip.
Mr. Pruitt had a reputation for running late and did not wish to miss dinner reservations at restaurants, especially a trendy French bistro, Le Diplomat that he frequented and he also wished to expedite local Washington trips to the airport by having his security detail use the vehicle’s siren and lights for those trips in a clear abuse of power and ethics as well as a sense of entitlement in which he thought he could mimic the powers of the presidency.