I was disappointed this afternoon when I heard that the leading grifter in the Trump regime had resigned. That is to say, the leading grifter except for the Grifter-in-Chief squatting in the White House.
Disappointed because EPA-hating EPA chief Scott Pruitt was the regime’s poster-boy for imperial management style and using public office for personal reward. His blatant corruption made him an easy target for critics of his policy agenda, the most damaging to the environment since the late Anne Gorsuch Burford was in charge at the EPA in the 1980s.
But while we can cheer about seeing the departing backside of this corrupt low-life, his deputy, the lower-key climate science-denying Andrew Wheeler, will push the same environment-wrecking policies as Pruiit did, but presumably without a Praetorian guard, cone of silence, and first-class air travel that made him the focus of so much bad press and numerous ethnics investigations.
The Republican senators who are glad to see Pruitt out the door will be just as glad to confirm Wheeler for the top EPA job, and a few Democrats will probably give him the thumbs-up too. When he was confirmed as deputy chief in April, a trio of coal-state Democrats—Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.)— voted for him.
Jeff Turrentine at the National Resources Defense Council wrote in April about what makes Wheeler possibly an even worse choice than Pruitt:
Well, for starters, his most recent job was as an energy lobbyist. His biggest clients included Murray Energy Corporation, which proudly bills itself as the largest coal mining company in America, and whose CEO, Robert E. Murray, vigorously fought the Obama administration’s attempts to reduce carbon emissions and strengthen environmental and public health laws. Shortly after Trump took office, Murray, an unabashed climate denier, presented Vice President Mike Pence with a ridiculously pro-coal “action plan” that called for doing away with the Clean Power Plan, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating federal tax credits for renewable energy, and—yes—halving the EPA’s workforce.
In his spare time, Wheeler serves as the vice president of the Washington Coal Club, a powerful yet little-known federation of more than 300 coal producers, lawmakers, business leaders, and policy experts who have dedicated themselves to preserving the uncertain future of our dirtiest fossil fuel. Wheeler clearly loves coal, but he’s also made time to lobby the U.S. Department of the Interior to open portions of the Bears Ears National Monument to uranium mining.
It gets worse. Before joining his current K Street lobbying firm, Wheeler worked as a legislative aide to Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe.
Thus Pruitt now will queue up in the private sector for his fossil-fuel industry rewards, and the policies he pushed continue being pushed by Wheeler but without the magnetic attraction to media that Pruitt’s antics and ethical amorality generated.
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“A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”
~~Theodore Roosevelt, 1906
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—What would 62 mpg give Americans? 700,000 jobs and tens of billions of dollars in their pockets:
The Obama administration has already established a standard 35.5 mile-per-gallon fuel-efficiency average for cars, light trucks and SUVs manufactured in 2016 and beyond. The discussion now is over how much the standard should be increased to by 2025. The administration has slated an announcement on its decision about this for September.
Eco-advocates are seeking a 62-mpg standard. The big car companies, including GM, the one that taxpayers still own one-fourth of, are aghast. It's the usual whine, which comes down to the usual claim: no-can-do, too-expensive, unsafe.