We need to talk about Scott Pruitt

[Pods 7582]

Two days in a row, he has refused to allow the press to attend a national summit on toxic chemicals.  

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Pods

[Blotto 23557]

If only he had a boss that could set him straight on the issue of stifling the press.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

There are only a dozen ongoing investigations into his malfeasance.

Either he’s a Capo for Trump or he has the pee tape... maybe both.

[GhostOfTomJoad 9331]

Carson, Perry, De Vos, etc are incompetent window dressing in the pantheon of Trump appointees, but Pruitt is terrifying. Unlike the others, he's actively engaged & motivated to do shit--bad, detrimental shit--that will negatively impact our environment for years (decades?) to come. Just so he can fill his pockets & live high on the hog at the taxpayers' expense.

I'm beyond flabbergasted that he wasn't run out of town on a rail 6 months ago.

[burntorangebongos 10747]

Fuck that guy!

[Aqua Buddha 14598]

51 minutes ago, Blotto said:

If only he had a boss that could set him straight on the issue of stifling the press.

Yeah, Trump is either powerless to control him or he's complicit.

The Trumpkins will tell you that Trump deserves credit for everything but meanwhile he can't even control Scott Pruitt.

[Ted Lange 16110]

Few things amplify the Dotard’s bullshit more than running on draining the swamp & putting/leaving Pruitt in charge of the EPA. Pathetic 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

There’s some 90s movie where the 20 something protagonists kill a bunch of people to make the world a better place.   One of them is George Costanza.  He is some big polluter.  They say to him “I’ve never met someone that is anti-earth.”  His response, “I’m not anti-earth.  I’m pro-earthling.”  That’s Pruitt.  

[HtownHorn 14720]

 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

So are you saying ... Fake News?

[Biff Tannen 45691]

Quote

Sen. Tom Udall calls on Scott Pruitt to apologize for the "disturbing treatment of journalists" after reporters were barred from entering an EPA hearing and one was forcibly removed from the EPA building.

Fun fact: Tom Udall is the son of former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall.

Quote

Among his accomplishments, Udall oversaw the addition of four national parks, six national monuments, eight national seashores and lakeshores, nine national recreation areas, twenty national historic sites, and fifty-six national wildlife refuges, including Canyonlands National Park in Utah, North Cascades National Park in Washington, Redwood National Park in California, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, and the Appalachian National Scenic Trailstretching from Georgia to Maine.

Zinke, on the other hand, has successfully reduced 2 national monuments so far.  Both Zinke and Pruitt should be fed to the Kraken.

[Mojo Hand 4580]

He's the worst.  I think he's still there only to give Trump leverage over Sessions, because he's the only guy he can replace Sessions with absent Senate approval. 

[hpslugga 4062]

I don’t know if he’s the worst because the issue he’s supposed to be concerned with is of the utmost concern and that magnifies his awfulness or if he’s really just that bad, but yes he’s undoubtedly the worst just beneath DeVos.

[tx 3 putt 77017]

he's a complete idiot all about the money grab 

[thrillhammer 684]

i hope and pray trump fires him for some reason or another.  it would be a beacon of light in trumps dark history of decision making.

[safe sex 11735]

Well, that's why Scott will stay right where he is.

[VinyVango 694]

Frontline on PBS had a very interesting episode about Pruitt's background and rise to EPA.   A strong argument can be made that he should never hold any public office.  The fact that he is running EPA is mind-numbing... immensely irritating and depressing.

[hookem2010 2624]

Pruitt and Zinke are both giant pieces of shit, and Pruitt doesn't even attempt to mask his absolute contempt for the very thing he is supposed to be protecting. All these people who care for nothing but lining their pockets are really taking us backwards. Hopefully there is still shit worth saving in 2 1/2 years.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[hpslugga 4062]

28 minutes ago, trauma babe said:

Well, that's why Scott will stay right where he is.

And even if he is let go, Cheetoh will find someone just like him with less baggage. Bernie Sanders' ilk ain't sitting in that chair.

[Ragnarok 103]

Yeah, the nerve of that guy Pruitt.  Did you see his latest outrage?  Insisting that studies that EPA uses publish their data and methodologies.  I mean, people are just going to try to find something wrong with it. Outrageous. That's not how we do things at the EPA.

[safe sex 11735]

As if that excuses literally everything else he has done to corrupt and disarm the agency he runs. A pretty important one, too.

Edited May 25, 2018 by trauma babe

[WhatTheBuck 28788]

1 hour ago, Ragnarok said:

Yeah, the nerve of that guy Pruitt.  Did you see his latest outrage?  Insisting that studies that EPA uses publish their data and methodologies.  I mean, people are just going to try to find something wrong with it. Outrageous. That's not how we do things at the EPA.

People's private medical information shouldn't be made public. What that move does is it removes health studies from consideration when setting policy. So when they study a population and find that the toxins the local industry is dumping into the water supply are making people sick, that evidence is inadmissible because they're not publishing people's private medical information. 

Yes, it is outrageous. 

[Message Board User 12395]

 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

If I saw Pruitt I’d probably punch him in the mouth, so I kind of have to give him a pass on the 24/7 security cost. 

[Pods 7582]

Message Board User posted it above, $3.5 for security is absolutely batshit insane. It's almost double his predecessor. 19 agents 24/7? I know there are groups like ELF that may be a threat to him, but ELF doesn't have a commando unit. That's fucking ridiculous. 

 

Edited May 25, 2018 by Pods

[Ted Lange 16110]

This swamp draining seems to be a sham.

[Pods 7582]

 

[4Pete 156]

There's nobody in this world that deserves to have a cartoon-like, karmic demise courtesy of Mother Nature.  Something terribad.

Well, Zinke, too.  Like eaten by a grizzly.

[Ragnarok 103]

12 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

People's private medical information shouldn't be made public. What that move does is it removes health studies from consideration when setting policy. So when they study a population and find that the toxins the local industry is dumping into the water supply are making people sick, that evidence is inadmissible because they're not publishing people's private medical information. 

Yes, it is outrageous. 

That is the left wing spin, which of course is nonsense.  Do you really think the purpose of this rule is to reveal people's private medical information?  The high priests at the EPA have been talking to the gods, and telling us mortals what it is the gods say we have to do.  The "scientists" at the EPA have been conducting studies.  We just have to trust them; don't worry your pretty little head about the data.  People on both sides of the aisle should cheer transparency in climate science. It is long overdue.

[Dahobbs 17625]

6 minutes ago, Ragnarok said:

That is the left wing spin, which of course is nonsense.  Do you really think the purpose of this rule is to reveal people's private medical information?  The high priests at the EPA have been talking to the gods, and telling us mortals what it is the gods say we have to do.  The "scientists" at the EPA have been conducting studies.  We just have to trust them; don't worry your pretty little head about the data.  People on both sides of the aisle should cheer transparency in climate science. It is long overdue.

Why is it that people that have literally zero bit of scientific understanding are always the ones questioning actual scientists? And why are their questions always so mind numbingly stupid? For instance, the rule is about what scientific studies the EPA can use, not really about how the EPA conducts studies. Like all scientists, the EPA has to rely on studies conducted by others as it cant study everything on its own. And this rule is aimed at disallowing the EPA from using critical studies from the past establishing the dangers of air pollution. 

See the link for more context:

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/558878/

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RomaVicta 29927]

My God, we're a lazy, stupid electorate. More Americans can name Prince Harry's wife's dress designer than can say they know who Pruitt is or what is wrong with closing out the press.

Sickening.

[Ragnarok 103]

Science should be transparent and reproducible, not secret.  I don't see how anybody can argue with that. When Michael Mann published his infamous hockey stick, it took the better part of a decade to pry the data behind it out of him, at which point it was easy to prove that the graph was garbage. It's a good thing that those days are over.  And the egregious practice of sue and settle has been ended as well.  Reigning in an out control EPA has been one of the great successes of the Trump administration.

[Pods 7582]

9 minutes ago, Ragnarok said:

Science should be transparent and reproducible, not secret.  I don't see how anybody can argue with that. When Michael Mann published his infamous hockey stick, it took the better part of a decade to pry the data behind it out of him, at which point it was easy to prove that the graph was garbage. It's a good thing that those days are over.  And the egregious practice of sue and settle has been ended as well.  Reigning in an out control EPA has been one of the great successes of the Trump administration.

Methods should be transparent and reproducible. Data should not necessarily be openly published immediately. Data takes a lot of time and money to collect. Some data has privacy restrictions and anonymized data should be used. Health data should absolutely be restricted. If the EPA bans anything using health data, that renders the EPA entirely impotent when it comes to protecting our health, which is the actual goal. 

 

[Pods 7582]

51 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Why is it that people that have literally zero bit of scientific understanding are always the ones questioning actual scientists? And why are their questions always so mind numbingly stupid? For instance, the rule is about what scientific studies the EPA can use, not really about how the EPA conducts studies. Like all scientists, the EPA has to rely on studies conducted by others as it cant study everything on its own. And this rule is aimed at disallowing the EPA from using critical studies from the past establishing the dangers of air pollution. 

See the link for more context:

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/558878/

To support the measure, the EPA cites a large, nonpartisan literature of recommendations about science in government. An agency statement bragged that the rule “is consistent with” two bipartisan reports in particular: one from the Administrative Conference of the United States, and one from the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas, knows both of those reports well. In fact, she wrote them. Wagner was the sole author of the Administrative Conference report, and she served on the seven-author panel that produced the Bipartisan Policy Center’s recommendations.

She said the proposed rule had nothing to do with her and her colleagues’ work.

“I really don’t know what the problem is that they think they’re fixing,” she said, adding that many of her co-authors “would laugh and hoot” at some of the scientific ideas expressed in the rule.

“They don’t adopt any of our recommendations, and they go in a direction that’s completely opposite, completely different,” she told me after reading the rule. “They don’t adopt any of the recommendations of any of the sources they cite. I’m not sure why they cited them.”

 

In one sweeping move, the Trump administration may soon not only destabilize the last three decades of clean air and water rules, but also completely overhaul how the Environmental Protection Agency uses science in its work. If EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s

 recently-proposed rule gets enacted, it will spark a revolution in environmental regulation. But the question is—will it stand up in court?

Pruitt proposed the regulation on Tuesday, describing it as an effort to increase transparency. It would require the EPA to publish all the underlying scientific data used to support studies which guide clean-air and clean-water rules. It would forbid the use of studies that do not meet this standard, even if they have been peer-reviewed or replicated elsewhere.

Crucially, the proposed rule does not carve out an exemption for medical data, which is tightly regulated by federal law. As such, it could immediately disqualify many historic or long-running studies—especially those documenting the dangers of pesticides or air pollution—as the researchers who ran those studies never secured their subjects’ permission to openly reveal their medical data. Under federal law, scientists can face criminal penalties if they publish confidential medical information about someone without first securing their permission.

Both environmental groups and anti-regulation activists said the rule would utterly transform the EPA’s mission in ways that would outlast this administration. The proposal “may be the most consequential decision made by EPA since the election of Donald Trump,” said Joseph Bast, the director of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that rejects the mainstream scientific consensus about climate change, in a statement.

“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible,” Pruitt said after signing the proposal. “It’s going to be able to be analyzed by those in the marketplace, and those that watch what we do can make informed decisions about whether we’ve drawn the proper conclusions or not.”

“This is not a policy. This is not a memo. This is a proposed rule,” he added, implying that future administrations will not be able to reverse the measure once it is finalized. Before it becomes a rule though, it’s likely to become a lawsuit—numerous environmental groups have already promised to fight the rule in court. And the way its written, many say, makes it unlikely to stand up to such scrutiny.

To support the measure, the EPA cites a large, nonpartisan literature of recommendations about science in government. An agency statement bragged that the rule “is consistent with” two bipartisan reports in particular: one from the Administrative Conference of the United States, and one from the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas, knows both of those reports well. In fact, she wrote them. Wagner was the sole author of the Administrative Conference report, and she served on the seven-author panel that produced the Bipartisan Policy Center’s recommendations.

She said the proposed rule had nothing to do with her and her colleagues’ work.

“I really don’t know what the problem is that they think they’re fixing,” she said, adding that many of her co-authors “would laugh and hoot” at some of the scientific ideas expressed in the rule.

“They don’t adopt any of our recommendations, and they go in a direction that’s completely opposite, completely different,” she told me after reading the rule. “They don’t adopt any of the recommendations of any of the sources they cite. I’m not sure why they cited them.”

Other legal scholars were unsparing in their criticism of the rule. “There’s so many different issues with it that it’s hard to know where to begin,” said Sean Hecht, a professor of environmental law and policy at UCLA. “Reading the rule, it doesn’t look like a proposal that has been strongly vetted by career lawyers.”

“To anyone who’s looked at a lot of EPA rules, this rulemaking is extraordinary in the lack of reference to any legal authority,” he said.

Betsy Southerland, a former director in the EPA’s Office of Water and a 30-year veteran of the agency, told me that the rule did not legally seem like a rule at all. At one point, the agency asks the public to comment on which Congressional laws give it the greatest authority to issue the rule. “That’s a stunner,” she said.

“The proposed rule is very sloppily drafted, to be sure,” said Wagner. “It’s very hard to know what they’re talking about, why they’re doing it, how they’re doing it, why and where they see it applying —it’s very mysterious. As a legal matter, that’s not going to help.”

The new rule also appears to invent entirely new terms in environmental law. One phrase—“pivotal regulatory science”—frequently appears throughout the proposed rule. The term seems to be completely novel: It does not appear anywhere else in the laws, rules, or court decisions that govern the EPA, Hecht said. According to Google, that exact phrase hasn’t even appeared on the internet before.

“It’s relatively rare for an agency to make up a term out of whole cloth and try to insert it into the law,” said Hecht.

Wagner said she was “very, very confused” by that and other phrases in the law. Even though the rule is explicitly about “research data,” the rule does not define that term, she said.

She worried that the rule was drafted ambiguously on purpose. “A sinister answer is that the ambiguity gives litigants more points to hold the agency up in court. Every single term is an attachment point,” she said, meaning that a company suing the EPA can seize on the new phrase and attempt to get a court to define it.

Other aspects of the rule “seem to me to be efforts to allow rich stakeholders to ‘data bomb’ the agency,” she said. They seemed designed to force the agency to surrender old data, she said, so that the fossil-fuel and chemical industry can run endless studies reanalyzing it, tweaking their models each time until they get the answers they want.

Just about everyone involved in the rule-making process agrees that the rule targets a specific and foundational piece of environmental science: the “Six Cities” study, from the Harvard School of Public Health. First published in 1993, the study found that Americans living in more air-polluted cities died earlier than Americans living in cleaner ones.

The killer was a specific type of air pollution: fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, which scientists call PM₂.₅. Subsequent studies of human anatomy and biochemistry have backed up this finding: PM₂.₅ appears to be so tiny that it can seep through the lungs and enter the bloodstream, where it weakens and inflames heart tissue, injures organ walls, and damages cell structures.

PM₂.₅, in other words, appears to be exceedingly deadly. This makes it exceedingly expensive.

Every time the EPA adopts a new air or water rule, it must run a cost-benefit analysis, proving that the new rule’s benefits to the public exceed its costs. Each time an American dies earlier than they otherwise would have, the EPA says their death costs the U.S. economy about $9.2 million. Since PM₂.₅ kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, the costs of all these early deaths can quickly become overwhelming. The EPA has justified many air-pollution rules—including the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s landmark climate-change rule for the power sector—on the basis of the high cost of PM₂.₅.

But it all comes back to the Six Cities study, say anti-regulation activists. While conducting the research in the 1970s and 1980s, Harvard scientists drew on hundreds of confidential medical records. These scientists say they cannot now release the underlying data to the public because doing so—even on an anonymized basis—would reveal the identity of individual patients.

But Harvard has turned over its data to third-parties and industry groups multiple times in the past. Each time, those scientists have reanalyzed the data and largely validated the results of the Six Cities study.

This isn’t enough for Steven Milloy, a policy adviser at the Heartland Institute and a former coal executive. “If you have data that’s really important for public health, then you ought to be willing to share it,” he told me. “PM is the granddaddy of all this stuff. It’s where the secret science came from.”

He argues that the EPA must release the data from the Six Cities study, even though that data is controlled by Harvard University. Milloy has long fought for the HONEST Act, a law by Lamar Smith, a Republican congressman of Texas, that closely resembles the new rule.

“It’s the biggest science fraud that has gone on in this country’s history,” he said of the Six Cities study and the larger effort to regulate PM₂.₅.

He contests that PM₂.₅ is not toxic at all. “I have challenged EPA for years and they have never produced a body,” he said. “They’ve never been able to do that, not in China, not in India, not in the United States, not anywhere. China, for the last few years, has had these huge episodes of PM₂.₅. No one’s died.”

The World Health Organization has found that ambient outdoor air pollution, including PM₂.₅, killed 23 million people in China in 2012.

Milloy said that the new rule was “actually better than what I thought was coming.”

“If it’s actually implemented, it’s going to be revolutionary for EPA science and regulatory science, period,” he said. The new rule would force the agency to reshape rules on radiation, drinking water, pesticides, and air-quality issues, because much of the evidence supporting those rules is drawn from medical research using confidential patient data.

But first the rule must stand up in court. It’s unclear how it will fare. On the one hand, the rule is inexactly written and disinterested in citing legal authority.

The rule also directly contradicts a 2002 ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “We agree with EPA that requiring agencies to obtain and publicize the data underlying all studies on which they rely ‘would be impractical and unnecessary,’” the court decided in that case.

But the federal judiciary is being remade by the Trump administration. President Trump appointed 12 new appellate court judges in 2017, a record for a president’s first year in office. These new, more conservative judges might find themselves more amenable to anti-regulatory arguments than their predecessors would have been.

It’s possible that the rule, in any form, could outlast the EPA chief who signed it. Pruitt now faces the worst crisis of his 20-year political career: To describe him as scandal-plagued would be an understatement. He has set off a scandal pandemic. This weekend, The New York Times revealed that Pruitt personally met with a top energy lobbyist last year, even as Pruitt rented a $50-a-night condo from the lobbyist’s wife. This follows revelations into alleged ethics lapses over staff pay, luxurious travel arrangements, and grift among his subordinates.

There are at least 10 different federal investigations into Pruitt’s ethics scandals, including ones led by the White House and the Republican-led House Oversight Committee. Pruitt will testify before two House committees on Thursday.

 

Edited May 26, 2018 by Pods

[Ragnarok 103]

Leftist hysteria could use some calm rational discussion:

http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-hahn-epa-scott-pruitt-good-rule-20180511-story.html

Here's what the rule would actually do. First, it would require the EPA to identify studies that are used in making regulatory decisions. Second, it would encourage studies to be made publicly available "to the extent practicable." Third, it would define "publicly available" by listing examples of information that could be used for validation, such as underlying data, models, computer code and protocols. Fourth, the proposal recognizes that not all data can be openly accessible in the public domain and that restricted access to some data may be necessary. Fifth, it would direct the EPA to work with third parties, including universities and private firms, to make information available to the extent reasonable. Sixth, it would encourage the use of efforts to de-identify data sets to create public-use data files that would simultaneously help protect privacy and promote transparency. Seventh, the proposal outlines an exemption process when compliance is "impracticable." Finally, it would direct the EPA to clearly state and document assumptions made in regulatory analyses.

Here's what the EPA's rule wouldn't do: nullify existing environmental regulations, disregard existing research, violate confidentiality protections, jeopardize privacy or undermine the peer-review process.

The costs of compliance with EPA regulations are substantial. A draft report from the White House Office of Management and Budget suggests that significant EPA regulations imposed costs ranging from $54 billion to $65 billion over the past decade. These rules also realize substantial public-health and environmental benefits estimated to range from $196 billion to $706 billion over the decade.

Given the stakes for both the cost of compliance with EPA regulations and the real risks that pollution poses to public health and the environment, this rule should be read closely by critics and supporters for what it actually says. Just as transparency in science and evidence are essential, so, too, are intellectual honesty and accurate policy communication.

Taking steps to increase access to data, with strong privacy protections, is how society will continue to make scientific and economic progress and ensure that evidence in rule-making is sound. The EPA's proposed rule follows principles laid out in 2017 by the bipartisan Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking — humility, transparency, privacy, capacity and rigor — and moves us toward providing greater access to scientific data while protecting individual privacy.

Instead of throwing stones, the scientific community should come together to offer practical suggestions to make the rule better. For example, the rule should recognize the incentives for scientists to produce new research. Scientists need to have time to produce and take credit for their research findings. Thus, there will inevitably be a trade-off between the production of new insights and the sharing of data with others, including regulators.

The EPA should also establish use restrictions and a secure data infrastructure so that confidential business and personal data are adequately protected. Finally, it should set procedures to evaluate the effectiveness of this rule. Done right, this could improve government policy not only in the United States but also around the world.

It's still hard to tell how this rule will affect EPA decisions, but one thing is clear: The rule will make the evidence by which we make policy decisions more transparent. The policy might not be perfect, but its benefits will likely far outweigh its costs.

 

 

 

 

[FondrenRoad 4378]

1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

My God, we're a lazy, stupid electorate. More Americans can name Prince Harry's wife's dress designer than can say they know who Pruitt is or what is wrong with closing out the press.

Sickening.

Laurel.  Yanny. 

[Pods 7582]

@Ragnarok Wrong, the report is garbage pseudoscience. 

To support the measure, the EPA cites a large, nonpartisan literature of recommendations about science in government. An agency statement bragged that the rule “is consistent with” two bipartisan reports in particular: one from the Administrative Conference of the United States, and one from the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas, knows both of those reports well. In fact, she wrote them. Wagner was the sole author of the Administrative Conference report, and she served on the seven-author panel that produced the Bipartisan Policy Center’s recommendations.

She said the proposed rule had nothing to do with her and her colleagues’ work.

“I really don’t know what the problem is that they think they’re fixing,” she said, adding that many of her co-authors “would laugh and hoot” at some of the scientific ideas expressed in the rule.

“They don’t adopt any of our recommendations, and they go in a direction that’s completely opposite, completely different,” she told me after reading the rule. “They don’t adopt any of the recommendations of any of the sources they cite. I’m not sure why they cited them.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Pods

[Gil Bang 25974]

 

[R2D2 91]

Disgusting rancid fraud.

[thrillhammer 684]

1 hour ago, Gil Bang said:

 

i dont fault the man for $130 pen, but 12 of them?

on a side note, doesn't anyone else suspect the dude has some issues with his sexuality?  i think he's gay but pretending not to be, and that's causing him to be bitter and vindictive.  he needs to come out of the closet and he would feel much freer.  

[Jiggy-Z 3432]

On 5/25/2018 at 10:22 PM, Pods said:

Methods should be transparent and reproducible. Data should not necessarily be openly published immediately. Data takes a lot of time and money to collect. Some data has privacy restrictions and anonymized data should be used. Health data should absolutely be restricted. If the EPA bans anything using health data, that renders the EPA entirely impotent when it comes to protecting our health, which is the actual goal. 

 

Perhaps that is the long game here, but I think this particular go around is nothing more than a sloppy attempt to make the "other side" look bad and hope for the best.

On the surface, anyone opposed to the rule looks like they are trying to hide something-after all who wouldn't want data transparency?

Consider the following from Rag's cited article:

 Former Obama administration EPA officials co-wrote a New York Times op-ed in which they said the proposal "would undermine the nation's scientific credibility." and

The Economist derided the policy as "swamp science."

 

From the Atlantic article:

“The proposed rule is very sloppily drafted, to be sure,” said Wagner. “It’s very hard to know what they’re talking about, why they’re doing it, how they’re doing it, why and where they see it applying —it’s very mysterious. As a legal matter, that’s not going to help.”

The new rule also appears to invent entirely new terms in environmental law. One phrase—“pivotal regulatory science”—frequently appears throughout the proposed rule. The term seems to be completely novel: It does not appear anywhere else in the laws, rules, or court decisions that govern the EPA, Hecht said. According to Google, that exact phrase hasn’t even appeared on the internet before.

“It’s relatively rare for an agency to make up a term out of whole cloth and try to insert it into the law,” said Hecht.

and..

But first the rule must stand up in court. It’s unclear how it will fare. On the one hand, the rule is inexactly written and disinterested in citing legal authority.

 

.....so we have a sloppy attempt.

 

Also the rule creates the appearance of data hoarding and fraud....to anyone not willing to understand what actually goes on with validation...

from....Steven Milloy, a policy adviser at the Heartland Institute and a former coal executive. “If you have data that’s really important for public health, then you ought to be willing to share it,” he told me. “PM is the granddaddy of all this stuff. It’s where the secret science came from.”

 

but wait....

But Harvard has turned over its data to third-parties and industry groups multiple times in the past. Each time, those scientists have reanalyzed the data and largely validated the results of the Six Cities study.

 

Milloy further states...“It’s the biggest science fraud that has gone on in this country’s history,” he said of the Six Cities study and the larger effort to regulate PM₂.₅.

So a pretty doubtful chance of actually getting accepted... but will certainly rile the base. 

Appears to be a wolf in sheep's clothing..even aggy would be disappointed.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[kopp0e 1135]

On 5/23/2018 at 7:15 PM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

There are only a dozen ongoing investigations into his malfeasance.

Either he’s a Capo for Trump or he has the pee tape... maybe both.

He is not a mis-spelled version of the moniker that I go by that's for sure..! 🤪

[RomaVicta 29927]

I get the impression he does this for the thrill. He picks your pocket, slaps you with your wallet, and then laughs in your face. Of course, that's metaphor. If it were a real person he was robbing, he'd get his ass kicked or (hopefully) worse.

Trump clone.

[Chooky 13315]

Step 1:  Spend taxpayer money on insanely lavish and unnecessary bullshit.

Step 2:  Reward industries and lobbyists who provide money and insanely lavish and unnecessary bullshit.

Step 3:  ???

Step 4:  Pruitt

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

We don't need to talk about this sumbitch other than to decide if we want to allow him the courtesy of deciding where he wants it. Worst cabinet official ever. 

[HenryJames 66094]

 

[Chuckie Finster 22698]

3 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

[Chad Fuck 17684]

In any other administration, this guy's behavior on its' own would've been a huge scandal and he would've likely been run out of town on a rail.  

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

2 hours ago, Chad Fuck said:

In any other administration, this guy's behavior on its' own would've been a huge scandal and he would've likely been run out of town on a rail.  

The crazy part is, Trump can plug in any other oil and gas stooge to do the same things Pruitt is doing at the EPA.  Why keep this liability around?