Trump and Bannon have made it perfectly clear that they intend to destroy the government. Bannon has said as much. That means that the protections we’ve voted for ourselves over the years are going to be cut out, abandoned, destroyed, and the earth salted beneath. We will suffer actual physical and monetary harm because of it. Our kids and grandchildren will be even worse off.
Scott Pruitt is the embodiment of Government-by-Vandalism. Scott Pruitt is not in the Environmental Protection business. He’s in the pollution business.
You wouldn’t appoint a serial killer as police chief. You wouldn’t hire an arsonist as fire captain. And you wouldn’t hire Scott Pruitt to protect anything but a polluter’s bottom line. He actually argued against regulating lead and mercury – saying the science was inconclusive. He could not state that the acceptable exposure to lead for children is zero — absolutely no safety whatsoever. Since the scientific literature is utterly conclusive about these, one can only surmise that the Trump administration views our injuries — poisoned kids, destroyed futures — as an acceptable cost of business. Children’s delayed development and unrealized human potential are externalized costs for profitable business.
He did not pledge to leave alone California’s tougher emissions standards, which predate creation of EPA. He refuses to recuse himself from adjudicating those very cases in which he brought suit. That’s textbook conflict of interest. He professes not to know about the effects of global warming — gosh golly well who knows what will happen — which is denial. So I have a few drinks …
He will have no scruples about either substantive matters of scientific fact, nor procedural questions like states’ rights/federalism. He’s in the business of wielding power on behalf of the moneyed, so as typical from this administration, we should expect absolutely no consistency of logic or principle. The Pruitt EPA will introduce mischief and FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) on behalf of polluters, and cripple the agency’s law-mandated work.
Compared to the huge outcry against DeVos — whose comical ineptitude and ignorance detracts nothing from her demonstrated record of actual malignity — Pruitt is a trained assassin. He exists in order to expose the public to great danger, to undo protections that have done us a great service over the last several generations; which have saved countless lives, spurred innovation and yes indeed — job growth, and saved us many billions of dollars.
This is the worst possible time for federal turnaround on carbon emissions – what we do in the next 20 years determines whether we have a planet capable of supporting human civilization, or not. (Action is urgent — which makes state action happening in MA even more important.)
Environmental protection is an absolutely fundamental role of government, every bit as critical as police protection, fire departments, and courts of law. There is no more a right to introduce toxins to the air, water, and soil, than to dump your trash and sewage on your neighbor’s lawn, or poison his water-well, or drive on the left side of the road just because you feel like it.
And no one has the right to commandeer the entire planet’s habitat for their own private, vanishingly short-term profit.
I have to wonder about people like this, who sell their souls for a little money, or just to be the bagmen for the rapaciously wealthy. What will your life amount to? is this it? Was this your idea of a good life?
All this for a little bit of money?
sco says
“All this for a little bit of money” has been going through my head a lot lately after the GOP keeps defending the administration so they can get their pet tax cuts and their industry giveaways through.