Executive Departments Part 2

[GreyhoundFan]

Betsy got her fee fees hurt:

[GrumpyGran]

Seriously, she gets hurt when someone criticizes her? Then maybe she needs to give up her tax-payer funded job and go back to work at her Nazi family business.

[GreyhoundFan]

You couldn't make this up:

[GrumpyGran]

41 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You couldn't make this up:

No, no, no, please tell me he didn't really say that. No.

[candygirl200413]

Snoopes confirms. Lord Jesus: https://www.snopes.com/ben-carson-voter-fraud/

[GrumpyGran]

10 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Snoopes confirms. Lord Jesus: https://www.snopes.com/ben-carson-voter-fraud/

He has an odd mind.

So, while he didn't actually say that illegal immigrants should be stripped of citizenship, he was talking about illegals in the sentence before and after, which is still worrisome as, at best, it means he wanders with his topics.

It's also troubling because he is making a huge leap there with the concept of tossing out people who vote illegally. He must know now that most of the people who did vote illegally in 2016 were Repubs so that's doesn't seem to help his party.

And our laws don't make voter fraud a crime punishable by exile. If he wants to pull citizenship and export people how about child molesters? Serial killers? Domestic terrorists? Is one errant vote more reprehensible to him than killing dozens of people, including children?

And when we deport these people, where exactly will we deport them to? What country gets our cast-offs? He is describing the exact same behavior on the part of our country that his boss claims is unacceptable from other countries.

Yeah, I don't think he's playing with a full deck.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

And our laws don't make voter fraud a crime punishable by exile. If he wants to pull citizenship and export people how about child molesters? Serial killers? Domestic terrorists? Is one errant vote more reprehensible to him than killing dozens of people, including children?

Pity. After all, it would rid America of the GOP in one fell swoop.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"First-class travel distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA tenure"

Spoiler

Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Trump’s agenda at home and abroad.

On Monday, June 5, accompanied by his personal security detail, Pruitt settled into his $1,641.43 first-class seat for a short flight from D.C. to New York City. His ticket cost more than six times that of the two media aides who came along and sat in coach, according to agency travel vouchers; the records do not show whether his security detail accompanied him at the front of the plane.

In Manhattan, Pruitt made two brief television appearances praising the White House’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, stayed with staff at an upscale hotel near Times Square and returned to Washington the next day.

That Wednesday, after traveling with Trump on Air Force One for an infrastructure event in Cincinnati, Pruitt and several staffers raced to New York on a military jet, at a cost of $36,068.50, to catch a plane to Rome.

The transatlantic flight was part of a round-trip ticket for the administrator that cost $7,003.52, according to EPA records — several times what was paid for other officials who went. The documents do not explain the discrepancy. In Rome, Pruitt and a coterie of aides and security personnel got private tours of the Vatican and met with papal officials, business executives and legal experts before heading briefly to a meeting of environmental ministers in Bologna. Pruitt departed the G7 summit a day early, before negotiations had concluded, to attend a Cabinet meeting where Trump’s deputies lauded the president’s job performance.

In total, the taxpayer-funded travel for Pruitt and his top aides during that stretch in early June cost at least $90,000, according to months of receipts obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project under the Freedom of Information Act. That figure does not account for the costs of Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail, which have not been disclosed.

In an interview Sunday, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said all of Pruitt’s travel expenses have been approved by federal ethics officials.

“He’s trying to further positive environmental outcomes and achieve tangible environmental results” through his travel, she said, adding that in the case of the New York trip, “He’s communicating the message about his agenda and the president’s agenda.”

On other domestic trips, Bowman added: “He’s hearing directly from people affected by EPA’s regulatory overreach.”

As he enters his second year in charge of the EPA, Pruitt is distinguishing himself from his predecessors in ways that go beyond policy differences. His travel practices — which tend to be secretive, costly and frequent — are integral to how he approaches his role.

Pruitt tends to bring a larger entourage of political advisers on his trips than past administrators. But while the aides usually fly coach, according to travel vouchers through August obtained by The Washington Post separately from the Environmental Integrity Project, he often sits in first or business class, which previous administrators typically eschewed.

Last year, Pruitt promoted U.S. natural-gas exports in Morocco, sat on a panel about the rule of law in Rome and met with his counterparts from major industrialized countries. This year, he plans to travel to Israel, Australia, Japan, Mexico and possibly Canada, according to officials familiar with his schedule. None of those visits have been officially announced.

Pruitt plans to meet with his foreign counterparts and U.S. and foreign business officials abroad, as well as tour energy facilities.

These overseas trips are largely untethered to the kind of multilateral environmental summits that dominated his predecessors’ schedules, and Pruitt rarely discloses where he plans to be.

In an interview Friday, Bowman said the agency doesn’t release Pruitt’s schedule in advance “due to security concerns” and because it could be a “distraction” from the trips. But she added that he has received government invitations for all his foreign trips.

“There’s just a lot of international cooperation that the head of any Cabinet-level agency wants to establish with his or her counterparts,” she said.

The agency records show that wherever Pruitt’s schedule takes him, he often flies first or business class, citing unspecified security concerns. EPA’s assistant inspector general for investigations told The Post in September that Pruitt has gotten a higher number of threats than his recent predecessors.

Federal regulations state that government travelers are required to “exercise the same care in incurring expenses that a prudent person would exercise if traveling on personal business . . . and therefore, should consider the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.” Agencies are allowed to authorize first-class travel in rare instances, such as a flight of 14 hours or more, a medical disability or when “exceptional security circumstances” mean “use of coach class accommodations would endanger your life or government property.”

Pruitt has used the security exception often during the past year.

In a two-day period last July, he spent $4,443 for separate round-trips to Birmingham and Atlanta for visits that included a power plant and farm tour. On at least four occasions, he has spent between $2,000 and $2,600 on first-class airfare to official meetings or tours near Tulsa, where he lives. Frequently, he stayed in Tulsa for the weekend, records show, before returning to Washington.

Pruitt’s other first-class trips include a $4,680.04 itinerary to Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Little Rock to promote the unraveling of a controversial Obama administration water regulation. Another multi-city ticket, which included stops in Colorado, Iowa, North Dakota and Texas, cost $10,830, according to the vouchers, not including lodging and incidentals.

A separate batch of travel vouchers obtained by the Environmental Working Group shows that Pruitt flew coach multiple times between March to May 2017, but he also logged several more expensive trips during that period. On May 11, the administrator delivered the keynote address to the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank Meeting in Colorado Springs; the conservative group covered his lodging, but the ticket cost $2,903.56. A week later, he flew to Tulsa to tour the Brainerd Chemical Company, and stayed the weekend, for a flight cost of $1,980.34.

While on the road, Pruitt often stays at high-end hotels, according to travel records: the Kimpton in Salt Lake City, Le Meridien in Minneapolis, the Capital in Little Rock and the Michelangelo in New York.

In addition, he frequently opts to fly Delta Airlines, even though the government has contracts with specific airlines on certain routes. Asked whether there is an additional expense associated with flying Delta when there is a comparable government contract flight, Bowman said, “EPA staff seek cost-efficient travel options at all times.”

Such travel decisions, coupled with a tendency to not publicize out-of-town trips, have prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups, who have questioned how much some of Pruitt’s trips have to do with the EPA’s mission.

“What did American taxpayers get for Pruitt visiting the Vatican and getting photographed with European agency heads?” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, of last year’s Italy trip. “This was all for show.”

The group obtained Pruitt’s travel vouchers through litigation and is suing for other travel-related documents, including speeches he has made in closed-door meetings with industry officials.

“It is acutely paranoid,” Schaeffer said of the EPA’s refusal to disclose Pruitt’s whereabouts on any given day. “He’s a public official. His schedule should be publicly known.”

At the request of congressional Democrats, EPA’s Office of Inspector General is conducting probes of Pruitt’s travel last year and the expansion of his security detail.

The decision to bring seven political aides and his security detail to Rome for two days before the G7 summit significantly increased the cost of the Italy trip, which included just two career EPA officials. The Rome stop included a routine U.S. embassy briefing, a meet-and-greet with business executives and a roundtable on the judiciary. But much of the two-day stop was devoted to papal visits, including a meeting with Archbishop Paul Gallagher and private tours of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.

Bowman declined to comment specifically on the topics discussed at the Vatican, but said in an email, “While in Italy, Administrator Pruitt discussed how the U.S. is leading the world in environmental achievements to remediate toxic land, reduce air pollution, improve water infrastructure, and ensure access to clean drinking water.”

She added: “These discussions were broad, and very well-received.”

In December, Pruitt journeyed to Morocco, where he touted America’s natural-gas exports and discussed a series of policy collaborations between the two countries.

Pruitt’s two immediate predecessors, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy, also traveled repeatedly to foreign summits and other events. Jackson traveled abroad four times a year while on the job, including to the G8 Environment Ministers meeting in Siracusa, Italy; the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen; the inauguration of Indonesia’s president; and the Netherlands as part of a trip focused on sea-level rise. The entire delegation flew coach to the Netherlands, and invited the media to come along.

McCarthy traveled overseas between four and seven times a year, including to multilateral meetings; a G.E. oil and gas conference in Florence, Italy; the Costa Rican president’s inauguration; and to the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics.

Unlike with Pruitt, the EPA typically announced McCarthy’s general itinerary and the purpose of her trips in advance.

“McCarthy will arrive in China beginning on Monday, December 9, to discuss US-China cooperation on air quality, climate pollution and environmental issues. She will travel to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong during her four-day visit,” read a 2013 agency news release posted days before her visit.

By contrast, Pruitt’s EPA routinely gives the public no such notice, either domestically or internationally.

Last week, for instance, Pruitt surfaced in Florida, to the surprise of reporters who cover the EPA and even media outlets in the state. An official said the agency notified some local and national outlets.

The EPA has also declined at times to confirm in advance Pruitt’s speaking engagements to various industry and political groups.

Several foreign officials, when contacted by The Post, deferred questions about Pruitt’s upcoming visits either to the U.S. embassy or EPA.

In the coming weeks, Pruitt will embark on a series of trips, some of which had been postponed due to external circumstances. A brief government shutdown in January forced the administrator to cancel a trip to Japan and Israel, for example, and he will travel this month instead.

Japanese embassy spokeswoman Rieko Suzuki said in an email that Pruitt had raised the idea of visiting with Japanese Environment Minister Masaharu Nakagawa, and her country was working on finalizing the details. “Since EPA Administrator Pruitt expressed his intention of visiting Japan and meeting Minister Nakagawa,” she wrote, “the Ministry of Environment of Japan has been trying to arrange a bilateral meeting.”

A spokesman for a low-emissions coal thermal plant located in the suburbs of Tokyo, run by the electric utility firm J-Power, confirmed Pruitt was scheduled to visit the facility. J Power spokesman Shingen Tsuneoka said that the plant emits “almost no” nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, two major air pollutants released by burning coal.

Bowman said Pruitt is headed to Japan “to strengthen existing areas of environmental cooperation, learn how Japan is responding to emerging energy challenges, and share successful approaches to innovative environmental technologies.” The administrator also will participate in a business roundtable with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and visit the Yokohama Hydrogen Supply Chain Demonstration, she added.

In Israel, Bowman said, Pruitt will “visit a water recycling plant, hear from Israeli water technology companies about their successes in wastewater recycling for irrigation, visit a waste processing facility, tour a toxic land remediation site” and take part in a clean energy roundtable.

Next month, Pruitt is tentatively planning a one-day trip to Mexico to meet with Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Rafael Pacchiano Alamán, she said. That trip also had been postponed, according to travel vouchers.

Pruitt had intended to journey to Australia last year, according to EPA officials, where he was set to meet with officials from Peabody, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, as well as Melbourne-based energy giant BHP. The visit was to include a boat trip, according to an official, but was canceled because Pruitt had to work on the federal response to Hurricane Harvey.

This week, Pruitt is expected to travel to New Hampshire on a trip that will include a meeting with the governor, a visit to a local paper company and a tour of a Superfund site. The EPA has not publicized the trip.

Maybe he wouldn't have so many threats against his safety if he weren't such a tool.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"First-class travel distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA tenure"

  Reveal hidden contents

Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Trump’s agenda at home and abroad.

On Monday, June 5, accompanied by his personal security detail, Pruitt settled into his $1,641.43 first-class seat for a short flight from D.C. to New York City. His ticket cost more than six times that of the two media aides who came along and sat in coach, according to agency travel vouchers; the records do not show whether his security detail accompanied him at the front of the plane.

In Manhattan, Pruitt made two brief television appearances praising the White House’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, stayed with staff at an upscale hotel near Times Square and returned to Washington the next day.

That Wednesday, after traveling with Trump on Air Force One for an infrastructure event in Cincinnati, Pruitt and several staffers raced to New York on a military jet, at a cost of $36,068.50, to catch a plane to Rome.

The transatlantic flight was part of a round-trip ticket for the administrator that cost $7,003.52, according to EPA records — several times what was paid for other officials who went. The documents do not explain the discrepancy. In Rome, Pruitt and a coterie of aides and security personnel got private tours of the Vatican and met with papal officials, business executives and legal experts before heading briefly to a meeting of environmental ministers in Bologna. Pruitt departed the G7 summit a day early, before negotiations had concluded, to attend a Cabinet meeting where Trump’s deputies lauded the president’s job performance.

In total, the taxpayer-funded travel for Pruitt and his top aides during that stretch in early June cost at least $90,000, according to months of receipts obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project under the Freedom of Information Act. That figure does not account for the costs of Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail, which have not been disclosed.

In an interview Sunday, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said all of Pruitt’s travel expenses have been approved by federal ethics officials.

“He’s trying to further positive environmental outcomes and achieve tangible environmental results” through his travel, she said, adding that in the case of the New York trip, “He’s communicating the message about his agenda and the president’s agenda.”

On other domestic trips, Bowman added: “He’s hearing directly from people affected by EPA’s regulatory overreach.”

As he enters his second year in charge of the EPA, Pruitt is distinguishing himself from his predecessors in ways that go beyond policy differences. His travel practices — which tend to be secretive, costly and frequent — are integral to how he approaches his role.

Pruitt tends to bring a larger entourage of political advisers on his trips than past administrators. But while the aides usually fly coach, according to travel vouchers through August obtained by The Washington Post separately from the Environmental Integrity Project, he often sits in first or business class, which previous administrators typically eschewed.

Last year, Pruitt promoted U.S. natural-gas exports in Morocco, sat on a panel about the rule of law in Rome and met with his counterparts from major industrialized countries. This year, he plans to travel to Israel, Australia, Japan, Mexico and possibly Canada, according to officials familiar with his schedule. None of those visits have been officially announced.

Pruitt plans to meet with his foreign counterparts and U.S. and foreign business officials abroad, as well as tour energy facilities.

These overseas trips are largely untethered to the kind of multilateral environmental summits that dominated his predecessors’ schedules, and Pruitt rarely discloses where he plans to be.

In an interview Friday, Bowman said the agency doesn’t release Pruitt’s schedule in advance “due to security concerns” and because it could be a “distraction” from the trips. But she added that he has received government invitations for all his foreign trips.

“There’s just a lot of international cooperation that the head of any Cabinet-level agency wants to establish with his or her counterparts,” she said.

The agency records show that wherever Pruitt’s schedule takes him, he often flies first or business class, citing unspecified security concerns. EPA’s assistant inspector general for investigations told The Post in September that Pruitt has gotten a higher number of threats than his recent predecessors.

Federal regulations state that government travelers are required to “exercise the same care in incurring expenses that a prudent person would exercise if traveling on personal business . . . and therefore, should consider the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.” Agencies are allowed to authorize first-class travel in rare instances, such as a flight of 14 hours or more, a medical disability or when “exceptional security circumstances” mean “use of coach class accommodations would endanger your life or government property.”

Pruitt has used the security exception often during the past year.

In a two-day period last July, he spent $4,443 for separate round-trips to Birmingham and Atlanta for visits that included a power plant and farm tour. On at least four occasions, he has spent between $2,000 and $2,600 on first-class airfare to official meetings or tours near Tulsa, where he lives. Frequently, he stayed in Tulsa for the weekend, records show, before returning to Washington.

Pruitt’s other first-class trips include a $4,680.04 itinerary to Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Little Rock to promote the unraveling of a controversial Obama administration water regulation. Another multi-city ticket, which included stops in Colorado, Iowa, North Dakota and Texas, cost $10,830, according to the vouchers, not including lodging and incidentals.

A separate batch of travel vouchers obtained by the Environmental Working Group shows that Pruitt flew coach multiple times between March to May 2017, but he also logged several more expensive trips during that period. On May 11, the administrator delivered the keynote address to the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank Meeting in Colorado Springs; the conservative group covered his lodging, but the ticket cost $2,903.56. A week later, he flew to Tulsa to tour the Brainerd Chemical Company, and stayed the weekend, for a flight cost of $1,980.34.

While on the road, Pruitt often stays at high-end hotels, according to travel records: the Kimpton in Salt Lake City, Le Meridien in Minneapolis, the Capital in Little Rock and the Michelangelo in New York.

In addition, he frequently opts to fly Delta Airlines, even though the government has contracts with specific airlines on certain routes. Asked whether there is an additional expense associated with flying Delta when there is a comparable government contract flight, Bowman said, “EPA staff seek cost-efficient travel options at all times.”

Such travel decisions, coupled with a tendency to not publicize out-of-town trips, have prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups, who have questioned how much some of Pruitt’s trips have to do with the EPA’s mission.

“What did American taxpayers get for Pruitt visiting the Vatican and getting photographed with European agency heads?” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, of last year’s Italy trip. “This was all for show.”

The group obtained Pruitt’s travel vouchers through litigation and is suing for other travel-related documents, including speeches he has made in closed-door meetings with industry officials.

“It is acutely paranoid,” Schaeffer said of the EPA’s refusal to disclose Pruitt’s whereabouts on any given day. “He’s a public official. His schedule should be publicly known.”

At the request of congressional Democrats, EPA’s Office of Inspector General is conducting probes of Pruitt’s travel last year and the expansion of his security detail.

The decision to bring seven political aides and his security detail to Rome for two days before the G7 summit significantly increased the cost of the Italy trip, which included just two career EPA officials. The Rome stop included a routine U.S. embassy briefing, a meet-and-greet with business executives and a roundtable on the judiciary. But much of the two-day stop was devoted to papal visits, including a meeting with Archbishop Paul Gallagher and private tours of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.

Bowman declined to comment specifically on the topics discussed at the Vatican, but said in an email, “While in Italy, Administrator Pruitt discussed how the U.S. is leading the world in environmental achievements to remediate toxic land, reduce air pollution, improve water infrastructure, and ensure access to clean drinking water.”

She added: “These discussions were broad, and very well-received.”

In December, Pruitt journeyed to Morocco, where he touted America’s natural-gas exports and discussed a series of policy collaborations between the two countries.

Pruitt’s two immediate predecessors, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy, also traveled repeatedly to foreign summits and other events. Jackson traveled abroad four times a year while on the job, including to the G8 Environment Ministers meeting in Siracusa, Italy; the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen; the inauguration of Indonesia’s president; and the Netherlands as part of a trip focused on sea-level rise. The entire delegation flew coach to the Netherlands, and invited the media to come along.

McCarthy traveled overseas between four and seven times a year, including to multilateral meetings; a G.E. oil and gas conference in Florence, Italy; the Costa Rican president’s inauguration; and to the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics.

Unlike with Pruitt, the EPA typically announced McCarthy’s general itinerary and the purpose of her trips in advance.

“McCarthy will arrive in China beginning on Monday, December 9, to discuss US-China cooperation on air quality, climate pollution and environmental issues. She will travel to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong during her four-day visit,” read a 2013 agency news release posted days before her visit.

By contrast, Pruitt’s EPA routinely gives the public no such notice, either domestically or internationally.

Last week, for instance, Pruitt surfaced in Florida, to the surprise of reporters who cover the EPA and even media outlets in the state. An official said the agency notified some local and national outlets.

The EPA has also declined at times to confirm in advance Pruitt’s speaking engagements to various industry and political groups.

Several foreign officials, when contacted by The Post, deferred questions about Pruitt’s upcoming visits either to the U.S. embassy or EPA.

In the coming weeks, Pruitt will embark on a series of trips, some of which had been postponed due to external circumstances. A brief government shutdown in January forced the administrator to cancel a trip to Japan and Israel, for example, and he will travel this month instead.

Japanese embassy spokeswoman Rieko Suzuki said in an email that Pruitt had raised the idea of visiting with Japanese Environment Minister Masaharu Nakagawa, and her country was working on finalizing the details. “Since EPA Administrator Pruitt expressed his intention of visiting Japan and meeting Minister Nakagawa,” she wrote, “the Ministry of Environment of Japan has been trying to arrange a bilateral meeting.”

A spokesman for a low-emissions coal thermal plant located in the suburbs of Tokyo, run by the electric utility firm J-Power, confirmed Pruitt was scheduled to visit the facility. J Power spokesman Shingen Tsuneoka said that the plant emits “almost no” nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, two major air pollutants released by burning coal.

Bowman said Pruitt is headed to Japan “to strengthen existing areas of environmental cooperation, learn how Japan is responding to emerging energy challenges, and share successful approaches to innovative environmental technologies.” The administrator also will participate in a business roundtable with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and visit the Yokohama Hydrogen Supply Chain Demonstration, she added.

In Israel, Bowman said, Pruitt will “visit a water recycling plant, hear from Israeli water technology companies about their successes in wastewater recycling for irrigation, visit a waste processing facility, tour a toxic land remediation site” and take part in a clean energy roundtable.

Next month, Pruitt is tentatively planning a one-day trip to Mexico to meet with Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Rafael Pacchiano Alamán, she said. That trip also had been postponed, according to travel vouchers.

Pruitt had intended to journey to Australia last year, according to EPA officials, where he was set to meet with officials from Peabody, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, as well as Melbourne-based energy giant BHP. The visit was to include a boat trip, according to an official, but was canceled because Pruitt had to work on the federal response to Hurricane Harvey.

This week, Pruitt is expected to travel to New Hampshire on a trip that will include a meeting with the governor, a visit to a local paper company and a tour of a Superfund site. The EPA has not publicized the trip.

Maybe he wouldn't have so many threats against his safety if he weren't such a tool.

He seems to be quite focused on protecting his personal environment, doesn't he?

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another member of Dumpy's sewer: "Why Mick Mulvaney is the perfect scoundrel for Trump"

Spoiler

It’s no wonder that, when rumors began to swirl that White House chief of staff John F. Kelly might be on his way out, speculation about possible replacements quickly turned to Mick Mulvaney, currently the director of both the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Whether or not Mulvaney ascends to Kelly’s position, he showed Sunday how adept he has become at selling President Trump’s big con.

Mulvaney’s appearances on “Fox News Sunday” and “Face the Nation” were a tour de force of confidently delivering outlandish statements. First, Mulvaney dealt with the resignations of two White House staffers over domestic abuse allegations, and the president’s complaints that now-departed staff secretary Rob Porter’s life was being ruined by “a mere allegation.” (In truth, besides multiple allegations from his ex-wives, Porter was denied a full security clearance because of a protective order against him in 2010.) Asked by CBS News’s Major Garrett whether the White House had “a lax attitude when it comes to the question of domestic abuse,” Mulvaney replied, “I think what you saw happened this week, Major, was completely reasonable and normal.”

Yes, “reasonable and normal.” Even the buttoned-up Garrett interrupted to double-check that he’d heard Mulvaney correctly. Mulvaney repeated the sentiment on Fox News, saying the president had “a very normal reaction” to Porter’s resignation, totally in keeping with a “zero tolerance” policy. When Chris Wallace pointed out that the president hadn’t shown any concern for the victims, Mulvaney innocently suggested that the president may have been tweeting not about Porter but about mogul Steve Wynn.

Policy was not spared from Mulvaney’s speciousness. The OMB director told Wallace that the president’s new budget “does move us back towards balance. It does get us away from trillion-dollar deficits.” The latter is technically true, but Mulvaney said those words knowing what The Post reported Sunday night: The budget “falls far short of eliminating the government’s deficit over 10 years,” with yearly deficits still in the hundreds of billions. So much for “balance.”

What makes Mulvaney such a perfect fit for Trump is not the ridiculous claims themselves, but the confidence with which he delivers them. Other Trump lackeys were less “sure” in their defenses. Legislative director Marc Short admitted that he literally did not know what Kelly knew and when he knew it, which led NBC News’s Chuck Todd to reply, “Why come on here and not know?” Kellyanne Conway opted for ridiculous defenses, including the idea that women should just be happy that he created jobs for them. But where Mulvaney was earnest, Conway was resigned, like a beleaguered mother who just wants you to lay off her ill-behaved child.

Trump has made a career out of making false statements with absolute conviction: The GOP tax cut is the “biggest” ever (it’s not); the Nunes memo totally “vindicates Trump” (it doesn’t); “our economy is perhaps the best it’s ever been” (not even close). More broadly, he’s still pledging to “drain the swamp” while Cabinet members fleece taxpayers and corporations and donors receive big giveaways. This two-facedness is best enacted by those who remain committed to the con — which makes Mulvaney the perfect scoundrel for Trump.

I'm not normally a violent person, but whenever I see Mulvaney on TV or in an online picture, I just want to punch something.

[JMarie]

Republicans are all about smaller government, right?  So how is taking half of someone's SNAP benefit and forcing recipients to accept food they might no like, or can't eat because of religious or dietary restrictions, how is this okay?

http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/12/news/economy/food-stamps-box-blue-apron/index.html

Quote

Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp recipients.

That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.

"USDA America's Harvest Box is a bold, innovative approach to providing nutritious food to people who need assistance feeding themselves and their families -- and all of it is homegrown by American farmers and producers," said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in a statement. "It maintains the same level of food value as SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] participants currently receive, provides states flexibility in administering the program, and is responsible to the taxpayers."

Part of the president's fiscal 2019 budget blueprint, the idea immediately sparked concerns and questions among consumer advocates and food retailers. They feared it would upend a much-needed benefit for more than 80% of those in the program.

Here's how it would work:

Instead of receiving all their food stamp funds, households would get a box of food that the government describes as nutritious and 100% grown and produced in the U.S. The so-called USDA America's Harvest Box would contain items such as shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans, canned meat, poultry or fish, and canned fruits and vegetables. The box would be valued at about half of the SNAP recipient's monthly benefit. The remainder of their benefits would be given to them on electronic benefit cards, as before.

The administration didn't detail exactly how families would receive the food boxes, saying states could distribute them through existing infrastructure, partnerships or directly to residences through delivery services.

The proposal would save nearly $130 billion over 10 years, as well as improve the nutritional value of the program and reduce the potential for fraud, according to the administration.

Consumer advocates, however, questioned whether the federal government could save that much money by purchasing and distributing food on its own. Also, they were concerned that families would not know what food they would get in advance nor have any choice regardingwhat they receive. Plus, it could be difficult for families to pick up the box, especially if they don't have a car.

"It's a risky scheme that threatens families' ability to put food on the table," said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

 

[GrumpyGran]

12 hours ago, JMarie said:

Republicans are all about smaller government, right?  So how is taking half of someone's SNAP benefit and forcing recipients to accept food they might no like, or can't eat because of religious or dietary restrictions, how is this okay?

http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/12/news/economy/food-stamps-box-blue-apron/index.html

 

I'm sure you don't have to dig too deep to find the trail of money on this one. Perdue has some friends somewhere who want the contract for this and small farmers will be shut out of the program. And I can't wait until the government accidentally poisons someone with the food they send.

[GreyhoundFan]

Alexandra Petri's great take on the completely idiotic idea of Blue-Apron style deliveries for those on SNAP: "Blue-Apron-style replacement for SNAP is a marvelous idea"

Spoiler

Some people have raised objections to the concept proposed by Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney of replacing SNAP with a “Blue Apron-style” shipment of nonperishables. They point out that this is really nothing like Blue Apron, which sends perishables to families that choose to eat them every week. They say that this untested, difficult-to-scale approach is an insult on par with forcing people to pedal for hours on a stationary bike in order to receive housing assistance and calling this a “Soul Cycle-style opportunity.”

But what do they know? Answer: not better than I, a corn baron, who has never known poverty or sadness except, once, the sadness of not having a bill small enough that a vending machine would accept it. I also once read a Dickens novel.

They should have been born with wealth, as I was (the spoon in my infant mouth was GOLD), and the dim sense that anyone struggling is doing so just to have a compelling narrative about adversity to put on their college application and take away poor Junior’s slot at Penn. Or that anyone who requires government assistance is doing this just for fun and recreation — they get a keen thrill from the judgment and the paperwork. Clearly, these people are insufficiently motivated to have been born to scions of wealth, and therefore we must replace their safety HAMMOCK with a fire.

Indeed, this program does not go far enough. Why stop at taking away people’s (already constricted) ability to choose food that suits their families? Why not mandate Stitch Fix-style deliveries of sackcloth and ashes so that we may know that these people are truly humbled? Why not insist that if you have smiled even once in your life, you should be ineligible for any assistance?

I know from close study of a series of cherry-picked anecdotes in columns and speeches that those on SNAP are using their EBT cards (not cash, of course; we could not trust such people with cash, as we can Louise Linton) to throw themselves garish military-style parades and fly around in private jets. Well, someone is doing that. Therefore, we must impose more restrictions on those receiving government assistance, to show that we know the value of a dollar. Which I do. It is an icky green kleenex you can use to buy one-fourth of a coffee!

They cannot buy wasteful nonsense like diapers, or toothpaste, or a rotisserie chicken. (How dare they buy a precooked meal when they spend their entire days relaxing lavishly at their two full-time jobs with their lush part-time salaries!) They should use their ample spare time (I am reliably assured that it is ample) to cook. Like Blue Apron. See, this is Blue-Apron-style after all.

I do not know what should go in these boxes, or how it will all work, but I imagine it will be quite simple and not require much thought.

What if, as Annie Lowrey asked on Twitter, recipients lack a fixed address? All I can say is that if they have no permanent abode, perhaps they ought to be denied these boxes altogether. Some of us can only afford to summer in one place and winter in another — imagine spending each day at a new address! The luxury: unthinkable! Surely we cannot reward such extravagance with food, as well.

To answer Lowrey’s further objections, briefly: No poor children are fussy eaters. Sometimes, they demand “more” — I learned this from real life, not that Dickens novel — and this plan will give them “more.” Of something. Not nutrients, perhaps, or choice, but certainly of shelf-stable nonperishables they did not request but that I thought were a good idea.

The boxes will never be stolen. Why would you steal something of so little value?

There are no poor vegetarians or vegans; they dine constantly on steak and lobster, I am informed.

Do not fear that one of these packages might be misplaced or dampened. I am reasonably confident it will never rain again.

If the food does not arrive on time, they can just order in from Uber Eats. It is a shame that this never occurs to them.

Do not ask whether anyone wanted this. Of course they wanted this. Their lives are too easy, and they should be made examples of. The reason that people are poor is that being poor is pleasant and they have chosen it. That is why. The reason I am not is because I am inherently good in some way they are not. Things are fair as they are, and we must make them more so.

On a separate note, if you are on twitter and like Star Wars, Ms. Petri has a truly funny twitter account, Emo Kylo Ren (https://twitter.com/KyloR3n).

[JMarie]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/rob-porter-john-kelly-timeline-white-house/index.html

CNN has an excellent timeline of what was known about Rob Porter vs. what was officially being said about him.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Veterans Affairs chief Shulkin, staff misled ethics officials about European trip, report finds"

Spoiler

Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin’s chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to create a pretext for taxpayers to cover expenses for the secretary’s wife on a 10-day trip to Europe last summer, the agency’s inspector general has found.

Vivieca Wright Simpson, VA’s third-most senior official, altered language in an email from an aide coordinating the trip to make it appear that Shulkin was receiving an award from the Danish government — then used the award to justify paying for his wife’s travel, Inspector General Michael J. Missal said in a report released Wednesday. VA paid $4,312 for her airfare.

The account of how the government paid travel expenses for the secretary’s wife is one finding in an unsparing investigation that concluded that Shulkin and his staff misled agency ethics officials and the public about key details of the trip. Shulkin also improperly accepted a gift of tickets to a Wimbledon tennis match worth thousands of dollars, the investigation found, and directed an aide coordinating the trip to act as what the report called a “personal travel concierge” to him and his wife.

“Although the [inspector general’s office] cannot determine the value VA gained from the Secretary and his delegation’s three and a half days of meetings in Copenhagen and London at a cost of at least $122,334, the investigation revealed serious derelictions by VA personnel,” the watchdog concluded.

Shulkin is one of five current and former Trump administration Cabinet members under investigation by agency inspectors general over their travel expenses, an issue that forced Tom Price to resign as Health and Human Services secretary in the fall. Shulkin and other Cabinet officials have said their travel, often on private and military planes or to speak at political events, was approved by agency ethics officials.

The Washington Post first raised questions about Shulkin’s Europe trip — in particular the Wimbledon tickets and his wife’s expenses — in a story in September.

In a response to Missal, Shulkin called his portrayal of the trip “overall and entirely inaccurate” and said it “reeks of an agenda.”

“It is outrageous that you would portray my wife and me as attempting to take advantage of the government,” he wrote.

Shulkin also wrote that VA staff suggested his wife’s travel be paid by the agency and that he “had nothing to do with the process of obtaining approval.” He delegated day-to-day trip planning to his staff, he wrote.

In an interview with investigators, Wright Simpson said she did not recall whether she altered the email, Missal wrote. In a second interview, he wrote, she did not directly respond to questions about the email, repeatedly saying “I responded appropriately to the email.”

She did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment from The Post.

Shulkin, a physician and former hospital administrator who served as VA’s undersecretary of health from July 2015 until last January, is the administration’s lone holdover from the Obama administration. He leads the second-largest federal agency and is a favorite of President Trump, who made improving care for veterans a centerpiece of his campaign.

On the trip to Europe last July, Shulkin and his wife, Merle Bari, were accompanied by Wright Simpson and Poonam Alaigh, then the acting undersecretary of health, as well as an aide and a six-person security detail. The group spent three-and-a-half days meeting with Danish and British officials to discuss veterans’ health issues. Sightseeing occupied the other days, including tours of Westminster Abbey and Denmark’s Rosenborg Castle, a cruise along the Thames and shopping in Sweden.

In September, in response to The Post’s questions about the trip, VA issued a statement that said “all of Shulkin’s activities on the Europe trip, including his attendance at Wimbledon, were reviewed and approved by ethics counsel.”

That statement was not accurate, Missal found.

Before the trip, in response to a request from Shulkin, ethics officials reviewed only whether VA could pay his wife’s expenses, Missal found. After The Post’s inquiries, Shulkin asked for an expedited ethics review of the gift of Wimbledon tickets. When The Post story was published, ethics officials complained internally that VA’s statement had misrepresented their role and cast them in a poor light, Missal wrote.

John Ullyot, VA’s assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, told investigators that Shulkin dictated the language saying that all of his activities on the trip were reviewed, Missal wrote. Shulkin told investigators he had “no idea” where the statement originated.

In a separate response to Missal, private attorneys for Shulkin wrote that, “to the extent the statement could have been drafted more clearly, it is apparent that the statement was the result of haste, not an intentional effort to mislead.”

In addition, at a Washington Post Live event in November, where he rebuked The Post for what he called “poor reporting,” Shulkin said he had purchased the Wimbledon tickets, Missal wrote. Asked by a moderator if they were given to him “by folks from the Invictus Games or anything like that,” Shulkin said they were not.

That statement also was not accurate, Missal found.

As he planned the trip, Shulkin contacted Victoria Gosling, chief executive for the 2016 Invictus Games, a sports tournament for wounded veterans founded by Prince Harry. Gosling was a strategic adviser to the games at the time, according to the report.

Gosling offered Shulkin two tickets and a grounds pass to the July 15 women’s finals tennis match at Wimbledon, Missal wrote. She also treated Shulkin, Bari and their son to lunch before the match — which Venus Williams lost — in a private, members-only dining room. The tickets for the same match in the 2018 Wimbledon are selling for a minimum of $1,700 a piece, the report says, though Shulkin’s attorneys said the tickets cost $450 in total.

In their response to Missal, Shulkin’s attorneys wrote that the inspector general had misinterpreted his remarks.

As part of the review he sought after The Post’s inquiries in September, Shulkin told an ethics official that Gosling and his wife were friends, Missal wrote. The official concluded that Shulkin could accept the tickets based on a “personal friendship” exception to rules prohibiting the acceptance of gifts, he wrote.

But the inspector general found the evidence of a friendship thin. When investigators interviewed Gosling last week, she could not recall Bari’s first name, according to the report.

The findings were presented to the ethics official, who then reversed herself, concluding that “the documents totally indicate that they’re not friends, as represented in [Secretary Shulkin’s] response to me.”

Shulkin told Missal’s investigators he and his wife had offered to pay for the tickets before the trip, but that Gosling “insisted on taking us as friends,” the report says.

Shulkin also told investigators he did not seek an ethics review before accepting the tickets because the tennis event “had absolutely no business connection whatsoever,” the report says. “I wouldn’t think about clearing it with ethics,” Shulkin said.

In concluding that the gift was improper, Missal wrote: “Ms. Gosling gave a gift of the Wimbledon tickets, valued at thousands of dollars on the secondary commercial market, because of Secretary Shulkin’s official position.”

Shulkin’s attorney said the secretary was not prohibited from accepting the tickets because Gosling neither does nor seeks to do business with Veterans Affairs.

Even so, they wrote that Gosling and Bari are friends and that Gosling attributed her failure to remember Bari’s first name because she was pressure from investigators. “The investigators unexpectedly called me on my mobile phone whilst I was driving on a very busy highway,” she wrote in a statement provided by the lawyers. “I felt like the investigators were twisting my words and trying to put words into my mouth.”

Ethics officials initially declined the request to pay travel expenses for Bari, a Philadelphia-area dermatologist, “on the grounds that the available information did not show that her presence would serve a ‘sufficient government interest,’ ” Missal wrote.

Wright Simpson, the chief of staff, became personally involved, Missal wrote. She pressed for Shulkin to receive an award from the Danish government, which she understood to be the criterion that would justify Bari’s status as an “invitational traveler” whose expenses would be covered.

In emails to James “Gabe” Gough, the aide in the traveling party who was coordinating with VA’s European counterparts, Wright Simpson pressed for confirmation of an award. Gough said no award was planned.

“We’re working on having a dinner at the US Ambassador’s Residence in the honor of SECVA, but that has not been confirmed by US Embassy Copenhagen yet,” Gough wrote, using the acronym for the secretary of Veterans Affairs.

According to the report, Wright Simpson then altered the email to make it appear that Gough had written, “We’re having a special recognition dinner at the US Ambassador’s Residence in the honor of SECVA.” With confirmation in hand, she told ethics officials that an award was definite. Bari was approved as an “invitational traveler,” all expenses paid.

Shulkin received no award or special recognition on the trip.

Missal wrote that Wright Simpson’s actions may have violated federal criminal statutes and that he referred the matter to the Justice Department. The Justice Department declined to prosecute, he wrote.

Once his wife was on the official list of participants, Shulkin directed Gough to coordinate with her to schedule meals and visits to tourist attractions. “Boss told me ‘if she’s happy, I’m happy and you’re happy,’ ” Gough told a colleague in an email, according to the report.

Gough told investigators his involvement was necessary to coordinate security coverage for Shulkin.

Investigators came to a different conclusion: At Shulkin’s direction and on official time, they wrote, “Mr. Gough was serving as a de facto personal travel concierge to the Secretary and his wife.”

“Is there earlier flight from Copenhagen? Wimbledon tickets? High tea? Roman baths in ath. Would want to do baths not just tour,” Bari wrote to Gough in June.

In another email she said “ . . . we like to be busy, we often don’t spend too much time at palaces or cathedrals. Secretary agrees that need some time to check in with work answer emails or call back each weekday so can be flexible in later afternoon after we do sightseeing.”

Gough complained to a colleague about Bari’s many requests, writing, “I would have been finished with this a week ago.”

The travelers’ expenses in some cases were inadequately explained or poorly documented, investigators found. A member of the security team’s expense voucher included “an inexplicable $3,825 overpayment for airport parking and a $2,718 overpayment for lodging.”

Last-minute itinerary changes inflated airfare costs by $15,700, bringing the total to $42,230. Much of that covered an upgrade to business class on the return flight for Shulkin, who was suffering from back pain, and a member of his detail. Wright Simpson also modified her ticket to expand a 3½-hour layover by nearly two hours, a change that increased the price to $4,041 from $1,101.

The report mentions another unusual expense: VA had official “Trip Book” itineraries printed for the entourage, 15 copies at a cost of $100 each.

Another lying liar who has bilked the US taxpayers.

[CTRLZero]

25 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

In an interview with investigators, Wright Simpson said she did not recall whether she altered the email

This whole Shulkin matter just reeks (to use his own word).  Because I am not skilled in the deceptive arts, I can't even imagine how one would alter an email.  It would be such an effort on my part, that I would definitely recall doing so!  They probably had Trump University courses on the topic.

It did give me a chuckle when they tried to play the "personal friendship" angle, but then Gosling couldn't remember the first name of her close friend!  The collective memory failure of this administration is astounding.

I hope Shulkin is required to reimburse taxpayers the expenses as he exits the administration. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Mnuchin's wife decided to try and rehab her image. It didn't go well: "Louise Linton’s antics are far more revealing than she knows"

Spoiler

On Tuesday, Elle dropped a 3,000-plus-word profile of Louise Linton, the would-be Hollywood actress and designer-dressed wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. It came complete with a sexy, come-hither photo and was studded with the clueless, rich-girl statements we’ve all come to know and not love.

“I’m just a regular girl,” said Linton, who grew up in Scottish castle courtesy of her wealthy developer father and is now married to a man with an estimated net worth of $300 million, and (infamously!) studded her now shuttered Instagram account with hashtags like #prada and #valentino.

Therapy, Linton says, should be tried by all. “It’s like going to the dentist,” she notes, seemingly unaware that about 1 in 4 people in the United States say they forgo dental care because they can’t afford it and that mental-health care remains expensive and hard for many to access.

Even Linton’s character witnesses reek of a modern update of a satiric Victorian takedown. They include Richard, a homeless man with no last name she met in a Los Angeles park. His dog, whose vet bill Linton paid, likes her. “You can’t fool an animal,” he told the publication. (No word on whether he is still homeless, from either Linton or Elle.)

Twitter pounced. “So basically, Louise Linton is Marie Antoinette without pants,” noted health-care columnist Eugene Gu. “If this article is supposed to rehab @louiselinton, it fails. She comes across as more obnoxious that her social media efforts would lead you to believe. Which is hard to do,” added Soledad O’Brien.

It would be easy enough to join in on the latest Louise Linton pile on. But she’s actually doing us all a service, albeit unintentionally. In a world of record-breaking inequality, Linton is giving those of us who are not wealthy much-needed insight into how wealth impacts personality, which could help us understand how all the wealthy people whom Trump has put in charge of his administration think. The administration, after all, is made up of wealthy people doing things that greatly benefit wealthy people.

The more money we are surrounded by, the more likely we are to act as though it is a norm and not an exception. In a 2015 paper, “Why Wealthier People Think People Are Wealthier, and Why It Matters,” researchers at Britain’s University of Kent and New Zealand’s University of Auckland discovered that the more money someone possessed, the wealthier they believed their peers to be.

Other research shows lower-income people spend more time looking at their surroundings and pick up on emotional cues better than their wealthier peers. This, in turn, seems to give the wealthy permission to act in a way that, to put it kindly, forever prioritizes No. One — themselves.

And then there is one of my favorite studies, the one in which researchers discovered the higher the self-described social rank, the more candy the subjects took from a jar of candy designated for children. They also discovered the more prestigious the make of car, the more likely a driver would cut off a pedestrian in a crosswalk or fail to yield to others at a four-way stop. As I’ve previously argued: “There’s a body of psychological and behavioral-economics research suggesting that wealthy people are generally less caring, generous, and aware of how others think, feel, and live.”

Well, hello Louise Linton!

But hello Donald Trump and the rest of your Cabinet, too!

Not only is Trump our wealthiest president ever, the same is true of the Cabinet he selected. Empathy? Trump turned the situation involving the “dreamers” into a hostage situation. His administration  just released a budget that calls for severe cuts in the social safety net. It would slash Medicaid and housing assistance, completely eliminate funding for a program that offers after-school classes for children living in poverty and end loan forgiveness for people who choose to work in the public or nonprofit sectors.

As for Congress, which is also well-stocked with wealthy people, the news broke yesterday that even as the United States is facing the worst flu season in about two decades, the Republican majority is considering doing away with the Affordable Care Act requirement that employers with 50 or more full-time employees offer them health insurance. Because, apparently, nothing shows you care like contemplating making it harder for people to access medical services during a flu epidemic.

This comes mere weeks after Republicans in Congress passed and Trump signed into law deficit-busting tax cuts that lavish most of their benefits on wealthy Americans.

All of this, of course, is much more significant than any sin Linton is guilty of. She holds no public office. She’s just a trophy wife. She might, for all we know, be a well-meaning one. (She did pay the dog’s vet bill, after all.)

But in her role as the monied trophy wife, Linton is also highlighting exactly why wealth inequality is so pernicious. It’s not simply that some people have a lot more than others. It’s that the excessive wealth leaves them cut off, and clueless, often incapable of understanding the needs and motivations of others. Linton’s wealth excesses are comic. But she helps shed light on what might motivate the actions of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, which are the stuff of tragedy.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Alexandra Petri has a wonderful (as usual) take on Louise Linton: "That last Louise Linton profile wasn’t rehabilitating enough. Here’s mine."

Spoiler

“Louise was blessed and fortunate enough to be raised in a Scottish castle, and to not understand the reality of some human beings with a different background,” said Louise Linton’s friend in this Elle profile. In fact, I do not think that profile did a good enough job of showing how down-to-earth Louise Linton is at all. Here is another attempt.

It’s the simple things in life. That is what Louise Linton has always felt. That is why she wants to take me on a tour of her custom-built Petit Trianon where she goes to experience the simple things the Trump-supporting taxpayer always experiences.

Louise is eager to show us how down-to-earth she is, asking to be photographed only with small bills, and requesting that her chateau be cropped out of the frame. Formerly, the image of Louise Linton was that she could not engage in more conspicuous consumption if she were the main character of La Traviata. But someone told her it was a good idea to do this profile, so here I am!

First, Louise leads me into the failing factory. She had it built at three-quarter scale, sparing no expense to replicate the unsafe and unsanitary working conditions many Americans face on a daily basis.

“I just think it’s important to stay grounded,” she observes. “You have to be like, how do I keep this factory going? How do I feed my family?” She invites friends over to contemplate these puzzles with her. She describes this as “trying” — contemplating the threat of having your job outsourced to automation, or not being allowed to use “summer” as a verb. The activity is very popular with her friends, who laud Linton as one of the most down-to-earth people they have ever met. And some of them have met Elon Musk.

Next we proceed to the diner. “Howdy, Tucker,” she says. Tucker, an actor, doffs his “MAGA” cap. We drink a cup of real coffee, flown in from a real American town, and Linton marvels at its texture and flavor. Over this real coffee, Louise tells me about how she made a real friend at the dog park when a strange dog got hold of the solid gold bone that her dog was struggling to bury. She now regularly invites the dog to tea and grooming parties while its owner sleeps on a park bench.

With Tucker’s help, Louise leads me in one of her favorite exercises: pretending to craft a Kickstarter campaign for a family member’s life-threatening medical emergency before the clock runs out. We don’t succeed. Louise feels awful!

No time to process this: We have to go to SoulCycle! Louise is just like regular people, she tells me. In fact, her SoulCycle T-shirt says “Regular Person” on it.

After SoulCycle, Louise leads me around her model farm, where she and husband Steve often go to tend their pastel sheep and imagine what it would be like to be members of the third estate. She has a lot of compassion, her friend (a model) tells me as we walk from the model farm to their model factory (different kinds of models).

We punch out at a Faberge clock before we board her personal subway, clinging to the poles as someone makes us a sandwich.

Has she ever seen an actual subway? I ask.

She smiles knowingly. No time to process this either! We are climbing on a private jet.

Louise’s friends hasten to assure me that she likes the things regular people like: breathing air, Ivanka Trump-branded products, getting upset on the Internet, going to galas, calling the plumber when the diamonds from the bathtub where she sleeps get stuck in the drain. She gets it!

We get off the jet at another model farm, where we join several other members of the Trump administration to don custom galoshes and imagine what it might be like to need soybean subsidies. There is another diner here, this one a bit larger, where we go and complain about our economic anxieties. The only thing on the menu is hamburgers. They arrive on blue china and we cut little pieces out of them with our silver forks and knives.

“Louise has a lot of compassion,” her friend, a model, explains, “but she grew up in a Scottish castle.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"EPA changes its story on Pruitt's first-class travel"

Spoiler

EPA on Wednesday retracted its claim that Administrator Scott Pruitt has received a “blanket waiver” to fly first class whenever he travels, after POLITICO pointed officials to federal travel rules that appeared to bar such arrangements.

Pruitt has been routinely flying first class at taxpayers’ expense after securing what EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox had described as "blanket waiver,” POLITICO reported Tuesday. But the General Services Administration says federal rules require agencies’ oversight staffers to sign off on officials’ first- or business-class travel "on a trip-by-trip basis ... unless the traveler has an up-to-date documented disability or special need.”

Wilcox changed his explanation after POLITICO pointed out that section of the regulations. GSA does allow first-class travel for security reasons, but only if agencies request a waiver for each trip.

"As such, for every trip Administrator Pruitt submits a waiver to fly in either first or business class," Wilcox said, amending the agency's earlier statement, which yielded criticism from Republican lawmakers and led Democrats to request an inspector general investigation.

A GSA spokesperson confirmed its ban on blanket waivers to POLITICO Wednesday but would not discuss Pruitt's specific circumstances.

The EPA spokesman said anyone seeking additional details about Pruitt’s travels would have to formally request them under the Freedom of Information Act, a process that can take months or years. In fact, the agency has not yet responded to POLITICO's June request information about travel authorizations.

Two House Democrats asked an agency watchdog earlier Wednesday to review EPA's "blanket waiver" policy.

The questions add to growing scrutiny over the high-flying travel expenses of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, five months after former HHS Secretary Tom Price stepped down following POLITICO’s reporting on his use of more than $1 million in taxpayers’ money for trips on private jets and government planes.

Pruitt and his staff say he can't fly coach because of security concerns. He regularly purchases first-class tickets on trips as short as D.C. to Boston and on long-haul flights to the Middle East.

But Norm Eisen, the former top ethics lawyer for the Obama administration and a critic of Trump, said Pruitt should not be allowed to routinely ignore regulations that are meant to ensure government officials do not waste taxpayer dollars.

"It’s nonsense, whereas no such thing as providing a blanket waiver of that kind. It’s contrary to all ethics practices," Eisen said. "If you’re going to use the people’s money in this way, there needs to be an individual waiver each time."

Information about Pruitt’s travel expenses has come out only in response to specific public records requests, including one that a court ordered EPA to respond to in mid-January from a watchdog group called the Environmental Integrity Project. It’s not possible to tally how much Pruitt has spent on first-class trips in total, but The Washington Post reported over the weekend that in early June, Pruitt and other EPA staff racked up more than $90,000 in travel bills.

Records also show Pruitt spending $1,641 for a flight from D.C. to New York City and back — a route that often costs as little as $250 with a few days’ notice.

Pruitt also may have an armed agent flying with him at the first-class price level, but EPA excluded some of the travel records in its disclosure to the environmental group, citing security concerns.

Pruitt’s high-priced trips run contrary to the practices of previous administrations, when top EPA officials typically flew coach, and ethics officials allowed first-class trips only in special circumstances. Staffers for President Barack Obama’s EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, recall her flying coach to and from Africa and Asia.

Some Republican lawmakers have criticized Pruitt’s flights, adding to angst over other Trump officials’ travel practices. Besides Price, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin have been under scrutiny for their expenses.

Eisen, now chairman of the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that when he was working in the White House from 2011 to 2014 he only rarely allowed non-coach travel, when State Department officials had to make flights of 14 hours or more. Trips of that length justify first-class tickets, according to federal regulations.

GSA rules clearly prohibit blanket authorizations for commercial flights in virtually all circumstances.

“Blanket authorization of other than coach-class transportation accommodations is prohibited and shall be authorized on an individual trip-by-trip basis, unless the traveler has an up-to-date documented disability or special need,” the Federal Travel Regulation says.

However, agencies can apply waivers to use government aircraft, in certain situations.

Other former federal officials speaking on background said they'd also never heard of a blanket waiver.

An advance staffer for an Obama-era Cabinet member said first class didn’t seem to offer security benefits.

“Security [staff], in my experience, doesn’t care so much what cabin the principal sits in," the former advance staffer said. "They care much more about where their seat is in the plane."

EPA's Office of Inspector General, which investigates threats against Pruitt, said last fall that he received up to five times as many threats as his immediate predecessor, McCarthy.

It is not clear how many of those threats have been deemed credible; the instances revealed so far have included threatening tweets and a menacing postcard. The internal watchdog did not immediately respond to a request on Wednesday for updated statistics on threats against Pruitt.

A former TSA official noted that everyone who flies, in coach or otherwise, is subject to security screening.

"Everyone in that aircraft went through TSA security screening," the official said. "It’s a safe environment like you’d go through the Capitol building on Capitol Hill. Everyone has gone through a metal detector, same as on an aircraft."

Other security experts told POLITICO that there are genuine protective advantages to traveling in first class.

Airlines will often work with high-profile travelers to board them separately from the general public. Flying first class also grants access to secured lounge areas, and first-class passengers disembark first. And while in the air, the first-class area is more tightly controlled than coach.

“You want to minimize as much potential problems as you can,” said Joe Funk of TorchStone Global, a private security firm. Funk spent 21 years in the Secret Service and more recently provided security for presidential candidates Obama, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.

“If you reduce the exposure of your protectee, your VIP, from the entire airport audience to a smaller group that is in the lounges, you’ve eliminated or minimized” threats, he added.

While flying first class could allow Pruitt access to special lounges where there are fewer passengers waiting for a plane, former federal agency staffers say VIPs are often offered that option even with just a coach ticket. Some airports ask high-level officials to disembark directly to their vehicles rather than walking through the terminal, a former EPA staffer said. And armed guards and the people they are protecting typically board planes first, former government employees familiar with the process said.

“As much as you can keep your principal away from other people,” you should, said John Sexton of Sexton Executive Security in Fairfax, Va.

 

[GrumpyGran]

30 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"EPA changes its story on Pruitt's first-class travel"

  Reveal hidden contents

EPA on Wednesday retracted its claim that Administrator Scott Pruitt has received a “blanket waiver” to fly first class whenever he travels, after POLITICO pointed officials to federal travel rules that appeared to bar such arrangements.

Pruitt has been routinely flying first class at taxpayers’ expense after securing what EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox had described as "blanket waiver,” POLITICO reported Tuesday. But the General Services Administration says federal rules require agencies’ oversight staffers to sign off on officials’ first- or business-class travel "on a trip-by-trip basis ... unless the traveler has an up-to-date documented disability or special need.”

Wilcox changed his explanation after POLITICO pointed out that section of the regulations. GSA does allow first-class travel for security reasons, but only if agencies request a waiver for each trip.

"As such, for every trip Administrator Pruitt submits a waiver to fly in either first or business class," Wilcox said, amending the agency's earlier statement, which yielded criticism from Republican lawmakers and led Democrats to request an inspector general investigation.

A GSA spokesperson confirmed its ban on blanket waivers to POLITICO Wednesday but would not discuss Pruitt's specific circumstances.

The EPA spokesman said anyone seeking additional details about Pruitt’s travels would have to formally request them under the Freedom of Information Act, a process that can take months or years. In fact, the agency has not yet responded to POLITICO's June request information about travel authorizations.

Two House Democrats asked an agency watchdog earlier Wednesday to review EPA's "blanket waiver" policy.

The questions add to growing scrutiny over the high-flying travel expenses of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, five months after former HHS Secretary Tom Price stepped down following POLITICO’s reporting on his use of more than $1 million in taxpayers’ money for trips on private jets and government planes.

Pruitt and his staff say he can't fly coach because of security concerns. He regularly purchases first-class tickets on trips as short as D.C. to Boston and on long-haul flights to the Middle East.

But Norm Eisen, the former top ethics lawyer for the Obama administration and a critic of Trump, said Pruitt should not be allowed to routinely ignore regulations that are meant to ensure government officials do not waste taxpayer dollars.

"It’s nonsense, whereas no such thing as providing a blanket waiver of that kind. It’s contrary to all ethics practices," Eisen said. "If you’re going to use the people’s money in this way, there needs to be an individual waiver each time."

Information about Pruitt’s travel expenses has come out only in response to specific public records requests, including one that a court ordered EPA to respond to in mid-January from a watchdog group called the Environmental Integrity Project. It’s not possible to tally how much Pruitt has spent on first-class trips in total, but The Washington Post reported over the weekend that in early June, Pruitt and other EPA staff racked up more than $90,000 in travel bills.

Records also show Pruitt spending $1,641 for a flight from D.C. to New York City and back — a route that often costs as little as $250 with a few days’ notice.

Pruitt also may have an armed agent flying with him at the first-class price level, but EPA excluded some of the travel records in its disclosure to the environmental group, citing security concerns.

Pruitt’s high-priced trips run contrary to the practices of previous administrations, when top EPA officials typically flew coach, and ethics officials allowed first-class trips only in special circumstances. Staffers for President Barack Obama’s EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, recall her flying coach to and from Africa and Asia.

Some Republican lawmakers have criticized Pruitt’s flights, adding to angst over other Trump officials’ travel practices. Besides Price, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin have been under scrutiny for their expenses.

Eisen, now chairman of the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that when he was working in the White House from 2011 to 2014 he only rarely allowed non-coach travel, when State Department officials had to make flights of 14 hours or more. Trips of that length justify first-class tickets, according to federal regulations.

GSA rules clearly prohibit blanket authorizations for commercial flights in virtually all circumstances.

“Blanket authorization of other than coach-class transportation accommodations is prohibited and shall be authorized on an individual trip-by-trip basis, unless the traveler has an up-to-date documented disability or special need,” the Federal Travel Regulation says.

However, agencies can apply waivers to use government aircraft, in certain situations.

Other former federal officials speaking on background said they'd also never heard of a blanket waiver.

An advance staffer for an Obama-era Cabinet member said first class didn’t seem to offer security benefits.

“Security [staff], in my experience, doesn’t care so much what cabin the principal sits in," the former advance staffer said. "They care much more about where their seat is in the plane."

EPA's Office of Inspector General, which investigates threats against Pruitt, said last fall that he received up to five times as many threats as his immediate predecessor, McCarthy.

It is not clear how many of those threats have been deemed credible; the instances revealed so far have included threatening tweets and a menacing postcard. The internal watchdog did not immediately respond to a request on Wednesday for updated statistics on threats against Pruitt.

A former TSA official noted that everyone who flies, in coach or otherwise, is subject to security screening.

"Everyone in that aircraft went through TSA security screening," the official said. "It’s a safe environment like you’d go through the Capitol building on Capitol Hill. Everyone has gone through a metal detector, same as on an aircraft."

Other security experts told POLITICO that there are genuine protective advantages to traveling in first class.

Airlines will often work with high-profile travelers to board them separately from the general public. Flying first class also grants access to secured lounge areas, and first-class passengers disembark first. And while in the air, the first-class area is more tightly controlled than coach.

“You want to minimize as much potential problems as you can,” said Joe Funk of TorchStone Global, a private security firm. Funk spent 21 years in the Secret Service and more recently provided security for presidential candidates Obama, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.

“If you reduce the exposure of your protectee, your VIP, from the entire airport audience to a smaller group that is in the lounges, you’ve eliminated or minimized” threats, he added.

While flying first class could allow Pruitt access to special lounges where there are fewer passengers waiting for a plane, former federal agency staffers say VIPs are often offered that option even with just a coach ticket. Some airports ask high-level officials to disembark directly to their vehicles rather than walking through the terminal, a former EPA staffer said. And armed guards and the people they are protecting typically board planes first, former government employees familiar with the process said.

“As much as you can keep your principal away from other people,” you should, said John Sexton of Sexton Executive Security in Fairfax, Va.

 

I'm just sayin'. Looks pretty safe to me. And he gets the extra joy of running over all those people his boss is throwing under it.

[GrumpyGran]

Oh, fuck, possum's talking. He's struggling, should have waited until, well maybe until he isn't AG anymore.

He's at a sheriff's conference, yeah, nothing will actually be said here.

[GreyhoundFan]

Understatement: "VA chief Shulkin, under fire for Europe trip, acknowledges ‘the optics of this are not good’"

Spoiler

Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin promised House lawmakers Thursday that he will repay parts of his taxpayer-funded travel to Europe last year, a 10-day trip that included choice accommodations for a Wimbledon tennis match and several sightseeing excursions with his wife.

Shulkin, appearing shaken and remorseful, told members of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs that he would “do whatever I have to do to make things right” following publication Wednesday of a damning report detailing efforts by the secretary and his staff to mislead VA’s ethics office. The report was written by Michael J. Missal, the agency’s inspector general.

For Shulkin, it was a noticeable departure from his defiant tone the day prior, when he characterized Missal’s report as “unfair” and “entirely inaccurate,” insisting he’d done nothing wrong.

“I’ve already written a check to the Treasury,” Shulkin told lawmakers during a previously scheduled hearing intended to focus on VA’s $200 billion budget proposal.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), opened the hearing with a statement noting that public officials controlled taxpayer money and must be held to a “higher standard.” Rep. Tim Walz, (D-Minn.), the panel’s ranking member, called for a Justice Department investigation.

Shulkin told the committee: “I do recognize the optics of this are not good. I accept responsibility.” Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), who called for Shulkin’s resignation after reading the report Wednesday, shot back: “It’s not the optics that are not good. It’s the facts that are not good.”

Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said he was “profoundly frustrated,” and that Shulkin had to work to “restore trust.” Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) told him, “I hope in the coming days you’ll be forthcoming with the American people.”

The inspector general’s report says that Shulkin’s chief of staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, altered an aide’s email to make it appear as though Shulkin was receiving an award from the Danish government, justification for allowing the government to pay for Shulkin’s wife to join him on the trip. VA paid more than $4,300 for her airfare, the report says.

Shulkin’s woes mark the latest setback for VA, which has faced withering criticism over a host of scandals, including long wait times for appointments and medical malpractice.

He is among five current and former Trump administration Cabinet members to be investigated by inspectors general over travel expenses. Tom Price resigned last year as health and human services secretary amid widespread outrage over his use of taxpayer-funded charter flights. Officials have said their travel on private planes or military aircraft was approved by their agencies’ ethics officials.

In Shulkin’s case, he has defended the Europe trip, which included a conference on veterans health issues, as essential and beneficial.

When he wasn’t answering lawmakers’ questions about his travel, Shulkin was addressing the agency’s ongoing struggle to fill several senior-level jobs and hire mental-health providers. President Trump has prioritized lowering the rate of suicide among veterans — currently estimated at 20 per day.

He faced heated questions, too, about VA’s plans to outsource veterans care, a program known as Choice. Due to the long wait-times veterans experience at VA facilities nationwide, the the issue has become a focal point. Many unions and civil servants, along with veterans service organizations, fear such proposals will leave VA gutted.

The only thing he is sorry about is being caught.

[GreyhoundFan]

Awwwww, Pruitt got his fee fees hurt by the skeery public: "Public confrontations prompted Pruitt to switch to first-class travel, EPA says"

Spoiler

Verbal confrontations with members of the public prompted Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to switch to flying first or business class whenever possible, officials said Thursday.

Henry Barnet, who directs EPA’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics and Training, said in an interview that the head of Pruitt’s security detail, Pasquale Perrotta, recommended in May that he fly in either first or business class to provide “a buffer” between him and the public. His memo was prompted by an incident that month when a person approached  Pruitt “with threatening language” that was “vulgar,” Barnet said.

Barnet said he did not believe any physical altercation was involved. But compared to Pruitt’s immediate predecessors, he added, verbal insults and threatening language have been “much more prevalent with this administrator, and he’s recognized much more when he travels.”

The EPA did not immediately release details about that May incident or the memo that Barnet received with the new security recommendation. The agency also had declined to release the travel waiver that it uses to justify Pruitt’s premium-class flights, or to say who signed off on the decision.

Asked whether a member of Pruitt’s security detail always travels in first or business class with him, Barnett declined to provide specifics out of security concerns but said, “We try to have an agent with the administrator at all times, near the administrator.”

Pruitt’s predecessor, Gina McCarthy, flew coach for every trip she took except for one trip to Davos, Switzerland, when she was upgraded, according to a former EPA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security arrangements. A member of McCarthy’s security detail would sit in an “adjacent or adjoining seat,” the official added, whether behind her or just across the aisle.

Pruitt’s travel practices have come under renewed increasing scrutiny after The Washington Post detailed this week how his trips have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. His many first-class flights include a $1,641.43 trip from Washington, D.C. to New York City last June and a $7,003.52 round-trip ticket to Italy last summer. Pruitt also has taken numerous first-class flights — typically ranging from $2,000 to $2,600 — to events in his home state of Oklahoma, where he often stays the weekend.

In a subsequent interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Pruitt alluded to the fact that his upgrades stemmed from public confrontations “in the March-April time frame.”

“We live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment,” he told the paper. “We’ve reached the point where there’s not much civility in the marketplace, and it’s created, you know, it’s created some issues and the (security) detail, the level of protection is determined by the level of threat.”

Pruitt emphasized that members of his security detail decide his travel arrangements: “I’m not involved in any of those decisions. Those are all made by the detail, the security assessment in addition to the chief of staff.”

Barnet, a seven-year EPA veteran, said he doesn’t “approve or do anything with the administrator’s travel — that goes through the administrator’s office.” But he said he is responsible for dispatching agents to accompany Pruitt at all times.

While the agency’s Office of Inspector General does not publicly discuss the actual number of threats against Pruitt or others at the EPA, it has said investigators opened more cases during fiscal year 2017 than in the previous year. Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson, each of whom led the EPA under President Barack Obama and were controversial figures in their own right, had security teams composed of about a half-dozen individuals. That number has roughly tripled under Pruitt and become a 24/7 operation.

The Post reported last fall that agents normally charged with probing environmental crimes were being pulled off their normal duties to bolster Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail.

Barnet said the agency had hired enough agents that it was no longer having investigators do that job.

“We are up to speed in terms of the size of the team we need to protect the administrator,” he said, though he declined to disclose numbers.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't have picked out any previous EPA administrator out of a line-up, so maybe if Pruitt doesn't want to be recognized, he should shut up and not be such a tool. As for the "toxic environment" he referenced, um, he's trying to make OUR environment more toxic every single day.

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Awwwww, Pruitt got his fee fees hurt by the skeery public: "Public confrontations prompted Pruitt to switch to first-class travel, EPA says"

  Reveal hidden contents

Verbal confrontations with members of the public prompted Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to switch to flying first or business class whenever possible, officials said Thursday.

Henry Barnet, who directs EPA’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics and Training, said in an interview that the head of Pruitt’s security detail, Pasquale Perrotta, recommended in May that he fly in either first or business class to provide “a buffer” between him and the public. His memo was prompted by an incident that month when a person approached  Pruitt “with threatening language” that was “vulgar,” Barnet said.

Barnet said he did not believe any physical altercation was involved. But compared to Pruitt’s immediate predecessors, he added, verbal insults and threatening language have been “much more prevalent with this administrator, and he’s recognized much more when he travels.”

The EPA did not immediately release details about that May incident or the memo that Barnet received with the new security recommendation. The agency also had declined to release the travel waiver that it uses to justify Pruitt’s premium-class flights, or to say who signed off on the decision.

Asked whether a member of Pruitt’s security detail always travels in first or business class with him, Barnett declined to provide specifics out of security concerns but said, “We try to have an agent with the administrator at all times, near the administrator.”

Pruitt’s predecessor, Gina McCarthy, flew coach for every trip she took except for one trip to Davos, Switzerland, when she was upgraded, according to a former EPA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security arrangements. A member of McCarthy’s security detail would sit in an “adjacent or adjoining seat,” the official added, whether behind her or just across the aisle.

Pruitt’s travel practices have come under renewed increasing scrutiny after The Washington Post detailed this week how his trips have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. His many first-class flights include a $1,641.43 trip from Washington, D.C. to New York City last June and a $7,003.52 round-trip ticket to Italy last summer. Pruitt also has taken numerous first-class flights — typically ranging from $2,000 to $2,600 — to events in his home state of Oklahoma, where he often stays the weekend.

In a subsequent interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Pruitt alluded to the fact that his upgrades stemmed from public confrontations “in the March-April time frame.”

“We live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment,” he told the paper. “We’ve reached the point where there’s not much civility in the marketplace, and it’s created, you know, it’s created some issues and the (security) detail, the level of protection is determined by the level of threat.”

Pruitt emphasized that members of his security detail decide his travel arrangements: “I’m not involved in any of those decisions. Those are all made by the detail, the security assessment in addition to the chief of staff.”

Barnet, a seven-year EPA veteran, said he doesn’t “approve or do anything with the administrator’s travel — that goes through the administrator’s office.” But he said he is responsible for dispatching agents to accompany Pruitt at all times.

While the agency’s Office of Inspector General does not publicly discuss the actual number of threats against Pruitt or others at the EPA, it has said investigators opened more cases during fiscal year 2017 than in the previous year. Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson, each of whom led the EPA under President Barack Obama and were controversial figures in their own right, had security teams composed of about a half-dozen individuals. That number has roughly tripled under Pruitt and become a 24/7 operation.

The Post reported last fall that agents normally charged with probing environmental crimes were being pulled off their normal duties to bolster Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail.

Barnet said the agency had hired enough agents that it was no longer having investigators do that job.

“We are up to speed in terms of the size of the team we need to protect the administrator,” he said, though he declined to disclose numbers.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't have picked out any previous EPA administrator out of a line-up, so maybe if Pruitt doesn't want to be recognized, he should shut up and not be such a tool. 

 Honestly, if you put Pruitt in a line up with a bunch of other middle-aged white guys with grey hair, I freely admit I'd probably pick out the wrong guy.