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Posted (edited)

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

 

Edited by Pods
Posted

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.

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Posted
  On 5/24/2018 at 12:14 AM, Blotto said:

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

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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.

Posted

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

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Posted

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.  

Posted
  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.

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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.

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

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Posted

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. 

Posted

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.

Posted

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.

Posted

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.

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Posted

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.

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Posted (edited)

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

Edited by trauma babe
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Posted
  On 5/25/2018 at 12:06 PM, 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.

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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. 

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Posted (edited)

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 by Pods
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Posted

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.

Posted
  On 5/25/2018 at 1:53 PM, 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. 

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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.

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Posted
  On 5/26/2018 at 2:13 AM, 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.

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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/

 

 
 
 
 

 

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Posted

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.

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Posted

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.

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Posted
  On 5/26/2018 at 3:07 AM, 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.

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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. 

 

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Posted (edited)
  On 5/26/2018 at 2:40 AM, 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/

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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.”

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Edited by Pods
Posted

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.

 
 
 
 
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Posted
  On 5/26/2018 at 2:44 AM, 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.

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Laurel.  Yanny. 

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Posted (edited)

@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 by Pods
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Posted
  On 6/1/2018 at 4:52 PM, Gil Bang said:

 

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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.  

Posted
  On 5/26/2018 at 3:22 AM, 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. 

 

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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.

Posted
  On 5/24/2018 at 12:15 AM, 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.

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

Posted

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.

Posted

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

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Posted

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.  

Posted
  On 6/4/2018 at 3:02 PM, 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.  

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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?

 



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