The Interior Department on Wednesday defended a campaign-style video posted to its official social media channels, following backlash that ensued over a typically apolitical government agency touting President Trump’s “historic feats for conservation.”
Critics accused the department of violating the Hatch Act
The Hatch Act hasn’t only been violated. It has been shredded and the bits encased in concrete and dumped in the East River.
The current Interior press secretary fired back at Fullerton in a tweet by insisting that sharing the Trump-friendly video on social media got approval from “career ethics attorneys [hired from some of the top tobacco companies in the world].”
This is nothing new or unique. The Interior Department has been blowing a Trump horn and performing a kind of bureaucratic vandalism of public lands for the last 4 years. Exhibits in the visitor center at Arches NP tell the viewer how protected public lands have been shrunk since forever. Geologic interpretive kiosks at overlooks now tell how oil can be extracted from the picturesque geologic formation in the panorama below you.
BLM field archaeologists are turning over every year or so and law enforcement ranger positions are going unfilled, putting the remaining ranger - usually it’s just one for hundreds of thousands of square miles - in danger (think of apprehending Bundy-types, caught looting or vandalizing).
The lack of public stewardship is showing just as unprecedented numbers of people are visiting.
Me thinks he doth protest tweet too much.
Interior increased the number ethics staff by 250% to remove the rotten stench from the blatant failure of the prior administration to invest in the ethics program.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt posted a video
I’d never heard of this mook before, and he wants to introduce himself by bragging about the department of the interior’s ethics program? He’ll go far, this one. Far away, one hopes.
I have to admit this one made me laugh: It’s a non sequitur; there is no relationship between staff increase and better ethics enforcement, quite the contrary if the additional staff were added to oversee and prevent regular staff from examining or questioning ethics (this is the more likely case IMO).
Every political appointee in that department is worthy of flushing into the cesspit. Then add oil. Then light the mess ablaze. Entertaining except for the smell.
And probably worth the excess CO2 that would come from burning the oil.
It would be really interesting to see what that 250% increase in ethics people means…just one more thing to add to the long list of things the Biden administration needs to investigate and clean out from this travesty of governing.
Perhaps we will find out that our natural resources have been ethically raped at more than a 250% increased rate. All ethically done, of course.
they are there to ethically figure out how to sell public lands to the oligarchs (only ethical oligarchs, of course )
Shouldn’t that be the Potomac River?
Welcome to my life.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Sorry. I’m a traditionalist.
Living in Montana it’s hard to sing the praises of the donnie bonespurs Interior Department considering it has favored development over stewardship of the lands and species
As a taxpayer I’m not happy that the money was spent to travel from DC to NYC to do as you suggested, I guess that makes me a conservationist, and fiscal liberal.
@Interior increased the number ethics staff by 250% to remove the rotten stench from the blatant failure of the prior administration to invest in the ethics program.
Oh yes, Trump continues to protect what little remains of Americas natural beauty.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/28/trump-tongass-national-forest-alaska/