News Journal: Don’t get numb to the Trump administration’s wrongdoing

It is as if a great national numbness has descended upon us.
We live with a constant, nearly daily barrage of the scandalous and the bizarre, of blatant lies and careless distortions. Whatever the latest assault on our senses, that becomes the news of the day.
We forget or don’t pay attention to what happened last week or last month. It is all just too much to cope with.
But for the sake of our sanity and our democracy, we have to try.
What would we have thought, for instance, about a previous administration in which eight cabinet members were under investigation by the inspector generals of each of their departments? Would we have found that outrageous, even more so because it had all happened in the first 14 months of Reagan’s or Clinton’s or Bush’s or Obama’s presidency?
Not now. We are numb. If we are not very careful, we are in danger of accepting things like this as normal.
For the details of each investigation, Google VA Secretary David Shulkin, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former HHS Secretary Tom Price, and EPA head Scott Pruitt. These are “the best people” chosen by our President to help him “drain the swamp.”
Most are accused of misusing taxpayer funds for their personal benefit.
Even in this lineup, Scott Pruitt is a special case, so let’s devote the rest of this column to him. In my 40 plus years in Washington, I never saw a greater swamp expansion than Pruitt’s reversal of federal environmental safeguards begun with the bipartisan enactment of the Clean Air Act of 1970, and expanded under Republican and Democratic administrations ever since.
His main weapon has been to cut back on enforcement. Under his leadership, there has been a significant decline in new civil and criminal cases, defendants charged and EPA inspections and evaluations.
“The drop-off in actions is very worrying,” says Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “It shows across the board a lack of desire to hold polluters accountable and that means the public health risks are greater.”
How has Pruitt scaled back the EPA’s ability to monitor corporate activity in areas that are important to us all? Three examples:
First, the EPA has scrapped rules that had tight restrictions on coal ash disposal. Dumping coal ash, the byproduct of coal-fired power plants, into a convenient river is a lot cheaper than the previous coal ash disposal requirement. The difference goes straight into some corporation’s pocket.
“People living near more than a thousand toxic coal ash sites are at risk,” says Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. “They face contaminated drinking water, toxic dust in the air, and serious health threats just because the EPA is choosing to side with polluters over the public.”
Second, Pruitt has phased out the National Center for Environmental Research as an independent agency. Tracey Woodruff, a former senior scientist and policy adviser at the EPA under the Clinton and Bush administrations says, “Their programs have been so successful in advancing our scientific understanding and our ability to address the ways that environmental chemicals can impact children’s health. The children centers were really the first and only centers to uncover the relationship with prenatal exposure to flame retardants and IQ deficiencies in children.”
Third, the EPA is rolling back requirements that ensure infrastructure projects be designed so that roads and bridges are able to survive rising sea levels. Robert Moore of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Franklin Nutter of the Reinsurance Association of America oppose the rollback, saying “While many Americans may think flooding is only a problem for coastal regions prone to hurricanes and tropical storms, it is far more widespread than that and can devastate any state or region across the country. In just the past five years, all 50 states have experienced flood damage.”
Enough. If you are want to know all that Pruitt has done to demolish the agency he heads, check out Harvard Law School’s Environmental Regulation Rollback Tracker and Columbia Law School’s Climate Tracker.
Meanwhile, Pruitt has been under investigation by the Inspector General’s office for over six months for breaking federal guidelines and flying first class. This is not a minor expense.
It has been estimated that Pruitt traveled 43 out of 92 days last spring. In fact, the Washington Post reported that taxpayers, on just one trip, had to pay at least $90,000 when Pruitt traveled first class from Washington to New York and to Cincinnati and Rome, with his aides flying coach.
Pruitt flew on a military plane, which cost over $35,000, from Cincinnati to New York so he could catch his first-class flight to Rome.
Wow. I traveled over 300,000 air miles as a federal employee, often on long overnight trips abroad, and all in coach. Those were the rules. We all abided by them.
Have we become so numb, so inured to the nonstop news of one breach of law or decency after another, that we no longer care enough to hold our government’s leaders accountable? Let’s hope not. The swamp has gotten a lot bigger, but we can at least begin to drain it again starting in November.
Ted Kaufman is a former U S Senator from Delaware