Executive Departments 3

[GreyhoundFan]

"Stephen Moore wants people to pay more attention to his economic policies. Challenge accepted."

Spoiler

Stephen Moore wants the media to pay less attention to his idiotic comments about gender and more attention to his idiotic comments about the economy.

Sure thing, bro. Happy to help out.

Moore, whom President Trump wants to appoint to the Federal Reserve Board, has been complaining about a “sleaze campaign” against him. The alleged “sleaze” involves simply repeating the sexist things Moore has publicly said in columns, speeches and on national TV. Such statements include: Women shouldn’t be allowed to report on sports unless they’re hot and wear revealing clothes; it would destabilize society if women became “economically self-sufficient”; and a powerful man should never take a meeting alone  with any woman because she might falsely accuse him of sexual harassment.

Moore, who has enlisted the PR firm that helped save Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, argues that his opponents are “pulling a Kavanaugh against me.” Which is odd, because Kavanaugh at least could claim he faced an ultimately unprovable he-said-she-said situation.

Moore’s situation is more like he-said-and-then-he-said-it-again-and-again-ad-nauseam-in-public-for-decades.

In any case, Moore claims that critics focus on the “spoofs” he made about the second sex because they don’t want to grapple with his awesome economic views.

 “No one wants to talk about my economic ideas,” Moore told Politico. “They have not attacked me on my economic ideas,” he crowed to a right-wing radio host.

These contentions are laughably false, as readers of  The Post  know. Even high-profile conservative economists — including experts at the American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institution, Cato Institute, and Mercatus Center  — have criticized Moore for his wrong, intellectually dishonest and politically malleable economic positions.

But for those who (understandably) haven’t been following along, here are the non-gender-related highlights:

1. Moore can’t tell whether prices are going up or down. This is an important thing to know if you’re on the Fed, half of whose dual mandate is stable prices.

Moore has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that the country is experiencing “deflation.” That means prices are falling , which they are not. But claiming this gives him cover to argue that the Fed should pump more stimulus into the economy just as Trump begins running for reelection.

Conversely, when we were in the depths of the financial crisis and prices  were  falling, Moore claimed we were on the brink of Weimar-style hyperinflation. He therefore called on the Fed to tighten monetary policy, which would have crippled the economy — and just coincidentally maimed President Barack Obama.

2. Relatedly, Moore claims official government economic statistics are phony when they don’t suit his preferred political narrative.

3. Moore advocates — at least when politically convenient — crank economic ideas, including returning to the gold standard. This idea is roundly rejected by actual economists and would result in much more price volatility.

When called on such nonsense, Moore has claimed he never said such things, even after being presented with video evidence.

Moore sometimes claims he’s merely been misunderstood, and that he wants not a gold peg but a commodity price peg. This would also  create a lot more price volatility than the status quo. It  also appears to be a policy newly adopted for political convenience.

After all, even when commodity prices were plummeting in 2014 (but Obama was still in the White House), Moore continued calling for tighter monetary policy. That’s the opposite of the policy prescription that would have been suggested by a commodity peg.

4. He cheered the failure of Lehman Brothers, an event that (foreseeably) set off a worldwide financial panic and nearly plunged the entire global economy into another Great Depression. This doesn’t inspire confidence in Moore’s instincts next time the Fed has to handle a financial crisis.

5. Moore lies, and lies, and lies.

About his own record, and about easily Google-able facts. Now I realize the word “lie” implies knowing intent to mislead, as opposed to possibly ingenuous misstatement of fact. But note that, even after being corrected on his various falsehoods — including about the Volcker Rule, Canadian tariff rates, whether tax cuts have paid for themselves — he has often repeated the exact same falsehood.

So either he’s deliberately misinforming the public, or he’s like the goldfish who forgets everything immediately after swimming a lap around the bowl.

6. More broadly, Moore prioritizes what’s good for his party above what’s good for the economy. Which is toxic to an institution that must be politically independent in both practice and perception to function.

You can see this tendency of Moore’s in his monetary policy flip-flops, as well as his calls for Trump to fire everyone at the Fed who doesn’t do Trump’s bidding. Most recently, you can see it in Moore’s explanation of the one concern that could persuade him to withdraw his Fed candidacy: if he concluded that sticking around might hurt the GOP.

Fortunately, if he cares about what’s good for the economy and what’s good for his party, there might just be a way to kill two birds with one stone.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Moore truly needs to crawl back under arock:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

More fun with Moore:

 

 

And here he is trying to weasel out of it:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, guess who came out against the Violence Against Women Act?

Quote

(CNN)Stephen Moore, President Donald Trump's pick to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, once dismissed the Violence Against Women Act as the "most objectionable pork" in the 1994 crime bill, saying the money would better spent if Americans were forced to write checks to "radical feminist" groups.

More recently, he's wondered aloud whether women would concern themselves about gender parity once they start out-earning men and suggested that women shouldn't curse in public.

It's part of a 25-year track record of dismissing women and criticizing gender equality in print and in interviews with conservative outlets. Moore's commentary covers everything from single mothers to the limited earning power of black men relative to black women -- a problem, he's argued, because it made black families weaker.

On Tuesday, Moore said the "biggest problem" in the US economy is a relative decline in male earnings for both black and white men.

"You know, people are talking about women's earnings -- they've risen. The problem, actually, has been the steady decline in male earnings, and I think we should pay attention to that because I think that has very negative consequences for the economy and for society," Moore said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Trump's former campaign adviser, who is still undergoing White House vetting and has not yet been formally nominated, has come under fire since CNN first reported last week on his other writings dismissing women's involvement in the military as well as professional sports.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Monday said the White House was reviewing columns Moore wrote for the National Review in the early 2000s. As first reported by CNN's KFile last week, Moore railed against women's involvement in sports and asked if there was any area in life "where men can take vacation from women."

Moore called the columns a "spoof" in comments to CNN, though he subsequently told ABC News that "some of them weren't funny and so I am apologetic; I'm embarrassed by some of those things." Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters Monday the White House is "still behind" Moore.

Additional writings uncovered by KFile after that initial story indicated Moore's comments on women ranged far wider than initially believed, showing a breadth of opinion on legislative and policy matters, as well as social issues.

In interviews, writings and speeches reviewed by CNN's KFile between 1994 and 2019, Moore repeatedly advocated broadly against women's initiatives in legislation.

Moore did not initially respond to a CNN request for comment.

After this story published, he told CNN in a brief phone interview that he has no plans to withdraw from consideration.

Moore said he had not seen all the comments from several Republican senators Tuesday expressing concerns or outright opposition to his nomination but that he was not surprised. He said he knows he needs to sit down with those senators to talk with them about their issues with his nomination.

"I have all these attacks against me and I'm not surprised these Republicans are (questioning my nomination) -- because that's what they hear," he said.

"I do need to sit down with every one of them and tell them here's the truth: I'm not anti-woman," Moore said. "When they hear that I think they'll -- hopefully they'll be supportive."

He said his nomination has not yet been submitted because he is still processing some of his background paperwork.

"We're just about done with all the financial disclosure stuff and the stuff for the FBI background check," he said, saying he anticipates getting that paperwork completed by the end of the week.

Writing in a column for the Washington Times in 1994, Moore denounced the Violence Against Women Act, part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which provided funding and resources for the investigation of violent crimes against women. Moore stated it would be more efficient if it "simply required every American household to write a $20 check to the radical feminist group of its choice."

"Probably the most objectionable pork in the entire legislation is the $1.8 billion earmarked for Sen. Joe Biden's 'Violence Against Women Act.' That act sets up gender sensitivity programs for judges and police; classifies assaults against women as 'hate crimes' or civil rights offenses, and passes out millions of dollars to women's groups for 'rape education' and a smorgasbord of other programs," Moore wrote. "The act would be more efficient if Congress cut out the federal middleman and simply required every American household to write a $20 check to the radical feminist group of its choice."

In a 1997 column for the National Review, Moore celebrated the elimination of the Women's Educational Equity Act, which he called "vile." The program, which introduced protections for women in education against gender discrimination and promoted gender equality in education, appears to have been restored a year after funding lapsed in an amendment. It passed the House again in 1999.

"House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R., La.) points to 297 programs that have been exterminated in the past thirty months. These oinkers include the Solar Technology Transfer programs ($4.3 million), the Cattle Tick Eradication Program ($12 million), the House barbershop and one House parking lot ($2 million), and the vile Women's Education Equity program ($3.9 million)," Moore wrote. "Good riddance to bad rubbish. But the savings add up to less than $3 billion -- out of a $1.7-trillion budget. The big ones keep getting away. "

Moore again praised the elimination of the Women's Education Equity Act in another 1997 column still available on the Cato Institute website, listing it among other "absurdities" that were cut by the federal government.

"But have congressional Republicans actually gotten rid of anything? I posed that question to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston last month and received an impressive four-page fax enumerating more than 200 program terminations since January 1995. The list of shutdowns includes such absurdities as the Women's Educational Equity Act, the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corp., the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration and the Energy Department's gas turbine modular helium reactor."

In a 1995 column for the Weekly Standard, "50 Ways To Pull A Clinton," Moore attacked President Bill Clinton and the act further.

"Reason 50: 'eliminates the Women's Educational Equity Act.' It is highly revealing that out of a federal budget that spends $1.6 trillion a year, the White House feels compelled to highlight an obscure $3 million grant program that funds leftist Women's groups," Moore wrote.

In an appearance on C-SPAN in 2000, first reported by The New York Times, Moore argued that self-sufficient women were leading to a decline in the American family and said men needed to be the breadwinners of the family.

"It's not a good thing that black women are making more than black men today. In fact, the male needs to be the breadwinner of the family, and one of the reasons I think you've seen the decline of the family, not just in the black community, but also it's happening now in the white community as well, is because women are more economically self-sufficient," he said. "So, I would like to see an increase in black earnings because black men have not closed the gap as much as black women have."

Speaking at an event in January, Moore called Republican women smarter and better looking than their Democratic counterparts.

"Can I say something politically incorrect?" Moore said. "Republican women are so much more beautiful than Democratic women. Republican women are so much more smarter than Democratic women."

Moore has also been critical of Trump, including a declaration in a 2015 interview on Kudlow's radio show newly unearthed by CNN's KFile that Trump would be one of the "two most arrogant people in America," alongside President Barack Obama, and calling Trump "a complete blank slate" that "doesn't have an underlying philosophy."

Moore, a longtime conservative commentator who was a longtime Wall Street Journal editorial board member, subsequently went to work for Trump's 2016 campaign. He was a CNN contributor from 2017 until last month.

Kudlow, a onetime Reagan official and CNBC personality, joined the White House in 2018 as director of the National Economic Council. He has been a key public defender of Moore, an unconventional pick for the Fed board, which is responsible for setting interest rate policy and generally cultivates an aura of political independence.

In recent months, Moore has been a vocal defender of Trump amid the President's public campaign against the Fed's recent rate hikes, overseen by Chair Jerome Powell -- a Trump appointee. Moore's political background as the founder of the conservative Club for Growth has drawn opposition from Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a member of the key Senate Banking Committee, who is running for president.

But Republican senators have also indicated their hesitation about Moore. Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst told CNN on Tuesday that it is "very unlikely" she would support Moore.

Trump's other recent Fed pick, Herman Cain, withdrew last week after four Republicans blocked his path to confirmation, saying they would not vote for him if he were nominated. Cain faced renewed scrutiny over sexual harassment allegations, which he has denied and which ended his 2012 Republican presidential bid.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Thune says Trump’s choice of Moore for Fed Board ‘is in trouble,’ expects decision on nomination this week"

Spoiler

Stephen Moore’s prospects of getting confirmed to the Federal Reserve Board grew dimmer Wednesday as Trump administration officials began to acknowledge privately he does not have the votes and Republican senators indicated the ensuing drama over Moore’s pending nomination would end soon.

Moore, whom President Trump has floated for an open seat at the powerful U.S. central bank, has faced escalating criticism from Senate Republicans this week, primarily because of his past writings disparaging women. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) has already said she probably would oppose him, while several other GOP senators have expressed concerns and have privately indicated they prefer he never be officially nominated.

Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said in an interview Wednesday that he expects more information about Moore’s fate by the end of the week and that trying to confirm him in the Senate, where Republicans control 53 votes, would be a “very heavy lift.”

“I think there will be probably some more information about that nomination in the next day or so,” Thune said. “I think he’s gotten enough feedback from the people up here that his nomination is in trouble.”

Thune, the party’s chief vote-counter in the Senate, said he could not predict what Moore or the administration ultimately decides on his pending nomination. But two GOP senators familiar with party dynamics, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said they expect either Moore to withdraw or the White House to cancel his pending nomination by either Thursday or Friday.

Meanwhile, there is a growing awareness among some senior administration officials that Moore has no chance to win Senate confirmation, but a decision has not been made on the timing of any announcement.

Still, Moore on Wednesday resisted any notion he would step aside, telling The Washington Post: “Full speed ahead.”

Moore has come under a firestorm of criticism for his past writings and comments, in which he argued there would be societal problems if men were not the family breadwinners, complained about women in sports and derided women in combat. He now explains them as “humor columns” and has said he regrets having written them.

But while it is his writings about women that have most irritated Senate Republicans, Moore comes with other baggage. He had also fought the Internal Revenue Service over $75,000 in unpaid taxes and was found in contempt of court in 2013 for failing to pay his ex-wife more than $330,000 in child support and alimony.

Moore says he has now paid the tax lien and that it was based on “about $7,000 of tax underpayment.” He and his wife are working to get the IRS to return the rest of the money they believe they are owed.

Democrats have also highlighted other comments from Moore, such as his remarks disparaging Cincinnati and Cleveland as “armpits of America” and calling a sweeping farm policy bill “fiscally rancid.” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, is circulating a letter among farm-state senators asking Moore to clarify his views and questioning whether he understands the “rural economy.”

He has not been formally nominated by the White House, and another potential Fed pick who similarly was never nominated — 2012 GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain — bowed out of consideration in April when he similarly lost support among Senate Republicans.

When it became clear that Cain’s prospects for Senate confirmation had evaporated several weeks ago, White House officials largely remained quiet on the issue and let Cain withdraw from consideration on his own terms several days later.

“I sure would like to see [Moore] just withdraw,” Ernst said in a brief interview Wednesday afternoon.

Ernst, who faces reelection next year, has been the most vocal in her opposition to Moore, but other senators are increasingly raising concerns about his potential nomination, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has told Republicans to take their issues with Moore directly to the White House.

In a closed-door party lunch Tuesday, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) ticked off the litany of issues plaguing Moore, including the tax payments, child support and his columns about women, and noted that Senate Republicans could get through to confirmation, but that it will be tough, according to two senators in attendance.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a reliable Trump ally who nonetheless helped derail Cain’s nomination last month, also told fellow Senate Republicans to make their concerns about Moore known, jokingly telling others inside the lunch that he would not be the one scuttling the nomination.

Meanwhile, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell declined to address Moore’s assertion this week that the decline in wages for men is the “biggest problem” in the economy over the past 25 years.

“I think men and women should make the same for the same work, by and large,” Powell said. When pressed, he said it would not be appropriate for him to comment on anything related to a potential nominee.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Hooray!! "Stephen Moore, Trump’s Federal Reserve choice, bows out amid scrutiny of past remarks about women, other topics"

Spoiler

Stephen Moore, President Trump’s planned nominee for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, on Thursday abandoned his bid to join the powerful U.S. central bank, the second presidential favorite to bow out in the face of Republican opposition.

Trump announced in a tweet that Moore had “decided to withdraw from the Fed process.” Trump called him “a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person.”

“Steve won the battle of ideas including Tax Cuts and deregulation which have produced non-inflationary prosperity for all Americans,” Trump said in the tweet. “I’ve asked Steve to work with me toward future economic growth in our Country.”

A growing number of Republican senators said they had serious problems with Moore over his controversial writings, and the White House, which said Monday that it was reviewing those writings, never formally submitted his nomination.

Moore’s decision comes after Herman Cain, another Trump choice for the Fed Board, stepped aside as it was clear that he lacked the votes in the Senate. The 2012 presidential candidate had denied multiple accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment.

Up until recently, Moore had been defiant amid revelations about columns in the 2000s in which he made derogatory statements about women, called for then-Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) to be impeached and made a joking reference to AIDS.

Moore also came under scrutiny for saying in 2016 that it would be a “betrayal” for Trump to pick former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) to be secretary of state. Romney now represents Utah in the Senate.

And a 2014 comment by Moore that Cincinnati and Cleveland are “armpits of America” drew a rebuke from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who wrote a letter to Moore last month calling the remarks “disqualifying” and demanding that he provide a list of other towns that he would describe as “armpits.”

Ohio is a swing state that was central to Trump’s win in 2016 and will be a key part of his 2020 reelection efforts.

Moore insisted as recently as Thursday morning that he wouldn’t back down. “I’m not pulling out,” he told the Wall Street Journal hours before Trump’s tweet. He also told The Washington Post on Wednesday that he was “full speed ahead.”

Last month, in an interview with North Dakota-based radio station WZFG, Moore accused his opponents of “pulling a Kavanaugh against me.”

Moore’s statement was a reference to Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who faced allegations amid his confirmation hearings last year of sexual misconduct during his college and high school years — accusations he denied. Conservatives rallied to Kavanaugh’s defense, and he was narrowly confirmed by the Senate.

“I was so honored when I got the call from Donald Trump. But all it’s been since then has been one personal assault after another and a kind of character assassination having nothing to do with economics,” Moore said in the radio interview.

Trump announced in March that he was choosing Moore, his close ally, to fill an open seat on the Fed’s seven-person board. But in recent weeks, the Heritage Foundation visiting fellow and former president of the Club for Growth has faced questions about columns he wrote in the 2000s for the conservative magazine National Review.

Last month, CNN resurfaced several columns in which Moore decried the “feminization of basketball,” denounced coed sports and argued that women should not be allowed to be men’s sports referees — unless they are good-looking.

Moore also wrote that female athletes were seeking “equal pay for inferior work” and lamented, “Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women?”

Moore told The Washington Post that he did not stand by any of the comments and that the article was a “spoof,” although he did not cite a particular column or explain a later piece in which he defended his remarks.

In a recent article, CNBC also unearthed some of Moore’s past writings, including one in 2004 in which he wrote about being told by a doctor that his young son had “low-muscle tone.”

“He might as well have told us that [the child] has AIDS,” Moore wrote.

Moore also repeatedly made mocking references to his wife at the time, a stay-at-home mother, as a “loss leader” who “doesn’t have a job.” And in a 2001 column — one of several that are apparent parodies of a family Christmas letter — Moore described a scene in which he is “cruising around town with the top down and a gorgeous 20-something blond has pulled up beside him.”

The “mood is spoiled” when the woman spots Moore’s children “making weird faces at her,” he wrote.

“She sticks her finger in her mouth and zooms off and Steve is left screaming at the kids: ‘How many times do I have to tell you tyrants to stay out of sight when I’m hitting on girls?’” Moore wrote, referring to himself in the third person. “And then Will, with a puzzled look on his face says, ‘But Daddy, we already have a mommy.’ And then Steve says, ‘Yes, but imagine, just for a moment, how nice it would be if you had a much younger mommy.’ ”

Stephen and Allison Moore, who have three children together, were married for two decades before divorcing in 2011. Allison Moore began divorce proceedings in 2010, and her divorce complaint said her then-husband had opened a Match.com account and had a mistress.

Stephen Moore was found in contempt of court in 2013 for failing to pay his ex-wife more than $330,000 in alimony and child support, court documents show.

The New York Times also found other Moore columns. In one, written in 2000 for the Washington Times, Moore described colleges as “places for rabble-rousing” and “for men to lose their boyhood innocence” and “do stupid things.”

“It’s all a time-tested rite of passage into adulthood,” he wrote. “And the women seemed to survive just fine. If they were so oppressed and offended by drunken, lustful frat boys, why is it that on Friday nights they showed up in droves in tight skirts to the keg parties?”

Two of Moore’s other past statements seemed problematic.

In a 2003 National Review column titled “Impeach Governor Sonny Perdue,” Moore blasted Georgia’s then-governor — and Trump’s current agriculture secretary — over tax policy.

“Voters thought they were electing a Ronald Reagan, not a Michael Dukakis,” Moore wrote in the piece, describing Perdue and other Georgia Republicans as “fiscal frauds.”

Perdue’s cousin, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, which would have held a hearing on Moore’s nomination as part of the confirmation process.

In an email, Moore told The Post that he and Sonny Perdue had reconciled “many years ago.”

“I had a great meeting with him several months after our policy disagreement and have had a friendship with him ever since,” Moore said.

Moore also said in a 2016 radio interview that a potential nomination of Romney by Trump to be secretary of state “makes me so angry,” according to a CNN report at the time.

“If Mitt Romney is nominated for secretary of state, I feel this will be a betrayal of those who worked for Donald Trump, like myself, for the last four or five months,” Moore said.

 

[Flossie]

On 5/1/2019 at 6:35 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Moore truly needs to crawl back under arock:

 

Is that surprising?  This is the guy who was kicked out of his local mall because he kept harassing teen girls trying to get a date.  He really wants people to start thinking of children as adults.  He's probably got his eye on a 14 year old, and a good way to get to know her would be to hire her 11 year old brother as his aide.

[GreyhoundFan]

7 hours ago, Flossie said:

Is that surprising?  This is the guy who was kicked out of his local mall because he kept harassing teen girls trying to get a date.  He really wants people to start thinking of children as adults.  He's probably got his eye on a 14 year old, and a good way to get to know her would be to hire her 11 year old brother as his aide.

I don't recall seeing Stephen Moore trolling for young girls like Roy Moore, but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

In other news, typical Dumpy appointee doesn't understand jack shit about the department he's supposed to "lead".

 

[Flossie]

9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I don't recall seeing Stephen Moore trolling for young girls like Roy Moore, but I wouldn't be surprised.

You're right, I wasn't paying attention.  I was thinking of Roy Moore.

The problem is that it seems that anyone who comes in close proximity with DT is soon found to be a horrible person with multiple shady dealings in their background.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump rolls back safety rules meant to prevent another Deepwater Horizon spill"

Spoiler

The Trump administration has weakened offshore drilling safeguards put in place after a 2010 explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform killed 11 workers and triggered the largest ocean spill in U.S. history.

Administration officials said the revised Well Control Rule announced Thursday in Louisiana, not far from the site of the spill, reflects President Trump’s stance on “facilitating energy dominance” by increasing domestic oil and gas production and reducing burdens on the fossil fuel industry.

“Today’s final rule puts safety first, both public and environmental safety, in a common sense way,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in a statement. “Incorporating the best available science, best practices and technological innovations of the past decade, the rule eliminates unnecessary regulatory burdens while maintaining safety and environmental protection offshore.”

Officials at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, a division of the Interior Department that promulgated the rule, said the changes also will save the offshore oil and gas industry nearly a billion dollars over 10 years.

Politicians and conservationists who oppose the rule change are worried about its potential cost to the environment. The Deepwater Horizon disaster poured 4 million barrels of oil — about 200 million gallons — into the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana.

Around the time that the Obama administration finalized the rule in 2016 to guard against another catastrophic spill, BP announced that the accident had cost the company $61.6 billion, more than the value of Ford, Honda or General Motors.

The gulf fishing industry lost nearly $95 million in 2010 alone. According to the National Audubon Society, a million seabirds died.

More than 150 whales and dolphins were found dead during the response to the spill, while surviving dolphins suffered lung defects and hormone abnormalities, according to NOAA Fisheries.

When the spill was at its worst in May 2010, a month after it started, bluefin tuna were feeding and spawning as oil polluted their habitat. The wider effect on the animals is largely unknown.

The rule change comes at a time when the administration is considering expanding offshore drilling leases to 90 percent of the United States’ outer continental shelf, including the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, an unprecedented proposal.

Before the proposal was announced by the Interior Department last year in January as part of the National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, the agency suspended a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to determine whether oil rigs can operate more safely. The Academies said the delayed study to assess whether the bureau is meeting its regulatory mission started in fall last year.

In preparation for its planned drilling expansion, the Interior Department is considering granting permits that would allow seven companies to conduct seismic surveys to map the Atlantic floor using earsplitting sounds that some scientists say harm whales.

Last week, the agency confirmed a decision to delay finalization of its five-year offshore oil exploration plan after a federal judge ruled that only Congress, not the White House, has the power to sweep aside Arctic and Atlantic drilling bans set by President Barack Obama.

Diane Hoskins, campaign director for the conservation group Oceana, said: “Gutting the far too few offshore drilling safeguards that were established in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is reckless and wrong. The Trump administration is putting industry cost savings ahead of safety just weeks after the anniversary of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.”

Administration officials heeded the concerns of the industry, particularly the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies on its behalf.

The institute said in a statement that it expects “opponents of natural gas and oil development anywhere to attack the updated rule.”

“Offshore energy development is safer than ever,” said Erik Milito, a vice president with the group. “Technological advances, as well as collaborative efforts by the industry and regulators, have helped to continuously advance safety systems and standards.”

Industry representatives had complained that the Obama rules were overly burdensome and did not necessarily make offshore oil rigs and platforms safer. They said the rules did not recognize technological improvements since the BP spill.

In its rule proposal last May, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said it understood the concerns and identified areas where the rules could be “amended or removed to reduce significant burdens on oil and natural gas operators . . . while ensuring safety and environmental protection.”

The new rules responded to those concerns by eliminating a requirement that safety and pollution prevention equipment be inspected by independent auditors certified by the bureau. A bipartisan presidential commission established after the BP disaster recommended such inspections.

Now oil companies can use “recommended practices” set by the oil industry for ensuring that safety equipment works, returning to a standard that existed before the gulf oil spill.

The industry’s recommended practices “are simply that — they make recommendations but don’t require anything,” Nancy Leveson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who served as a senior adviser to the presidential commission, said when the rules were proposed.

"The documents are filled with ‘should’ instead of ‘must,’ " she said.

The revisions also include other changes the industry has sought. Safety-bureau regulators removed a key word from language describing the level of down-hole pressure the agency requires operators to maintain in a given well to avoid an accident. The word it removed is “safe.”

Pressure tests, which failed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, no longer have to “show” that a well is in balance. Instead, they should “indicate” that.

A requirement that forced oil rig and platform operators to design and assure that equipment functions in extreme heat and weather such as storms that produce high winds was eliminated.

Extreme conditions played a role in the BP catastrophe and a lesser-known disaster that preceded it. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan so roiled the gulf that an underwater canyon collapsed and brought down an oil platform operated by Taylor Energy. Oil has spilled from the site ever since, the second worst in that body of water.

The National Ocean Industries Association applauded the bureau “for acknowledging that the 2016 Well Control Rule, while well intentioned, was flawed with technical problems that actually detracted from the goal of safe operations,” said the group’s president, Randall Luthi. “BSEE’s final revisions, which leave the original rule largely intact, further manage risks and better protect workers and the environment, making drilling safer.”

A conservation organization that successfully sued the administration over its plans to open the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to leasing despite earlier bans on drilling there vowed to fight the administration’s weakened rules.

“These rollbacks are a handout to oil company [chief executives] at the cost of endangering the lives of their workers and heightening the risk for another environmental catastrophe off America’s coastlines,” said Chris Eaton, an attorney for Earthjustice. “We will use every tool we have to prevent these rollbacks.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course: "Trump administration wants to allow debt collectors to call 7 times a week and text, email as much as they want"

Spoiler

Christopher Fultz peered at his phone during a break at his job as a paramedic and saw an unusual text displaying his name in all caps.

Click on the link, said the message, which was from a number he didn’t recognize.

Fultz, 36, initially ignored the text but eventually followed the link leading to a website asking for his Social Security number. Fultz said he then realized a debt collector who repeatedly called and left what Fultz considered threatening voicemails had found a new way into his life.

“I was appalled. They can’t send text messages if it’s a debt collector,” said Fultz, of Ohio. “It was just shocking that they would do that. It felt like a scam.” Fultz filed suit and the debt collection company paid him $3,500 as part of a settlement.

For decades, debt collectors have relied on a limited set of communication tools: landlines and the U.S. mail. Now they are finding increasingly personal ways to reach the millions of Americans regulators say have been contacted by debt collectors. Some debt collectors worry that these contacts fall into a legal grey area because the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was written 40 years ago and doesn’t directly address digital communications.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday proposed rules that would give the industry the go-ahead to send consumers unlimited amounts of texts and emails, accelerating a trend the watchdog bureau says could be beneficial for everyone.

The proposal is a victory for debt collectors such as San Francisco-based TrueAccord. Instead of making a barrage of phone calls, TrueAccord sends out millions of emails and texts every month. Next it hopes to contact delinquent consumers through chat programs such as WhatsApp.

“When you have a good online digital presence, you don’t need to make those calls,” said Ohad Samet, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. “The only question here is why hasn't everyone else moved to digital first models yet.”

But this digital-first approach has alarmed consumer advocates who worry the CFPB could give an industry known for high pressure tactics a new way to violate consumers’ privacy. While many Americans understand how to deal with a pesky creditor calling their landline, their texts, emails and social media are new, more personal territory.

“People are able to ignore phone calls, and that is the thing debt collectors don’t like,” said David Phillips, an Illinois attorney who has filed dozens of suits against debt collectors. “It’s as if a debt collector is able to show up at your house and pound on the door. That is the effect of a text message.”

In addition to addressing the use of email and text communications, the bureau also proposed limiting the number times a debt collector could call someone to seven times in a week. After reaching the consumer, the debt collector wouldn’t be allowed to call again for a week. It would also update the disclosures the companies must provide in written communications.

Consumers can still tell debt collectors to stop contacting them in any way, under the law.

The debt collection industry said it appreciates the CFPB proposal, but called the cap on the number of phone calls they can make “arbitrary.” It would “unnecessarily impede communications with consumers,” said a statement from Leah Dempsey, senior counsel for ACA International, a large industry lobbying group.

Consumer groups that had called for the CFPB to limit the industry to three calls a week were unhappy with the proposed rules.

The cap applies to individual debts owed by the consumer, said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. Someone with more than one bill in collections could quickly be inundated, Jun said. “It could add up quickly,” she said.

If the debt collectors emailed or texted too often it would be considered harassment and be illegal, according to the CFPB. But unlike with phone calls, the bureau is not proposing a specific cap on the number of contacts.

The proposal also asks debt collectors whether they anticipate using social media to contact consumers while prohibiting such contact if it could be viewed by a third party. Some debt collectors have already found ways to use social media.

Diandra Rivera of Brooklyn said she stopped posting to Facebook and closed her LinkedIn account after realizing debt collectors had started monitoring the sites. One combed through her LinkedIn page to find a former boss and even family members, who the debt collector then contacted, she said.

Another monitored her Facebook page. During phone calls with the debt collection agency, the representative would mention social outings she had posted on Facebook, Rivera said. The agent questioned why she was behind in repaying her student loan payments if she could afford to go to Applebee’s, Rivera said.

“It was really creepy,” she said.

The proposed rules are likely to set up a battle between debt collectors and consumer advocates. The CFPB received about 81,500 complaints about debt collectors in 2018, according to a report released in March, making the industry one of the agency’s most common sources of consumer complaints.

Giving debt collectors such wide latitude to expand digital communication is unwarranted, said Christine Hines, legislative director for the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

“With the extreme examples of debt collectors harassment and invasion of consumers’ privacy that we’ve seen, it’s always a bad idea to exempt debt collectors from liability or grant them a safe harbor, in any circumstance,” she said. “Seems like an invitation to encourage more abuse not deter it.”

But some industry officials say the move into the digital space could be transformative. Debt collectors are already combing through social media to track consumers’ digital footprints and building models to determine whether they would be more likely to respond to male or female voices.

TrueAccord, launched in 2014, has been attempting to put a friendly face on the debt collection industry and rarely calls consumers, said Samet, the co-founder. The company “crunches a lot of data” to build a profile of consumers, based on what kind of products they have purchased and on their previous responses to attempted contacts, he said. Ninety percent of the company’s communication with consumers does not involve a human, he said.

“There is machine learning at play here,” he said.

Samet said he believes consumers appreciate TrueAccord’s approach. Text messages and emails are a “channel you engage with more frequently but if you don’t like my email it’s a swipe of the finger to make me go away. You can set up filters. You can do a lot of things to manage your communications,” he said.

The CFPB has received more than 50 complaints about TrueAccord since 2015, according to the bureau’s database, which doesn’t identify complainants.

“This lady keeps emailing me constantly. She has even went so far as to tell me that she knows I am opening the emails. She is harassing me at this point,” according to a complaint filed with the CFPB earlier this year. “This is not okay. Please help me.”

In 2017, a consumer told the CFPB that TrueAccord had been too aggressive. “This email was written in such a matter [as] to convince me that they will threaten me both physically and try to ruin my reputation. They stated they would use any means available to collect the money they say is owed,” according to the complaint.

Samet said the complaints are typical of the kind received by other service companies such as Comcast and a “fraction” of what competitors receive. “We never want people to complain,” he said.

To be sure, digital communications from creditors can sometimes be helpful to consumers. Emails and text messages create a footprint that can be used to track down debt collectors hiding behind P.O. boxes and shell companies, said Ohio attorney Jonathan L. Hilton, who practices consumer law. In some cases, Hilton said he has subpoenaed Google or cell phone companies to find the names, addresses and even bank account information of debt collectors. “It’s very useful from the investigative side,” he said.

Vicki Chester, a retired nurse’s assistant, said she was being inundated with phone calls from a debt collector about an old $350 debt for months before she relented and made two $60 payments. “The calls were nasty,” said Chester, a client of Hilton’s. “I was tossing and turning every night wondering if I am going to be picked up.”

Finally, she asked the debt collector to send her an email with details about the debt. That is when Chester said she realized she was being hounded about money she didn’t owe. “I realized, this isn’t my debt,” said Chester, who received a $6,000 settlement against the debt collection agency. “They had the wrong Vicki.”

The 1977 Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was written before cell phones became the constant companion of millions of Americans. The law prohibits debt collectors from calling before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. and prohibits harassment. But it did not directly address most forms of digital communication.

The CFPB proposal would change that, which would be a relief for Elle Gusman.

Minnesota-based Direct Recovery Services has experimented with both text messages and emails, said Gusman, who founded the company in 2012. Emails were effective initially but then began getting flagged as spam by Google, especially when sent out in large batches, she said. The company even created a new domain name, but words included in the emails or their attachments -- such as debt, password, account, pay online -- would get flagged, she said.

“It won’t go through,” said Gusman.

Consumers also appeared to like receiving text messages about their delinquent bills, said Gusman. “Millennials just want to go online and pay” their bills, she said. “It would be crazy, within an hour of just sending our messages, we would get 20, 30 payments online.”

Sending the messages was expensive and it was difficult to include all of the required disclosures in a few characters, said Gusman.

One of the people Direct Recovery Services texted was Fultz, the Ohio paramedic, who said he found the messages intrusive.

The company has stopped the practice but Gusman said she is hoping the CFPB proposal will allow the company to try again.

 

[Howl]

So here's a little flashback, and Sarah Kendzior wants us to remember this, because Steve Mnuchin, head of a corrupt Treasury is corrupt, and running interference for Trump.  And is there a Russian angle?  Of course there is, because with these guys, there's ALWAYS a Russian angle.  Buzzfeed article (exposé, really) from December 2018: 

Russian Agents Sought Secret US Treasury Records On Clinton Backers During 2016 Campaign  Whistleblowers said the Americans were exchanging messages with unsecure Gmail accounts set up by their Russian counterparts as the US election heated up.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[Howl]

Shanahan has been tapped for permanent SecDef. Hearings underway.  He's perfect.  A number cruncher with zero background in global military diplomacy/military policy/foreign affairs, he's under ethics investigation by the Pentagon IG.  A Boeing man through and through, he seems suitably malleable and loyal to Trump.  What could possibly go wrong?  If he's an epic failure, like Prewitt and Zinke, he can go back to Boeing or get an ultra cushy, good paying lobbyist job.

From CNN

Quote

The ethics accusations leveled by the organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington accuse Shanahan of violating his signed ethics agreement by praising Boeing during discussions of government contracts in his current position and criticizing the company's competitors.

and more CNN

Quote

Although Shanahan has recused himself from Boeing-related matters, his ascension to the top of the Pentagon marks an unprecedented moment in which a decades-long executive for a top defense contractor occupies ultimate influence over government programs that rely on defense contracts. Shanahan spent 31 years at Boeing before officially joining the Pentagon in July 2017.

That has stoked concerns over the potential for impropriety, particularly as the defense budget swells to near-record levels and the Pentagon implements expensive new initiatives such as Space Force. Much of that new money will be spent on contracts signed with the country's top defense contractors, including Boeing, the second biggest defense contractor in the country.

"He may not be directly negotiating contracts, but he now directs overall policy. Boeing provides so many services for DOD, so I don't see how Shanahan can pull back from all decisions that could potentially affect those issues," said William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

"Lock Mnuchin up! (And give Maxine Waters the key.)"

Spoiler

Ladies and gentlemen, our nation is in a crisis. It is in a crisis about whether to label the current moment a crisis.

Facing the blanket refusal by the Trump administration to cooperate with any and all congressional oversight, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) last week proclaimed a full-blown “constitutional crisis.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she agreed.

On the other side, the man who precipitated the purported crisis, President Trump, respectfully disagreed. “The Democrats new and pathetically untrue sound bite is that we are in a ‘Constitutional Crisis,’ ” he remarked as part of a 118-tweet fusillade that included an attack on his handpicked FBI chief. “They are a sad JOKE! We may have the strongest Economy in our history.”

He wrote this before the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled more than 600 points because of his trade war with China.

Is it a crisis or not? And “Would we even know one if it bonked us on the heads?” asked Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick. She put the question to 10 legal experts and got a split decision: Four said no crisis, three said crisis, and three disputed the validity of the question. (They are lawyers, after all.) “Crisis schmisis,” replied Harvard’s Laurence Tribe.

If we’re not in a crisis yet, we certainly would be in one if (or when) the Trump administration ignores a court order, or if the Supreme Court (with Trump’s appointees) upholds a blatantly illegal act.

But Congress needn’t wait for the crisis to happen. Lawmakers can show the Trump administration how reckless its actions are by responding in kind, with their own brazen attempt to push their powers to the limit. For the first time in nearly 100 years, they should lock him up.

No, not Trump, and not his enabling attorney general, William Barr. That would be way too messy.

But there is another figure who is at once so disagreeable that even Republicans might not object to his confinement, and so ineffective that most people wouldn’t notice he’s missing: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Mnuchin has arguably been the most brazen in rejecting the constitutional balance. He’s refusing to turn over Trump’s tax returns even though the law explicitly states that the treasury secretary “shall furnish” any tax returns the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requests.

“Shall furnish” offers no wiggle room, but Mnuchin told Congress he shan’t furnish.

Some Democrats suggest they could punish such contempt of Congress with a $25,000-a-day fine. But that won’t work: Mnuchin literally prints the money. (Remember the photo of him and his wife at the mint looking like James Bond villains?) And his $300 million net worth would withstand 33 years of $25,000-a-day fines.

Much more likely to get Mnuchin’s attention would be for the House sergeant at arms to do what hasn’t been done since Teapot Dome days: seize him on his next Capitol drop-by, cuff him and put him in a chain-link cage — or what Trump officials who deal with child migrants call a Detention Space for Safety and Protection.

Contrary to Pelosi’s joke to The Post’s Robert Costa about “a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol,” no such holding cell remains for those in contempt of Congress. Therefore, Mnuchin’s cage should go in Statuary Hall, where tourists would snap photos. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chair of the House Financial Services Committee, would serve as his warden, and she would only release him for exercise breaks if he politely asks her to “bang the gravel.”

To persuade him to cooperate with Congress, Mnuchin would be fed only Buffalo chicken sandwiches from the takeout in the Capitol basement. And, as a final method of coercion, he would be forced to listen to a continuous loop of special-order speeches by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), blasted from loudspeakers 24 hours a day.

Within a few days, at most, Mnuchin would release Trump’s tax returns. Constitutional crisis averted.

Mnuchin’s confinement would benefit the American public in other ways, too:

It would prevent Mnuchin (previously the executive producer of “The Lego Batman Movie”) from doing any more harm as a negotiator for the United States in the just-collapsed trade talks with China.

It would also save taxpayers the expense of his lavish travel tastes, which had him flying to the solar eclipse with his wife on a military jet, inquiring about military aircraft for his European honeymoon and recently flying on Michael Milken’s jet.

And it would place behind bars a man who defended Trump’s response to Charlottesville, Trump’s foul language in public and Trump’s calls to defy the constitution.

Of course, in our democracy, Mnuchin would never be locked up for that. But a funny thing happens when you set off a constitutional crisis: The rules no longer apply.

 

[Howl]

Bolton is doing quite a bit of saber rattling re: Iran.  Some tweeters who are in a position to know are getting extremely concerned.  There's a still acting SecDef who doesn't understand foreign policy and dynamics in the Middle East and is a malleable loyalist.   Bolton's very loyal deputy at NSC, Charles Kupperman, is a Boeing man. 

Bolton has had this chronic wet dream about screwing with Iran.  Getting into a war with Iran would be an unmitigated disaster.  It would make the Iraq invasion look like a walk in the park. 

[Howl]

Bolton saber rattling is still on going.  There's been an order to evacuate all non-necessary/military personnel from Iraq.  Iran has stated that it will not go to war with the US. 

Iran is a large country with an extremely well trained military with lots of weapons.  About two weeks ago Iran declared that all US military in the Middle East are terrorists.  This will lead to death for so many troops, and revitalize ISIS.  Stand down, Bolton! This way lies disaster. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"After two faulty Boeing jets crash, the Trump administration blames foreign pilots"

Spoiler

The U.S. aviation system needs urgently to restore the world’s confidence after two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets.

Instead, the Trump administration’s top aviation official, goaded by some Republican lawmakers, informed the world Wednesday that the problem isn’t that Boeing put a faulty aircraft into the skies, nor that the Federal Aviation Administration’s lax oversight kept it flying. The trouble, they argued, comes from lousy foreign pilots — particularly the ones on Ethiopian Airlines and Indonesia’s Lion Air who died struggling to pull the Max jets from death plunges.

“I’m trying to be respectful because they’re deceased,” Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) said of the doomed crews. But, “do we not have concerns not only with the training of pilots in other nations, but the reliability of their logs?”

The acting FAA administrator, Daniel Elwell, shared this skepticism and said he “absolutely” wants to “take a hard look at the training standards globally.”

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) voiced concern about “the maintenance programs, the pilot experience requirements, the pilot training programs of the air carriers involved.”

And Rep. Sam Graves (Mo.), ranking Republican on the House transportation committee and a pilot (as he repeatedly mentioned), criticized the deceased: They “never pulled the throttles back,” they “were simply going too fast,” they followed “no operating procedure that I have heard of.”

“You have to know how to fly the plane!” Graves said, faulting “pilot error” and “a lot of misidentification” by the crew.

Elwell concurred that the problem should have been “immediately recognizable” to the pilots, but there was “apparent lack of recognition.” He blamed the Indonesians for failing to disable the system and said the Ethiopian crew “didn’t adhere to the emergency [advisory] we put out” and “never controlled their air speed.”

Such basic knowledge is “taught at the earliest stages,” Elwell lectured. “You don’t pull out a checklist. . . . It is memorized, and you’re tested on it all of the time.”

Sam Graves rejoined the denunciation. “I hate to disparage another country and what their pilot training is, but that is what scares me in all of this: climbing on an aircraft or airline that is outside U.S. jurisdiction,” he said. “It just bothers me that we continue to tear down our system based on what has happened in another country.”

Yep. Nothing makes foreigners want to buy Boeing jets like a little jingoism.

Pilot inexperience may well have played a role in the crashes after the infamous MCAS stabilization system malfunctioned. But that doesn’t negate the fact that screwups by both Boeing and the FAA put the faulty aircraft in the air in the first place. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that senior FAA officials failed to review key safety assessments of the MCAS system and that Boeing failed to label the stall-prevention system as a critical component whose malfunction could be catastrophic. MCAS wasn’t even originally mentioned in the plane’s manual. In addition, Boeing had disabled a safety feature designed to warn pilots about malfunctioning sensors related to the system — but it allegedly didn’t inform airlines. Boeing didn’t inform the FAA until 13 months after it discovered it had offered the safety feature as an add-on option instead of standard.

Elwell played down these factors. His reaction to the Journal report that the FAA’s internal review found weak oversight: “Frankly, there’s nothing in that article that led me to anything I’m aware of,” he replied. Elwell allowed that the 13-month delay wasn’t ideal but lectured the panel: “Don’t make something that isn’t a critical safety item a critical safety item.” Elwell also defended a policy that allows Boeing to handle much of its own safety regulation, and he said returning the Max to service is “not contingent” on completing accident investigations.

Elwell was not so forgiving of foreigners. He complained that grounding the planes (the United States resisted the move) “was not a collaborative process” and ignored the data. He said he hopes the return of the Max will be more collaborative. “I think that’s important for the world to have some level of confidence” in the plane, he said.

Exactly. So maybe take some responsibility?

At the end, the panel’s other witness, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt, cautioned against the attacks on foreign pilots. “Maybe there are different standards throughout the world,” he said. But “if an aircraft manufacturer is going to sell airplanes all across the globe, then it’s important that pilots who are operating those airplanes in those parts of the globe know how to operate them. . . . Just to say that the U.S. standards are good and this might be a problem with other parts of the globe, I don’t think that’s part of the answer.”

Blaming the victim seldom is.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, won't happen: "EPA watchdog suggests agency recover $124,000 in Pruitt’s 'excessive’ travel expenses"

Spoiler

The Environmental Protection Agency should consider recovering nearly $124,000 in improper travel expenses by former EPA chief Scott Pruitt, the agency’s inspector general recommended Thursday.

The findings, issued nearly a year after Pruitt resigned amid controversy over his spending, travel and ties to lobbyists and outside groups, highlight the fiscal impact of his penchant for high-end travel and accommodations. Investigators concluded that 40 trips Pruitt either took or scheduled during a 10-month period, between March 1 and Dec. 31, 2017, cost taxpayers $985,037.

The bulk of those expenses were for Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail, which billed $428,896 in travel costs. The agency spent an additional $339,894 on staffers traveling with the former administrator. The “questioned amount” the inspector general’s office identifies for possible recovery is the $123,941 that taxpayers spent on flying both Pruitt and a security agent in first- or business class, instead of coach.

The report also highlights the extent to which Pruitt’s official travel revolved around trips to Tulsa, Okla., where he maintained a home while a member of President Trump’s Cabinet. It noted that out of the 40 trips investigators scrutinized, 16 included “travel to, or stops in, Oklahoma” — where Pruitt maintained a residence.

The EPA watchdog details a litany of other problems with the way Pruitt and his entourage rang up “excessive costs" using taxpayer money: Exceptions for first- and business-class travel were approved for Pruitt and his security detail “without sufficient justification,” and “approved by an individual who did not initially have the authority to grant such approval.” In addition, lodging costs in excess of 150 percent of per diem guidelines “were not approved and/or adequately justified”; international trip reports were “inaccurate and incomplete.”

“Actions are needed to strengthen controls over the EPA’s travel and prevent fraud, waste and abuse,” the inspector general’s office writes.

EPA said in response to the report that the agency had a long-standing policy of allowing travel other than coach class. Its general counsel’s office had issued an opinion determining that the acting controller “had the authority to grant first-class exceptions. Therefore, in evaluating the delegation EPA believes that the trips were authorized by an appropriate official, making cost recovery inappropriate.”

Pruitt could not be immediately reached for comment.

It appears unlikely that the EPA will actually recover the extra funds it spent flying Pruitt and one of his security agents in first- or business-class, however, given Pruitt’s departure and the fact that half the money paid for the agent’s airfare.

There is a precedent for a Trump administration Cabinet member reimbursing taxpayers for at least a portion of costs determined to be improper: Then-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price announced the day before he resigned that he had written a personal check to the U.S. Treasury for $51,887.31 to offset charter and military flights he took in 2017. However, that agency’s IG later urged recovery of at least $341,000 from Price after investigating his use of private and military aircraft.

Investigators conclude that Pruitt’s use of chartered and military flights while at EPA “was justified and approved in accordance with regulations.” Those trips included one on an Interior Department plane to the Oklahoma panhandle which cost $14,434, and another in which a military jet carried Pruitt to New York at a cost of $36,068 so that he could catch a flight to Italy for an international meeting of environmental ministers.

The vast majority of Pruitt’s travel costs — 82 percent — stemmed from his airfare, the report found. During the 10 months investigators analyzed, $878,336 was from trips that Pruitt took, and $106,701 came from six trips that were ultimately canceled. The report did not examine flights during 2018, though Pruitt primarily flew coach after The Post detailed his extensive first-class travels in February that year.

In a 2017 memo obtained by The Washington Post under a public records request, the head of Pruitt’s security detail wrote that the controversial administrator was being recognized more often in public and that those guarding him had noticed “at times lashing out from passengers, which occurs while the Administrator is seated in coach with [his personal security detail] not easily accessible to him due to uncontrolled full flights.”

As a result, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta wrote, “We believe that the continued use of coach seats for the Administrator would endanger his life, and therefore respectfully ask that he be placed in either business or first class accommodations.” The memo, and officials’ argument that Pruitt faced greater security threats than his predecessors, was used as a basis for the EPA chief to routinely fly first class.

Last year, a Post investigation found that the former administrator also exceeded the government rate for hotels and other daily expenses by more than 150 percent on 17 of his trips, largely because he routinely chose to stay in boutique hotels. The inspector general’s office identified a similar pattern, concluding that Pruitt’s costs exceeded the daily government rate by more than 150 percent on 10 of the 34 trips it examined.

In other instances, the report identified instances where the agency lacked a detailed accounting for expenses or justification for some of Pruitt’s trips, such as ones with stops in Tulsa.

The new findings effectively end the agency watchdog’s probe into Pruitt, who now works as consultant to coal companies.

In November, the inspector general closed two inquiries into his conduct without reaching any conclusions because he resigned as administrator before he could be interviewed. Those investigations focused on Pruitt’s use of staff members for personal purposes and a condo rental deal he made with a lobbyist.

The office did not make a finding as to whether Pruitt violated federal law, according to its semiannual report to Congress, saying in each case that “the result of the investigation was inconclusive.”