Dismantling Government

   Pruitt and Zinke are not a vaudeville comedy team, and their act toward America's national resources is no joke.
   They are, in effect, part of the Trump Administration's effort to dismantle government in the name of free enterprise, thus enabling private enterprise to exploit formerly protected national forests and monuments for corporate profits.
   Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is not protecting the environment, but just the opposite, as he has admitted his opposition to the EPA's "activist agenda." During his political campaign for the post of Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt got financial support from the fossil fuel industry.
   As the state's attorney general, he sued the EPA fourteen times over the federal agency's actions. Now he's in charge, and has barred scientists from advising the agency on environmental issues, instead preferring to appoint industry executives.
   Ryan Zinke, the new chief of the Interior Department, wants to remove regulations that protect wildlife from hunters and trappers in National Park Service preserves in Alaska.
   And he wants a "review" of federal policies that protect some 27 national monuments nationwide, to allow mining, drilling and tree harvesting, as well as fishing rules in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
   The Wilderness Society has called this "a sellout" of lands and waters "to drilling, mining and logging interests."
  And the National Parks Conservation Association was outraged at Zinke's recommendations to the president, charging that the president "has no legal authority" to make the proposed, and that only Congress has that authority.
   So unless there is a rebellion in Congress against the president's plans and policies, it looks like corporate America -- with the approval of one of its own now in the Oval Office -- will get its wish to freely develop and profit from natural resources now protected by federal law.