Scott Pruitt – immigrationcourtside.com

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: Scott Pruitt Isn’t As Bad As You Might Think He Is – He’s 10X Worse! – GOP Takes an “Ethics Vacation” On Totally Corrupt EPA Sec!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/scott-pruitt-is-an-even-bigger-monster-than-you-thought

Bess writes:

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 directed his staff to “find reasons for [him] to travel to Oklahoma, so [he] could be in his home state for long weekends at taxpayers’ expense,” where he has seemingly been laying the groundwork for a run for office;

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?

PWS

04-15-18

THE LEVIN REPORT: “A wise person once said, of working in the White House: ‘It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns . . . I am in a constant state of shock and horror.’” 🤡🤡🤡🤡

Bess Levin writes in Vanity Fair:

“A wise person once said, of working in the White House: “It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns . . . I am in a constant state of shock and horror.” Whether or not that description can be attributed to Gary Cohn or is simply “representative” of his views, we may never know, but it’s obviously a good summation of what life is like inside the capsizing Carnival cruise ship that is the West Wing, particularly over the last 24 hours.

To recap, on Wednesday night, The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump was expected to announce major tariffs on aluminum and steel on Thursday, a development that apparently caught administration officials completely off guard. Though Trump has been itching to start a trade war since he announced his candidacy for president, virtually all of his advisers, outside the truly batshit insane ones, strongly advised against such punitive measures, as they could ultimately hurt many U.S. allies and provoke retaliation by U.S. trading partners, among other terrible consequences. During a June meeting with his Cabinet to discuss the issue, a whopping 22 people were said to be against Trump’s wishes, to the three who weren’t: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, then-senior adviser Steve Bannon, and Trump himself. Unhappy that more people weren’t on his side, Trump reportedly screamed, “I want tariffs. And I want someone to bring me some tariffs!”

With Bannon’s departure, there was a thought that sheer numbers, if not sanity, would prevail. In addition to Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have all strenuously argued against the tariffs, warning that they could hurt the global economy, damage key relationships, and threaten national security. That was obviously wishful thinking, though, given that 1) when Trump gets an idea in his head, no matter how dumb it is, he doesn’t let it go, and 2) the president has recently been taking the advice of Peter Navarro, a hard-line trade adviser who makes Bannon look like a “globalist cuck.” (For reference, Navarro wrote a book called Death by China, has encouraged Trump to go after freaking Canada, and thinks the North American Free Trade Agreement is responsible for an increase in spousal abuse, divorce, and infertility.) Considering Navarro’s growing influence in the White House, in retrospect it probably shouldn’t have come as a shock that this afternoon, this happened:

President Trump said on Thursday that he will impose stiff and sweeping tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum as he moved to fulfill a key campaign promise to get tough on foreign competitors. Mr. Trump said he would formally sign the trade measures next week and promised they would be in effect “for a long period of time.” The trade measures would impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. It is unclear whether those would apply to all imports or be targeted toward specific countries, like China, which have been flooding the United States with cheap metals.

The announcement capped a frenetic and chaotic morning inside the White House as Mr. Trump summoned more than a dozen executives from the steel and aluminum industry to the White House, raising expectations that he would announce his long-promised tariffs. However, the legal review of the trade measure was not yet complete and, as of Thursday morning, White House advisers were still discussing various scenarios for tariff levels and which countries could be included, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

It’s hard to overstate how bad of an idea this is. In addition to going against the advice of nearly all of his advisers and most people on Capitol Hill, essentially flipping off the World Trade Organization, and likely alienating important allies, the “JOBS JOBS JOBS” president is putting countless “JOBS” at risk in sectors like the automotive industry that obviously rely on aluminum and steel to manufacture their products. (According Axios’s Jonathan Swan, a report put out by Wilbur “wake me when the meeting is over” Ross that recommended imposing tariffs enraged Cohn because it didn’t factor in such collateral damage. Cohn and other staffers were also reportedly irked by the fact that the report suggested Trump’s fantasy of a manufacturing Renaissance could come true, when everyone knows it’s never gonna happen.)

To give you an idea of how unpopular today’s announcement was, even the Brothers Koch have come out against it, calling the tariffs, via their Americans for Prosperity mouthpiece, “a misguided approach that will hurt American businesses and families by increasing costs and undermining the tax relief just delivered by Congress and President Trump.” Larry Kudlow, whose name as been floated as a possible replacement for Cohn, and who is a huge fan of Trump’s, slammed the move, too, saying “All that will happen with steel tariffs is you will raise prices for all import users and that includes businesses and of course consumers. You will wind up hurting millions of people to help 140,000 people in the steel industry.” But don’t take their word for it. Here’s how Trump’s favorite metric responded:

(For those of you who are not visual learners, what we’re saying is: the Dow plunged 550 points on the news, closing the day down more than 400 points. For a stock-market obsessed president, that’s gotta hurt.)

Scott Pruitt, risking his life, will fly coach

Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruittcame under fire for routinely flying first or business class when coach would have sufficed. His excuse? That “we live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment,” and one time someone went up to him in the airport and uttered completely factual statements to his face. From there on out, his security detail decided that flying at the back of the plane was too much of a risk, and that Pruitt’s safety could only be ensured in the part of the aircraft where the booze is on the house. Today, however, this hugely brave American announced that those days are over.

During an interview with CBS News, Pruitt said that he has told his security detail “to accommodate those security threats in alternate ways . . . up to and including, flying coach going forward.”

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Get “The Levin Report” full version here https://tinyletter.com/besslevin/archive

Perhaps showing why we have the Trump “Clownocracy” in the first place, some Dems actually enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s idiotic move. As the late great Casey Stengel might have said, “Can’t anyone here play this game?” Guys, we need steel and aluminum, and we import one heck of a lot more than we make. Even an “economic dummy” like me knows that. So, a trade war that hurts American consumers and manufacturers who use steel and aluminum is going to be a big loser for us. Countries like ours that are, and almost certainly always will be, net importers rather than exporters can’t afford trade wars (particularly with our, perhaps soon to be former, “friends” like Canada & the EU)!

Finally, a “too bizarre not to be true rumor” sweeping the “world of inside the Beltway punditry” is that “Don the Con Man” will fire “Mr. Magoo” (a/k/a “Gonzo Apolyptco,” a/k/a “Jeff Sessions”) and temporarily replace him with the ethically challenged Scott “First Class” Pruitt for long enough to completely dismantle the Justice Department and our system of justice just as he did with our environment and the EPA. Talk about the “GOP Wrecking Crew” and the not-so-smart minority of folks who voted them into power. Vladi must be laughing his tail off!

PWS

03-02-18

SESSIONS FAILS IN BID TO BE NAMED “CABINET’S WORST” — FINISHES IN DEAD HEAT FOR RUNNER-UP WITH EPA’S PRUITT — DE VOS JUST “TOO BAD TO LOSE!”

Sports fans, I thought I had this one pegged for sure! Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions was an early favorite in the NY Times/Gail Collins Reader’s Poll Competition for “Worst Cabinet Member.” And, to be honest, I didn’t see any way he could blow this one (after all, it’s not like having to remember whether you met the Russian Ambassador a few months ago) despite the undeniably fierce and well-unqualified competition. But, in the end, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wouldn’t be denied; she “out-worsted” the field. I have to admit that I had underestimated her worst characteristics (although not by much). Still, as pointed out below, timing could have hurt Sessions’s bid.

Collins reports:

“It was a hard-fought race, people. But the results of our Worst Trump Cabinet Member reader poll are in.

And the winner is — Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos!

With a near tie for second place between Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “It’s hard to be worse than Sessions or Pruitt. But DeVos deals with … children,” wrote a Michigan reader.

DeVos really hates public schools — something you don’t find often in a secretary of education. Her goal seems to be replacing them with charter schools, none of which will need much oversight because, you know, the choice thing.

Many readers noted that our secretary of education does not seem to be … all that bright. (“DeVos is a solid choice based on irony alone.”)

But I can’t help thinking Sessions might have taken the prize if his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee had gone on just a little longer. He clearly wowed viewers with his alleged inability to remember things. (“Wins by a Pinocchio.”) Some were taken by his resemblance to a bad hobbit or gremlin (“malevolent pixie”). But others simply found Sessions … bad. (“He is detestable and should have little tiny horns on the back of his head.”)

. . . .

Let’s be extremely clear that this was not a scientific survey. In fact, it was pretty hard to get any count at all since many readers couldn’t resist the temptation to take the easy route and pick all of the above. (“I’ve seen better cabinets at Ikea.”) Or to name five. Or to complain that selecting one Worst was too hard. (“Trying to pick a winner from this bunch is like trying to knit a sweater with wet spaghetti.”)

It’s not that everyone was negative — there were a few kind words for James Mattis, the secretary of defense, and some mixed reviews on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But a lot of folks still seem to be in a state of trauma over that big meeting President Trump called last week, in which the cabinet members tried to one-up each other in the fulsomeness of their praise for their commander in chief. (“That cabinet meeting looked like one of those cheap TV ads you see where people praise a tomato slicer. …”)

Unfortunately, we couldn’t count the Worst Cabinet Member votes that were given to somebody who wasn’t actually in the cabinet. Donald Trump cannot get the prize. Nor can Jared or Ivanka or Omarosa. Also we cannot name Eric Trump’s wedding planner, even though she has just been named to one of the top jobs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

One reader was unnerved by rumors that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, after having finished wrecking his state’s economy, is now in line for a federal job and asked if he could be nominated Worst in advance.

Special tip of the hat to readers who chose Rick Perry. I have to admit I didn’t even mention him when I wrote the column proposing the Worst vote-off. But a number nominated him, generally pointing to the fact that when Perry took the job, he was unaware that the Department of Energy’s main responsibility was tending the nation’s nuclear arsenal, not traveling the world to boost the sale of American oil and gas.

Just as balloting came to a close, Perry gave an interview on CNBC in which he downplayed carbon dioxide’s role in global warming, explaining that “most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”

This is a man who just keeps on campaigning. Plus, as one correspondent noted, if Perry ever won the Worst award “his acceptance speech would be epic.”

We saw a lot of votes for Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, for his heroic efforts to ruin national health care and the social safety net. And Ben Carson got a surprising amount of support, considering that we barely ever hear about him doing anything. One reader was apparently won over by the painting the secretary of housing and urban development has in his home, showing Jesus with his arm around Ben Carson.

But DeVos is definitely our Worst Cabinet winner. For now. Do you think we should do this every few months? And what should the award look like? Anything’s possible. After all, we’ve got another three and a half years.”

You can read Collin’s entire piece (I “shorted” the coverage of Scott Pruitt) at this link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/opinion/betsy-devos-trump-worst-cabinet-member.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20170622&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=1&nlid=79213886&ref=headline&te=1

If Trump doesn’t fire him or force him to resign first, I think Gonzo has a realistic shot at destroying the entire U.S. legal system that it has taken us more than 200 years to build and putting half our population in privately run prisons or detention centers to boot. Now, that would have to make him the hands-down “winner!”

PWS

06-22-17

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