Thursday, July 12, 2018
The WSJ and the Swamp
The name of the slough was “Despond.” Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt. . . .
—John Bunyan, A Pilgrim’s ProgressIt was such a nicely written letter, beautifully typed, and of impeccable logic. In it Scott Pruitt explained why he resigned, and it had nothing to do with his behavior while serving as Administrator of the EPA. In the second sentence of his letter of resignation he said, in what was probably an unintentional but very straightforward acknowledgement of his conduct, that Mr. Trump’s confidence in him “has blessed me personally.” He was not, of course, referring to the blessings he received that were the ultimate reason he was forced out. He was forced out, he said: “because of “the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family” that “have taken a sizable toll on all of us.” The letter, of course, made no reference to any of his conduct that gave rise to more than twelve investigations.
A Wall Street Journal editorial that appeared the day after Mr. Pruitt’s resignation was announced, was captioned: “Pruitt Drowns in the Swamp.” The swamp to which the editorial writers refer was not, as readers might have thought, the swamp that Mr. Pruitt had created. That swamp contained the $48,000 phone booth installed in Mr. Pruitt’s office, a phone booth that Clark Kent would have been thrilled to use when changing into his superman outfit. It contained flunkies sent to buy used mattresses and skin cream. It contained first class airplane tickets, 24-hour protection, and elaborate convoys when travelling by car. And that is only a partial list. One would be forgiven for thinking that the swamp to which the WSJ was referring was the one in which Mr. Pruitt swam. A reading of the editorial disabused the reader of that notion.
The first six words of the editorial instructed: “Chalk one up for the swamp.” It went on to explain that the swamp to which it was referring was the “permanent progressive state” that “finally ran Scott Pruitt out of the Environmental Protection Agency.” The editors of the WSJ did not view Mr. Pruitt as one of the most prominent alligators living in the swamp because of the ingenious ways he found to translate his position into personal profit and self-aggrandizement. Instead, it attributed his downfall to Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg who, it says, were out to get him, and to “the EPA bureaucracy that leans left, the green lobby entwined with it, and their collaborators in the press corps.”
The WSJ is quite happy to overlook the particulars of the swamp of misconduct in which Mr. Pruitt swam during his tenure. The writers state that allegations that “he misused private air travel, sent staff on personal errands, and bought $1,560 worth of pens, among dozens of other allegations,” allegations that Mr. Pruitt described as “false or exaggerated.” probably were false and exaggerated.
In further defense of Mr. Pruitt, and placing the blame for his departure on what the WSJ calls the “left,” it suggested that to be successful Mr. Pruitt “had to avoid even the hint of an ethical question” and “he should have been walking around Federal Triangle handcuffed to a general counsel.”
The WSJ also praised Mr. Pruitt for updating “advisory science boards that have been stacked with members who receive EPA grants.” At the time he appointed those representatives Mr. Pruitt held a press conference in which he explained the reasons for rearranging the composition of the boards by making reference to the book of Joshua in the Bible. He referred to the story of Joshua leading the people of Israel into the promised land following the death of Moses, and telling them they would now have to decide whom they would serve. Mr. Pruitt described the rearrangement of the commission as making use of the “Joshua Principle.” Scientists would have to decide whether to serve on EPA independent advisory boards, or receive grants from the agency. They could no longer do both. He replaced members who had received grants with “voices from regulated industries, academics and environmental regulators from conservative states and researchers who have a history of critiquing the science and economics underpinning tighter environmental regulations.” The WSJ conveniently overlooked those appointments. Included among the appointees were Texas’s top toxicologist, Michael Honeycutt, who was appointed to lead the Scientific Advisory Board, and Consultant, Louise Anthony Cox, who chairs the “Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.” Mr. Honeycutt has said that the EPA overstates the risks that are associated with mercury and has disregarded science that “demonstrates a chemical is not as toxic as it thinks it is.” Ms. Cox has said that the methods for calculating the public health benefits are “unreliable, logically unsound, and inappropriate for drawing casual inferences.”
The WSJ closes its defense of Scott Pruitt, and its attacks on those it describes as his “defenestrators,” by reminding readers of Mr. Pruitt’s use of first class air travel that cost tax payers $105,000 in the first year he was in office. It suggests that to avoid receiving the kind of unjust treatment from creatures living in the swamp inhabited by the left, that Mr. Pruitt received, the members of the Trump cabinet should fly coach. Only the editors of the WSJ would think that by itself, that one action would drain the swamp in which Mr. Trump and his cabinet swim. Would that it were so.
Saturday, June 2, 2018
The Nobel and the Trump
Modesty and unselfishness-these are virtues which men praise-and pass by.
— André Maurois, Ariel
It has been a period of exciting ups and downs for the average United States citizen, as well as for Kim Jong Un. The reasons are, of course, different. The ups and downs for Kim Jong Un were first the possibility that he would be able to have a summit conference with Mr. Trump, and put one over on this self-proclaimed master negotiator at that meeting. That was followed by the cancellation of the meeting by Mr. Trump, followed by its reinstatement thanks to Mr. Kim’s great negotiating skill that included sending a conciliatory letter to Mr. Trump expressing optimism about the outcome of the summit. For the American citizen, the exciting thing was quite different.
When Mr. Trump first announced that the meeting with North Korea was to take place on June 12, many of us began eagerly looking forward to the 2019 Nobel ceremonies in which, we had all been led to believe by Mr. Trump, he would be the recipient, and a worthy one at that, of the Nobel Peace Prize.
For Mr. Trump to receive the prize would be exciting for all of us under any circumstances, but it would be especially exciting since no American President since Barak Obama has been the recipient of that prize, and that award took place more than 10 years ago. In addition to Mr. Obama, only three other United States presidents have received the prize: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter. The pride that accompanies the bestowing of the award would be even greater since no other leader of the free world has been awarded that prize since it was given to Mr. Obama, and that fact alone, would make it very special. The bestowing of the prize would cause the entire nation to swell with pride, seeing yet another United States President standing on the podium, and being awarded the prize to what would surely have been world-wide acclaim.
It is a tribute to the selflessness of Mr. Trump that he was willing to take a principled stand in dealing with North Korea, even if that principled stand cost him the opportunity to go to Oslo to receive the peace prize. He knew that foregoing the prize and the trip to Oslo required that he put aside his own ambitions and prove himself the statesman he perceives himself to be by cancelling the opportunity fate had presented him-the June 12 summit meeting. Nothing less than such self-sacrifice was expected of the leader of the free world.
Had the June 12 meeting been cancelled, Mr. Trump’s peace prize opportunity would have vanished. The fault would have rested squarely on the shoulders of three men: Kim Jong Un, John Bolton and Michael Pence. Mr. Kim, it turns out, is easily offended, and he was offended by the comments of Messrs. Bolton and Pence. John Bolton, a notable hawk and a man inspired by venom rather than thought was the creator of thoughtless comments about the summit, that were mimicked by Mindless Michael, a man described by one North Korean as a “political dummy.” Those words were the cause of the summit’s temporary collapse. Here is what happened.
Mr. Bolton, famously and irrationally, as is his wont, said only weeks before the highly anticipated meeting between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump, that for the talks to be successful, they were going to have to be “the Libyan model.” That view was echoed by Mr. Pence in an interview on Fox News. A short hand version of the Libyan model goes something like this.
In the spring of 2003, Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s president, agreed to permit American and British observers into all the country’s nuclear-related sites. The observers could see for themselves that Libya was following through on its commitment to denuclearize. As a result, Libya got relief from the sanctions that had been imposed on it, and agreed to pay $5 million to each of the families of the 270 victims of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 for which Gaddafi took responsibility. In 2011 the United States and European nations helped topple the Libyan government and Mr. Gaddafi was slaughtered by the country’s insurgents. Kim Jong Un’s response to that as the model to be followed by North Korea, could have been anticipated by wiser people. He did not take kindly to contemplating what most people would not view as a happy ending to what Messrs. Bolton and Pence referred to as the successful “Libyan model.”
Choe Son Hui, a North Korean vice minister, said of Mr. Pence’s comments: “As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice president.” That shows how little Mr. Choe understands about the United States even though he is involved in U.S. affairs. No one I know is surprised at any “ignorant and stupid remarks” that come out of the mouths of Mr. Trump, his vice-president or his surrogates. We hear them every day. Would it were not so.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Conflicts?
Wherefore waste our elocution,
On impossible solution. . . .”
—Sir William Schwenk Gilbert,
The Gondolier
Recusal. Such a simple word. And yet it is the plug that enables you to drain the swamp that you create. The foregoing came to mind when it was reported that ten Senate Democrats had sent a letter to Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. The letter addressed the hiring of Diane Auer Jones to serve as a senior policy advisor to the assistant secretary for post-secondary education. The Senators wrote that Diane has a “significant number of conflicts of interest and appearances of impropriety” in her new role. Diane joins the cadre of hires by Secretary DeVos of individuals who had been involved in the for-profit college industry prior to joining the department that regulates them. Following Mr. Trump’s election, those in the for-profit college business all joined together in singing a loud refrain of “What a friend we have in Donald.” Stock in for-profit colleges soared. The day after Mr. Trump’s election, stock in Strayer Education Inc. that owns the for-profit college called Strayer University, went up by 20%.
The euphoria was not misplaced. Donald knew first hand of the travails of the for-profit college business since he was the creator of Trump University, an entity that had neither campus nor classrooms, and a faculty without academic credentials. Trump University was, like its creator, a complete fraud. It was sued in a class action by former students who ultimately settled their suit for $25 million. For-profit colleges were not all as blatantly fraudulent as Trump University, but they had been subject to considerable scrutiny and penalties under the Obama administration. Among them was DeVry University.
DeVry was a for-profit University whose practices resulted in an action against it by the Federal Trade Commission. That action alleged that DeVry touted its success rate at placing students, by including in its statistics former students who were employed in areas that had nothing to do with the education they received at DeVry. For its fraudulent activities, DeVry paid the FTC a penalty of $100 million, and for other transgressions paid the State of New York, $2.25 million and the state of Massachusetts, $455,000. One of Ms. DeVos’s early hires was Julian Schmoke. He was placed in charge of the unit that investigates fraud in higher education. Mr. Schmoke was associate dean of the College of Engineering and Information Sciences at DeVry from 2008 to 2012. Although not at DeVry when the penalties were assessed, some of the practices for which DeVry was fined occurred while Mr. Schmoke was at DeVry. Ms. DeVos, placed him in charge of the special team at the department that investigates abuses by for-profit colleges such as those engaged in by DeVry. The need for concern about conflicts of interest he might encounter were less than they would have been under the prior administration. That is because under Ms. DeVos, the special team charged with examining various aspects of questionable for-college practices, was reduced from about twelve lawyers and accountants to three employees. Their charge was to focus only on processing student loan forgiveness applications and small compliance cases. Those are not the sorts of things that got DeVry in trouble. Nonetheless, if matters come before Mr. Schmoke that would appear to be a conflict of interest, he can use the magic word that drains the swamp and recuse himself.
Then there is Robert Eitel. Mr. Eitel has become Ms. DeVos’s senior counselor. Before he joined her team, he worked at Bridgepoint Education. He was its top lawyer during the time it was being investigated for its activities as a for-profit college. One of those investigations resulted in Bridgepoint entering into a $30 million settlement over deceptive student lending practices. He is now on an unpaid leave from that institution. A spokesman for the department addressed the possibility that conflicts of interest might present themselves to Mr. Eitel in his new role. The spokesman said if that occurred Mr. Eitel would recuse himself.
And then there is Carlos Muñiz. He has been appointed General Counsel for the Department of Education. Prior to his appointment, he provided consulting services to Career Education Corporation, the company that was being investigated by the Department before Ms. DeVos shut the investigation down. Since the investigation has been shut down, Mr. Muñiz will probably have no conflicts of interest to resolve. Should they arise, however, he can invoke the magic word and avoid any appearance of impropriety.
And that brings us back to Diane. It was her hiring that prompted the senators to write their letter. She is now a senior adviser to the Department of Education on post-secondary education. Prior to her appointment, she worked for five years as a senior vice-president at Career Education, the same company from which Mr. Muñiz came. She also worked as a lobbyist and consultant for for-profit colleges. The senators are worried that she may have conflicts of interest and asked how those possible conflicts would be resolved. I am happy to tell them. Should any conflicts arise, Diane will summon the magic word and the conflict will drain from the swamp. It’s so obvious that one wonders why the senators had to rely on a simple columnist to provide the explanation.