WASHINGTON—Vice-President Mike (The Choirboy) Pence has had a rough couple of weeks. By now, the fact that Pence is such a tool that you could use him to open a fire hydrant is very much a given, but he enhanced that reputation even further by standing over the casket of John McCain in the Capitol rotunda and a) lying that the president* gave a damn that McCain was dead, and b) citing "tax reform" as an essential part of McCain's legacy. In addition, there's a new book that describes in detail exactly how much wing nut Jesus Pence would like to inject into our politics. (Spoiler: Way, way, waaaayyyyy too much.) Here, from USA Today, is Pence's response to what is by now a self-evident truth.

"The Bible says count it all joy when you endure trials of many kinds," Pence told the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview excerpt released Friday. "Any time I’m criticized for my belief in Jesus Christ, I just breath a prayer of praise."

This, of course, is nonsense. Pence can believe what he wants. But he can't hand the secular government of the country over to his personal lord and savior. And, as the essential Amy Littlefield at Rewire points out, there is a lot in Pence's public service that isn't very damn Christian at all.



While there’s no way to prove it, Lopez believes these ailments, and the premature deaths of her loved ones, stem from where she has lived since infancy: an area of East Chicago, Indiana, contaminated with lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals. Some 80 percent of East Chicago, which is predominantly Black and Latino, is zoned for heavy industrial use. Factories made lead products here for decades; steel mills and oil tanks still blot the landscape. Although federal and state officials knew about lead contamination in East Chicago in the 1980s, it took until 2009 for the area surrounding the former USS Lead plant to be added to the Superfund National Priorities List of most-contaminated sites. And it took even more time for officials to act with any speed.

Part of the reason may rest with a 2011 federal report that found there was no health threat from the air, water, or soil around the Superfund site. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) cited the findings of this report when Rewire.News asked about the agency’s apparent failure to respond with urgency to the contamination. But in September 2016, Reuters found the report was based on flawed or incomplete data and was, in the words of one expert, “embarrassingly bad;” the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released a new report this August.

Enter The Choirboy.

Twelve days later, Pence flew back from North Carolina after tornadoes damaged mostly white Kokomo, Indiana. As the crisis in East Chicago spiraled into the national spotlight, he never visited the city. In December 2016, just after the election, East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland pleaded with Pence to declare a state of emergency, which Copeland said would provide state resources that were “necessary to cope with the disaster.” “We understand the devastating effects of lead and arsenic poisoning on humans, and especially on children,” Copeland wrote. “By this letter, I am imploring you to take action.”

Pence refused. In a letter to Copeland, his office outlined the steps it had taken, including supplying $200,000 in funding, and called the declaration unnecessary “given the level of coordination among federal, state and local agencies.”Pence’s successor, Republican Eric Holcomb, declared an emergency in East Chicago in February 2017, a month after he took office, ordering all state agencies to “continue developing and exploring ways to be of assistance in this matter.” East Chicago residents like Akeeshea Daniels, who has suffered from myriad health problems and had to scramble to find housing when the city evacuated the complex, still have not forgotten Pence’s absence. “I felt like when he could have done something, he didn’t do it. And it’s sad,” Daniels said. “I wouldn’t feel any safer with him being president.”

And what would an environmental story concerning this administration* be without a cameo role from the departed Scott Pruitt?

Before he resigned in a tangle of scandal, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt added the East Chicago Superfund site to a list of areas with “the greatest expected redevelopment and commercial potential.” Advocates worried his goal was to make the sites available as soon as possible for industries to pollute again. Recommendations from the EPA’s Superfund Task Force refer prominently to corporate “reuse” of polluted sites. Pruitt’s replacement, Andrew Wheeler, is a former coal industry lobbyist.

But it's The Choirboy's show here. I've scoured the gospels twice now and I can't find anything in them about neglecting your poisoned constituents. It's got to be in there somewhere.

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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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