Friends of the Earth & Charles P. Pierce / Esquire Magazine – 2018-07-06 00:51:00
Special to Environmentalists Against War
Victory for the Planet:
Scott Pruitt Resigns from the EPA after Onslaught of Scandals!
Friends of the Earth
WASHINGTON (July 5, 2018) — VICTORY! Scott Pruitt just resigned from his job as EPA Administrator.
The scandals surrounding Pruitt have been building for months. Sweet deals on rent in a lobbyist’s condo. Over $150,000 in taxpayer money wasted on luxury travel. Building a private phone booth in EPA headquarters. Meeting with Big Oil executives instead of scientists. Giving hundreds of thousands of dollars in special raises to his favorite staff — in direct contravention of White House rules and guidelines.
But Friends of the Earth members like you amplified those scandals and made them impossible for Trump to ignore. Pruitt resigned after you signed petitions, made phone calls, and took to social media to demand that he be kicked out of the EPA.
This shows that when people like you stand up to Trump and his Administration, you can make a difference. You can stop them from destroying our environment.
Forcing Pruitt out of the EPA is a huge victory for people and the environment. Pruitt has done everything he can to destroy our environmental protections. And until the scandals caught up to him, he was dangerously effective at it.
What’s more, Pruitt was rumored to have bigger political ambitions. His name was being circulated as a potential replacement if Trump fires Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And the New York Times even speculated that he could have his eye on the White House.
By kicking Pruitt out of the EPA, you helped send a strong message that it’s unacceptable for our leaders to put the fossil fuel industry and other corporate interests ahead of people and the planet. And you are helping prevent Pruitt from doing any more damage in future positions.
Trump is still trying to fill his government with anti-science extremists and climate deniers. Pruitt’s potential replacement — coal industry crony Andrew Wheeler — could be confirmed by the Senate any day now. Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is also mired in corruption and continues to attack our public lands.
We’ll need you with us every step of the way as we work to stop these dangerous nominees and appointees. But this shows that when we all take action together, we win.
Thank you for helping build a better future for our country and our planet.
Standing with you,
Lukas Ross, Climate and energy campaigner, Friends of the Earth
I Hope They Made Scott Pruitt
Turn Out His Pockets
Charles P. Pierce / Esquire
(July 5, 2018) — I have to admit, while watching the preposterous nomination of Scott Pruitt to be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, I knew he was being put in the job not to do the job. That’s been Republican practice going back to Ronald Reagan, who put Anne Gorsuch in charge of the EPA for roughly the same reasons and with roughly the same results. (Her son, of course, will now afflict us from the Supreme Court for decades.)
I expected the environmental calamity, the wholesale sell-off of our public lands, and the rolling back of the regulations that protected the air and the water. Even the climate denial came as no surprise. That was what he was getting paid to do.
What I didn’t anticipate was that Pruitt also would turn out to be so enthusiastic about gobbling at the public trough. (Borrowing your aides’ credit cards to book rooms and then not paying them back? That’s some first class deadbeatery right there.)
It appears now that there’s only room for one first-class deadbeat and grifter in this administration. From The New York Times:
Mr. Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built his career on lawsuits against the agency he would eventually lead, remained a favorite of Mr. Trump’s for the majority of his tenure at the EPA.
He began the largest regulatory rollback in the agency’s history, undoing, delaying or blocking several Obama-era environmental rules. Among them was a suite of historic regulations aimed at mitigating global warming pollution from the United States’ vehicles and power plants.
Mr. Pruitt also played a lead role in urging Mr. Trump to follow through on his campaign pledge towithdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, despite warnings from some of the president’s other senior advisers that the move could damage the United States’ credibility in foreign policy. Under the landmark accord, nearly every country had committed to reducing emissions of planet-warming fossil fuel pollution.
That was his real job and he did it well enough to ride through an incredible array of scandals, most of them the kind of penny-ante greed that would embarrass Scott Walker, who is the master of that form. Pruitt did most of what he was hired to do and now he’s going to be replaced by Andrew Wheeler, who used to be a coal lobbyist.
The lasting damage will continue to be done. Anyway, I hope they locked up the office supply closet before they canned Scott Pruitt, or at least made him empty his pockets on the way out the door.
P.S.: Here is Pruitt’s letter of resignation. If we had a functioning EPA, it would be a SuperFund site:
Mr. President, it has been an honor to serve you in the Cabinet as Administrator of the EPA. Truly, your confidence in me has blessed me personally and enabled me to advance your agenda beyond what anyone anticipated at the beginning of your Administration.
Your courage, steadfastness and resolute commitment to get results for the American people, both with regard to improved environmental outcomes as well as historical regulatory reform, is in fact occurring at an unprecedented pace and I thank you for the opportunity to serve you and the American people in helping achieve those ends.
That is why is hard for me to advise you I am stepping down as Administrator of the EPA effective as of July 6. It is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role first because I count it a blessing to be serving you in any capacity, but also, because of the transformative work that is occurring. However, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.
My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people. I believe you are serving as President today because of God’s providence. I believe that same providence brought me into your service. I pray as I have served you that I have blessed you and enabled you to effectively lead the American people. Thank you again Mr. President for the honor of serving you and I wish you Godspeed in all that you put your hand to.
Your Faithful Friend,
Scott Pruitt
A Requiem for Scott Pruitt
Gar Smith / Environmentalists Against War
No surprise here, we all knew it
EPA-pick Scotty Pruitt
was bad news, bears, but let’s review it:
Climate change? “There’s nothing to it.”
The Clean Air Act? “We must undo it.”
Clean Water law? “We can’t renew it.”
Lead in water? “Learn to chew it.”
On wilderness? “I’ll drive right through it.”
Oil and coal? “I’ll get right to it.”
Polar bears? “I won’t rescue it.”
Atomic waste? “I don’t intuit.”
Stewardship? “I shall eschew it.”
Sierra Club? “I plan to sue it.”
Your legacy? “I think I blew it.”
Our planet’s future? “Don’t care! Screw it!”
Wait! What’s that? It’s bye-bye Pruitt?
Let Trump be next or we will rue it!
