One of Trump's Top EPA Officials Was Just Indicted on State Ethics Charges

[Hermit-The-Prog]

One of Trump’s Top EPA Officials Was Just Indicted on State Ethics Charges

Russ Choma and Nick Schwellenbach November 13, 2018

A senior Environmental Protection Agency administrator responsible for nine southeastern states has been indicted by an Alabama grand jury on charges he conspired to violate ethics laws, reportedly in connection with a messy bribery scandal that has links to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and has roiled local politics.

The Alabama Ethics Commission announced Tuesday morning that a grand jury had indicted Onis “Trey” Glenn, the EPA official, and Willie Scott Phillips, his former business partner, on a variety of state ethics charges. The press release was short on details, but the charges include inappropriate solicitation or receiving of money or other items of value and allegations that Phillips violated rules against the “use of office for personal gain.” Glenn was indicted separately from Phillips on multiple counts of conspiracy or complicity.

[...]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/onis-glenn-epa-alabama-indictment/

[Tom Rivers]

1. Rachel opened her show with this tonight... absolutely sickening

And yet those in red states will continue voting to put the fools in that will get rich quick while they keep them poor while they pollute their water, their food, their air, and LITERALLY shit on them.

But as long as it's all done in the name of LORD JESUS, then I guess it's okay. Disgusting. Sick country.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. pollution for profit

Somehow voting for corruption is supposed to be rebellious. I've never been able to figure out that mindset.

[Vinca]

5. That was the most nauseating segment.

It's hard to imagine why the south keeps voting Republican.

[Achilleaze]

3. republican "values" suck cesspool scum

KGOP republicans keep demonstrating that they are a cabal of lowlife criminal vermin.

[duforsure]

4. Anyone else think

Trump isn't selling relaxed EPA policies to the biggest polluters too? We already suspect he's selling foreign policies.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. Kochs and others

Wouldn't surprise me if all the big Republican donors bought special dispensations. We know Pruitt was appointed to wreck the EPA; it's not a big leap from that to selling relaxed EPA policies.

And for a replacement...

The President’s Coal Warrior

Inside EPA head Andrew Wheeler’s highly effective campaign to sacrifice public health in favor of the fossil-fuel industry

[by] Jeff Goodell November 13, 2018

If you could design the ideal character to assure the continuing domination of Big Coal and Big Oil in America and to reaffirm their faith in their God-given right to cook the climate in pursuit of profit, that character would look a lot like acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.

[...]

But make no mistake, Wheeler is one of the most skilled regulatory hitmen the fossil-fuel industry has ever deployed. Compared to former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, his clownishly corrupt and incompetent predecessor, Wheeler is a no-nonsense professional, a man with vast experience in the dark corners of the Senate who can crawl through the most fetid lobbyist dungeons and emerge with the name of the right congressional staffer to call to tweak a bill that’s heading for the floor. Pruitt, on the other hand, who had come to Washington from the wilds of Oklahoma, was almost comically ineffective at rolling back the laws he made such a show of attacking as he embroiled himself in no fewer than 13 scandals during his 18-month tenure.

Wheeler won’t make the same mistakes. “Under Trump, the EPA’s mission is to deliver for the Republican Party’s fossil-fuel overlords,” Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse tells me in an e-mail. “Under Wheeler, I don’t think that will change.” What will change is his mission plan. “Wheeler is the embodiment of the anti-regulatory ‘deep state’ in Washington,” says Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Working Group. “His goal is not just to roll back the environmental progress made under President Obama, but to weaken and deconstruct the entire regulatory system at the EPA. He’s playing the long game. And that’s exactly what makes him so dangerous.”

[...]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/andrew-wheeler-epa-fossil-fuel-agenda-755332/amp/