Once again, I point out that, maybe, confirming a guy to head the EPA who was at the time of his nomination and confirmation suing the agency he was designated to lead, might not have been the greatest idea in the history of government. (Senator Edward Markey gets credit for this bit of wisdom.) And while it is true that Scott Pruitt is doing everything in that job that he was hired to do—deregulating clean air, clean water, and entire species out of existence while crippling the EPA’s most basic scientific functions—he’s doing it in such a corrupt and farcical manner that even the ethics officers down at Camp Runamuck are expressing concern.

The promiscuous use of government aircraft. The sweet $50-per-night condo deal he got from an energy industry lobbyist. His bizarre (and very expensive) demands for security measures that this week took a very weird turn in that Pruitt now seems to be drawing his notions concerning his protection from the sitcoms of the 1960s.

First, he ordered up a new government SUV with seats that apparently were designed similarly to Jethro Bodine’s old double-naught spy hat. From The Washington Post via The Hill:

The new car was ordered last May and cost the government $10,200 for a one-year lease, according to federal spending records. Records show that EPA requested upgrades to the vehicle which included Wi-Fi, GPS navigation, second-row bucket seats and a leather interior. The upgrades were an additional $300 per month. Pruitt wanted the larger car because it was similar to those used by other Cabinet officials, a former EPA official told the Post. The official said that the bulletproof seats, made of the same kevlar used in bulletproof vests, was approved by the head of Pruitt’s security detail, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta. The covers cost hundreds of dollars, according to the source.

This, of course, was on top of the revelation that Pruitt also had arranged for a Cone of Silence not unlike that employed at CONTROL HQ, at least if The New York Times is accurate.

The E.P.A. said the secure phone booth was necessary “to make and receive phone calls and to discuss sensitive information, including classified telephone calls up to the top secret level.” The agency paid about $24,000 for the phone booth and more than $20,000 to install a drop ceiling, remove closed-circuit television equipment and pour concrete around the booth, according to agency contracts.

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This $43,000 gimcrack, alas, was not legal, at least according to the GAO, and is of a piece with Pruitt’s general approach to federal public service, which can be best summed up by the ancient political maxim, “Me some too, yes?”



In a separate report Monday, the E.P.A.’s inspector general published records showing that Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff signed off on hires and thousands of dollars in raises for political appointees under a provision of a clean water law. That report was part of an ongoing audit of salaries and hiring practices at the agency.

Of course, the entire Interior Department seems to be dedicated to allowing private interests to gorge on public lands while its officials go up to their elbows in the public trough. This goes right up to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. From CBS News:

A report by Interior's inspector general said Zinke's use of a chartered flight after he spoke to a National Hockey League team in Las Vegas "might have been avoided" if Interior employees had worked with the team to accommodate Zinke's schedule. Zinke and four Interior Department staffers flew on a private plane from Las Vegas to his home state of Montana in June 2017. Zinke has said no commercial flight was available for the late-night flight that allowed him to deliver a speech to Western governors the next day in Whitefish, Montana. Zinke, a former Montana congressman, was in Las Vegas to speak to the Vegas Golden Knights, the city's new National Hockey League team. The team's owner, Bill Foley, contributed to Zinke's congressional campaigns.

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Well, despoiling the natural wilderness is hard damn work, as the NYT reminds us, and a fella needs his rest while traveling, especially when you’re working hard to despoil only the natural wilderness far from where you live.

In the last year, Mr. Zinke has torn up Obama-era rules related to oil, gas and mineral extraction and overseen the largest reduction of federal land protection in the nation’s history, including an effort to slash the size of Bears Ears National Monument. But here in Montana, where support for drilling in certain beloved areas can be a career killer, Mr. Zinke has struck a different note. And as he faces allegations that he has violated travel and ethics rules, an examination of his Interior Department record shows that his pro-development bent has not always applied to his home state, where he is viewed as a fiercely ambitious candidate for future office. In the past year, Mr. Zinke has halted the sale of oil and gas leases near Yellowstone National Park, opposed gold mining in that area, and urged the president to protect one national monument, Montana’s Upper Missouri River Breaks, while creating another, the Badger-Two Medicine, just miles from his childhood home.

Alas for Alaska, Zinke doesn’t live there, which is why Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers want to go full speed ahead on the massive Pebble Mine project, an extraction extravaganza that will endanger the Bristol Bay watershed, which is only the richest salmon fishery on the planet. It not only feeds the world, but it is vital to the life of the various Native communities in and around the bay. The fight by Alaskan environmentalists against this looming potential catastrophe has been strong and, just this month, both state environmental officials and U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski were able to get the Corps of Engineers to extend the public-comment period on the project by two months.

There's something of a dark irony in turning the Interior Department into an open sewer of greed and corruption. It is consistent with the entire administration*, which is run at the top by a conspicuous glutton. There are seven deadly sins. Gluttony is one of them. I’d say we have a clean sweep, probably the only clean thing involved in this whole mess.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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