It’s getting hard to understand why anyone would want to get involved in national politics. When President Donald Trump said he was going to go to Washington and drain the swamp, I’m sure he had no idea just how big that swamp was.
We all know that Trump is not a graceful politician, but his administration has a lot of accomplishments to be proud of in these first two years. He got America working again. All of a sudden, government agencies are interested in hearing from industry and learning what they can do to help. The Obama administration was downright hostile to business. This is why it’s refreshing to have a businessman as president.
Last week, Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke announced his resignation. I was disappointed, but I get it. Zinke was good for resource users on public land. The Washington attack machine was just too much for him as it was for several other cabinet members. There have been 15 allegations of misconduct made against him in two years. The next highest number of complaints went to Gail Norton, who served under George W. Bush. Both of these Interior secretaries were friendly to the oil and gas industry.
But what really gets me is the pettiness of many of these claims. Such as having his wife ride in a government auto or spending $12,500 on a private or government plane for transportation. These agencies throw more money away through grant programs.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz investigated many of these claims and didn’t find much to do about them. He said that “a $12,375 chartered flight he took in June 2017 after speaking at the developmental camp for the Golden Knights, a professional hockey team based in Las Vegas, NV, could have been avoided.”
So Zinke is gone. He said that the personal expense to defend these claims in court isn’t worth the effort. Now, the environmental community is doing back flips over his departure and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s last July. The personal destruction that has become normal in Washington, D.C. is staggering; who would want the abuse? Where did the civility and respect for opposing views go?
I will agree that during the eight years of the Obama administration, they were taking the country in one direction. The Trump administration is doing a complete 180-degree turn, a polar opposite of what we had before. This policy redirect may be too much for a lot of people to handle. I know that the executive staff in the Department of the Interior didn’t like the redirection that happened overnight.
I’ve had a couple of my D.C. lobbyist friends say that you don’t go to D.C. to fix anything; you go there to destroy something. Usually it’s legislation or regulation; it certainly can’t be people. Have you ever seen this level of attack on an administration’s cabinet members before? I haven’t.
Now just wait a week when the new Congress takes over. The first year in the new House of Representatives is going to be ruthless. Many of the new majority committee chairmen have blood in their eyes.
Now for Zinke’s replacement, there is a list of six politicians being considered who we understand will be just as tough as Zinke on changing policy. They will also carry out Trump’s agenda. It’s sad that the only energy in Washington that is good is solar, wind, and perhaps hydro, but dams mess with fish migration.
The gas and oil industries have all received a black eye, but we’re pulling more hydrocarbons out of the ground than ever before. The U.S. just became the largest oil and gas producer in the world. We now export the stuff. It has made America less vulnerable to foreign sources. I remember the oil embargo in the early 1970s and how inconvenient it was, and most Americans don’t like to be inconvenienced.
Does the environmental community have a firm grip on the U.S. economy and the government? It’s starting to seem so. Everything we produce in this world goes back to our natural resources in some way. If we don’t use our natural resources, we don’t have an economy, a culture, or even civilization. All wealth comes from this earth. We need it and must use it wisely, but we can’t lock it up either. There is a balance. But finding balance in American politics is becoming overwhelming. — PETE CROW
