Any thinking person who lived in Oklahoma when Scott Pruitt was a state senator and the Attorney General knew what the rest of the country was in for when he became head of the EPA.

One of his biggest flaws was his rejection of science.

In 2005 he told a radio interviewer that there are not “sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution”.

His connections and dealings with the moneyed and the oil and gas industry were questionable.

On a state senator’s salary of $38,400, he joined with a top republican donor and oil guy, and with a bank loan was able to help buy Oklahoma City’s baseball team, the Black Hawks, for $11.5 Million and sell it 7 years later at a profit.

He lost his bid to go to Washington as a representative and to be the state’s Lieutenant governor, but did finally get elected to be the state’s attorney general in 2010.

His first act as AG was to dissolved the Environmental Protection Unit in the Attorney General’s office, claiming he wanted to increase the operational efficiency of his office, and replaced it with the “Federalism Unit” whose job it was to fight President Obama’s regulatory agenda, sue the administration over its immigration policy, oppose the ACA, and eliminate both the Dodd-Fank reforms and the Consumer Protection Agency.

He got campaign contributions from fuel corporations which gave him $300,000 for his campaigns over the years^.

I left the state and moved back to Massachusetts the year after he became the AG, but I did keep watching what Pruitt was doing in the state I called home for 18 years.

In 2013 Pruitt filed a lawsuit alongside the Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company and an energy industry group funded by a major financial backer of his in opposition to a regulation they did not like.

He sued the EPA to block the Clean Power Plan, again on behalf of Oklahoma utilities unwilling to follow regulations on their coal-fired plants, testified against the EPA in a congressional hearing, and by the time he went to Washington to lead it, he had sued the EPA 13 times mostly to help the oil and gas industry who faithfully continued to finance him.

He claimed the Supreme Court decision ending the Defense of Marriage Act had no effect in Oklahoma, and then, when a federal court declared that the Oklahoma voter-approved amendment in 2004 to the state constitution defining marriage as only the union of one man and one woman was a violation of the U.S. Constitution,  Pruitt criticized the Supreme Court when it refused to hear Oklahoma’s appeal in the definition of marriage case.

When there were questions about the management of the Tar Creek Reclamation Superfund lead-contaminated waste site near Miami, Oklahoma, he blocked the results of the audit by the State Auditor and Inspector, Gary Jones, from being released to the public.

A state’s rights champion, he joined a lawsuit targeting California’s prohibition on the sale of eggs laid by caged hens and went after Colorado for legalizing Marijuana.

After Oklahomans for Health collected the legally required number of signatures for a referendum on the ballot for the legalization of medical marijuana, he attempted to rewrite the name of the law to make what had been clear very confusing and misleading, and the time he wasted in trying to do this did prevent the question from being on the 2016 ballot as planned, delaying it until 2018, but  with the title as it had been written.

Pruitt used his office’s stationery to send form letters written by energy industry lobbyists to federal agencies during the time for public comments on a particular issue.

In 2015 he wrote a letter to school superintendents stating that schools can lawfully hand out religious literature on campuses, but judging from his defense of the Ten Commandment tablets being displayed on the grounds of the state capitol building and other comments and actions over the years, it was clear to most and cheered by some that the religious material would favor his religion..

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They showed that as Oklahoma’s Attorney General, Pruitt had acted in concert with oil and gas companies to challenge environmental regulations, using his letterhead on a complaint filed by one firm, Devon Energy, which is doing quite well in Oklahoma, and that the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers had provided his office with language to use in opposing ozone limits and the renewable fuel standard program in 2013.

As self-serving and dangerous to the people in his home state that his actions were, as head of the EPA, he gets to affect all of us nation wide.

According to The Washington Post,

“In legal maneuvers and executive actions, in public speeches and closed-door meetings with industry groups, he has moved to shrink the agency’s reach, alter its focus, and pause or reverse numerous environmental rules. The effect has been to steer the EPA in the direction sought by those being regulated. Along the way, Pruitt has begun to dismantle former president Obama’s environmental legacy, halting the agency’s efforts to combat climate change and to shift the nation away from its reliance on Fossil fuels.”

Regarding climate change, he has claimed carbon dioxide is not “a primary contributor to the global warming that we see”, a stance that contradicts the EPA’s public position published on the official website which stated, “Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change”. He removed several agency web pages containing detailed climate data and scientific information, issued a directive to stop litigants from pressuring the EPA to regulate, fired scientists from the agency’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, intending to replace them with industry representatives, removed several scientists from EPA advisory panels, forbade any scientist who receives a grant from the EPA from then serving on those panels, and meets with industry representatives almost daily while rarely meeting with environmentalists.

He has removed, relaxed, or delayed 67 environmental rules, and, after it was there for twenty years, the Climate Change section on the EPA website was taken down in April of 2017

So far this year he has proposed a rule to relax the regulation of coal ash, that stuff that keeps getting into rivers and streams from which cities get their water supplies, postponed a new rule to limit liquid waste that is discharged into bodies of water by power plants, and has put a halt to a rule that requires mines to guarantee they can pay for reclamation.

If it benefits the bottom lines of the fossil fuel companies, regardless how bad it is for people, he is all for it.

Pruitt has been granting Renewable Fuel Standard waivers to several highly profitable refineries, one being the biggest and most profitable refinery companies in the nation which had net profits of $1.5 billion last year, when they are meant for small refineries experiencing unique economic hardship.

He wants to reduce regulations on auto emissions while reducing the requirements for auto manufacturers to  produce energy efficient cars. Inefficiency means having to buy more gas, and his friends make more money.

He has traveled to Iowa twice to promote the repeal of the Clean Water Rule.

And while doing these things and more, he has found ways to make his position in DC pay off for him (even more).

He has ignored the White House to give high EPA salaries to Oklahoma friends he brought to Washington with him, put a sound proof phone booth in his office and charged the taxpayers for it, pays $50 a night to stay in a condo owned by an oil-lobbyist,  although it would seem he owes some of that as he has missed some due payments, and has flown first class because he feels people in coach are mean to him, if not in action, in assumed attitude., and this makes him uncomfortable.

He continues to be good to his friends.

He has put the wants of lobbyists ahead of the needs of the American people, and treats companies that attempt to skirt the established rules and regulations like he should be treating those who follow both. He treats those who ignore the laws  politely while punishing those who don’t.

He is promoting cheating.

The whole country now has to deal with what had been limited to Oklahoma, and having lived there, I can assure you, you won’t like it.