Monsters and functionaries

Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump, and the new environment in America

Kleptocracy.

Before November 8, 2016, it was a word you didn’t see or hear much—and with good reason. Whatever you thought of recent presidents, they were not soulless businessmen, childish braggarts, and dim bulbs. Donald Trump is the embodiment of all three and his kleptocracy (Greek:“rule by thieves”) will be an amalgam of corrupt, compromised men and women who use their unique access to power, wealth, and resources to enrich themselves at the expense of others. 

But enough about Eric, Ivanka, and Don, Jr.

Donald Trump’s 17 cabinet appointees, if you’re scoring at home (and if you’re not, it’s time to start), have more money than the bottom 43 million U.S. households combined, which is only important if you think heads of government agencies should know how much a half gallon of milk costs and care that industrial runoff and sewage spills cause vibrio vulnificus infections in children. The president-elect, who still promises to drain the swamp—all evidence to the contrary—has instead filled it with rapacious snakes and captains of industry, a cabal of proud billionaires, loud sycophants, unapologetic corporate bagmen, bellicose generals, and relentless extremists. 

You could argue his selection of Michael Flynn, who retweets paranoid conspiracies with as much discrimination as those who hand out “Strippers in Your Room” cards on Las Vegas Boulevard, as national security advisor, and Ben Carson, whose only qualification to be HUD director is that he lives in a house, are his worst nominees. But our collective gob was truly smacked when he named our own Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Having Pruitt run the show at the EPA is like, well, your-joke-here. My favorite: it’s like having a dingo watch your baby.

From his website:

Pruitt filed the first lawsuit challenging the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and is a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.

Proud, he is, to lead the fight against healthcare—when one in six Oklahomans are uninsured—and against those who would scrupulously protect the state’s air and water. 

For the love of the Sierra Club, the director of the EPA should be an activist—it’s in the job description: protection. That’s why Republican President Richard Nixon created it in the first place … in 1970.

But it’s not just the EPA. Pruitt, a pious grandstander, not only championed Bibles in public schools, the Ten Commandments monument, and Hobby Lobby’s right to discriminate against women, he was the only AG in the nation who rejected a 2012 settlement with those banks who nearly caused the collapse of the whole economic shebang because, he said, “it started being co-opted by Washington to turn into something to fix the housing market.”

And God knows we couldn’t allow that.

While attorney general, Pruitt also installed something called the Federalism Unit (so called because The Nullification and Sedition Unit didn’t look good on the signage) whose sole mission was to sue the federal government whenever he decided—about twice a month as it turns out—Washington had overstepped its boundary.

He has, in fact, sued the feds on cross-state air pollutions rules, mercury and air toxin rules, as well as on banking, contraception, endangered species, healthcare, and Colorado’s marijuana law. He’s even sued the EPA for being sued, claiming the agency wanted environmental groups like the Sierra Club to sue it so it would then be “forced” to demand greater environment on polluters.

He’s a small government conservative, all right, unless it’s his department that needs the paring.

While living in the same harsh fiscal climate and preaching small-government conservatism, Pruitt has managed to increase his office’s expenses by 40 percent and add nearly 60 employees since taking over, creating a dynamo for legal attacks on the Obama administration and a launching pad for his political career.

His most peculiar affection, though, goes to the put-upon titans in the oil and gas sector who are just trying to make ends meet.

Pruitt also fought efforts by attorney generals in other states to press ExxonMobil for information about whether the company failed to disclose material information about climate change, calling such efforts “governmental intimidation” of the oil giant.

Protecting ExxonMobil. What a prince.

He champions fossil fuel and, of course, doubts climate change.

“Look, I mean, I think there should be a vigorous debate about that. I mean, I think that ... We ought to have true science. We ought to let science be science and let it educate and inform the policy makers on what should and should not occur.”

You mean like listening to the NASA scientist who said, “There’s no pause or hiatus in temperature increase. People who think this is over are viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles. This is a chronic problem for society for the next 100 years.”

Just as predictably, Pruitt gets his feelings hurt when he’s called on any of this.

Pruitt continues to reject the insinuation that his work is driven by a partisan agenda. “Opponents want to present it that way,” he says. “It’s not that way at all for me.”

Of course not.

Another mom-and-pop energy shop for which Pruitt has a soft spot is Devon Energy, a company for which he often takes dictation.

“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”

Later this month, that meeting with the EPA will be with its director, Scott Pruitt.

Mr. Pruitt has responded aggressively, and with a lot of helping hands. Energy industry lobbyists drafted letters for him to send to the E.P.A., the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Obama, The [New York] Times found.

Industries over which he will have regulatory power join him as plaintiffs in court challenges? What could go wrong, especially considering the main financiers of his various election campaigns in Oklahoma have been Harold Hamm, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Alliance Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, Spectra Energy, ITC Holdings, Chesapeake, ONEOK, OGE Energy and Tulsa-based oil and gas producer Unit Corp, as well as Continental Resources, the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the American Gas Association, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, Peabody Energy, AEP, Southern Co. and Oklahoma Gas & Electric.

He is both Pinocchio and Geppetto.

Follow-up by Mr. Pruitt’s federalism office often came after coordination with industry representatives, especially from Devon Energy. The company, one of the most important financial supporters for the Republican Attorneys General Association, is guarded about its public profile. But it readily turned to Mr. Pruitt and his staff for help, setting up meetings for the attorney general with its chief executive, its chief lobbyist and other important players.

It’s not just because of his views on the environment generally and the EPA specifically that the senate should reject his nomination—it’s his DNA. Pruitt believes the functions of government, especially national, are not to be trusted and that local solutions are always best and more applicable. The problem is local governments don’t patrol the Gulf of Suez so ExxonMobil can safely move its product, don’t initiate the cleanup of toxic superfund sites, and don’t regulate and coordinate air, water, atomic energy, endangered species, waste, or occupational safety between states. To allow such a man to control an agency tasked with those responsibilities—when his heart and mind clearly lie with those who use the environment as a chew toy—is disdainful. Let his friends at Devon make him chief counsel—it’s where his loyalties are—and leave the EPA to someone who cares if a Canadian pipeline (yes, he supported Keystone) runs under your son’s kiddie pool. 

It’s not like anyone was expecting Trump to name Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to the position (or, for that matter, Diane Ravitch to Education or Morris Dees to Justice), but in selecting Pruitt to head the agency, the president-elect gave a Trumpian FU to anyone who wants an EPA chief who worries more about the lead and copper levels in drinking water than whatever’s bothering Harold Hamm.

“Monsters exist,” Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and chemist, once said, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” 

Like the rest of Trump’s cabinet, Pruitt asks the wrong questions, challenging the aggrieved, not the aggressors. And, like his future colleagues, he, too, feels government is an impediment, a burden, especially on his benefactors. He will emasculate the very agency he should embolden. To that extent, Scott Pruitt is part monster, part functionary. In the Trump Administration, that is not a bug, it’s a feature.

For more from Barry, read his 8th Annual Bad Penny Awards.