It is official: Scott Pruitt is no longer EPA Administrator!

The day we've been waiting for, ever since Pruitt was confirmed as head of Trump's EPA seventeen months ago, finally came to pass.  Thursday, July 5, Scott Pruitt resigned from the TEPA and The Donald accepted his resignation via Twitter (of course.)

The Donald promised many times during his campaign to 'drain the swamp' but brought his own brand of sewer rats, bottom feeders and sycophants to Washington.  When he proposed Pruitt to head the EPA, we all knew what was  going on.  The  Donald wanted to dismantle the EPA, something else he was very vocal about during his campaign.  Pruitt had sued the EPA fourteen times as Oklahoma's Attorney General, so it was obvious protecting the environment was not  on his agenda. 

He was confirmed easily and from Day 1 began rolling back protections for the nation's clean water.  Soon it was rolling back or  eliminating controls for clean air, clean soil and clean energy.  Despite all the data provided to show the climate is changing, Pruitt insisted it was a hoax and tried to remove all documents from EPA's website that showed research on climate change and global warming.

However, another battle may have just begun. Andrew Wheeler, EPA deputy administrator, is poised to move into Pruitt's throne and he's about as bad as Pruitt.




https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/05/scott-pruitt-removes-his-ethical-swamp-epa-editorials-debates/761701002/

The Top Ten Worst Things The Donald has done his first year

Marc Thiessen, of the Oklahoma Editorial Board, was really scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with the 10 best things The Donald has done in his first year.  He must be trying to appear as a "glass half full" type instead of "head up his ass" type. What’s really disturbing (but not surprising) is some of the ‘best things’ are not good at all, and border on catastrophic.  Look at Thiessen’s list:

10: Enforced President Obama’s line against Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

9: He has taken a surprisingly tough line with Russia.

8: He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

7: He withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement.  Approved the Keystone XL pipeline and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for exploration.

6: He got NATO allies to kick in $12 billion toward our collective security.

5: He has virtually eliminated the Islamic State’s physical caliphate.

4. He admitted he was wrong he was wrong on Afghanistan.

3. He enacted historic tax and regulatory reform that has unleashed economic growth.

2. He is installing conservative judges who will preside for decades.

1. He was inaugurated president, not Hillary Clinton.

I came up with my own Top 10 list for the Donald’s first year:

Ten Worst Things:

10.  He tried (and failed) to keep transgendered people from serving in the military.  Coming from a strict non-military background, The Donald has no business to tell someone they cannot serve in the military.

9. Seventeen of our (i.e. United States) intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia interfered with our election, the base of our democratic society, and The Donald and his cronies were in on it from the beginning.  Instead of investigating Russia, The Donald ordered an investigation of the U.S. voters.

8: He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.  So four previous presidents said they would and didn’t.  This move, which has been condemned by every single one of our allies, just further alienates us from the rest of the world.

7. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, approved the Keystone XL pipeline and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for exploration.  He has been a denier of climate change forever, although everyone else in the world (the U.S. is the only country that is not participating in the Paris Climate Agreement).  This spells doom for our global environment, endangered species and the health of all Earthlings. 

6. He fired the entire HIV/AIDS Council.  This is a serious blow to anyone, not just the LGBT community, suffering from AIDS.

5. Since his inauguration, he has increasingly tried to demonize ALL Muslims, with his travel bans against countries (with no terrorists), and ignoring countries with terrorists.  He posted the controversial youtube videos showing violence against Muslims.

4. Obama halted the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2015. Not The Donald.

3. He has told more lies, he has taken more vacation, and done less in his first year than any other president.

2. He LOST the popular vote and he got mad.  He cheated by having Russia interfere with the election and gave it to him.  Russia and the KKK all got who they wanted for President.  The majority of Americans did not.

1. He appointed Scott Pruitt, a non-scientist, climate-change denier, global warming denier, as Administrator to the Environmental Protection Agency.  Since Pruitt has been confirmed (by the GOP), he has systematically reversed or delayed every regulation that protects our clean air, clean water and clean soil.  He has removed all the scientists and replaced them with industry representatives, who have no interest in protecting our environment.

There are many other significant achievements that did not make the top 10.

Our environment is doomed...Pruitt's war on the environment in a nutshell

What he says:	What he does:
Pruitt and the TEPA are seeking to reduce the EPA’s funding by 31.4 and eliminate up to one fifth of the staff.	He is spending $25,000 on a soundproof “privacy booth” in his office.  His round-the-clock security detail has cost $830,000 for his first 3 months on the job, double the amount of his predecessors.  He spent 43 out of 92 days from March – May traveling between Oklahoma and DC.  He spent $36,068.50 to fly on a military jet to and from Cincinnati in June.
Pruitt has accused the Obama administration for failing to protect the environment.	He has tried to ease restrictions on methane releases.  He tried to reject banning a harmful pesticide.  He and the TEPA are trying to eliminate the Waters of the US rule, which is part of the Clean Water Act.  He has repeatedly denied the change in climate despite the mountains of data showing it is real.  Pruitt and The Donald have removed the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-pruitt-spending-epa_us_59cc2a95e4b05063fe0ef9b3

Government scientists "leak" a climate change report before Trump can bury it

The New York Times received a draft of a report from government scientists providing data that we're feeling the effects of global warming right now.  The scientists made the draft public in fear that The Donald and his WH staff might try to bury it.

The report states:  “Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,”

This contradicts...nay, it PROVES that The Donald's and Pruitt's "beliefs" do not hold up in the face of cold hard facts.  The current administration has long denied that global warming and climate changes exists.

They don't have proof.  They just don't believe it.  Disputing it does not mean it is wrong, fellas!

The NYT article addresses the authors citing thousands of studies by tens of thousands of scientists have documented climate changes.  I learned of global warming and the greenhouse effect in the late 1970's.

“Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change,” the scientists wrote in their draft.

Pruitt said in March  “No, I would not agree that [carbon dioxide is] a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

Again, no proof, just a statement.  

The EPA and 12 other agencies have until August 18 to approve the report, but it's no small stretch of the imagination that Pruitt and The Donald will try to kill it.  Or edit it to leave out the global warming stuff.

Kinda like W. back in 2003,  when he ordered WH officials to edit a similar report by the EPA and deleted all the data on climate change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-report-draft-nyt_us_598907ece4b0a66b8bae1fc6?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=__TheMorningEmail__080817&utm_content=__TheMorningEmail__080817+CID_10ffcfa282b1476041611456cad67004&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=HuffPost&ncid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__080817
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/climate/climate-change-drastic-warming-trump.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/19/us/report-by-epa-leaves-out-data-on-climate-change.html

Oklahoman Editorial Board contradicts itself in supporting Pruitt

Once again, the medieval mindset at the Oklahoman Editorial Board, its lips firmly pressed against Scott Pruitt's backside, decries the evils of science in favor of profits for the rich.  In an editorial posted yesterday on Newsok.com, the OEB said citizens should "welcome" the changes at the EPA.  In  a typical narcissistic tone, they call opposition to the change "hysterical" and sending people into shock.  It's bullying tactic to call the opposition names.  And it's  childish.

It accuses the EPA of destroying businesses and ignoring important issues  such as Superfund sites.  True to fashion, the OEB did not offer  any examples of business that were destroyed by the EPA.  Which businesses were they?  Or does the OEB make up numbers like Pruitt. (Has anyone figured out where those 50,000 new jobs are?)

The example they do provide is for the Superfund site, saying the EPA has scandalously ignored this issue.  The EPA hasn't ignored it, fellas!  It's been bogged  down and delayed by bureaucratic red tape and corporations refusing to pay to clean up the messes they have made.  

Also, don't you think global warming and climate change  is a pressing issue, too?  Oh...right.  More of that science-y stuff.

The OEB goes on to say "fringe groups have threatened to file endless lawsuits to block the reforms now underway."  The National Resources Defense Council can hardly be described as a 'fringe group'.  They have filed lawsuits to keep industries from dumping mercury into our water and to keep pesticides from our environment.  

I  don't know about you but I tend to appreciate clean air and clean water.

But the best part of  the article:

Thanks to replacing coal with gas in generation of electricity, Pruitt noted, the United States is “leading the world” in reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

This is credit to President Obama, not Pruitt, who has been pushing hard to roll back regulations on the coal industry, who has been touting all the new jobs in the coal industry. 

No, guys!  You owe the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions  to the man you love to hate!

Read the article here:
http://newsok.com/citizens-should-welcome-epa-changes/article/5558350

Newsok columnist Wingerter sucks up to Pruitt - WTF?

Justin Wingerter's post in Newsok.com today demonstrates a blind, uncompromising loyalty to Scott Pruitt, thinking that all this talk about the EPA administrator is exciting!  But even the first paragraph is enough to make someone seriously ill.  Any one with a brain, at least.  Wingerter sounds like a star-struck teenaged girl facing her teen idol.

Listen to this obsequious drivel:

"Critics and supporters of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt have found common ground in their shared belief that the former Oklahoma attorney general is operating with an efficiency and zeal beyond that of his predecessors."

I have yet to hear any of his critics use the terms 'efficiency' in describing his policies.  'Zeal' maybe, but not in a good way.  His 'zeal' is taking apart the EPA so oil and gas industries can pollute the environment with impunity.  This does not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the process from becoming The Donald's nominee to somehow (God only knows) getting appointed.


Al Armendariz, a former regional EPA administrator stated: “I'm not aware there's ever been an environmental administrator with an agenda to roll back environmental regulations one after another.”

We've never had a pretender-in-chief so hellbent on destroying the environment.  The Donald put Pruitt there for  the sole purpose of dismantling the EPA.

Back in March, Pruitt denied a ban on chlorpyrifos, after a study from the USDA questioned EPA's methodology and mistaken conclusions that it is unsafe.  According to FactCheck.org, there are some questions about the EPA study, but claims stronger data and conclusions come from the November 2016 report from Columbia  Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University.

How convenient that Wingerter's post left out the citation for the USDA's study.  FactCheck.org, on the other hand, listed 27 references, USDA not included.

It's been clear for a while that Pruitt is hostile  to the EPA while getting on his knees in the oil and gas industries, criticizing the EPA for its policies to protect our air and our water.  Pruitt is out to line  his pockets with the help of oil and gas.

“I'll do it as long as the Lord calls me to and as long as the president wants me to do it,” Pruitt said.

God help us all!

http://newsok.com/scott-pruitt-talks-epa-pesticides-and-future-elections/article/5558202
http://www.factcheck.org/2017/04/the-facts-on-chlorpyrifos/
   (and references therein).

The Oklahoman Editorial Board: Science leads to dark paths!

We can always count on the Neanderthals on the Oklahoman Editorial Board to provide us with a good laugh every now and then.  An opinion published July 20 was titled: “In policy, debates, bowing to “science” can lead down dark paths.”

The opening sentence states that the use of “science” is an intellectually offensive tactic of some activists to stifle debate.  Reading through the opinion, the Oklahoman Editorial Board talks about how the eugenics, or ethnic cleansing, was declared a science by then associate surgeon general Dr. W. C. Rucker of the U.S. Public Health Service.  The article proceeds to demonstrate how this set a precedence for sterilization of inmates in prisons and mental asylum.  It was even perpetuated into the 1970’s when American Indian women were sterilized at an OKC federal facility.

Read this quote from the article:

“It took the Nazi Holocaust to discredit eugenics. Before then, critics were dismissed as backward, anti-science zealots.”

Leave it to the Oklahoma Editorial Board to say the Holocaust was good for something.  As typical, the OEB does not cite any references that one can follow to read more about these subjects.  What did Rucker show as his evidence to support his eugenics?  Did other doctors or scientists support his findings?  The article does not say.  It implies that once Rucker made his declaration, the rest of the country followed like mindless rats seduced to follow the Pied Piper.

Rather than give other examples of “science leading us to the Dark Side”, the OEB latches on to this one thread and doesn’t let go, as if feeling the need to beat it into our brains to make the point.  And all the examples are limited to Oklahoma.

The intro to the second to last paragraph is the most worrisome and chilling, that this board has a voice that is reaching out to the mindless rats:

“Science is one thing.  People’s interpretation of science is something else.”  Then, “policy proposals based on debatable interpretations of science should certainly be debated.” 

Didn’t they warn us at the beginning about debates with science? 

Although never specified in the article, one can read between the lines and see the inference to the present “debate” over global warming.  Never fans of science, Gov. Failing, Pruitt and other Republicans, in Oklahoma and nation-wide deny climate change and global warming vehemently.  They cling to their faith and beliefs and shun the evils of science. 

Scientists can be wrong, which is why we have peer reviews.  Nobody is ‘debating’ the issue of climate change, i.e. no one has presented data to show our climate is NOT changing.  NASA and NOAA have submitted decades of data that have been researched and reviewed by both sides of the debate and have reached one conclusion: Earth is warming up. 

The OEB has a point that one cannot take one person’s word as proof.  Yes, got it.  We went to a dark place then.  But that has changed.  We’re in the 21^st century now, guys.  People are watching each other like Orwellian Big Brothers.  It’s okay to be skeptical but not to be obstinate and suspicious.

http://newsok.com/in-policy-debates-bowing-to-science-can-lead-down-dark-paths/article/5556929

Rick Perry is as stupid and greedy as Scott Pruitt and The Donald

The Donald's plan to gut the EPA, and roll back any regulation that protects our clean air and clean water is well on its way.  By appointing nay-sayers to the right positions, he can eliminate any and all barriers to his own oil and gas interests.  This was made clear when he appointed Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier with absolutely no experience in science, to head the EPA.  He also appointed ex-governor of Texas Rick Perry (a Bush flunkee) as Energy Secretary.

Like Pruitt, Perry is a global-warming denier and wasted no time in proving his ineptitude and plain ol' stupidness.  He said earlier this week he does not "believe" carbon dioxide from human activities is a main contributor to climate change.  As if he hadn't emphasized his lack of education enough, he went on to blame climate change on the oceans:

According to AP reporter Matthew Daly:

Asked on CNBC's "Squawk Box" whether carbon emissions are primarily responsible for climate change, Perry said no, adding that"most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in."

So the "good ol' boy" train rolls along.  We've known for a while that Pruitt has been on his knees among the oil and gas industries, but now we find out who's been hanging it out for him.  Or maybe Perry's on his knees, too.  Both of them have a reason to poison the environment:  to make more money!  

Just like The Donald!

Perry also said skepticism is a sign of being a "wise, intellectually engaged person."  That might be correct, Perry, but in your case, it's a sign of being a total moron.

http://newsok.com/article/feed/1275120

Trump proposes 93% cut to Chesapeake Bay clean up program

In another reversal from his campaign rhetoric, The Donald has proposed a 93% budget cut to the Chesapeake Bay Program, a six-state effort with Washington, DC to clean up the largest estuary in the country.  That would mean a budget of $73M to $5M.  It supports a lucrative fishing industry as well as a favorite tourist destination.

As early as last Tuesday, Trump vowed “to promote clean air and clear water” but he also promised to create jobs.  Not only is he putting clean air and clean water in jeopardy, he is proposing cutting 3000 jobs at the EPA.  He has no plans to keep his promises.

Remember that Scott Pruitt is from Oklahoma, and has no knowledge of how to keep such a large body of water free from pollution.  This could set  clean-up efforts back years.


http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/blog/bs-md-trump-epa-budget-20170302-story.html
http://www.dailypress.com/news/science/dp-nws-bay-budget-slashed-20170302-story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2017/live-updates/trump-white-house/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-trumps-address-to-congress/trump-vows-clean-air-and-clean-water-as-epa-cuts-loom/?utm_term=.6a9c64626d75

Hey, Inhofe! Where's that snowball this month?

We all remember when Republican Senator Jim Inhofe threw a snowball on the floor of the Senate, February 15, 2015, to "demonstrate" there was no such thing as global warming and to argue against President Obama's initiatives to curb human-related climate change.

February 2017 will be one of the warmest on record in the Baltimore/Washington DC area with very little snowfall.

How will Inhofe ever explain that?

.

Inhofe (R-OK): Dumber than Mary Failing?

Doc Hoc of the blog Okie Funk reported that the week before last, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma went on the radio and proved to the listeners just how stupid he is.  The reason Inhofe is anti-education is because he thinks students are "being brainwashed" in our schools with all that sciencey stuff and those "fact" things.  He still manages to cling to his uneducated notion that global warming is a hoax, despite tons of data from NASA, NOAA and other scientists around the world.

He even wrote a book which has not been well-received, and in it he can't explain why we should believe a stupid, uneducated senator and not the thousands of experts on the subject.  As if he wasn't getting through to enough people, he brought a snowball to the Senate floor in February 2015 and threw it to prove there was no such thing as global warming.

I don't know who is dumber - Inhofe or Failing.  Perhaps they're auditioning for "Dumb and Dumber 3"?

http://okiefunk.com/content/right-question
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/26/3802201/inhofe-granddaughter-climate-understanding/
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/04/3629466/snowball-inhofe-meet-the-press-climate/