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Author Topic: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery  (Read 3407 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
« Reply #105 on: December 12, 2017, 07:57:42 pm »

 



Zinke, Perry and Pruitt’s Pretend Populism Profits Polluters

We started the week with a look at Pruitt’s industry-friendly contradictions--but we hardly scratched the surface yesterday.
 
For example, the New York Times reported on Sunday how Pruitt’s EPA has taken a step back from actually enforcing air and water pollution laws. Despite Pruitt’s professed dedication to enforcing the laws, his EPA has started a third fewer cases than Obama’s EPA by nine months in, and only a quarter as many as George W. Bush’s EPA in the same timeframe. This math makes it clear that Pruitt is giving polluters a pass, despite his claim that he doesn’t “hang with polluters; I prosecute them.” Take even the most cursory look under his whole down-home country lawyer shtick, and his true colors are revealed.
 
But Pruitt is far from the only Trump advisor palling around with polluters instead of regulating them. Last week, In These Times ran photos of a meeting between Energy Secretary Rick Perry and coal man Bob Murray in advance of Perry’s coal-friendly FERC proposal, after Murray vehemently denied he had influence over the plan. The Washington Post’s Steve Mufson expands on this reporting with his own piece last Friday about the plan that comes “straight from coal country.” Nora Brownell, Former FERC committee member appointed by George W. Bush, tells the Post that the plan is “cash for cronies.”
 
And then there’s Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior. In an op-ed for CNN last week, Zinke wrote that the decision to dramatically shrink national monuments was a result of “prioritizing the voice of the people over that of the special interest groups.” Unfortunately for Zinke, the three million public comments filed--99% in support of the monuments and against shrinking them--undercut this claim. Who is in support of Zinke’s move to minimize? Well we can’t say for sure, but here’s a Washington Post headline with a clue: “Areas cut out of Utah monuments are rich in oil, coal, uranium.”
 
And hey, another clue in another Post headline: “Uranium firm urged Trump officials to shrink Bears Ears National Monument.” As Juliet Eilperin reported this weekend, a anium company lobbied and met with Zinke about the decision to downsize. Though Zinke told reporters there’s no mine within the monument, the new shrunk size of Bears Ears means significant uranium deposits are now no longer off-limits to industry.
 
Zinke hasn’t just been busy penning op-eds: he and the House Natural Resource Committee took some time to hit back at Patagonia’s criticism of the monument downsizing. But criticizing an American company for expressing its first amendment right to free speech is, in the words of former White House ethics officer Walter Shaub, “wildly inappropriate.”

Sure, this administration may be lawless and constantly capitulating to polluters and profiteers. But at least they’re down-home populists, in touch with nature and the common man, right? All of Zinke’s horseback-riding and cowboy-hat-wearing seems to suggest that he’s just a simple country boy.
 
That facade may be a little too thin for Zinke’s liking. In an interview with Outside Magazine published last week, Zinke presents himself as a Teddy Roosevelt conservationist and seasoned fisher, talking with reporter Elliot Woods while standing in a river, rod in hand. Unfortunately for Zinke, he’s no Teddy, and on top of that Woods seems to be a much better fisherman than the Secretary of the Interior, noting at the end of the piece that Zinke was having some trouble casting because he rigged his reel backwards.
 
And last May, when Zinke spent thousands in public money to helicopter out to a horse-riding session with Mike Pence, Zinke wore his cowboy hat backwards. This is apparently a frequent mistake: the Sierra Club pointed out that in the shot of Zinke exiting Air Force One for last week’s announcement, his hat was again on backwards.
 
Now we don’t expect Trump or his fan base to get all that upset about all these handouts to polluters at the public’s expense. But a faux-pas like this, with a man incapable of properly wearing his hat?
 
The red-MAGA-cap crowd’s anger is surely brimming over.   
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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