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Rachel Maddow rips disgraced Oklahoma banker who 'immaculately conceived' report on toxically polluted super sites
SARAH K. BURRIS
22 DEC 2017 AT 23:49 ET
The man that Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt tapped to head up the most polluted sites in the United States, has zero experience in pollution clean up or any environmental experience. In fact, he’s nothing more than a disgraced banker from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
During Friday’s show, Rachel Maddow highlighted the close relationship Pruitt has with new toxically polluted super site cleaner Albert Kelly. While Pruitt lived in Oklahoma, he purchased a minor league Oklahoma baseball team that Kelly loaned him the money for. In fact, Kelly also managed to find the buyer for the team when Pruitt decided to unload it.
But not long after his name was announced to be the director of toxic cleanup, federal banking regulators announced that Kelly must pay $125,000 in fines and be banned from banking for life.
“We don’t know what Albert Kelly did to get himself banned for life from banking,” Maddow disclosed. “I didn’t even know that was a thing. When he agreed to pay the fine, he didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing, but yeah, banned for life from banking. And then onto the EPA to oversee cleanup for the country. Wow.”
In July, the EPA task force that Kelly oversaw issued a final report on the 42 super fund sites. PEER, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, did a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see what led to the report. PEER wanted the see how they came up with the recommendations and asked for research materials, agendas from the meetings. The answer, according to the EPA is, nothing.
“The EPA did not respond with any materials,” Maddow said. “PEER sued and this week, almost six months later, they did not get the documents they were looking for but they did get a response from the EPA. And it’s amazing. Associated Press reporting, ‘a lawyer for EPA has written to PEER to say that the task force had no agenda for its meetings, kept no minutes and used no reference materials. Pruitt’s plan for cleaning up toxic sites immaculately conceived without the usual trappings,’ says the executive director of PEER. No minutes, no meeting agendas, no drafts. That’s how things are being run at the EPA right now.”
As Maddow noted, the Oklahoma banker “who just got banned for life from banking is in charge of coming up with the way that we’re going to clean up toxic pollution in this country and he says the 107-member task force produced literally not a letter of paper work in developing its plan.”
Pruitt, of course, accepted every word of the report and began implementing it immediately. Meanwhile, 700 people, including 200 scientists, have left the EPA.
“All the qualified people are leaving and the Trump administration bringing in new people whose qualifications are a disgraced former banker from Tulsa,” Maddow noted. “I mean, this is a feature and not a bug, right?”
Watch the full take below: |
