POITOU, FRANCE – Last week was a slow week, interrupted by the Fourth of July holiday.
Stocks bounced around a bit, going nowhere special. Even the Trump Show had been relatively calm, with no new ratings boosts.
Rumors of a deal on auto import taxes helped buoy up stock prices yesterday. Electric car maker Tesla’s share price was falling; rumor has it that Elon Musk is running out of time and money.
And bitcoin seemed to be recovering a bit.
But Friday morning, at 12:01 a.m., the shooting began. Donald Trump started his latest war. Bloomberg:
“China Warns: U.S. has started biggest trade war in history.”
Remember, “war is the health of the [Deep] state.” This will be no exception.
Trump Heaven
Meanwhile… poor Scott Pruitt was in the news, as he has been since his arrival in Washington.
Despite all the news focus, we have not mentioned him a single time in these Diary entries. What was there to say? The man was like a road sign; everything about him seemed so obvious.
The former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief was watching fireworks on the White House lawn on Wednesday night. Come Thursday and he might as well have been a Bolshevik, a terrorist, or a Democrat.
His pass key was canceled and Washington cackled as he packed up.
In the space of only 12 hours, the great shining star of the fossil fuel industry was cast from the firmament of Trump Heaven into the deep sea of the administration’s has-beens.
And what was his crime? What was his sin? Ostensibly, Pruitt has been accused of “ethics violations.” Chief among them is his renting of a room from the wife of an oil lobbyist.
But as far as we know, he just did what was asked of him. He was a loyal spear carrier, even backing The Donald in his trade war. Washington insiders should have loved him.
Except for a brief and forgivable term as a lawyer at the beginning of his career, Pruitt has spent his entire adult life as a politician. He never had an honest job or earned an honest dollar.
But Washington lives on money taken under false pretenses by sleazy chiselers posing as world improvers. Pruitt should have fit right in.
“What went wrong?” is the subject of the following few words.
Classic Crony
Pruitt’s entire career was a classic; it was spent at the beck and call of one crony industry or another.
At one point, egged on by local producers, he even sued the state of California on behalf of Oklahoma’s farmers, to force the opening of California’s market to eggs from Oklahoma’s caged chickens. The case was thrown out, but the egg-mongers were suitably grateful.
And earlier in his career, he had even lived with lobbyists, joining with them to buy a house near the action in Oklahoma City.
Pruitt was no stranger to the ways of the Swamp, in other words; coming to the nation’s capital, many thought he might teach the locals a lesson or two.
But there was a problem with Pruitt. Out on the Plains, he saw how easy and delightful it was to suck from the bottle of homemade hooch; thereafter, he never could graduate to anything better.
His taste buds had been forever burnt and scarred by the local brew; the more sophisticated vintages of national politics were lost on him.
In 2003, Pruitt had run for Congress and lost. But he wasn’t beaten.
He got together with Oklahoma City millionaire Robert A. Funk and bought the Oklahoma City RedHawks, a minor league baseball team.
Pruitt was earning $38,400 per year as a state senator at the time. His contribution to the $11.5 million purchase price couldn’t have been much. But he would find ways to hold up his end of the stick.
Whether it made any money for Pruitt or not, we don’t know. But ownership of the baseball team helped get his picture in the paper.
This would be useful to him going forward, and to the people who bankrolled him. It helped build his cred, too, as a local hero, eventually getting him elected as Oklahoma’s attorney general.
It was a big step up; his legal experience had been focused only on defending Christians in religious cases.
It hardly mattered. The top legal position in Oklahoma City, as in Washington, can be filled by any political hack. There are assistants to provide whatever legal opinions are wanted. Often, none are.
Likewise, at the EPA, no knowledge of chemistry – or science of any sort – is required. But you have to be able to play ball… and not just in the minor leagues.
It was not enough to fawn over the president and pretend that the commander-in-chief was a genius.
Nor did he fail to live up to the code of all swamp critters: When he was bought, he stayed bought.
Nor did strict adherence to the Canon of Claptrap – according to which public officials are supposed to make better deals for people than they could make on their own – save him.
Punk Hoodlum
The problem with Pruitt was neither ideology, doctrine, nor politics. It was simply that he thought too small.
He was a punk hoodlum who had suddenly been put in a major crime syndicate. He had neither the wit nor the manners to pull it off.
The big-city feds were skillfully, quietly moving trillions of dollars from the patriots to the Deep State insiders… and there was the small-timer Pruitt angling for a job for his wife… and a break on his rent!
Just as if he were back in Oklahoma.
In a town in which grand larceny is admired and emulated, Pruitt’s petty crimes were démodé, like stealing a pencil from a blind man or failing to leave a tip at the Capital Grille.
At the end, Pruitt was the subject of no fewer than 13 separate investigations by the Government Accountability Office.
He called attention to himself… and posed an unnecessary risk to the entire operation, like getting drunk and driving too fast when you are on your way to rob a bank.
Regards,
Bill
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