Executive Departments Part 2

[fraurosena]

On 6/12/2018 at 11:26 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

"Scott Pruitt is acting like what he is: The poorest member of Trump’s Cabinet"

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Take a moment to pity Scott Pruitt.

I know this sentiment comes as a shock. After all, in a presidential administration haunted by scandals, Scott Pruitt still stands out for the surprising pettiness of his peccadilloes.

Last week alone, we discovered the Environmental Protection Agency chief had turned his administrative aides and security staff members — whose salary is paid by our taxes — into personal assistants in a way that would be familiar to a Hollywood producer. No task was too demeaning for them to take on. He demanded they pick up dry-cleaning and seek out his preferred skin moisturizer, one apparently only for sale at high-end Ritz-Carlton hotels.

True, he’s hardly alone. Compare all this with the high-living behavior of some of his colleagues in the administration. President Trump is the ringleader: He spent $13 million last year traveling. One weekend alone at his New Jersey golf club cost more than $44,000. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson (estimated net worth: $26 million) got caught ordering $31,000 worth of dining room furniture for his office suite, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, took advantage of a military flight to Fort Knox that was suspiciously timed for the 2017 solar eclipse. Much of this happens on the public tab, no matter how many bucks they’ve got banked.

Pruitt’s no slouch in that department, either: He has insisted on flying first class when traveling on government business, citing security threats. But still — there is something frenzied about his spending and the way he pursues it. That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Economist Robert H. Frank calls the pressure to indulge in ever-more high-end goods and luxury experiences an expenditure cascade. As the wealthy spend more on luxurious goods and services, the pressure increases for everyone else to do the same. That’s something that has defined our second gilded age, as almost all of us can attest to. We’ve seen this effect in our own lives in everything from coffee to baby strollers, handbags to houses.

And now we see it from Pruitt, a middle-class striver in a rich man’s administration, courtesy of his spot in Trump’s Cabinet, the wealthiest ever assembled by a U.S. president. It was sociologist Thorstein Veblen who coined the term “conspicuous consumption” during the first gilded age. In his view, we are not simply spending for the sheer joy of it. It is, instead, a form of signaling status, a visual way to demonstrate power. Pruitt is the latest — or at least the most notable — figure to embrace that tendency.

We judge ourselves by the company we keep. And although you and I find ourselves keeping up with the Joneses, Pruitt finds himself keeping up with the Trumps (estimated net worth: $2.8 billion), the McMahons (estimated net worth: $1.6 billion), the DeVoses (estimated net worth: $1.5 billion), the Rosses (estimated net worth: $700 million), the Mnuchins (estimated net worth: $400 million) and the Sessionses (estimated net worth: $7.5 million).

Pruitt, by contrast, makes a tad less than $200,000 annually serving as head of the EPA. His net worth, according to mandatory filings? An estimated $400,000. Not riches, certainly, not take-this-job-and-shove-it money but impressive enough for a 50-year-old career politician in the United States, a country where about 40 percent of adults claim they could not come up with $400 in an emergency without borrowing money or pawning belongings.

But it’s not an adequate sum, not in the Trump administration, where Pruitt’s net worth is pretty much chump change, or in the Senate, where the median net worth is an estimated $3.2 million. (Members of the House get by with a more modest but still substantial $900,000.)

Could this, perhaps, at least partly explain Pruitt’s orgy of ethically dodgy financial behavior? He’s not the first pol to fall prey to this status spending. Just a few years back, we were treated to the spectacle of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, whose own dodgy financial trials originated, in part, in his family’s attempts to keep up with the high Virginia society that they found themselves thrust into after his election.

After all, Pruitt’s high-end skin care regimen is not the only example of his eyebrow-raising purchases and staff commands. His team also made sure he was supplied with delectables from gourmet food purveyor Dean & DeLuca. They apartment-hunted for the man, and helped him plan a family vacation to California to see the Rose Bowl. One even called the Trump International Hotel, asking whether any used mattresses were available for Pruitt to purchase, and what the sale price might be if so.

This, of course, comes on top of other Pruitt reveals, including renting a Capitol Hill apartment for $50 a night from the wife of a lobbyist with business pending before the EPA, charging the EPA for a dozen fountain pens costing $130 a piece, demanding that his security detail use their emergency sirens when he’s late for dinner reservations at destinations such as Le Diplomate and dining so often at the low-cost but high-end White House mess that he was asked to show up a little less often.

Give Pruitt some credit — he was, at least, attempting to save a buck. He’s a self-important spender, part cheapskate and schnorrer. But self-sacrifice? A modest lifestyle? Please. This is the Trump administration we’re talking about.

Common sense says the richer the company we keep — and the more high living that goes on around us — the more we’ll spend trying to keep up, and show off. Passing time with people wealthier than ourselves almost certainly shifts our reference points.

Many of us seem instinctively to know this. When a group of researchers led by Sara Solnick, then at the University of Miami, conducted an experiment where they asked subjects if they would prefer to earn $50,000 a year while others made do with $25,000 or instead an annual salary of $100,00 while living surrounded by those taking home $250,000 a year, about half say would prefer the lesser amount. The authors of the survey found that when they looked deeper at the decision, they found it wasn’t driven by envy. Instead, they noted, “Many seemed to see life as an ongoing competition, in which not being ahead means falling behind.”

Watching other people spend money, it seems, encourages others to do so as well. When Pedro Gardete, an assistant professor at Stanford University, crunched the data from hundreds of thousands of airline passengers, he discovered that people are significantly more likely to buy a snack or pay to watch a premium movie if the person sitting next to them does so first.

In this light, Pruitt’s pettiness isn’t mysterious at all. He’s just trying to keep up in an administration where almost everyone else is far, far ahead of him on the economic food chain. It all makes sense, in a behavioral finance sort of way.

 

In other words, Pruitt is destroying the planet in order to keep up with the Joneses.  

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Remember the BT who got promoted to a high-level position at the ONDCP despite an utter lack of qualification other than being a BT? Here's an interesting follow up (spoiler alert: ETTD) "Promoted six times and then fired: Inside a 24-year-old political appointee’s wild ride in Trump’s Washington"

Spoiler

He was one of the fastest-rising political appointees of the Trump administration, an unpaid campaign intern with no professional experience who soared into a top job with a six-figure salary at the White House’s drug policy office. But on Jan. 14, in the hours after a front-page Washington Post story cast doubt on his résumé and qualifications, 24-year-old Taylor Weyeneth was feeling vulnerable.

“Can I ask you what the plan is for me now,” Weyeneth texted the White House official who had promoted him.

“You’re fine. No action required,” Sean Doocey, then deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, wrote back. “It is garbage journalism by a garbage newspaper.”

Two months later, Weyeneth was gone — demoted, told not to speak publicly and finally fired as the political fallout spread.

This is the inside account of a political appointee’s time in Trump’s Washington. It’s the story of a young operative whose central qualification was loyalty and whose responsibilities included furnishing the White House with intelligence about career employees at a time when the administration distrusts the standing bureaucracy to an unusual degree.

Weyeneth recently agreed to a request from The Post to talk about his experiences in the administration and the unusual circumstances that enabled him to climb through the ranks and into the White House. He provided emails, texts and other documents to back up his account.

In just over a year, Weyeneth received six promotions in the campaign and administration. They culminated with his appointment as deputy chief of staff at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, where he oversaw veteran employees and helped steer an operation that was supposed to lead the fight against the opioid epidemic.

“This is more than I ever dreamed of,” Weyeneth recalled thinking, even as he worried about a possible backlash over his lack of qualifications: “Have I reached too far? Is public opinion going to take over? Is this going to become an article?”

Weyeneth’s story offers a fresh perspective on the chaos of Trump’s campaign and first year in office. He was among more than 250 political appointees to federal agencies and the White House who had left the administration as of mid-March, some of them after just weeks or months, according to a Post tally of White House departures and analysis of agency records released by the Office of Personnel Management under a Freedom of Information Act request. 

It illustrates ongoing problems in Trump’s Presidential Personnel Office, a little-known but crucial operation that has filled fewer key government posts than the four prior administrations, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that teamed up with The Post to track appointments.

The administration’s haphazard appointment process is unlike any in recent memory and has left the federal government unsteadied at the highest levels. Vacancies were one of the reasons Weyeneth was able to move up so frequently, the White House has acknowledged. For Weyeneth’s final promotion, though, Doocey reassigned an experienced “career incumbent” civil servant to create room for him to become deputy chief of staff at ONDCP, according to a memo independently obtained by The Post. 

Doocey and others wanted someone loyal to Trump and his policies in a position of authority, at a time when the office had lost most of its political appointees and had no leader, Weyeneth said. The White House tasked him with reporting back on the ONDCP operations and the activities of its acting director, a career bureaucrat, Weyeneth said.

Today, Weyeneth is doing temp work, including outdoor labor for a contractor at an intelligence agency. He is looking for private-sector work and is helping a substance abuse advocate on a project aimed at improving services for drug addicts.

In interviews, Weyeneth acknowledged mistakes, including errors on his résumés. He said he continues to support Trump and does not regret working for him. But he laments that he was not more skeptical when Doocey and other officials assured him that he could do the job and that they would protect him in the face of media-driven controversies.

“It got to a point where the people that were so supportive and so defensive of me, at least I had thought, were unable to continue their support,” Weyeneth said, “and mentioned to me word for word that we have to stop the bleeding.”

By opening up to the The Post, Weyeneth said he was aiming for a second chance. He wants to add to his own narrative in the hope that potential employers might see a more complete picture when they look him up online. “Redemption,” he said, describing his goal. “Being able to kind of rebuild, restart.”

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, accused Weyeneth of betraying his former colleagues by speaking to The Post for this story.

“So a guy is creating bad press,” the official said, “he’s sent supportive messages from people who were advocating for him internally, and his reaction is to try to embarrass them by leaking information to The Washington Post?”

The official said that Doocey, now director of the Presidential Personnel Office, declined to comment.

Room to rise

Taylor Weyeneth comes from a middle-class family in Upstate New York, and some of his relatives have suffered the ill effects of substance abuse, including one who died of a heroin overdose. He became interested in Trump in the fall of 2015, the start of his senior year as a legal studies student at St. John’s University in Queens. He liked Trump’s statements about the need to confront the opioid crisis and cut taxes.

The following spring, as he contemplated what he would do after graduation, Weyeneth went to the Trump campaign website, filled out a form and volunteered. Just as Trump was pinning down the Republican nomination, Weyeneth became an intern at the campaign’s headquarters in Trump Tower in New York.

His first promotion came a few weeks later. He was hired to be a coordinator for some of the interns, earning the equivalent of about $48,000 annually, Weyeneth said. Among the first people he told was his mother, Kim Weyeneth.

“He started as an intern but they saw something in him, the same thing I’ve always seen in him, and they decided to hire him fulltime,” she wrote on Facebook. “I’m beyond proud he is going to be a part of history.” 

Weyeneth soon caught the eye of Jeff DeWit, the campaign’s new chief operating officer. At the time, there were only a few dozen full-time paid employees at the headquarters. In an interview, DeWit said Weyeneth impressed him because he showed up early, stayed late and worked hard. “He’s a good kid,” said DeWit, now the chief financial officer at NASA.

Within weeks, Weyeneth was named coordinator for national voter services, a title that came with a wide array of logistical chores, including helping to launch a new call center in Texas. By the fall, Weyeneth said, he was working with scores of interns and volunteers. He said he was proud to be involved in a daily report for Trump staff that tallied the number of calls, emails and donations received by the campaign.

A few days before the election, Weyeneth had another chance to shine. He said a staff member in the office of Rick Dearborn, then a senior policy adviser to Trump, asked that Weyeneth and the interns create a list of Republican lawmakers and political figures who openly supported Trump. With a possible victory in sight, the campaign was contemplating how to fill an administration with loyalists.

Aiming to impress Dearborn, Weyeneth drove his interns hard to quickly create a spreadsheet of the names. “We got it done immediately,” he said. “It just showed commitment and dedication right off the bat.”

Dearborn did not respond to requests for an interview.

‘I’m now a political appointee’

Weyeneth was giddy about Trump’s victory. A photo from election night shows Weyeneth and volunteers drinking beer and screaming at a campaign party in Manhattan.

He was excited about the possibility of staying on with the Trump camp, he said, and lobbied Dearborn’s office. “Listen, I want to come on board,” Weyeneth recalled saying.

The request was well-timed. On Nov. 11, 2016, Trump fired the leader of his transition planning, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out long lists of people who had been recommended to run executive branch agencies.

In doing so, Trump virtually guaranteed his administration would get off to a rocky start. But that meant opportunities for Weyeneth and other young people. 

“Within a couple of days, I ended up in the transition team,” he said. “And it set me on a completely different path.”

Weyeneth worked directly with Dearborn, the new executive director of the transition, helping staff with travel arrangements and other administrative tasks, according to interviews and a résumé shared by the White House. Just after Christmas, he was ordered to help prepare the transition office in Washington. He rented a U-Haul van, loaded his stuff and on New Year’s Day drove south.

Among other things, Weyeneth helped compile a list of trusted politicos who could serve on the “beachhead teams” that would flood federal agencies in the days and weeks after Trump's inauguration. 

On Jan. 10, 2017, Weyeneth received an email from a transition official confirming his next move: confidential assistant on the Treasury Department’s beachhead team, according to an email he gave The Post.

He remembers his excitement and thinking, “I’m now a political appointee for a president of the United States.”

As an entry-level administration official, Weyeneth was part of a team responsible for helping nominees through their appointment process, making sure they filled out the proper forms on time. 

He was soon designated a deputy White House liaison, a job that is part of a political network that recruits administration officials and communicates constantly with White House officials about agency operations, political strategy and news coverage, according to documents and interviews. 

Among other things, Weyeneth said he told personnel officials about the opposition of some human resources officials at Treasury to the salaries proposed for some nominees.

He wasn’t at Treasury for long, though, because another door to advancement had opened. A friend who was working as White House liaison at the Office of National Drug Control Policy called to say she was moving to another job. She asked if he might be interested.

Weyeneth said he leaped at the opportunity, and Doocey signed off.

“I said absolutely, this is an important issue right now in the country. The president cares about it,” he told The Post, recalling his response. “I moved into ONDCP on March 13th of 2017, a day I’ll never forget. Being able to get a badge, where I go in and out of the White House and have access to all of these different people. You know, eat lunch next to the West Wing. I mean it was incredible.”

The new job came with a $79,720 salary, according to OPM records. It also came with risks.

‘We took what we could get’

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is supposed to coordinate drug-fighting efforts across the government. But it was in peril. The White House had signaled that it might cut its budget dramatically. The office had no permanent leader — a position known as the drug czar — and it was losing political appointees who could brief White House officials about ONDCP operations, documents and interviews show. 

Regardless, Weyeneth’s ambition was in bloom. In early July, he joked with a colleague that he wanted to be ONDCP’s chief of staff one day, a job that in the past has been filled by an Army general, a former head of Customs and Border Protection and others with years of experience. He recalled the conversation, he told The Post, because of the reaction he got. 

The colleague said, “Hopefully no time soon.”

“I was just like, ‘Why? Do you think it would be really that bad?’ ”

In his account, the colleague said: “Just wait until public opinion takes hold.”

About three weeks later, on July 28, Weyeneth said, Doocey summoned him. He showed Weyeneth a memo that said Lawrence “Chip” Muir, who had just become the office’s general counsel, also was going to serve as acting chief of staff. It named Weyeneth the deputy chief of staff, making him third in command, as well as the office’s White House liaison.

“I was ambitious enough to be able to say, ‘Hell, yeah! I’m being asked to serve my country,’ ” he told The Post. 

The job change took effect that same day. Weyeneth’s salary rose to more than $112,000, documents show.

In an interview, Muir said career staffers were surprised that someone so young and inexperienced was placed in the deputy’s job, a position that had recently been occupied by a lawyer and a veteran government official.

“We were in the grip of an opioid crisis and the American people expected us to get the work done,” he said. “We needed personnel in key positions, and we took what we could get.”

For the first several weeks, Weyeneth feared the press might write a story about him, focusing on his inexperience. When nothing was published, he said, he began to enjoy the job. 

Weyeneth was assigned to serve as a “sherpa” for Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), the failed nominee to be Trump’s drug czar, arranging meetings with congressional leaders, escorting Marino to the Hill and looking out for the administration’s interests.

More important, he was told to keep tabs on Richard Baum, a career employee serving as acting director, and other civil servants. At the time, White House officials feared Baum might be leaking to the press, according to interviews with knowledgeable officials. Weyeneth said he was told to move into an office close to Baum and report his activities to White House officials.

Weyeneth also worked on a plan to cut staff, streamline operations and draw attention to the office’s work under Trump.

On Dec. 21, 2017, Weyeneth received an envelope from the office of Trump’s chief of staff, John F. Kelly. “Dear Taylor,” said the letter signed by Kelly, one of many he sent to the White House staff. “Thank you for your hard work this year. Your dedication and service to our country has been instrumental to the success of President Trump’s administration.”

Weyeneth’s ascent continued. He took on new responsibilities following the departure of seven other Trump administration appointees in the office, including Muir, over several months.

“The functions of the Chief of Staff will be picked up by me and the deputy Chief of Staff,” Baum wrote on Jan. 3, 2018, according to a memo obtained by The Post independent of Weyeneth.

Baum declined a request for an interview.

The turning point

Unknown to Weyeneth, The Post was reporting about his remarkable rise. On Jan. 12, after The Post described its reporting to the White House, an administration official released a statement saying that discrepancies and inaccuracies in Weyeneth’s résumés had surfaced during checks for a security clearance. Weyeneth had been allowed to submit a corrected résumé. Weyeneth recently told The Post that the errors — he appeared to claim to have a master’s degree, and he wrote that he was vice president of his fraternity for longer than was the case — were made in haste, not to deceive.

Though it defended Weyeneth, the statement said he was going to be removed as deputy chief of staff and reinstated to a lower-level job in the office as a White House liaison.

When the Post story appeared online late on Jan. 13, the headline read: “Meet the 24-year-old Trump campaign worker appointed to help lead the government’s drug policy office.” It ran on the front page the next day. Late that morning, Doocey texted Weyeneth, according to copies shared by Weyeneth.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Doocey wrote. “Even though he tried to knife you in the face.”

“And obviously you know I am really happy about your support in this,” Weyeneth wrote, adding later: “Thank you.”

“You’re fine,” Doocey wrote, adding: “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Johnny DeStefano, then the director of PPO, wrote an email to Weyeneth that morning.

“Hang in there. Total unfair garbage in WaPo,” he wrote, according to a copy shared by Weyeneth. “By all accounts you are doing a great job.”

A White House official said DeStefano, now a senior Trump adviser, declined a request for an interview.

Weyeneth was relieved to be going back to a job “more appropriate” for his age and experience, he recently told The Post. But soon his calm was shattered. A follow-up story in The Post quoted a partner in a New York law firm as saying that when Weyeneth was a legal assistant there, after a time he “just didn’t show.” 

The partner, Brian O’Dwyer of O’Dwyer and Bernstein, recently acknowledged that his original account was not quite right, and that Weyeneth had resigned. “Had left on very good terms,” O’Dwyer said in an interview.

Weyeneth’s misstep came a few months later, O’Dwyer said. Weyeneth had asked the firm for additional instruction relating to real estate transactions. After the firm devoted time to training him, the young man stopped going and did not respond to text messages, O’Dwyer said.  

Weyeneth said the White House did not let him defend himself in The Post’s news stories. “They knew all of it,” Weyeneth said. “I wasn’t allowed to give a statement saying, ‘No I was not fired.’ I wasn’t allowed to share any other documentation. They just said, ‘Listen you’re going to be fine. Like, it’s a Democrat from New York saying they fired you. No one is going to care about that.’ ”

A White House official acknowledged that Weyeneth was urged not to speak publicly. “Given the inaccuracies in Mr. Weyeneth’s resume, and his inability to corroborate any of his claims with us at the time, we strongly advised him against being interviewed,” the official said.

In any case, cable television pundits and other news outlets jumped on the story.

The White House soon released another statement. “Mr. Weyeneth has decided to depart ONDCP at the end of the month,” it said.

Weyeneth said when he walked out of the White House for the last time, he despaired for his future. He delayed telling his mother until he could come up with a message that softened the blow.

PPO officials arranged to send Weyeneth to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he worked in a cubicle as a lower-level assistant. On March 22, he was called into a conference room by the department’s White House liaison and handed a notice. Its subject line: “Termination.”

Weyeneth said he felt ill as he was escorted out of the building.

“Everything that happened at the White House — and me having to leave the White House — was devastating,” he said. “Then being relieved of my duties at HUD . . . I was sick to my stomach.”

Weyeneth said he had been hearing for weeks that the White House doubted his loyalty. He said he believes his firing was meant in part as a warning to other administration officials.

The White House official did not respond to questions about that belief.

Weyeneth said he is merely trying to tell his own story. He recognizes that he could have avoided much of the trouble if he had taken more care with his résumé and remained with jobs he was suited for. But he also struck a defiant tone, saying there are legions of young people in Washington that would have taken advantage of the chance to become a deputy chief of staff. 

“This is D.C. It’s the town of social climbing, and climbing the political and business ladder,” he said. “So of course you would accept a role that might be above you.”

For his future prospects, Weyeneth believes he will be on a steadier path as a result of what happened. “And although maybe I had to take quite a few steps back,” he said, “right now I’m still very optimistic about what’s to come.”

What a fall: from deputy chief of staff in an executive branch agency to "outdoor labor for a contractor at an intelligence agency".

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why Scott Pruitt’s effort to get his wife a job could be his most consequential scandal"

Spoiler

He asked Chick-fil-A. A conservative activist group. Republican donors.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was on a mission to find his wife, Marlyn Pruitt, a job last year, The Washington Post is reporting, and he even used EPA aides to help him do it.

It's the latest in a months-long string of ethics lapses and alleged abuses of power on Pruitt's part, but it also could be the most significant for him.

The Fix sat down with Washington Post environmental reporter Brady Dennis, who has been covering Pruitt's scandals, to talk about why the EPA chief could be in legal trouble, what happens next and why he still has his job. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

THE FIX: Let's rewind. What has your reporting uncovered about Pruitt's ethical lapses so far?

DENNIS: He is by far the most controversial and the most investigated Trump Cabinet member at this point. It's at least a dozen — depending on how you count them — federal inquiries into everything from his first-class flights that taxpayers paid for to a $50-a-night condo rental from a D.C. lobbyist, to a $43,000 soundproof phone booth that was installed in his office, to the most recent revelations about using his subordinates at the EPA for all sorts of things: to look for a mattress, to pick up his dry cleaning, to help in the search for his wife to find a job.

In the records we've gotten so far, the emails we've seen cover only certain periods, so there are stretches of time when we don't know a lot about what was happening.

THE FIX: With regard to helping get his wife a job, it seems as if there are two major ethical issues here: that he was using his position of authority to try to find jobs for her and that he tasked taxpayer-funded staff with helping in that.

DENNIS: Right. There are federal laws that say you can't use your public office for personal gain and that includes yourself, your family, your friends. So if [using aides to get his wife a job] were to be found to be an example of that, that would certainly be a violation of federal law.

There are other federal rules that are very clear that you cannot use the labor of subordinates to do things on your behalf personally. He had an aide that was helping with his housing search. He said she was a family friend. My understanding is it doesn't matter; you can't accept free labor from someone who works for you.

Whether he was using his position for personal gain, those are questions people are raising.

THE FIX: You've also reported he created potential conflicts of interest to try to get his wife a job.

DENNIS: It's been striking to us that in some cases, the people Scott Pruitt went to during this job hunt on behalf of his wife seemed to have considered the ethical parts of it closer than maybe he did. [GOP donor] Doug Deason told us that he said to Scott Pruitt: 'I couldn’t find anything that made sense, that wasn’t some kind of conflict.'"

The group that eventually did give his wife a contract told us that they went to their own lawyers and made sure they didn't have any ethical problem in hiring her. Scott Pruitt never went to the EPA's ethics attorneys to ask if it was okay.

THE FIX: You've tweeted that the bottom line about the latest scandal is this: To what extent did Scott Pruitt use his government position and the time and labor of his subordinates (who are paid by taxpayers) to financially benefit himself or his family?

DENNIS: That's the key question, and I think the most relevant. No doubt, there's going to be a push to investigate to see if there is illegal behavior there. And we as a society care when people abuse their position.

THE FIX: You could argue that President Trump and his family are the poster people for blurring or crossing the line between personal gain and their public-service jobs. Is this coming from the top?

DENNIS: Scott Pruitt still has his job in part because Trump doesn't see this as a fireable offense, or he hasn't yet. The tone gets set at the top, and if Scott Pruitt is confident there is no consequences from this — and there may not be — that comes from the top because it has to be the president who decides whether to keep him or let him go.

So far, there's no indication that Trump has any intention of letting him go, despite even conservatives who want him gone, even several staffers in  the White House. But the most important White House staffer hasn't felt that way so far.

THE FIX: You've reported that Trump just likes the guy.

DENNIS: I think that's a big part of it. Our reporting and other people's reporting shows they talk frequently. And Pruitt is very diligent about not just carrying out the policies that Trump wants, but personally praising the president any chance he gets.

THE FIX: What do we know about any potential legal consequences for Pruitt?

DENNIS: I think it's a little too early to say. He does now have an outside attorney who has helped him set up a legal-defense fund. I think he's very aware about the level of scrutiny he's under, and I don't know how it all shakes out.

 

[AmazonGrace]

More fun with asbestos 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Remember Uncle Willy?

Amid President Trump’s headaches confirming cabinet secretaries, from neophyte Rex Tillerson to conflict-prone Scott Pruitt to unprepared Betsy DeVos, all of whom squeezed through, Wilbur Ross was a tonic. With his blue power suit and decades of dealmaking, he had the look and résumé of a Commerce Secretary. And unlike his boss, Ross promised to divest from almost all his holdings upon entering government, drawing bipartisan praise en route to an easy confirmation. “You have really made a very personal sacrifice,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. “Your service has resulted in your divesting yourself of literally hundreds of millions of dollars.” In November 2017, Ross confirmed in writing to the federal Office of Government Ethics that he had divested everything he promised.

But that was not true.
 

Spoiler

 

After weeks of investigation, Forbes found:

For most of last year, Ross served as secretary of commerce while maintaining stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm tied to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a Cypriot bank reportedly caught up in the Robert Mueller investigation and a huge player in an industry Ross is now investigating. It’s hard to imagine a more radioactive portfolio for a cabinet member.

To this day, Ross’ family apparently continues to have an interest in these toxic holdings. Rather than dump them all, the commerce secretary sold some of his interests to Goldman Sachs – and, according to Ross himself, put others in a trust for his family members. He continued to deal with China, Russia and others while evidently knowing that his family’s interests were tied to those countries.

In addition, five days before reports surfaced last fall that Ross was connected to cronies of Vladimir Putin, through a shipping firm called Navigator Holdings, the secretary of commerce, who likely knew about the reporting, shorted stock in the Kremlin-linked company, positioning himself to make money on the investment when share prices dropped.

Absurdly, maintaining all those conflicts of interest appears to be entirely legal—a reflection of ethics laws woefully unprepared for governing tycoons the likes of Donald Trump and Wilbur Ross.

Ross appears to have broken one law, however, submitting a sworn statement to federal officials in November saying he divested of everything he had promised he would—even though he still held more than $10 million worth of stock in financial firm Invesco, his former employer. He also continued to hold a short position in a bank called Sun Bancorp, a company he had promised to divest. The next month, Ross got rid of interests in both.

What does Ross say about all of this now? Not much. When Forbes asked, a month ago, what became of his holdings, he passed the message to his spokesman, who said he hoped to have an answer the next day. Five days later, he sent a one-sentence statement, promising Ross’ current assets would be reflected on an annual financial disclosure, which he had not yet filed. Given two weeks to respond to a list of detailed questions, the spokesperson declined to answer most of them but underscored that Ross eventually divested of his holdings. The spokesperson also issued a statement about whether Ross had broken the law by lying to federal officials. "The secretary did not lie," he said, adding that Ross filed amended paperwork, which is currently under review by the Office of Government Ethics.

Wilbur Ross is not known for telling the truth. On a Sunday afternoon last fall, just back from a trip to Asia, Ross called Forbes to lie about his personal fortune. Forbes had listed the commerce secretary on its billionaires rankings for years, but his financial disclosure report revealed less than $700 million in assets. When pressed about the discrepancy, Ross calmly cited more than $2 billion in undisclosed assets, saying he had shifted a chunk of his fortune to a trust for his family.

Those billions apparently did not exist, but when six senators demanded an investigation, Ross insisted his statements contained a kernel of truth. “At the time of my conversation with the reporter, I was in the process of creating a trust as a mechanism to divest my assets in order to comply with my ethics agreement.” But Ross’ ethics agreement required him to divest, either by selling his assets or giving them away. Simply parking them in a trust was not enough.

Richard Blumenthal, the same senator who had previously praised the commerce secretary for his divestitures, then asked Ross to describe the structure of the trust. He did not respond. That opacity, combined with the fact that the Office of Government Ethics never publicly released documents showing that Ross complied with his promises to divest, created a cloud of mystery surrounding Ross’ assets. Ethics watchdogs wrote damning reports, journalists speculated on whether the secretary of commerce still owned stakes in conflict-producing entities, and a Fox News commentator demanded that Trump fire Ross.

The whole time, Ross' explanation of what happened with those assets was buried in a document sitting in the Office of Government Ethics. Perhaps because it showed an apparent legal violation by the commerce secretary, ethics officials never signed off on the filing, even though they received it five months ago. And since they did not stamp their approval, it was never released to the public. Until now.

According to the filing, Ross divested most of his holdings on October 25, the last possible day he could get rid of them. He sold his “limited partner interests”—generally cash put in a firm’s funds and later invested into various companies—to an “independent third party.” Forbes confirmed that party was investment bank Goldman Sachs. But he dumped the “general partner interests”—which can also contain investments in various companies and typically give the owner an additional share of future profits in the fund—into a trust in which neither he nor his wife have an interest, according to the filing. Lately, Ross’ old funds have performed so poorly that it is not clear whether those general partner interests will ever kick off serious cash. But if the value of the companies they hold suddenly improves, then the beneficiaries of the trust could reap millions of dollars. If the funds have already paid out some portion of profits, and the investments continue to underperform, the beneficiaries may even be required to pay back some money—a possible reason why the commerce secretary put those interests in a trust. Representatives for Ross did not answer questions about the exact structure of the trust.

The ethics filing does not say who its beneficiaries are, but Ross apparently let that slip in his October phone call to Forbes, the only known occasion that he has ever publicly discussed a trust that he used to comply with his ethics agreement. “I am not the beneficiary,” he said when asked about the trust. “That’s the point. This is set up for children and things like that.” Was anyone outside of Ross’ own family a beneficiary? “No,” he said.

So according to Ross, he complied with his ethics agreement in part by handing assets over to his own family members, which technically counts as a divestiture, but left the Ross family with a handful of interests alongside the same motley actors that Secretary Ross is supposed to be getting tough with.

Ross’ key responsibility right now: serving as one of Trump’s top lieutenants in the ongoing trade war between the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China. Long before Ross entered the U.S. government, he was already doing business alongside the Chinese government, directing $100 million of his investors’ money into a 2009 initial public offering for a wind-power producer called Longyuan Power.

It wasn’t the sort of investment that Ross’ firm, bankruptcy specialist WL Ross, was known for. In business terms, an IPO is about as far away from bankruptcy as you can get. But according to four former WL Ross employees, Ross’ main reason for investing in Longyuan Power was not earning a return. “That investment was made solely to curry favor with the Chinese and a big state Chinese investment fund,” says one of Ross’ former colleagues.

Specifically, Ross hoped to entice a sovereign wealth fund named China Investment Corp. into dumping money in another fund of his, according to the former employees. The more the state entity put in the later fund, the more Ross could collect in fees and incentives. It appeared to be a strategic play: Ross could bet other people’s money on a questionable IPO now to grab more money for himself down the road. Ultimately, the future secretary of commerce raised $500 million from the Chinese fund, according to two of the former colleagues. The investment in Longyuan Power dropped from $100 million to $90 million before WL Ross sold it. In a statement, a spokesperson for Ross called the allegations surrounding Longyuan Power “silly and untrue.”

Armed with cash from the Chinese, Ross dumped millions into Diamond S Shipping, which owns 45 vessels around the world, making him business partners with the Chinese government. Despite that connection, Ross initially told the Office of Government Ethics that he planned to hold on to his stake in the business. That prompted questions during his confirmation hearing about how Ross’ interest in the shipping business might overlap with his responsibilities as a member of the cabinet. Despite internal WL Ross documents that note how globalization, the bogeyman in virtually all Trump administration trade negotiations, drives the success of Diamond S Shipping, Ross brushed off the concerns. “The research we’ve done suggests that there has never been a shipping case come before the Department of Commerce,” he told the senators. He did not mention that his business partner in the venture was the Chinese government. In November, a spokesman for Ross told the Center for Public Integrity that the secretary of commerce voluntarily divested from Diamond S Shipping. But in “divesting,” Ross apparently handed over an interest in the business to his family.

The ties between the Ross family and the Chinese government go deeper. In September 2017, one of the investments Ross still personally held, Luxembourg-based International Automotive Components Group, closed a new joint venture. As part of the deal, WL Ross funds took a 30% interest alongside a state-owned company named Shanghai Shenda and got roughly $300 million in cash. The same month, top Chinese officials hosted trade talks with none other than Wilbur Ross.

Two months later, a collection of international journalists was picking apart the Paradise Papers—a trove of documents showing relationships between some of the wealthiest people in the world and offshore entities they controlled. One of the most stunning findings of their investigation: The U.S. Secretary of Commerce still held a stake in a shipping firm named Navigator Holdings, which linked Ross to some of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies.

But according to Ross’ filings, he had already divested of funds that held Navigator stock a few days earlier, on October 25. Six days later, he opened a short position against the company. That meant that if shares of Navigator plummeted on the Paradise Papers news, Ross could presumably cash out with a gain. Navigator stock did not plummet immediately after the news hit, but it did trickle down 4% over the ensuing 11 days before Ross exited his short position, seemingly with a profit.

His family still appears to have an interest in Navigator, along with the Bank of Cyprus, another Russia-tied company. In 2014, after a successful bet on the beaten-down Bank of Ireland, where Ross was a board member, he turned his sights to the Cypriot institution, which had purchased Russia’s ninth-largest bank for nearly $600 million in 2008. Ross joined the board of directors as vice chairman, a role he shared with Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy, who reportedly served alongside Vladimir Putin in the KGB and later became the Russian president’s deputy minister of economic development. More troubling to Ross’ colleagues, the Cypriot economy was in shambles, and it would require a miracle to turn the bank around. “He wanted to be on the board of another international bank again and he loved flying around on Invesco’s plane,” says one former colleague. “He may have deluded himself that it was really a good idea." It wasn’t. Cyprus struggled to recover from the recession, and former WL Ross employees say the bank likely did not produce the sorts of returns that the Bank of Ireland had.

Another bad idea: apparently saddling his family with an interest in the Bank of Cyprus. The largest shareholder at the bank is a company connected to Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, whom Ross once hosted in his office around 2014, according to a former colleague of the commerce secretary. When Vekselberg came to the New York area earlier this year, he got a different kind of welcome: Agents working with Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, reportedly stopped him at the airport for questioning. It turns out, a company that once described itself as the U.S. affiliate of Vekselberg’s firm apparently pumped more than half a million dollars into an entity controlled by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen shortly after the president took office.

Most of the former WL Ross employees who spoke with Forbes do not think the secretary of commerce had anything to do with the Cohen payments or Russian interference. But given all the attention around Trump and Russia, why would Ross have anything to do with the bank? Says one person who worked alongside the secretary of commerce for years: “It just smells very bad.”

Late last month, the president made the kind of announcement that would generate headlines for days in more mundane times but barely registers in the age of Trump. He was considering launching an investigation into imports of auto parts, citing “national security” concerns. And to lead the effort, he wanted the man who knew something about the car business, Wilbur Ross.

Before he was secretary of commerce, Ross rolled up a series of companies into International Automotive Components Group, which claims to be the world’s third-largest maker of interior car parts, with 50 manufacturing facilities in 20 countries and a head office in Luxembourg. Depending on how it performs in the coming years, the car parts giant is one of many companies that could presumably leave Ross’ family with a windfall.

It’s an ethical nightmare. Ross, the person in charge of the investigation, could theoretically overlook issues related to International Automotive Components Group. Or he could tweak his findings and go after rivals. It’s also entirely legal, since Ross complied with the government’s lax requirements for divestiture, according to his filing. That won’t stop outsiders from wondering whether Ross is acting in the best interests of the country or his family. It’s a question that extends to China, Russia and everywhere else WL Ross’ shipping fleet does business. And it’s one the secretary of commerce, whose family would still have hundreds of millions of dollars if it completely forfeited those interests, opened himself up to.

 

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/06/18/lies-china-and-putin-solving-the-mystery-of-wilbur-ross-missing-fortune-trump-commerce-secretary-cabinet-conflicts-of-interest/#ddd96eb7e879

[GreyhoundFan]

"Exclusive: Zinke linked to real estate deal with Halliburton chairman"

Spoiler

WHITEFISH, Mont. — A foundation established by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and headed by his wife is playing a key role in a real-estate deal backed by the chairman of Halliburton, the oil-services giant that stands to benefit from any of the Interior Department’s decisions to open public lands for oil exploration or change standards for drilling.

A group funded by David Lesar, the Halliburton chairman, is planning a large commercial development on a former industrial site near the center of the Zinkes’ hometown of Whitefish, a resort area that has grown increasingly popular with wealthy tourists. The development would include a hotel and retail shops. There also would be a microbrewery — a business first proposed in 2012 by Ryan Zinke and for which he lobbied town officials for half a decade.

The Whitefish city planner, David Taylor, said in an interview that the project’s developer suggested to him that the microbrewery would be set aside for Ryan and Lola Zinke to own and operate, though the developer told POLITICO that no final decisions have been made.

Meanwhile, a foundation created by Ryan Zinke is providing crucial assistance. Lola Zinke pledged in writing to allow the Lesar-backed developer to build a parking lot for the project on land that was donated to the foundation to create a Veterans Peace Park for citizens of Whitefish. The 14-acre plot, which has not been significantly developed as a park, is still owned by the foundation. Lola Zinke is its president, a role her husband gave up when he became interior secretary.

The Zinkes stand to benefit from the project in another way: They own land on the other side of the development, and have long sparred with neighbors about their various plans for it. If the new hotel, retail stores and microbrewery go through, real estate agents say, the Zinke-owned land next door would stand to increase substantially in value.

Lesar, who also served as Halliburton's chief executive until last year, is providing money to back the hotel and retail development, according to business records and officials at Whitefish city government and Halliburton. He also has a longstanding relationship with the Zinkes. In 2014, he and his wife, Sheryl, gave $10,400, the maximum allowed by law, to Zinke’s first House campaign. His only other federal contributions that year were to Halliburton’s PAC and the campaign of Rep. Liz Cheney, whose father, Dick, ran the company before becoming George W. Bush’s vice president.

Ryan Zinke did not respond to a list of specific questions but said in a statement that he “resigned as president and board member” of the foundation “upon becoming secretary.”

The foundation’s 2018 annual report to the state of Montana, however, lists Ryan Zinke as an officer, with Lola Zinke as president and their daughter as treasurer. Zinke said the report was in error and he would seek to amend it.

In his statement, Zinke declared: “The mission remains to provide a children’s sledding park and community open space in a setting that recognizes the contributions of the railroad and the veterans to the community. ... The subject LLC you mention has been in contact with Lola with the intent of expanding their parking requirements on park property. I understand a concept was provided but no formal proposal or documents have been submitted or agreed upon. I also understand by reading the paper is their proposal is supported by the City Council.”

He did not respond to questions about the microbrewery, the involvement of Lesar or Lesar’s status as chairman of Halliburton.

Lola Zinke did not respond to questions left on her Facebook page or messages left at the family’s Montana home. Neither Jennifer Detlefsen, the Zinkes’ daughter and the foundation’s treasurer, nor the foundation’s law firm of Frampton Purdy Law, responded to questions.

In Whitefish, the plan to use land that was donated to the Zinkes’ foundation as a public park to further a private development strikes residents as a surprise.

“I’ve never been clear exactly what his intentions are for the place,” said Steve Thompson, who lives near the park and supported Zinke early in his career but has since grown disillusioned with him. He described the current state of the land as “sort of a big puddle, a mudhole puddle.”

The involvement of the interior secretary’s family in a multimillion-dollar project funded by the chairman of an energy-services giant — revealed here for the first time — is rife with conflicts of interest, ethics experts say, especially since Zinke’s job as interior secretary makes him the custodian of more than 500 million acres of public land and head of a department that sets technical and safety standards for pipelines and drilling.

Halliburton is the largest American oil-services company, drilling wells and building rigs. It stands to benefit from any new oil and gas exploration on public land or offshore — something the Trump administration has promised to promote — and the company has frequent dealings with the Interior Department in its regulatory capacity.

For example, federal disclosures show that Halliburton’s in-house lobbyist met repeatedly with Interior officials to discuss the department’s policies on hydraulic fracturing, the oil extraction procedure that some studies have linked to groundwater contamination and earthquakes. Under Zinke, the department last year rescinded Obama-era rules that restricted fracking on federal land, a decision that directly benefited Halliburton, one of the world’s leading fracking companies.

Marilyn Glynn, who was acting director of the Office of Government Ethics under former President George W. Bush, said the foundation’s involvement in a deal backed by the chairman of Halliburton is clearly inappropriate and, at minimum, should force Zinke to recuse himself from any policy decisions affecting Halliburton.

“That Halliburton’s chairman would almost be a business partner of Zinke or his wife, he would have to recuse himself from anything involving Halliburton,” said Glynn, adding that the relationship clearly crosses ethical lines.

She suggested the Trump administration should set a higher ethical standard.

“In a previous administration, whether Bush or Obama, you’d never run across something like this,” she said. “Nobody would be engaging in business deals” with executives whose companies they regulate.

Amy Myers Jaffe, a longtime energy analyst now working at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Interior Department, in setting specifications for rig equipment and how much methane can leak from pipelines, has the power to make Halliburton’s business more or less profitable.

“They spend a tremendous amount on R&D to comply” with government regulations, Jaffe said of oil-service companies. “You wouldn’t want Interior to change specifications and make that equipment no longer commercially viable.”

She added that Zinke’s conflicts could extend to investigations of accidents involving Halliburton’s equipment.

“One thing that is most concerning is if Interior would be called upon to investigate the procedures of a service company offshore” in case of an accident, said Jaffe. “A tight relationship [between the interior secretary and the company] would be problematic.”

Executive branch officials such as Zinke are subject to conflict-of-interest rules requiring that they recuse themselves from government decisions involving people with whom they or their close relatives have a financial relationship.

Craig Holman, a specialist in federal ethics laws for the advocacy group Public Citizen, said Lola Zinke’s efforts to help the development backed by Lesar would amount to a financial relationship.

“Entering this type of business relationship could very clearly open the doors [of government] to business interests that have stakes before the office holder,” Holman said. “Clearly, any substantial development project next to the vacant lot owned by Zinke’s foundation would significantly boost the value of the lot. The conflict-of-interest statute would be invoked if even the nonprofit on which Zinke or his spouse serves as an officer, as either paid or unpaid officers, derives a financial benefit.”

***

After 23 years as a Navy SEAL, Ryan Zinke retired from the military in 2008 and returned to Whitefish, the mountain city of roughly 6,000 people where he grew up and where his father and grandfather ran a plumbing business.

It was, however, a changed community, increasingly popular with tourists and second homeowners for its pristine isolation and proximity to Glacier National Park.

A city that began as a stopping place for freight trains carrying lumber from the state’s thriving timber industry was fast becoming an upscale resort. In 2009, the year after Zinke’s retirement, about 17 percent of households were making more than $100,000 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2016, 23 percent of Whitefish households were making that much, adjusted for inflation.

Whitefish is a particular magnet for California tech entrepreneurs and oil barons from Canada and Texas who have built homes valued at more than $1 million each. Lesar is one of them. He currently has a home behind a gate on a private road looping up one of the nearby mountains.

As the then 46-year-old Zinke planned his future, he began laying the groundwork for business and political careers more or less simultaneously, and sometimes on parallel tracks. Launching a nonprofit foundation to build a park in Whitefish was one of the first things he did to reintroduce himself to the community, which helped bolster his credentials for office.

The foundation’s first big donation was from BNSF Railway, the nation’s largest freight railroad, with more than 32,500 miles of track. The railway is one of the state’s biggest landowners, with extensive business before the state government.

Zinke proudly announced that the donated land would be used for what he dubbed “the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park.” In announcing the gift, he touted his own career in uniform and described the park as a gift to Whitefish. His intent was to combine the railway land and an adjacent city-owned hill into “a children’s winter sledding park in a setting that recognizes the contributions of the veterans and the railroad to the local community,” according to the nonprofit’s publicly available IRS forms.

"The theme of this park is to celebrate life — why veterans fight," Zinke told a local newspaper in February 2008.

That same year, he filed paperwork to run for the state Senate.

He won the race and, shortly after taking office, cast the deciding committee vote on a bill that strongly benefited BNSF. The bill would have pumped millions of taxpayer dollars into railroad construction through a publicly funded Montana Rail Authority.

Jeff Mangan, Montana’s commissioner of political practices, said the vote, coming so soon after Zinke accepted a donation of land from the railway, would have violated the Legislature’s code of conduct if he did not disclose the relationship. “If there’s an appearance of conflict of interest, they have a duty to disclose that conflict before a vote,” Mangan said. But enforcement of that requirement can be “fairly laid back,” he said.

There is no record of Zinke making a formal disclosure of his relationship with BNSF before the vote, and Zinke did not respond to questions on the matter.

Ultimately, then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer vetoed the legislation for the Montana Rail Authority, saying he was concerned “that public money will be targeted to build infrastructure that should be rightly financed by the private sector.”

BNSF continued to donate more land to the Veterans Peace Park with adjoining parcels being given to Zinke’s foundation in 2010 and 2013.

BNSF spokesman Ross Lane said in an interview, “We would firmly reject that there is any quid pro quo on the donations” for the Veterans Peace Park.

The land remains mostly in a natural state, and is only lightly utilized, except when local children use it for sledding, as they had before Zinke’s foundation acquired the land. On a recent spring day, the only inhabitants were a pair of Bufflehead ducks sharing a retaining pond that dominates the property with a discarded inner tube.

Nonetheless, even in an undeveloped state, the land is now valued at more than $500,000, according to the group’s 2016 tax returns, the most recent publicly available. The tax returns also show monetary gifts to the foundation, which increased as Zinke’s political career advanced.

In 2012, when Zinke launched an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor, the foundation took in $30,000, according to tax records. In 2014, when Zinke ran for the House, the foundation again received $30,000 in contributions and saw its cash holdings grow from $118 to $23,743 over the course of the year. The foundation raised $36,000 in 2015, before seeing its contributions fall to $5,000 the following year, the last before he became interior secretary.

The Zinkes reported that they gave the foundation $10,000 in 2012, but the source of the rest of the contributions is undisclosed. That lack of transparency is a common concern when politicians control their own charities, said Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser at government ethics watchdog group American Oversight.

“The main concern is it’s another way for donors and corporations to curry favor with politicians,” Sloan said. “If he’s doing something to benefit those making donations, it’s invisible to us. It undermines the whole interest of transparency.”

Even as the park continued to lie fallow, Ryan and Lola Zinke turned their attention to pieces of land that they own through various LLCs. In December 2012, while Ryan was preparing to leave the state Senate, the Zinkes announced that they wanted to turn his childhood home into a B&B called the Snowfrog Inn, and also to build a microbrewery on their development land across the street. They planned to call the brewery “Double Tap,” which is a Navy SEAL term for two gunshots.

Both proposals required public approvals, which put Zinke — one of the state’s rising political stars — in a position of arguing before local politicians. He was steadfast in calling for more commercial development in the face of neighbors’ complaints about traffic and noise.

The City Council appointed Zinke to a special steering committee of local residents to explore ways to develop the area where the Zinkes’ land was located. The committee included 13 residents of Whitefish, just two of whom lived in the neighborhood, Zinke and one other.

The committee recommended opening the area for greater commercial development. The City Council and mayor endorsed the plan.

... < document >

While the larger planning process was playing out, Zinke won approval in 2013 for the B&B without a microbrewery across the street, as he had initially proposed. The Snowfrog Inn website states that it is still under construction.

By 2015, Zinke was back before the City Council, this time in his first term as Montana’s sole representative in the U.S. House, arguing passionately for the committee plan to expand development, according to a video of the meeting. He cited his microbrewery proposal as the impetus for the changes to the planning process.

“In regards to a brewery, I’ve asked for a brewery because that’s what started this whole process,” Zinke declared at a contentious May 4, 2015, council meeting, referring to the changes to the city’s planning rules that he had helped orchestrate.

Neighborhood activists continued to raise objections, insisting that Zinke had done little in the 29 months since announcing his microbrewery proposal to assuage their concerns about noise and traffic. But Zinke told them they were outnumbered.

“The same people are going to be against it tomorrow as was at the beginning, but most of the strong majority of the steering committee, which represented every bit of the neighborhoods … all came to the same conclusion, that this [planning change] should stand,” Zinke said, according to a video of the meeting.

The changes to the planning process did not lead to approval of the microbrewery on the Zinkes’ own development parcel, but they opened the doors to a new proposal for a multiuse development on a much larger plot — a former timber-company lot — between the Zinkes’ land and the veterans’ peace park that they controlled.

The project, known as 95 Karrow, named for the avenue on which the land sits, was launched in September of last year. Two days after the partnership backing the development was established, Lola Zinke, in her capacity as president of the foundation controlling the peace park, signed an official letter of intent to allow the construction of a parking lot for customers of the microbrewery and other businesses on the parkland, which the developers included in their proposal. The letter said the specific terms of the agreement would be worked out by the parties.

Taylor, the Whitefish city planner, told POLITICO that the developers “certainly implied that they were working with [Zinke] to find a place for his microbrewery as well as a shared use agreement for parking on the peace park.”

At least two project maps submitted to the city mark off space specifically for a microbrewery adjacent to the parking lot. The letter Lola Zinke signed and submitted to Whitefish City Council states “it is the intent of the GNVPP Foundation to concur with the general design of the parking, micro-brewery, multiple use path, fence and other supporting elements” of the redevelopment project. Attached to that letter is a map with a handwritten notation indicating a “border adjustment” that would appear to carve out the microbrewery site from the rest of the property.

The parking lot is also meant to serve the park if the foundation ever does anything with the rest of the 14-acre parcel it owns.

The developers of the hotel, microbrewery and retail shops are a partnership known as 95 Karrow LLC, which itself is controlled by two individuals and three other entities, according to business registration records filed with Montana’s secretary of state. The two individuals are John and Katie Lesar, who are the son and daughter-in-law of Halliburton's chairman, according to a biography his wife, Sheryl, wrote for a local nonprofit, where she serves as a board member.

Two of the other entities, BADF LLC and KCM Enterprises Inc., are linked to Bruce Boody, a local architect who worked with the Zinkes on their B&B proposal, and a local developer named Casey Malmquist, according to Montana business records. The third, Greenstream Resources LLC, lists a Texas address but does not disclose any owners in records filed there. However, the P.O. Box it uses matches the address of another business, First Floor Properties LLC, that lists David Lesar as its “general partner” and other family members among its management.

Both Malmquist and a Halliburton official confirmed that David Lesar is a member of the Greenstream Resources LLC, which is expected to provide a significant portion of the financing for the 95 Karrow project.

Halliburton spokeswoman Emily Mir said the company had no comment on Lesar’s involvement in the project, calling it a private investment that Lesar was making outside his role in the company.

Malmquist, who is leading the development project, said that talk of Zinke owning a brewery on the site was premature, as no final decisions have been made on what type of businesses the redevelopment will contain.

“If and when we get to that point, Ryan Zinke, or anyone else that is interested, can purchase a parcel of property, properly located on the development by use and per zoning, and develop a project that is permitted from the standpoint of zoning designations that determine the permitted uses on the development parcel, as well as following the [covenants, conditions, and restrictions] that are yet to be developed for the property,” Malmquist said in an email.

***

The Zinkes’ mixing of their nonprofit role as stewards of the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation with their role as landowner and developer echoes other ethical concerns raised about the couple.

In 2012, Ryan Zinke formed a super PAC called Special Operations for America, through which he raised money from donors to attack then-President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign for taking credit for the death of Osama bin Laden. Over the following year, the group paid nearly $40,000 to an LLC established by Ryan and Lola Zinke called Continental Divide International for “strategy consulting” and “fundraising consulting” and to reimburse travel expenses.

Only $7,000 of the more than $180,000 the group raised in 2012 went to efforts to influence the election, according to the group’s FEC filings.

The super PAC was Zinke’s foray into a world of political fundraising that would carry through to his time in the Trump administration. Less than a month after being sworn in as interior secretary, he appeared at a fundraiser in the Virgin Islands for another PAC that has been criticized for spending vastly more on administrative expenses than on campaign activities.

The Virgin Islands GOP PAC has raised $5.7 million since its inception in February 2015. It has spent $76,000 — just 1.3 percent — on congressional candidates, including $3,500 to Zinke’s campaign and SEAL PAC, a subsequent group he launched after his election to the House.

Meanwhile, two of Zinke’s top aides at Interior, chief of staff Scott Homell and counselor Vincent DeVito, were previously on the payrolls of Special Operations for America and SEAL PAC, respectively.

Earlier this year, the Interior Department’s internal watchdog criticized Zinke for obscuring his personal interest in some ostensibly official duties — an incident that involved another Whitefish resident, Fidelity National Financial Chairman Bill Foley, who was one of Zinke’s biggest political donors.

Zinke charged taxpayers more than $12,000 last June for a late-night charter flight from Las Vegas, where he had spoken to a National Hockey League team Foley owns, to Whitefish for meetings at the Western Governors Association that were being held there the following day.

Speaking to the Las Vegas Golden Knights was a favor to a friend and donor. He “first mentioned during his initial ethics briefing in March 2017 that he wanted to speak to a friend’s hockey team,” according to a report from the IG. He did not mention any specific aspects of his job as interior secretary during the speech, which focused on his time as a Navy SEAL. After Zinke and his staff made plans for the speech, the Interior Department started to schedule an event for him to announce Payment In Lieu of Taxation grants, routine business that is typically handled with a news release.

The IG’s investigation found that the charter flight could have been avoided with better scheduling, and that Zinke’s prior relationship with Foley should have been disclosed in advance to ethics officials who had reviewed the trip.

Foley, a West Point graduate who grew up in the Texas panhandle, has been a major presence in Whitefish since buying a home there in 2005. That same year, he purchased a majority share in Winter Sports, the company that runs the Whitefish Mountain Resort in the town. He soon bought Glacier Jet Center, a private airport about 20 minutes outside the city.

Foley’s development projects, like David Lesar’s and the Zinkes’, are signs of just how far Whitefish has come since Zinke’s childhood. The Pastime Pool Hall and Bar, which Zinke fondly remembered in his autobiography as where his grandfather used to socialize, has been renamed “The Bulldog,” although not much else about it has changed. But the city also boasts a crepiere, an artisanal olive oil shop and a camping store that sells “overnight yurts.” A new yoga studio stands about a minute’s walk down the block from Zinke’s boyhood home.

“It's gone from a dirty ski town to pretty bougie,” said Cale Knox, a Whitefish native and employee at the Red Caboose coffee shop downtown. In a sign of the times, tech venture capitalist Michael Goguen recently bought the Red Caboose, and there is rumor that it will become a wine bar.

Only a mile away is the open land that Zinke dubbed his Veterans Peace Park. Ten years after the railroad donated the first piece of land, locals are as flummoxed as ever about what will happen to it. The situation has left some residents worried that what was pitched as an attempt to provide a green space dedicated to children and veterans was instead used to build Zinke’s political profile.

“It was something to put on his résumé,” Whitefish City Council member Richard Hildner said of the park during a visit there. “Now, it just sits here.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

The first I've heard of this dude is when he resigns (he's got ties to NXIVM)

 

[JMarie]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned The Mess That Is Corey

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/20/opinions/lewandowski-womp-womp-is-terrifying-perry-opinion/index.html

Quote

Lewandowski's "joke" is just a highly visible edge of a much broader, terrifying, pattern. His callous indifference here is not a personality quirk or accident, but a necessary feature for a regime that seeks to dehumanize and destroy in their pursuit of a white nationalist agenda. It's hopefully difficult to inspire the thousands of men and women who work for the government and in the private prison industry or the government to take babies and children away from their parents while feeling good about themselves. What kind of person can lie to a mother that they are taking their child away for a bath, then never bring them back, and still go home and feel good about their lives at the end of the day?

 

[fraurosena]

More fun with Scotty.

I think it’s better I don’t say where my mind went when I read about his need for ‘tactical’ pants.

[candygirl200413]

White House to Propose Merging Education, Labor Departments

Quote

The White House is set to propose merging the Labor and Education departments as part of a broader reorganization of the federal government, said a person with knowledge of the changes.

An announcement is planned for Thursday morning, after a monthslong review of cabinet agencies with an eye toward shrinking the federal government.

The changes would require approval from Congress, but it isn’t clear that lawmakers have the appetite to undertake a far-reaching reorganization, especially at this point in the political calendar.

Lawmakers have shown reluctance to embrace such plans in the past, and Congress has limited time for major legislation before the November midterm elections. Previous proposals to eliminate agencies, including the departments of education and energy, have made little headway.

Streamlining the executive branch has been a longtime conservative goal. The new plan also meshes with the administration’s priority of retooling higher-education programs to train students more directly to join the workforce.

The White House has championed plans to expand access to apprenticeships, for example, and the Education Department has moved to deregulate the controversial for-profit college industry, which often focuses on school-to-workforce training programs, but has been plagued by scandals.

Spokespeople for the White House and Labor Department declined to comment. Representatives at the Education Department couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The administration has also been weighing changes at the Department of Health and Human Services, such as consolidating safety-net programs under HHS. That could accompany a renaming of the department to something similar to its name in the 1970s, when it was called the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

HHS oversees Medicaid and other social assistance programs, while school meals and the food stamp program, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are run by the Department of Agriculture. The Treasury and Department of Housing and Urban Development oversee still other programs.

The Education Department is one of the smallest federal government agencies, with about 3,900 employees. Its workforce has shrunk by more than 10% since President Donald Trump took office, with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos enforcing a departmentwide hiring freeze.

The department’s largest division oversees $1.4 trillion in federal student loans, and the department is also responsible for distributing K-12 education dollars and enforcing civil rights laws at public schools and higher education institutions.

The Labor Department, for its part, has about 15,000 employees whose responsibilities range from enforcing federal minimum wage laws to overseeing worker training programs. Its biggest division is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the monthly jobs report and other economic data.

About half of Labor Department employees work in various enforcement divisions, overseeing worker and mine safety and wage and hour rules.

Republican lawmakers during the Clinton administration proposed merging the departments of Education and Labor, along with the equal employment opportunities commission, naming it the Department of Education and Employment. At the time, the Government Accountability Office predicted an agency would have a budget of $71 billion and employ 25,000 people.

Seth Harris, deputy labor secretary during President Barack Obama’s administration, called the proposal to merge the agencies a “solution in search of a problem.” Beyond eliminating one cabinet secretary’s salary, he said there’s little cost savings to be found because only one Labor division, Employment and Training, works closely with Education.

“There won’t be savings if the new department has the same mandates and programs the two need to carry out,” Mr. Harris said.

The Education and Labor departments have worked more closely together since the 2014 passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which called for coordination on on training. For example, Labor programs providing training to dislocated workers are intended to be done in conjunction with Education programs focused on adult education and vocational rehabilitation.

“Since the passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the department is working closer than ever with the Department of Education to align workforce education programs, plans, and performance requirements,” Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta told lawmakers last year.

 

[JMarie]

Womp womp

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/21/media/corey-lewandowski-speakers-bureau/index.html

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"New Pruitt question: Where are his emails?"

Spoiler

An examination of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt’s government email accounts has uncovered only one message he wrote to anyone outside EPA during his first 10 months in office — a number that has watchdogs questioning whether he is communicating in private.

EPA says Pruitt mainly holds discussions in person or over the phone, which would explain the meager electronic trail for his external communications. But Pruitt’s critics remain suspicious — especially in light of all the steps the agency has taken to conceal his activities, from refusing to release his meeting calendars to installing a $43,000 soundproof booth in his office.

Oversight groups said it seems implausible that someone as active as Pruitt, who meets frequently with political and industry allies, would have sent only a single email to someone outside EPA. Agency records also include evidence that Pruitt has used text messages at least once to set up a meeting with an Oklahoma lawyer.

“The emails, if they exist, could show what these people want and then those emails could be compared to what the EPA does,” said Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser at the watchdog group American Oversight. “Americans should know what the EPA is doing, why it’s doing it and who’s influencing those decisions.”

American Oversight also expressed doubts that EPA has reviewed all of Pruitt’s communications, as the law requires. Government officials can legally use private email accounts, but agencies are supposed to search those accounts when fulfilling public records requests.

It’s not unprecedented for high-ranking government officials to shun email, but Pruitt has in the past used his private email for official business when he served as Oklahoma’s attorney general.

EPA provided the email in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Sierra Club, which has been seeking Pruitt’s external communications for more than a year. In September, the group filed a lawsuit to compel EPA to respond.

Agency spokesman Jahan Wilcox offered a simple explanation for the shortage of correspondence, saying in an emailed statement that “Administrator Pruitt works mostly in person through conversations.”

But outside groups were skeptical.

“It is entirely possible that he doesn’t use email, but that becomes suspect,” said Justine Cowan, an attorney helping lead the Sierra Club’s legal effort. “How is he conducting business, and is he doing that on purpose so that we don’t get the records? In this day and age, who doesn’t use email?”

Previously released EPA documents show that a lobbyist helped plan Pruitt’s international travels, and that GOP donors both weighed in on policy decisions and set up meetings with him for friends. That makes the gap in Pruitt’s communications trail especially significant, American Oversight’s Sloan said.

“When you’re a Cabinet secretary, you have enough people around you to send the emails, and you’re pretty busy,” she said. “On the other hand, I get the feeling Scott Pruitt likes to hide what he’s doing even from top staff, which would mean he’d be likely to correspond on his own.”

Pruitt is facing a dozen investigations into his behavior, including his heavy spending on personal security and first-class travel, the pricey phone booth, a $50-a-night Capitol Hill condo deal he got from a lobbyist, and personal tasks that he had EPA aides carry out for him. The independent Office of Government Ethics has also expressed concern about more recent accusations that he used his position to try to land a job for his wife, and that he made inquiries to Chick-fil-A about obtaining a fast-food franchise for her.

From February 2017 to December, the only message Pruitt sent from one of his epa.gov addresses to an external email account was a Sept. 1 response to a consultant with Capitol Hill Consulting Group, according to the records EPA provided to the Sierra Club. The consultant had invited Pruitt to a dinner organized by the American Council for Capital Formation.

Pruitt also forwarded a second email with a speaking engagement request on Nov. 14 to an address that EPA redacted. The agency cited a legal exception for “personal privacy” in blocking out the address.

EPA told the Sierra Club that a completed search turned up no other emails from Pruitt to outside groups. Pruitt — like past administrators — has multiple email accounts at EPA, but the Sierra Club agreed to exclude two that the agency said are used only for receiving public comments and scheduling purposes.

Emails involving Pruitt’s scheduler also show he used what appears to be his personal email account to correspond with a friend and former Oklahoma County district attorney who wanted him to attend the opening of the Museum of the Bible in Washington. EPA redacted the address of the account Pruitt used for those messages, however.

In total, the Sierra Club’s request for Pruitt’s messages to people outside EPA produced 25 pages of documents, including the two emails and nine text messages. The texts do not reveal whom he communicated with or whether the messages were to or from him.

The Sierra Club says it has asked EPA to either search Pruitt’s personal email for agency-related messages or certify that he never used it for government business. If EPA does not respond, the environmental group could ask a judge to force a review of Pruitt’s personal email account.

Pruitt has used his private email to conduct government work in the past, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has confirmed. The Oklahoma Bar Association is investigating an ethics complaint alleging that he misled the U.S. Senate when he wrote in response to lawmakers’ written confirmation questions that he had not used his personal email for state business during his seven years as the state’s AG.

In addition to private email accounts, text messages and encrypted messaging apps also provide possible ways for officials to communicate without using their government accounts. Those technologies are more difficult for groups to seek to search, according to records experts.

Some of the Pruitt emails released to the Sierra Club raise questions about whether he was using any of these other methods.

In May 2017, an Oklahoma lawyer who is managing director at Sequoyah Capital, a firm that helps energy companies raise money, emailed Pruitt’s former scheduler Sydney Hupp and said that Pruitt had texted him to set up a meeting.

“Scott sent me a text and asked me to contact you about setting up a 20 minute meeting in Washington DC,” said Sam Hammons, adding that “although Scott and I have known each other for many years, I have attached my bio for your information.” Those email records were also obtained by the Sierra Club.

In another message that Pruitt forwarded to an unknown address, Victor Schwartz, co-chair of the public policy practice group at the law firm Shook, Hardy and Bacon, emailed Pruitt in November and said he had “tried all other means” of contacting him. Schwartz wanted to know if Pruitt could speak at a Nashville meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that represents conservative state lawmakers.

Schwartz, a member of the group’s Board of Scholars, wanted to pursue an ALEC resolution to “curb regulation through litigation.”

“As you and I discussed in May, it is inevitable the common law courts will try to undermine the deregulation efforts by expanding tort law. An ALEC Resolution would put sunlight on the issue and try to stop it or curb it,” Schwartz said.

He signed, “Thank you for all you have done, your friend always Victor,” with a smiley face emoji. EPA blacked out the email address that Schwartz wrote to when trying to contact Pruitt.

While EPA says Pruitt does his government business on the phone or in person, his desk and cell phone call logs show periods where he made or received calls only infrequently. The agency also redacted the numbers contacted in responses to records requests.

EPA has been slow to respond to requests for information from Pruitt’s office in particular, and many requests have been subjected to an extra layer of review by political staffers, as POLITICO reported in May.

 

[Howl]

26 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"New Pruitt question: Where are his emails?"

This is a Trump strategy, and perhaps Trump gave him a little tip about this.  Trump never leaves an e-mail or paper trail. 

And relative to the above numerous posts: Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Zinke, Pruitt et al., this is an administration, with the example set at the top, with no ethics.  None.  So let's get to the meat of the matter.  When these types of people yammer on about how effective business is and how government will be so much better when run like a business, THIS IS WHAT YOU GET!  These people are the poster children who represent everything bad in thinking they can do government better than anyone.  Wrong!  It just puts them in their fantasy position of unlimited power to do bigger deals and make bigger money.  Business is about making money.  Government is about serving the people.  Their aims are not even remotely similar. 

And don't get me started on government contractors and the privatization of government services, starting with Halliburton and Dick Phuqueing Cheney?   In the course of American history the government/business  dynamic has played out endlessly, but I'm not sure if anyone has cashed in, with Cheney's assistance, like Halliburton during the Iraq war. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

More fun with Scotty: 

 

[candygirl200413]

Ya know, if we had truly checks and balances, I think he would have already been removed!

[AmazonGrace]

MAGA: world  history starts with Columbus, eliminate ancient nonwhite civilizations from history altogether 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

More fun with Scotty: "Lobbyist tied to Pruitt’s condo rental pushed for EPA to hire family friend, emails show"

Spoiler

The lobbyist whose wife rented Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt a room in a Capitol Hill condo at a discounted rate lobbied Pruitt’s chief of staff to hire a family friend, according to recently released agency emails.

The exchange is among several previously undisclosed interactions that show how J. Steven Hart, who served as chairman of the law  firm Williams & Jensen until earlier this year, sought to exert influence over decisions at the agency even as his spouse was renting Pruitt a $50-a-night in an upscale condo blocks from the Capitol. The communications, released as part of a public records lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group also appear to undermine initial arguments that Hart had not lobbied the EPA during Pruitt’s tenure.

The emails show that both Hart and his wife — who rented Pruitt the condo under an agreement that he pay only for the nights that he stayed there — pushed for the EPA to hire Jimmy Guilliano, a recent college graduate.

“I seldom talk to Scott but Vicki does,” Hart wrote to Jackson. “She has talked to Scott about this kid who is important to us. He told Vicki to talk to you about how to handle this. I am not sure personally that this is a good idea for Jimmy unless he is working near you. Sticking him down in the bowels is death at EPA. His family is all Naval Academy by the way.”

In an email Sunday, EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said that the agency did not hire Guilliano and that the agency stands by its previous statement that Hart did not lobby the agency.

“The Agency accepts career recommendations from a number of acquaintances. Ultimately, Mr. Guilliano was not hired,” Wilcox wrote, adding that when it came to Hart’s other correspondence with Jackson, “Many of these emails were unsolicited and did not impact any Agency policy outcomes.”

This spring, Hart said in interview with The Washington Post and other outlets that he did no EPA lobbying during 2017 or 2018, but his former firm amended his lobbying disclosure documents this month to reflect that he worked on behalf of Coca-Cola, the Financial Oversight and Management Control Board of Puerto Rico, and Smithfield Foods.

Hart and Jackson, both Oklahomans, knew each other before Pruitt took the helm of the EPA. The emails show that the lobbyist repeatedly contacted Jackson on several topics, asking him to arrange meetings for his clients and place allies of his in different EPA jobs.

Hart worked to place candidates on the agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, which helps guide the EPA’s research, though those efforts did not appear to bear fruit. Pruitt revamped the membership of several EPA advisory panels in the fall, adding officials allied with industry groups while barring any researchers from serving if they were simultaneously receiving EPA grants.

At one point, for example, Hart wrote Jackson that he wanted “to highlight three candidates for the Science Advisory Board, who were nominated by our client, Dennis Treacy, the President of the Smithfield Foundation.”

At other point, while emailing Jackson on the issue, Hart wrote, “We need to smoke a cigar soon.” Hart hosted cigar parties in the same condo apartment complex where Pruitt stayed between February and August 2017.

Wilcox said the candidates Hart had suggested “were not considered. Because their names are redacted, they were not selected.”

In a statement Sunday, Hart said, “I never received any special treatment from Administrator Pruitt or had any undue influence over the Environmental Protection Agency. Ryan Jackson is an old friend whom I have known for many years prior to his service with the EPA.”

“We have discussed numerous issues and topics during his tenure as chief of staff, but he has never performed a special favor on my behalf,” Hart added.

Pruitt’s rental arrangement with Vicki Hart is under scrutiny by the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee, as well as the EPA’s Office of Inspector General.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another day, another Scotty headline: "Pruitt facing new probe into claims he retaliated against EPA staffers who questioned some decisions"

Spoiler

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is investigating whether Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt retaliated against staffers who questioned his spending and management decisions, according to three individuals familiar with the probe.

During Pruitt’s tenure, the EPA has reassigned or taken administrative action against several career officials and one political appointee who had objected to the way he was spending taxpayer funds or using the perks of his office, these individuals said.

Attorneys from the Office of Special Counsel, which responds to whistleblower complaints from federal employees and can choose to prosecute cases, is in the process of speaking to a half-dozen current and former employees as part of the case, according to Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff operations. The office is taking the matter “extremely seriously,” Chmielewski said in an interview Monday.

Politico first reported the probe was underway. Pruitt is facing more than a dozen federal inquiries into his spending and management decisions, including review of his first-class travels, installation of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office and his $50-per-night condo rental from a Washington lobbyist.

Chmielewski, a Trump appointee who has said publicly he was fired in February after questioning Pruitt’s decision to routinely fly first-class and spend money on a range of security-related matters, said he spent at least six hours speaking to officials from the special counsel’s office on Thursday. The office has assigned three attorneys to review claims he and other EPA officials have made, Chmielewski added.

In April, Pruitt denied any retaliation during a pair of hearings on Capitol Hill, during which Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) alleged “staff has been under attack during your tenure” and “there’s documented retaliation, as far as I’m concerned.”

Pruitt has attributed many of the most controversial spending decisions at the agency to his aides and said the decision to travel first-class and receive round-the-clock protection stemmed from threats he has received as administrator.  He responded to McCollum, “I would say to you unequivocally I know of no instance — I’m not aware of any instance that any employment action has been taken against someone for any advice or counsel they’d given with respect to spending.”

Neither the Office of Special Counsel nor the EPA would comment on the matter Monday. OSC spokesman Zachary Kurz said in an email the office “cannot comment on or confirm any open investigations,” and EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a separate email “EPA does not comment on matters involving OSC.”

The other agency officials who have either been reassigned or forced to leave the agency include former deputy chiefs of staff John C. Reeder and Reginald E. Allen; security agents John C. Martin and Eric Weese; and Mario Caraballo, deputy associate administrator of the EPA’s Office of Homeland Security. Reeder is married to Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig.

Caraballo, who submitted a report questioning the grounds for the administrator’s 24/7 security detail, was placed on administrative leave earlier this year and has since retired.

Chmielewski said while Pruitt’s top aides “thought they were going to pressure me into resigning” and compiled paperwork to that effect, he was actually fired.

 

[AmazonGrace]

More fun with Scotty:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Ocean science agency chief floats removing ‘climate’ from mission statement and focusing on trade deficit"

Spoiler

A recent presentation by the acting head of the United States’ top weather and oceans agency suggested removing the study of “climate” from its official mission statement, focusing the agency’s work instead on economic goals and “homeland and national security.”

Critics say this would upend the mission of the $5.9 billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the administration disputes that interpretation, saying the presentation did not intend to create a change of direction at a vast agency that tracks hurricanes and atmospheric carbon dioxide, operates weather satellites, manages marine reserves and protects endangered ocean species, among other functions.

NOAA’s mission, the agency says, is “to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts, to share that knowledge and information with others, and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.”

But in a presentation at a Commerce Department “Vision Setting Summit” this month, Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet, the agency’s acting administrator, suggested a change to that mission statement, as well as a new emphasis on tripling the size of the U.S. aquaculture industry within a decade and moving to “reduce the seafood trade deficit.”

The new NOAA mission, the presentation said, would be “to observe, understand and predict atmospheric and ocean conditions, to share that knowledge and information with others, and to protect lives and property, empower the economy, and support homeland and national security.”

“This presentation is a simplified draft for discussion,” said Gallaudet, an oceanographer who has spoken in the past about climate change’s effects on the Arctic, in a statement provided by the agency. “It was not intended to create change in NOAA mission or policy from what it was before. Any interpretation to the contrary is simply inaccurate.”

But the proposed removal of language about studying the “climate” and about the managing of coastal and marine resources has aroused considerable ire and concern.

“Elections have consequences,” said David Titley, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and the former chief operating officer of NOAA. “This is just another example of where the Trump administration is frankly emphasizing short-term aspects, such as economic growth, and de-emphasizing longer-term challenges, things that will be most apparent after their term, such as impacts on climate, conservation of marine resources.”

The presentation was first revealed by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental and science advocacy group.

The new mission statement outlined in the presentation still calls for studying “atmospheric and ocean conditions” — which would be influenced by climate change. And unlike other top Trump administration officials, Gallaudet — a retired Navy rear admiral with a doctorate in oceanography — has not publicly questioned the link between human activity and climate change.

Late last year, at a scientific conference in New Orleans, he introduced a presentation by NOAA scientists of their findings about the fast-changing Arctic.

Gallaudet said then that for those operating vessels in the Arctic, the environment is “the most hazardous [that] they’ve ever reported” because of changing ice conditions.

His recent presentation lists developing the best weather-prediction model in the world as a top priority but does not highlight its climate programs or initiatives.

It has prompted an outcry from some prominent scientists, including a NOAA administrator under President Barack Obama.

“This unraveling of NOAA’s core mission ignores the best interests of the American people, core Congressionally mandated responsibilities, overwhelming scientific evidence, and plain common sense,” said Jane Lubchenco, a marine scientist at Oregon State University, in a statement.

“NOAA’s core mission integrates the dual mandates of ‘observe and predict’ with ‘conserve and manage,’ ” Lubchenco added. “The two functions are highly interdependent. Eliminating multiple parts of both of them guts the whole agency and compromises its remaining functions. Eliminating basic functions of NOAA is foolhardy, ignorant, shortsighted, and very stupid. It’s akin to removing multiple vital organs from a body and expecting it to remain healthy.”

Lubchenco also said that under the new proposal, some of the agency’s congressional mandates could be “blatantly ignored or eliminated.”

“It’s a focus totally on economic development, and very little on preserving public trust resources,” said Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former regional administrator at NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, of the presentation.

“That concerns me, especially with all the progress we’ve made on fisheries.”

Rosenberg said he doubted that U.S. aquaculture could grow dramatically, given all the other current uses of and demands on the coastal real estate. As for lowering the country’s trade deficit in seafood, he said, “it’s just not going to happen.”

In 2017, according to NOAA, the United States imported $21.5 billion worth of seafood products but exported $5.4 billion worth.

It is unclear how the Trump administration could change that. So far, if anything, the president’s trade actions may be triggering movement in the opposite direction. China has recently proposed a 25 percent tariff on one major U.S. seafood export, lobsters.

Also unclear is how any proposed reorganization or redirection of NOAA would meld with the ideas of its proposed leader — or whether that individual will even be confirmed by the Senate in time to have a say.

Gallaudet is the acting administrator and was confirmed to be NOAA’s second-in-command. He is running the agency because President Trump’s nominee, AccuWeather chief executive Barry Myers, remains unconfirmed.

The agency has been without a Senate-confirmed head since Trump took office, even as the administration has proposed steep NOAA budget cuts that have been rejected by Congress.

 

[AmazonGrace]

I'm sure he's all about states' rights and not at all about white supremacy.

[AmazonGrace]

Because the White House needs more sexual abuse enablers 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Protest now, it will be illegal after Trump replaces Kennedy  

 

[AmazonGrace]

Rodent sex with Scotty 

I wrote "Rodent sex with" and my phone autocomplete knew to suggest Scotty