“At the EPA, staffers expect Wheeler to stick to the agenda set by Pruitt and Trump: Cutting environmental regulations that the Trump administration and industries see as unnecessarily burdensome to business, Southerland, the former water official, said.” - AP is committed to not examining the business records of the past 3 decades to see how regulations have harmed businesses or the common man.
from the archives:
{AP} August 24, 79 ACE
Mount Vesuvius erupted 2 days ago. The Volcano expelled ash and burning gases (invisible, like Zeus’ breath) upon the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Outside the ash fall zone, real estate prices have gone down, despite this being an excellent wine growing region.
Destroying the mission of the EPA with a smile, not a sneer.
I was pleased to learn the Pruitt had not been quite as wasteful with EPA resources as I thought he had been.
the roughly 20 members of a security detail Pruitt’s EPA had created…were originally trained for investigating environmental crimes.
They were just standing around, looking bored. May as well have them hang around near Pruitt while they did that.
The one thing that gives me hope about this is that while I have no doubt Wheeler will continue the same agenda, the reduced amount of open contempt for the EPA itself and the people working there may result in more people staying on and make it better able to come back once a real government is in power. Also, while Wheeler may be better able to make rules correctly compared to Pruitt’s administrative fuckups, he’s got a lot less time to do it.
Well, he’s got at least one thing going for him, in order to look bad in his new job compared to the standard Pruitt set, he’ll have to be outlandishly incompetent and cruel, like BBQ a bald eagle on the roof of the EPA headquarters bad. If he isn’t a walking caricature like Mnuchin he’ll cruise right through his term, no sweat. So there’s that.