Via The Hill (h/t to ossqss) and the “your free range chickens have come home to roost” department.
The Senate voted Friday to confirm Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ushering in what are likely to be dramatic changes to the agency.
The 52-46 vote was almost along party lines. All Republicans except Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted for Pruitt, while all Democrats except Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) voted against him.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) did not vote due to a military conference he is attending in Germany. Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) also did not vote.
Pruitt’s confirmation came despite repeated pleas from Democrats to delay the vote due to ongoing litigation regarding emails that a liberal group had requested from the office of Pruitt, who is Oklahoma’s attorney general — a position he will leave when he is sworn in as EPA administrator.
Republicans said Pruitt will bring much-needed change to an agency that exemplifies eight years of executive overreach by the administration of former President Obama.
“The nominee before us … thinks it’s time for the EPA to get back to the clean air and clean water business instead, and to do so with an appreciation for the complexity of our modern world,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor.
…
Trump promised to roll back Obama’s entire climate change agenda, including the Clean Power Plan, which sets carbon dioxide limits for power plants. He also pledged to repeal the EPA’s Clean Water Rule, which asserts federal power over small waterways like ponds and streams.
Trump said any new regulations will be judged on whether they benefit workers, and he would refocus the EPA’s mission on clean air and water.
At his confirmation hearing, Pruitt promised to take seriously the EPA’s mission, but also to improve cooperation with states and regulated parties.
“Regulators are supposed to make things regular, to fairly and equitably enforce the rules and not pick winners and losers,” Pruitt told senators.
More here: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/320103-senate-confirms-pruitt-to-lead-epa
Politics in the US are on a wild ride. That’s a good thing. We have essentially gone from the most leftist administration in our history, spun the car 180, and are now heading straight the other direction. No wets running things. Very few compromises on principle. This is what the election was about. And it is being delivered for once. Enjoy the ride folks.
It might be better than that. The Republicans are one state legislature from being able to call a Constitutional Convention and controlling the agenda and outcome of the same. Now I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but is certainly is a reality that I don’t think anyone anticipated that might come to pass in our life times.
THAT has some very interesting possibilities! Stay tuned!!
It would be a golden opportunity to correct one of our worst historical mistakes by repealing the 17th amendment. (The one that made Senators representatives-at-large.) Proper federalism and the rights of states would then have a solid foundation again. That it would also deliver a deathblow to the Marxist/Socialist/Progressive Democrats as a politically significant group is a side bonus.
It is NOT a Constitutional Convention. It is a Convention of the States for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution, amendments that would have to go through the same approval method as amendments proposed by Congress, i.e., ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
In addition, the states would have complete control of their delegates. They could tell them what they wanted done, and what they didn’t want, and could yank any delegate for non-compliance.
This is the only way we’ll ever get term limits on Reps and Senators, which would let them focus more on problems than on re-election.
Leftist? ROFL. You have no idea what your talking about. As the western world careers deeper into industrial militarism with tweedledum and tweedledummer taking turns as sock puppets.
Hey Ol’Tony, go outside and blow off the stink. Methinks you’ve been stewing in your own little world a bit too long.
McClod love the taste of his sock, and is a nothing but a puppet.
Who is pay you to be such a clod, McClod?
Tony,
You also have the right to remain silent. It may improve your relationships with others…..
Up column you offer this apparent contrition “At times I am probably guilty of the “sneer”, something we all need to monitor. “ and here you sneer of ‘tweedledum and tweedledummer’.
Hoist by your own ‘petard’…. and insincerity acknowledged.
J Mac. Ok, you have a point although I did pen the Tweedledum bit two hours before my contrite admission.
And btw, my “sneering” pales in the face of the barage of childish rubbish that is flung my way – merely because I disagree, usually politely.
Poor McClod, you make the Tweebles look like geniuses.
Tony you might come across as less hormonal if you could accept that whilst you are entitled to your opinions, they don’t matter.
“careers deeper”?
Who has no clue?
And I’ll raise you Michael Mann’s…and Hillary’s…and “Richard Windsor”s”…and…………..
PS I know that the Climategate emails gave us access to a bunch of info those under a legal FOIA request where trying to …avoid… releasing. Was there ever a release by them under the original FOIA request?
Maybe Scott Pruitt approved the sale of 20% of the US’s petroleum reserves to Iran in exchange for a multi-million dollar donation to his favorite bank account….err, charity!
Oh, wait–that was Hillary’s uranium deal with Russia.
But not to worry–it isn’t like uranium is a strategic mineral or anything (although the Russians did end up selling it to Iran, but that’s merely a coincidence).
Ha!
Oklahoma is an energy producing state. It would be odd if the AG did not consult that industry on regulations including federal ones. As long as no quid pro quo no worry.
True.
Most politicians, in general, are ex-lawyers. They don’t have expertise on the particulars of what is before them. They need the input of “experts”, lobbyist, on both sides to decide.
Eliminate the bribes and then both views are presented to those who may have been ignorant of the details and ramifications otherwise.
Eliminate all the political/ideological/party/$$$ bias?
We live in a world that is a long way from being paradise.
Nonetheless, the far-left greens will find something, no matter how small, to attack Pruitt with. Then, their friends in the compliant media will hammer it hard, as if it was something significant.
Reminds me of these exploding heads, but, now, the heads belong to the greenies/lefties, and the wounds are self-inflicted.
And Judith Curry.
Minor spy movie named Kingsman: The Secret Service had a final scene when heads did explode. Went up in very colorful bleves. Nicely done. I think of the EPA and glowarmers when i watch this and smile. Cheers-
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNJzrvtnoQE&w=854&h=480%5D
Waited 8 years for this. While civil service rules will prevent him from firing a lot of people, I predict the EPA staff will look very different in 4 years.
You don’t get rid of people by firing them. You get rid of them by ending their position. Make them redundant, offer them positions in other departments and agencies in other locations, and cut off all chances of advancement.
Pruitt is responsible for requesting a budget from Congress. If he doesn’t get enough funding for the epa to maintain all their departments, then he must downsize or violate the law wrt his budget.
Let’s just hope that skeptics come together and the technocrats get their minds around the idea that the Trump skepticism of calling AGW political BS is what reversed the dark ages we’ve lived through. 50 years of Greenshirt/leftist consolidation evolved to a single idiotic premise “climate change” are potentially going to unwind resembling Napoleon’s exit from Moscow.
What can go wrong? Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Well there is the knee jerk lukewarm factions who can’t admit the leftist culture and actual history of the AGW policy cartel. They’ll want to babble for decades more of pointless spaghetti charts and billions more of make work funding after never producing a significant CO2 climate signal. More “could” and “may” articles then anyone will ever want to see are already in the pipeline from the cartel. The massive smear campaign of any skeptic, totally motivated by political ideology just about to hit overdrive. We should rally around terms like “uncertainty” or obfuscate the base globalist left agenda by calling it “madness” as if this is some recent phenomenon and is something other then what it actually is ??? A sure road to disaster.
The key is to crush and destroy the entire radical social revolutionary agenda of climate and expose it while executing sound reversal of junk science climate policy. All the governmental, academic safe places and incubator sites defunded. Public education propaganda removed at once. The entire leadership faction fired and humiliated. The hate they’ve represented exposed just as the media left arm has been.
If they’re allowed to fester, maintain skeleton structures they will only return even more totalitarian in design. The action policy plan;
CO2 isn’t pollution, basic science restored.
Paris withdrawn, all U.S. Funding for IPCC ends, disbandment and no U.S. participating. No global advocacy and the corruption of climate science acknowledged by the executive authority.
All green crony subsidies based on climate fraud defunded.
All federal funding, especially education funding for Climate propaganda ended.
No federal funding of NPR/PBS, climate thugs among other vices.
Yes, a good day. Progress but spineless backsliding of pandering skeptics is as real a threat as the fanatical left that is present everywhere. They will never change or moderate, they can only be defeated. Then as they path to power is hopelessly blocked the AGW movement will move into another new power agenda and AGW will go the way of past leftist hobby horse blather.
The key is to crush and destroy…
Right, so the science is settled? Ever read Animal Farm?
Projection, thy name is Ol’Tony.
McClod = Boxer.
Off to the glue factory, where you belong, McClod.
“tony mcleod February 17, 2017 at 6:43 pm
Right, so the science is settled? Ever read Animal Farm?”
It seems you haven’t. Animal Farm is about making all animals equal, except some animals are more equal than others and dissenters are “turned in to glue”. Sounds familiar? Socialism? UN Agenda 21/2030, maybe? Yes, please do read Animal Farm, it’s clear you need to if you want to refer to it.
Tony,
you need to stop digging a deep hole……
McClod has been digging beneath a sewer.. its now all flowing in on top of him.
and he LOVES it
The way you pounce on every one of my comments Andy, it’s like you’re…well…I don’t know what to think.
It was never “science” Tony that drove the climate cabal. The days of that fantasy are over.
It was always elite political power crazed policy dressed as science with a conglomerate of special interests and ideology. From the scam green energy subside to the minions on campus wollowing about capitalism and their terrible employability prospects.
Keeping things regular? Well lots of people certainly have the shits…..
I am starting to develop a visceral non-scientific reaction to the following:
Journalists who discuss CO2’s “role” as a GHG without even mentioning the acknowledged “overwhelmingly large” ratio between the effect of water vapor and CO2. Even when they admit in passing that water vapor is the primary driver they will not say by how much, and you can put your thumb on the precise place that that actual number should be if the article was an honest one. It is usually missing. Monte Hieb does an excellent job not only in presenting the numbers but exposing the hair-splitting reality of excess CO2 fixation (in people).
Those who fail to address CO2 lagging temperature in paleoclimate, not leading it, or fail to recognize what an extraordinary level of proof that would be required to establish simple and significant causation. Mentioning the “lag” elicits an “Oh, That…” response where language becomes vague and amplification/feedback is supposed to come into play… but only when people are watching and not during times of CO2 spike and declining temperature like Toba era volcanism.
Shrill rants about the upward spike of manmade CO2 that are deeply silent on flat temperature.
Hottest year claims by 0.01C “after” adjustments. Where is the outrage?
Complete disregard for the CO2 level preference of plants, purported to be an integral part of the loving Gaia that environmentalists worship. You cannot hug sea level.
TRAGIC RESULT: I just want to tell them to go fk themselves.
At times, that’s the only appropriate response.
Wow, if I had known this was going to happen,
I would have voted for Trump more than twice!
….instead, you voted for Hillary twice?
Where oh where have we gone wrong?
Taking bets on when some attorneys go into Court and get a climate kook judge to shut down the reforms of the EPA.
Gosh Hunter, there’s a dark could in every silver lining for you. Of course those things will happen. The point is that the scam aspect of the climate movement is layed bare and if the science dandy wing of the skeptical community would just own up to their anti-political delusion of what actual has gone on for over 50 years this particular authoritarian curse could rest nicely in history.
I’ll keep a broker thermometer next to my piece of the Berlin Wall in remembrance. I’ll think of the millions who died in carbon rationing and which side of the fight so many were on.
I realize it’s far from over as well, the pathetic spinelessness and vanity of the science delusionalism of both alarmists and yes skeptics the main issue.
“Cloud” of course.
Pruitt: “Regulators are supposed to make things regular, to fairly and equitably enforce the rules and not pick winners and losers,” OMG what a concept…returning to 1789 to define regulation, like to make regular…like to make it the same for everyone.
Just Do It, Mr. Pruitt!
Another Great Day for America, and all who love Her!<
How to handle current EPA leadership by Pruitt
Step 1. Establish a “suspended from work room” be sure to make it fairly large, perhaps with movable partitions.
Step 2. A. Call in who is expected to be the most recalcitrant senior staff guy,
B. Give direction that within one day/week he will come up with a concept and timeline to rewrite an offensive rule and prepare it for publication in the Federal Register
Step 3. Ask if he will comply, if yes go to step 5. If no go to step 4.
Step 4. Immediately suspend him and put in room established in step 1.
Step 5. Give continual cyclic review, analysis and direction
Step 6. Rewash steps 2-5 with further guidance and response; response could necessitate return to step 4.
Step 7. Call in the next recalicitrant one.
Step 8. Wash “next recalicitrant one” through steps 2B through 6. Rewash.
Ongoing reviews. A. Determine if any personnel in “Room” are no longer apparently recalicitrant
B. Start “no longer recalicitrant” staffers along recovery path starting with step 2.
C. Enlarge or reduce size of “suspended from work room”
D. Block all personal IT. Monitor all government IT in accordance with current regulations and employee security/privacy releases.
Oh… I forgot.. “USE OF THE MALE PRONOUNS HE, HIM, GUY ETC. DOES NOT INDICATE……….”
”Tis hard to fire, ”tis easy to give them hell.
Who was the tart that said she’d not have any “deniers” in her department ? … Go there Mr Pruitt and sack the lot !
Mr. Pruitt is well aware of what a great pleasure it is to deal with the EPA management and their lobbyist bosses .
Over the last 20 years an expanding triple layer of environmental regulation has occurred . FED , STATE and Municipal . Once a broad policy framework is in place State and Municipal governments can take it from there . There is no need for an armed EPA to duplicate work .
The EPA has been hijacked by Democrat operatives and lobbyist’s which is clearly not the fault of most employees. AN EPA – Lite needs to get out of the Grant to pals business to be seen as neutral instead of
doing what Democrat sugar daddies tell them to .
CO2 is not a pollutant it is a highly desirable trace gas essential to life . The fact the EPA claims
otherwise shows why it may not be possible to effect change in the EPA . They certainly could care less about the economy and the above video clip displaying their enforcement attitude about nailing people to the cross shows the kind of contempt that would destroy America .
1+
Oh, no…. According to Nancy Pelosi, soon, children won’t even know what unpolluted food, air and water look like…
Pruitt needs to conduct a massive purge at the EPA or his tenure will be shorter than Flynn’s…
Pruitt has 15,331 out of 15,336 EPA employees whose raison d’etre is now to utterly destroy him by any means necessary.
The press has plenty of negative statements about Scott Pruitt. I have never seen anything positive.
However, the EPA has plenty of positive, pro-environment, info. I had no idea he was such a strong supporter of clean water.
Administrator Pruitt’s biography
https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epas-administrator
That means he is the right man for this job. May he perform this task well.
Yes, that is the best translation
Oh come on!
Just go look at the legal battles he’s had with the EPA.
Fox in charge of the hen house, sure enough.
Follow the money!
Hey skanky, you nasty little slanderer, have you apologised to Dr. Crockford yet for lying about her professional qualifications to try to rubbish her reputation on the World’s most popular science blog?
Video from inside Sierra Club HQ:
https://youtu.be/E1jf2hOkec4
We are no longer groveling at the feet of the worm tongues.
I don’t really know enough about Pruitt to have an opinion one way or the other. However regarding Chris’s comment on record high temperatures in Oklahoma for February, I can’t help but wonder if he would be making a song and dance if they were record cold temperatures. It is safe to assume that in that scenario we would be treated to the sound of silence or angry admonishment that “weather is not climate”.
Mr. Pruitt is the most dangerous man in the USA right now . At least if you are part of the Triliion $$ global warming industrial complex . Mr. Pruitt should be accompanied by a tank or two because unfortunately
the Democrat operatives have demonstrated they are prepared to hire mentally unstable people to do their bidding . Seriously please have adequate security because these loons are not going to be content with just paying protesters .
+10
To say I am pleased with what is happening in our great country right now would be the understatement of the century. Roll Trump, we got your back.