At Pruitt’s EPA, changing ‘P’ to ‘D’

The Trump administration has inspired some amazing magazine covers, like Time's depicting the tweeter-in-chief poking in his palm as he leans like a giant vagrant against a cratering Washington Monument. Brutal.

However, that's tame compared to Newsweek Feb. 16.

Under "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" in 50-point type, wounded and dying Disney-esque creatures flee and fall before Trump's man at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Headline: "Scott Pruitt is having a wonderful time destroying the EPA."

Yes, the man assigned to head the nation's environmental watchdog has left that dog chained out in the elements and is feeding it a steady diet of mercury and trichloroethylene.

Meanwhile, he uses his status to run for higher office, waste tax dollars on personal missives, and profit at the good graces of polluters.

Pruitt's tenure "is the regulatory equivalent of the German blitzkreig across Poland," writes Newsweek's Alexander Nazaryan.

The former Oklahoma attorney general, who spent the lion's share of his time there flinging junk suits at the EPA, now seeks to destroy it from within.

It won't work, writes Nazaryan, because environmental law isn't something one ideologue can toss out like an empty Skoal tin.

That doesn't mean Pruitt hasn't and won't inflict lasting damage. One horrific wound has been the departure of more than 700 EPA staffers, many of them scientists, who quit.

In their place, to the extent that Pruitt sees fit to fill any of the vacancies, are recruits direct from industry: polluters and profiteers and climate deniers.

"It's hard to think of another instance in America public life in which the interests of corporations were placed so far above the interests of the American people," writes Nazaryan.

Pruitt says his motivation is job creation. He boasts, for instance, that the first year of Trump policies created 50,000 jobs in the coal industry. Not quite, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Try 2,000.

Pruitt's assault on a host of regulations, dating back to the Obama administration and beyond, are offered as means of freeing up employers to hire more people.

The Environmental Integrity Project has analyzed the linkage between EPA regulations and job loss. It has found that only 0.2 percent of mass layoffs – 50 workers or more – are related to government intervention or regulations. By contrast, for every job lost due to regulations, 15 are lost due to cost-cutting reorganization.

What this means is whatever harm Trump and Pruitt manage to do to the Earth will be inflicted principally to soothe CEOs and stockholders fixated on their profit margins.

Recently Pruitt held a presumably public meeting in North Dakota to get feedback on his plan to revamp provisions of the Clean Water Act. When average citizens showed up at the meeting, however, they found out they were not invited.

This, reports Tribune-Media Services, is the way Pruitt works. When he seeks input, his audience is hand-picked and "industry-friendly," like representatives of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Meanwhile, representatives of the Navajo Nation have complained that their concerns about clean-water rules have been ignored.

This is what Pruitt does, merrily, merrily.

If he were honest, a virtue yet to visit the Trump administration, Pruitt would go ahead and change the name of his agency to EDA – Environmental Degradation Agency.

His first item of business as Oklahoma attorney general was to halt a lawsuit filed by his predecessor against chicken farmers alleged to have polluted the Illinois River. Oh, and he did so after receiving $40,000 from those farmers.

And so it goes. Pruitt has upped his game doing the bidding of the Koch brothers and Dow Chemical as he eyes a U.S. Senate run or, hey, maybe the presidency someday.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. They'd be delighted to have no EPA.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Porn star's payoff and other Trump debts

Do you care about Donald Trump and the porn star? You are entitled not to, and not to care as well about the Playmate who said he, um, engaged her and then offered to pay.

In both instances, said activities would have occurred two years into his marriage to Melania. Busy man.

USA Today recently asked: Should we care? Do we have to? As everyone knows, infidelity has been a part of many presidential narratives.

However, something is different about the porn star matter. Not surprisingly, it involves money.

What you may know about is that Trump's attorney paid $130,000 for the silence of the stage-named Stormy Daniels, enthraller of small audiences in such big hits as "The Witches of Breastwick" and "Dripping Wet Sex 4."

What you may not know is what the Washington Post now reports: When Trump dallied on the agreed-upon hush fund, she threatened to go public before the 2016 election.

So Trump attorney Michael Cohen did what one would for any exceedingly slimy client. He created a limited-liability company that served as a vehicle for the payoff.

Now, once again, you are entitled to not care. Except for that money thing, because it may have broken the law.

Public interest group Common Cause has filed inquiries with the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department to investigate whether the money in question came from Trump or from his campaign stash. The latter would violate federal finance law.

Carnal deeds aside, this should add to a thousand points of fascination about Trump and his money.

It would appear that all the pennies he has he owes back to someone.

Last year's Pulitzer Prize in public affairs reporting went to David Farenthold of the Washington Post for revealing the extent to which Trump's charitable foundation – ultimately shut down by the New York attorney general -- was a joke and a fraud.

Among other things, its funds had gone to a Republican candidate (illegal) and to trinkets like a portrait of the Orange Stallion himself. Charity? Not nearly as much as Trump claimed.

Truly, however, this is micro potatoes compared to what Robert Mueller is investigating: How Trump used others' money, particularly that of overseas lenders.

As Mueller presses allegations of money-laundering against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, recall that Steve Bannon told author Michael Wolff, "This is all about money laundering. (Mueller's) path to Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner."

Mueller has subpoenaed records from Germany's Deutsche Bank, which "was the only major commercial bank willing to lend to Trump after his string of bankruptcies," reports NPR.

Trump has denied having business deals inside Russia, but NPR reports that money from the former Soviet Union has helped finance projects for him in New York and Canada.

What we have is a supposed business wizard who, because of how often he leaned on the "bankruptcy" button, has had to turn to overseas sources of support.

There's extreme symmetry to Trump's reliance on other's money – aka debt. For that is how he proposes to finance the tax cuts he has touted as president.

Whereas analyses pointed to $1.5 trillion in additional debt, an analysis by Politico points to $2.3 trillion over 10 years.

Trump seeks to profit in office exactly the way he did as a businessman and builder, coasting on someone else's dime.

The other day I encountered someone who said he voted for Trump and gave but one simple rationale:

"He paid for his own campaign."

This is news to most who paid any attention to anything at all about Trump, particularly to the $30 million he received from the National Rifle Association and $15 million from the Big Daddy of big data, Robert Mercer.

Paid for his own campaign? The man can't even keep his porn stars mum.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com. 

Evangelicals' dance with the devil

Billy Graham is dead, and Christianity isn't feeling too good itself.

So charismatic, so compelling, no American rang up more ratings points for his faith than "America's pastor," but that was yesterday.

Now? Church attendance steadily declines. Meanwhile, the numbers of those who declare themselves spiritual but not religious grow.

Surely the reasons for this are many, but one is clear:

Many who advertise themselves as Christian have been digging a hole for their brand for years. They have sapped Christianity of its essence, which is love, and replaced it with two higher virtues: possession and possessions.

They took the "gold" from the "golden rule" and sent it offshore for tax purposes. They divined God's plan to be that they – white heterosexuals -- shall rule.

They set aside "hope" and "charity" in favor of "hate" and "blame" -- the first for Muslims and gay people, and the second for desperate Mexicans who come without papers to clean their toilets and pick their fruit.

Prince of Peace? This variant of faith is as militant as imaginable -- each war a holy war, and one's shiny firearm as much an accoutrement as the cross.

However, the most damning thing about so many self-proclaimed evangelicals and their leaders is the horse on which they have bet their previous winnings: Donald Trump.

True, Billy Graham helped politicize faith by being too cozy with politicians like Joseph McCarthy. He famously said Richard Nixon's "moral and ethical principles wouldn't allow him to do anything illegal."

However, at least Graham modeled inclusivity and straddled the divide, befriending and counseling presidents of either stripe.

Not so with the man who inherits Graham's empire, the hyper-partisan Franklin Graham.

He's defamed the multitudes by calling Islam "a very wicked religion . . . a religion of war."

He can't speak of homosexuals and transgender individuals without assigning to their desires the "LBGT agenda," whatever that is.

You may buy into Franklin Graham's spiel, but ask the young people you know and understand why so many young people want nothing to do with Graham's church, or the church itself.

That's tragic, because the church that actually models the love of Christ is something needed in a world torn by divisiveness and conflict. I was raised in a loving Methodist congregation. I know what good the church can do. This is not that.

Now we have a moral charlatan as president, less Christlike than anyone imaginable, and evangelical leaders line up to kiss his ring.

Sexual predator or not, serial adulterer or not, Trump is their guy -- he who figured out that mouthing their party line (even when changing his previous positions) would help him win the Republican nomination.

Asked about revelations of Trump's alleged affair with a porn star replete with a $130,000 pay-off, Tony Perkins of the selectively pious Family Research Council said Trump gets a "mulligan." OK, Mr. Perkins, what say you about the alleged affair between Trump and a Playmate with another payoff? How many mulligans does Trump get? Unlimited, clearly.

Back to that whole "LGBT agenda." Franklin Graham, and the churches that share his attitudes, couldn't be more out-of-touch with the majority of Americans, particularly young Americans who support LGBT rights – make that human rights without qualification. Most young people I know want nothing to do with this, or any, self-righteous bigotry.

Amid evidence that Christian church attendance is declining, interestingly I heard from a Unitarian friend who said attendance at his congregation is surging. His congregation isn't about excluding people or dividing people. It's not about colors or cloth or condemnation. It's exclusively about that Golden Rule stuff.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.