It's hard to imagine the Orwellian atmosphere inside Federal agencies, where career staff are being asked to adopt alternative facts and lie for their new overlords in the administration of demagogue and nihilist Donald "Rump" Trump. Rump has made a point of undercutting or terminating every initiative by President Obama that he can lay his little fingers on, largely out of envy and vindictiveness. The first sign was to appoint people to executive positions that were either totally unqualified (we're seeing through your "smart" glasses Rick "Oops" Perry) or were opponents of the agencies they were appointed to head. A prominent example of the latter is fossil industry shill EPA Administrator Scott "Screw It" Pruitt, who was an EPA nemesis when he was Oklahoma's Attorney General, suing the EPA some 14 times.
Employees of the EPA -- long time careerists and scientists dedicated to its mission -- have been appalled at the ham-fisted, pro-industry approach of Pruitt to eliminating regulations carefully researched and written to protect America's air and water. ProPublica takes a look inside the EPA's Office of Water, and it portrays employees struggling to fight the polluting headwinds of Pruitt:
"Since Trump was elected, dozens of environmental rules have been either opened for reconsideration or overturned altogether. These regulations would have had far-ranging effects, from banning hazardous pesticides and offshore oil drilling to stopping coal-mining debris from being dumped into local streams to forbidding hunters from shooting Alaskan wolves on wildlife refuges. They would have required infrastructure projects to be built to higher flood standards and greenhouse gas emissions to be limited and tracked."Pruitt's actions on the rule for effluents promise real damage to water quality and people's health, while it rewards a handful of big coal polluters:
"Longtime staffers and environmental experts say it is an instance in which science and prevailing industry practices were swept aside to benefit a handful of coal-fired power plants that were having trouble meeting the new standards. [snip] Many of the rules were years or even decades in the making, and the sheer speed with which they’ve been cast aside has left the EPA staffers who helped craft them shaken."Pruitt's secretive, non-participatory style applies to the public, not to fossil and extraction industry lobbyists, however:
"Since taking the administrator post, it’s been reported that he’s given lobbyists broad access and appointed people to key jobs who have close ties to the industries they are overseeing."Perhaps that "access" to lobbyists is why Pruitt had a soundproof room built in his office. You know, to conduct the public's business.
UPDATE: Not all is lost, though. Some are resisting.
