Once upon a time, before most countries had a dedicated civil service, the loyalty of state functionaries was secured in one way — self-interest. Ancient empires sought to acquire territory in part because it allowed soldiers and commanders to loot. When countries began acquiring colonies, they empowered governors or trade companies to run them, each of whom took their cut.

That’s how it has been for most of human history. In the last century or so, the United States has tried to cut back on that, with some success — partly by emphasizing the idea that wielding power is a “public service,” and by the creation of an extensive bureaucracy that persists from year to year. But as the army of lobbyists that occupies every capital in the nation can attest, the first use of power for many people is still to make one’s self rich.

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Scott Pruitt, who as of this writing still leads the Environmental Protection Agency, understands this great truth. Pruitt, formerly the attorney general of Oklahoma, has amassed in his short time in office a wide-ranging and comic portfolio of petty grifts. The accepted way of getting rich in Washington is to play nice with special interests while in office and to go work for them after you leave. That’s what we call the “revolving door.” Pruitt’s behavior stands out because it is so audacious, so immodest, and because his schemes often stand to gain him very little money. He seems addicted simply to the feeling of exercising power.

There are too many incidents to list here, but they range from the mundane — taxpayer-funded first-class travel and private jets — to the exceptionally bizarre. Pruitt uses EPA employees like errand boys: The Washington Post reports that he sent agency staff to secure a used mattress for Pruitt from a Trump hotel. But there’s also his 24/7 security detail, which Pruitt had enlarged significantly for unclear reasons. When they’re not ferrying him around the country like an Imperial Guard, Pruitt has tasked his government-provided bodyguards with chores like picking up his dry cleaning, and, on one occasion, he is said to have “directed agents to drive him to multiple locations in search of a particular lotion on offer at Ritz-Carlton hotels.”

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He's also instructed agency employees to find jobs for his family members, an on-the-nose violation of federal ethics law. In 2017, he had them to reach out to the head of Chick-fil-A in an attempt to procure a franchise agreement for his wife, and then instructed at least three EPA employees to help win a White House internship for his daughter.

Pruitt was given a fiefdom, a cabinet agency, and intends to build his fortune from it. EPA employees told The New York Times that Pruitt “expected a certain standard of living akin to wealthier Trump cabinet members,” several of whom are millionaires many times over. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, one of the millionaires of whom Pruitt is said to be jealous, recently shorted the stock of a company he had an interest in the week after he was approached by a New York Times journalist with questions as part of an expose linking the company to Vladimir Putin’s judo partner and son-in-law.

We can only be so mad at Pruitt — he’s doing what he was taught to do. In Oklahoma, he exhibited some of the same tendencies, and was never held accountable for it. Now that he has made it to the big leagues, he’s going for broke. He may be fired, at some point — yet again, we call for him to resign — but he’ll have had fun while it lasted.

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Cynics have become fond of saying that the United States is experiencing a second Gilded Age, a return to a time when economic inequality and a complete lack of accountability for the rich andpowerful eroded public faith in the institutions of government — and the institutions themselves. Pruitt has a message for those people: They’re right.