Scott Pruitt Resigns as Administrator of the EPA

The leftwing, and the Weekly Standard, have been baying for his head for a while.

Here's the Weekly Standard in one of its columns calling for Pruitt's termination.

From the beginning, the media had it in for Scott Pruitt.

There were two reasons for their determination. First, President Donald Trump's EPA administrator sought to roll back what Pruitt correctly believed to be costly and deleterious environmental regulations. We held him to be largely right on that score, and still do. The media, and especially the New York Times and Washington Post from which other media take their cue, shared the view of rank and file EPA bureaucrats that Pruitt was "anti-science" and therefore illegitimate. His deregulatory efforts, in their view, would result in environmental catastrophe.

The second reason for the media’s hatred of Scott Pruitt is simply this: He invites it.

Pruitt's use of public money for non-essential purposes has become a pattern. He's used taxpayer dollars to purchase lavish dinners and accommodations in five-star hotels; a new, expensively retrofitted Chevrolet Suburban; first-class flights, domestic and foreign, for himself and his security detail; a massive security entourage; "special hiring authority" pay raises for favored staff; and costly office renovations (this last violated two laws, according to the Government Accountability Office). None of these profligacies, taken by itself, would present a major political problem. But together, they present a major one.

Consider, too, reports that Pruitt leased a condominium owned by the wife of an energy-industry lobbyist at a significantly reduced rate, and demoted and/or reassigned EPA staff who raised objections about the administrator's large expenditures. Again: Neither offense, taken on its own, would necessarily prompt a fair-minded observer to conclude that Pruitt should be fired. Taken together, one begins to wonder why Pruitt's still in office.

Well apparently Trump agreed.

posted by Ace of Spades at 03:56 PM

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