"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Last week, we learned that Donald Trump’scoal-loving administration was set to release a proposal that would allow coal-burning plants to flood the planet with greenhouse gas emissions, raising a giant middle finger to the killjoy tree-huggers who insist on protecting the environment and human health through silly little things like government regulations. Whereas Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan would have caused a shift toward less-dirty energy sources like wind, natural gas, and solar, the White House’s plan would prop up coal plants by giving states free rein to come up with their own rules, or letting them petition to opt out of regulations altogether. On Tuesday, the administration officially unveiled the proposal, and as it turns out, it’s not as bad as everyone feared—it’s much, much worse, if one considers the deaths of 1,400 Americans and the hastened demise of the planet to be “worse.”
The New York Times [reports] that, buried within 289 pages of technical analysis, the Environmental Protection Agency casually notes that under the scenario individual states are most likely to follow in order to comply with Trump’s hilariously titled “Affordable Clean Energy rule,” between 470 and 1,400 premature deaths will occur each year by 2030 due to “increased rates of microscopic airborne particulates known as PM 2.5.” On the flip side, Obama’s Clean Power Plan was expected to prevent between 1,500 and 3,600 premature deaths annually by 2030, but that guy’s a law-flouting Commie, so screw him. In addition, the Trump administration’s own analysis concludes that its plan would cause 48,000 new cases of “exacerbated asthma” and a minimum of 21,000 missed school days a year by 2030 due to ozone-related illnesses. By contrast, the plan it is replacing would have resulted in a significant drop in new instances of asthma and 180,000 fewer missed school days annually.
But breathing, going to school, and a normal life-expectancy are obviously for losers, which is presumably why William Wehrum, the acting administrator of the E.P.A.’s Office of Air and Radiation, simply referred to the plan’s downsides as “collateral effects” in a comment to the Times; he also said that the administration has “aggressive programs in place that directly target emissions of those pollutants.” (Incidentally, Wehrum spent much of the past 10 years working to destroy air-pollution rules as a lawyer representing—wait for it—coal-burning power plants, chemical manufacturers, oil drillers, and refineries. He was able to so seamlessly transition to weakening air-pollutant rules from within the E.P.A. thanks to “a quirk in federal ethics rules [that] limit the activities of officials who join the government from industry [but are] less restrictive for lawyers than for officials who had worked as registered lobbyists.”)
Speaking of premature deaths, Trump is apparently super concerned about them—not when they happen to humans, of course, but to birds, whose early demise he vastly overestimated last night in a characteristically crazy, off-the-rails speech decrying wind turbines and other forms of energy that both cost and pollute less than coal. Quoth the man who is somehow the president of the United States:
You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the wind wheels [mimics windmill noise, mimes shooting gun], “Bing!” That’s the end of that one. If the birds don’t kill it first. The birds could kill it first. They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field, the birds. But uh, you know, that’s what they were going to, they were going to windmills. And you know, don’t worry about wind, when the wind doesn’t blow, I said, “What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?” Well, then we have a problem. O.K. good. They were putting him in areas where they didn’t have much wind, too. And it’s a subsidary [sic]—you need subsidy for windmills. You need subsidy. Who wants to have energy where you need subsidy? So, uh, the coal is doing great.
Really, what else is there to add?
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Read the rest of the Levin Report at the link.
I suppose with a President who favors KGB vet Putin over our intelligence officers, is dodging criminal charges for payoffs to an adult entertainment star and a Playboy model, and surrounds himself with family members, criminals, grifters, and wingnut ideologues, deciding to sacrifice 1,400 Americans to promote a dying industry that damages the health and welfare of its employees is sort of “below the radar screen.”
Earlier this month, in the wake of revelations about his pricey travel habits and sweetheart deal on rent courtesy of a high-powered lobbyist, Scott Pruitt sat down with a series of reporters to clear the air and explain what was happening. The negative headlines and stories painting him as one of the most corrupt Cabinet members in the Trump administration were the result of one thing and one thing only, he said: a liberal plot against him. The real issue, Pruitt and his defenders insist, is not his preference for flying first class when coach would suffice, or the $50 a night he was shelling out for part of a D.C. townhouse in a neighborhood where the market rate was several multiples of that, but that the left simply doesn’t appreciate his hydrocarbon-happy dismantling of Barack Obama’sregulatory regime. Which makes fresh accusations against Pruitt, by one of Donald Trump’s favorite staffers, somewhat awkward!
In a six-page letter addressed to Pruitt but circulated much more widely than his pair of very fancy desks, two senators and three House representatives detailed allegations that were brought to their attention this week by Kevin Chmielewski, who served as the president’s body man during the campaign—Trump called him a “star” and a “gem”—before going on to work as the E.P.A.’s deputy chief of staff. (Chmielewski was placed on administrative leave without pay after objecting to Pruitt’s spending policies, which can be loosely summed up as: F–k you, I do what I want.) Among the most damning allegations:
Pruitt demanded the agency “enter into a $100,000 per month contract to rent a private jet, which would have cost more than the administrator’s annual travel budget of approximately $450,000,” a situation Chmielewski says he prevented from happening, probably to the detriment of his employment;
Pruitt made travel decisions based on his “desire to visit particular cities or countries rather than official business” and then told staff to “‘find me something to do [in those locations]’ to justify the use of taxpayer funds,” which might explain his trip to Morocco to promote U.S. natural gas exports, despite the fact that said exports are not part of the E.P.A.’s mission to “protect human health and the environment”;
Pruitt booked his flights through Delta, despite the airline not being the federal government’s contract carrier for the route, “because [he] want[ed] to accrue more frequent flier miles,” just in case his private jet didn’t pan out;
Pruitt stayed in hotels that far exceeded the U.S. government per diem, sometimes by 300 percent. Exhibit A: when he traveled to Australia and Italy and refused to stay in hotels recommended by the U.S. Embassy, choosing fancier but less secure ones, which you think would concern someone who wanted a bullet-proof desk;
Pruitt blew through the $5,000 limit allowed by law to redecorate his office with items that included a $43,000 soundproof phone booth, art leased from the Smithsonian Institution, and a desk (one of two) that alone cost $2,075;
Pruitt insisted, as previously reported, on “the use of lights and sirens to transport [him] more quickly through traffic to the airport, meetings, and social events on numerous occasions” and required his drivers to “speed through residential neighborhoods and red lights, far in excess of posted speed limits,” because Scott Pruitt’s got places to be, people!
Pruitt insisted the E.P.A.’s director of scheduling “act as his personal real estate representative, spending weeks improperly using federal government resources and time to contact rental and seller’s agents, and touring numerous properties in which [he] might wish to reside”;
Pruitt gave two favored aides giant salaries after they were denied by the White House (which Pruitt claimed in recent interviews to not know anything about);
And that Pruitt did not even pay the $50 per night he owed lobbyist J. Steven Hart, who complained during a phone call Chmielewski heard on speakerphone that Pruitt “had never paid any rent to him” and that Pruitt’s daughter “had damaged his hardwood floors by repeatedly rolling her luggage across the unit when she was staying there.”
According to the letter, Chmielewski’s employment with the E.P.A. ultimately ended thanks to his refusal to “retroactively approve [a favored staffer’s] first-class return flight from Morocco.” That Chmielewski, contends, caused Pruitt to remove him from his post. But naturally Pruitt did not do the dirty work himself, allegedly relying instead on the head of his security detail, Nino Perrotta, who Chmielewski says threatened him in such a way that he reported it to the local police, E.P.A. officials, and the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. (Speaking of Perrotta, i.e. the guy who deemed it too risky for Pruitt to sit in coach, we highly suggest checking out his self-published memoir, Dual Mission, which includes lines like, “I cannot tell how many women in those days held [my] gun during very passionate late-night moments. It was, in some ways, like a dangerous, forbidden sex toy to some, and I played right along. Although never loaded, I am certain to have broken a rule or two in terms of allowing unauthorized access to and use of a federal firearm.”)
While the lawmakers concluded that the information left them “certain that [Pruitt’s] leadership at E.P.A. has been fraught with numerous and repeated unethical and potentially illegal actions on a wide range of consequential matters,” it’s not clear that Trump will have him removed. On the one hand, the guy is on a roll when it comes to firing people. On the other, Pruitt has done such a stellar job dismantling Obama’s environmental legacy in his short time on the job, and good work is truly hard to find. While Trump has said nothing about the matter on social media, during a speech today ostensibly about tax reform, he told the crowd that that he plans to sign a “presidential memorandum directing the E.P.A to cut” even more regulations on manufacturers.
For their part, Pruitt’s handlers appear to be on the offensive: just hours after the letter detailing the E.P.A. head’s ethically challenged habits was released, word leaked that Chmielewski “never filed required financial disclosure forms during his year in the Trump administration.” That, combined with Pruitt’s stellar work turning the environment into an ashtray, should help him hang on little while longer.
On the other other hand . . .
Bloomberg reports that Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, has been confirmed by the Senate to serve as the E.P.A.’s deputy administrator, which means he would lead the agency should Pruitt suddenly be told to clean out his desk. Many Democrats were opposed to the nomination, given Wheeler’s push to roll back regulations while working on behalf of his clients, among them one of America’s largest coal-mining companies. That may not be as impressive as Pruitt’s credentials for leading the agency—suing it 14 times—but it’s something.
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Go on over to Vanity Fair at the link to get the full “Levin Report.”
In an Administration loaded with ethically challenged individuals, starting with the “Big Boss,” Pruitt stands out. Nevertheless, because he is deconstructing the EPA and dismantling critical environmental protections — “turning the environment into an ashtray” — nobody in today’s GOP dares to agitate for his removal. Could you imagine how apoplectic the GOP would have been if Hillary Clinton or anyone else in the Obama Administration were fingered for doing this type of stuff?
