RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a transition official, choosing a harsh critic of the agency to take its helm.

As the chief legal officer of a big oil and natural-gas producing state, Mr. Pruitt, a Republican, has led legal fights against some of President Barack Obama’s most significant environmental rules.

Mr. Pruitt has touted his leadership role in fighting the EPA rule that cut power-plant carbon emissions, as well as an EPA measure that put more bodies of water under federal jurisdiction. Both of those rules have been temporarily blocked by federal courts as litigation proceeds.

In choosing a legal official to head his EPA, Mr. Trump could be signaling that legal action will be central to his plans to repeal a raft of regulations, something he promised on the campaign trail.

The Obama administration has issued an array of regulations, most originating at the EPA, aimed at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, including a high-profile rule that would reduce carbon emissions at power plants. Mr. Trump has vowed to repeal that rule, called the Clean Power Plan, and a host of others related to climate change and other environmental issues.

The selection of Mr. Pruitt reflects a request by some on Mr. Trump’s transition team that his cabinet—currently heavy on close allies and rich business people—should also include state officials and others not closely associated with the president-elect.

Mr. Pruitt wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Mr. Pruitt has been a close ally of the oil and natural gas industry, whose influence in Oklahoma rivals its clout in even Texas. Fifteen percent of Oklahoma’s GDP comes from oil and natural gas, second most in the country after Alaska, according to Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC.

Oklahoma City is also home to Continental Resources, whose founder and CEO, Harold Hamm, is a top energy adviser to Mr. Trump, as well as an ally of Mr. Pruitt’s.

“He understands the regulatory stranglehold that the EPA has had on industry during the Obama administration,” Mr. Hamm said of Mr. Pruitt Wednesday. “I believe that he will work to unleash prosperity in America through the proper use of regulations and adhering to the rule of law.”

Mr. Pruitt has pushed back against a group of Democratic attorneys general who are investigating ExxonMobil Corp.’s handling of climate-change science in recent decades. Mr. Pruitt has indicated he questions the scientific consensus that human activity is helping raise the Earth’s temperature, though he has been less outspoken about it than some other candidates Mr. Trump was considering to head the EPA, such as former Texas environmental regulator Kathleen Hartnett White. CONTINUE AT SITE

For those of us who love our country – it is refreshing to hear someone of stature describe the US as a near miracle of great global good; such sentiments are not often spoken in the modern era of globalism and anti-American rhetoric. Thankfully there seems to be an emergence, a renewal perhaps, of interest in our nation’s birth, as evidenced by the best seller lists of non-fiction. Thank God……

Because…. this tempestuous election year I found myself withdrawing into a sort of intellectual womb – trying to satisfy a need for political inspiration or at least connecting with folks who forged the greatest nation in the modern world – our nation. Perhaps you, too, found the need to go back in time to when it all started. And then trying to make sense of how we could get so far from the Framers’ intentions for the republic. So like Ben and Jerry’s for the brain, I’ve been binging on the writings of our founding fathers. Books like The Quartet, The Fever of 1721, Washington’s Secret Six, The Jefferson Bible, Hamilton, Faiths of our Fathers, The Federalist Papers, and similar.

Speaking of which….have you ever read the Silence Dogood letters? If not, may I suggest going online and reading those insightful missives that appeared in James Franklin’s New England Courant? Beyond being good literature, they take political satire and moral commentary to a level not readily viewed in early 18th Century America. That a largely self taught adolescent wrote them, all the while quoting some of the great philosophers (such as Cato) in their native language ought to impress, even if that young man happened to be Benjamin Franklin. Consider our nation was forged by adolescents of intellect and courage – Benjamin Tallmadge, Nathan Hale, Alexander Hamilton, and so many others – all of whom not only would be familiar with, they would be conversant about Cato, Voltaire, Cicero, Plato, Virgil, Epictetus, and similar. On the other hand, if I asked the average adolescent who Cato was, if I didn’t get a blank stare, the answer would likely be the Green Hornet’s side kick. And as for quoting, let alone reading Latin or Greek – unless the child is a prodigy or fortunate to attend a private school or exceptional public school – good luck with that. Yet nearly 300 years ago one might argue the average person was far more literate, even if not as well educated, as our average citizen.

More is the pity, because the Framers designed our nation around the notion of the citizen statesmen, and that the foundation of our country would be an engaged citizenry. I think if they listened to the average citizen today, most of the founding fathers and mothers might want to rise from the grave just so they could die all over again.

The progressive Left’s opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Ben Carson to be the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is predictably condescending, biased and hypocritical. For example, out-of-touch Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Carson a “disconcerting and disturbingly unqualified choice.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader-in-waiting Chuck Schumer said he had “serious concerns about Dr. Carson’s lack of expertise and experience in dealing with housing issues. Someone who is as anti-government as him is a strange fit for housing secretary, to say the least.”

It is incredible how progressives such as Pelosi and Schumer, neither of whom experienced real poverty first hand, are ready to demean Ben Carson, who grew up in abject poverty. They cannot deal with the fact that an incredibly accomplished African-American, who does not buy into the failed progressive ideology of big government social engineering, is poised to take over the leadership of a failing government bureaucracy that would rather dabble in social engineering than get its own house in order. Ben Carson simply does not fit the progressive image of how an African-American should think and act.

“I think the way that I’m treated, you know, by the left is racism,” Ben Carson has said. “Because they assume because you’re black, you have to think a certain way. And if you don’t think that way, you’re ‘Uncle Tom,’ you’re worthy of every horrible epithet they can come up with,” he added.

Ben Carson’s credentials for reforming the bloated, mismanaged Department of Housing and Urban Development come from his real life experience. “I grew up in Detroit, and I grew up in Boston. In Boston, we lived in the ghetto. There were a lot of violent episodes there. There were rats, there were roaches. It was dire poverty,” Carson said.

Carson’s opposition to government-imposed dependency is not based on some abstract conservative theory. He is not anti-government per se, but rejects the vicious circle of the dependency culture that progressive big government policies have fostered. “I’m interested in getting rid of dependency, and I want us to find a way to allow people to excel in our society, and as more and more people hear that message, they will recognize who is truly on their side and who is trying to keep them suppressed and cultivate their votes,” Carson said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2015.

Carson’s views are informed by what he saw first-hand growing up, including his own mother’s willingness to work at multiple jobs while raising her children as a single mother. She refused to simply rely on government handouts and instilled her work ethic in Ben Carson himself, which helped him escape the black hole of dependency. As a friend of Carson’s tweeted on Monday, “Dr. Carson’s mother worked 3 jobs at a time to keep them out of public housing, but he grew up around many who utilized housing programs.”

HUD is a failing government bureaucracy, which needs the kind of thorough overhaul that Ben Carson has the analytical skills to deliver, and the life experience to draw upon. He will not be trapped inside the bubble of conventional bureaucratic thinking that has led to gross financial mismanagement of HUD’s $50 billion annual budget during President Obama’s time in office, as well as poor performance. The fact that this renowned neurosurgeon, now retired, is willing to enter public service and bring a fresh outsider’s perspective to an entrenched government bureaucracy is to be lauded, not ridiculed.

During the tenure of the current HUD Secretary, Julián Castro, HUD’s own Office of Inspector General identified in its audit for fiscal years 2016 and 2015 eleven “material weaknesses,” seven “significant deficiencies” in internal controls, and five instances of “noncompliance” with applicable laws and regulations. “Overall, we determined that HUD’s financial management governance remained ineffective,” the Inspector General’s audit report concluded.

HUD’s management ignored over 60 prior recommendations on financial management presented by the Inspector General since 2012. Julián Castro became HUD Secretary in mid-2014, doing nothing since that time to fix the systemic problems at HUD. As Curtis Kalin, spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste said to the Daily Caller News Foundation, “HUD’s failure to properly maintain basic financial documents calls into question the department’s commitment to safeguarding taxpayer dollars.”

The belief among Democrat that a Republican could never win another presidential election was apparently so firm that they’re still in a state of shock. They’re even more stunned that Donald Trump has dared to name an ObamaCare critic as his health-care point man—which makes for an instructive moment.

Tom Price, a six-term Georgia Congressman and mild-mannered orthopedic surgeon, is an unlikely villain. But liberals are already saying the Health and Human Services nominee will shred the social contract, leave poor people and cancer patients panhandling for care, and jail women for their reproductive decisions. Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood claims that Mr. Price “poses a grave threat to women’s health in this country.” Earth to the abortion lobby: Declining to mandate and federally subsidize birth control coverage is not the same as “banning” it.

Meanwhile, the American Medical Association is facing an internal and social-media revolt over an anodyne statement that called Mr. Price “a leader in the development of health policies to advance patient choice and market-based solutions as well as reduce excessive regulatory burdens.” Supposedly this was a betrayal of doctors and patients, or something, but the big health-care societies always cater to power. They do so because so much of medicine is decided by government.
Mr. Price’s nomination is a refreshing signal that such state control isn’t an inevitability or necessity, starting with replacing ObamaCare. Most liberals are getting the bends coming up from their false triumphalism. They’ve spent years claiming the center-right vision for health care isn’t worth serious study while mocking Republicans for supposedly futile repeal votes. Maybe Republicans meant what they said.

You’d think that the people who designed and enforced a failed program might show more humility, or at least stop lecturing others. Even Hillary Clinton’s staff recognized the law is imploding. In a private Nov. 23, 2015 memo published by WikiLeaks, Chris Jennings, a former Obama aide who joined the campaign, wrote that the law’s performance is “at best, disconcerting” and identified other “troubling” signs.

One of them is that only about eight million people have paid the tax penalty for violating the individual mandate to buy insurance, and another 12 million have received regulatory exemptions. In other words, more people who were supposed to benefit from ObamaCare have opted out than have enrolled.

Now Democrats are assailing Mr. Price for proposing alternatives to the mess they created. The Republican, who took over the House Budget Committee from Paul Ryan, is a thoughtful and well-informed problem solver. Unlike many of his colleagues, Mr. Price hasn’t dodged details and specifics. He proposed an alternative to ObamaCare during the 2009-10 debate and in the years since he’s put flesh on the bones, including with legislative language.

Mr. Price’s Empowering Patients First Act relies on fixed-value tax credits to stabilize the insurance markets outside of employer-sponsored coverage. The switch to a defined contribution from a defined-benefit model is based on the transition to 401(k)s from pensions. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-dakota-access-pipeline-is-really-about-1481071218

A little more than two weeks ago, during a confrontation between protesters and law enforcement, an improvised explosive device was detonated on a public bridge in southern North Dakota. That was simply the latest manifestation of the “prayerful” and “peaceful” protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Escalating tensions were temporarily defused Sunday when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, at the direction of the Obama administration, announced it would refuse to grant the final permit needed to complete the $3.8 billion project. The pipeline, which runs nearly 1,200 miles from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota to Illinois, is nearly complete except for a small section where it needs to pass under the Missouri River. Denying the permit for that construction only punts the issue to next month—to a new president who won’t thumb his nose at the rule of law.

Like many North Dakotans, I’ve had to endure preaching about the pipeline from the press, environmental activists, musicians and politicians in other states. More often than not, these sermons are informed by little more than a Facebook post. At the risk of spoiling the protesters’ narrative, I’d like to bring us back to ground truth.

• This isn’t about tribal rights or protecting cultural resources. The pipeline does not cross any land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux. The land under discussion belongs to private owners and the federal government. To suggest that the Standing Rock tribe has the legal ability to block the pipeline is to turn America’s property rights upside down.

• Two federal courts have rejected claims that the tribe wasn’t consulted. The project’s developer and the Army Corps made dozens of overtures to the Standing Rock Sioux over more than two years. Often these attempts were ignored or rejected, with the message that the tribe would only accept termination of the project.

• Other tribes and parties did participate in the process. More than 50 tribes were consulted, and their concerns resulted in 140 adjustments to the pipeline’s route. The project’s developer and the Army Corps were clearly concerned about protecting tribal artifacts and cultural sites. Any claim otherwise is unsupported by the record. The pipeline’s route was also studied—and ultimately supported—by the North Dakota Public Service Commission (on which I formerly served), the State Historic Preservation Office, and multiple independent archaeologists.

• This isn’t about water protection. Years before the pipeline was announced, the tribe was working with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps to relocate its drinking-water intake. The new site sits roughly 70 miles downstream of where the pipeline is slated to cross the Missouri River. Notably, the new intake, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, will be 1.6 miles downstream of an elevated railroad bridge that carries tanker cars carrying crude oil.

Further, the pipeline will be installed about 100 feet below the riverbed. Automatic shut-off valves will be employed on either side of the river, and the pipeline will be constructed to exceed many federal safety requirements.

Other pipelines carrying oil, gas and refined products already cross the Missouri River at least a dozen times upstream of the tribe’s intake. The corridor where the Dakota Access Pipeline will run is directly adjacent to another pipeline, which carries natural gas under the riverbed, as well as an overhead electric transmission line. This site was chosen because it is largely a brownfield area that was disturbed long ago by previous infrastructure.

• This isn’t about the climate. The oil that will be shipped through the pipeline is already being produced. But right now it is transported in more carbon-intensive ways, such as by railroad or long-haul tanker truck. So trying to thwart the pipeline to reduce greenhouse gas could have the opposite effect. CONTINUE AT SITE

His history of lying and coverups does not just disqualify him for Secretary of State—it makes him unfit for any cabinet position in Trump’s administration.

David Petraeus was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos this Sunday, an event promoted as “Petraeus’s Sunday Hail Mary” in his last-minute efforts to become part of the Trump cabinet. Petraeus’s television performance was grim, tense, and hesitant. His demeanor was that of a defendant on the stand, trying to keep his stories straight.

Surprisingly, for someone who has sworn to defend the Constitution in his professional career, Petraeus stated without qualification, “I don’t vote.” He insisted that he did not support or oppose Trump, “nor did I support or oppose any other candidate. I’ve truly tried to be apolitical, non-political.”

But in fact, Petraeus’s positions have been identical to Clinton’s for years, possibly up to the moment last week when he entered Trump Tower for his meeting with the President-Elect. Petraeus as Secretary of State is Hillary Clinton in a better pantsuit.

And that’s why Petraeus is not just a bad choice for Secretary of State—he’s a bad choice for any other cabinet position. He brings too much baggage, a damaged brand, and a long history of lying. He lied to the FBI and CIA about his handling of classified documents; he lied to his wife about his mistress; he lied to Congress about Benghazi. Why should Trump’s transition team assume he’s telling them the truth now?
Petraeus Mishandled Classified Info and Lied about It

Petraeus handed over eight black binders of classified information to his mistress Paula Broadwell, risking charges of violating the Espionage Act. These were real secrets, and it was a more than just a “mistake,” as Petraeus would later allege. “The Justice Department said the information, if disclosed, could have caused ‘exceptionally grave damage,’” wrote the Washington Post. “Officials said the notebooks contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council.”

That was just the start of a series of lies and coverups. Petraeus was caught lying to the FBI in the investigation. He also reportedly lied to the CIA when he resigned, claiming he had no classified materials when, in fact, those eight books of secret information were still at his home. The administration managed to keep the FBI investigation of Petraeus secret until after the 2012 election: the election was held November 6, and Petraeus’s superior James Clapper was—conveniently—informed November 7 of Petraeus’ affair. Obama was then briefed, allegedly for the first time, on November 8—the day Petraeus resigned.

Mishandling classified information and then lying about it, and then being allowed to walk on a misdemeanor charge? It’s as if the Petraeus scandal was the dress rehearsal for the FBI’s handling of Hillary’s private server.
Petraeus Defended Middle East Clients Over the Rights of Fellow Americans

Petraeus’s first impulse is to silence any criticism of Islam that could upset his Middle East clients. When he was commander of CENTCOM, those clients were the Islamic nations in the CENTCOM region. Not much changed when he joined the global financial firm KKR in 2013, as a “door opener” to Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and everyone else he had previously courted in his official government role.

But then in December 2015, Trump suggested a temporary ban on Muslim immigration. Petraeus’s Muslim clients went ballistic. As The Federalist related earlier this year, “In December 2015, influential Dubai billionaire Khalaf Al Habtoor published an op-ed (‘Ignore Trump’s bigotry at your peril’).” On May 4, Habtoor called Trump “very dangerous” and a “loose cannon.” Two days later, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal warned against Trump’s effect on U.S.-Saudi relations.

A week later on May 13, Petraeus made his move against Trump. He wrote a scathing op-ed for the Washington Post, expressing his concern that Muslims would be alienated by “inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam, including proposals from various quarters for blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion.”

Petraeus’s op-ed reached CAIR-levels of outrage, scolding “those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims,” “those who demonize and denigrate Islam,” and “demonizing a religious faith and its adherents.” A bravura finger-wagging performance, the op-ed also served as a timely audition for a future Clinton administration, with Petraeus warning “It is precisely because the danger of Islamist extremism is so great that politicians here and abroad who toy with anti-Muslim bigotry must consider the effects of their rhetoric.”

Former Vice President Al Gore, a leading proponent of anti-global warming advocacy, met with President-elect Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka for what he described as “an extremely interesting conversation” at Trump Tower on Monday.

Via NBC News:

Gore, who campaigned for Hillary Clinton, declined to say what exactly he and Trump spoke about during the meeting. But he said he met with both the president-elect and Ivanka Trump, who reportedly wants to make climate change one of her signature issues.

“I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground… I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that,” Gore told reporters after the meeting.

The meeting came just days after a source said Ivanka was interested in making climate change one of her signature issues.
Donald Trump’s Post-Election Climate Stance

Trump, however, has been skeptical of climate change, calling it a “hoax” and tweeting in 2012 that global warming was “created” by the Chinese.