SWAMP ALERT: Trump Nominee, Leading Destruction of Interior Department, Paid Big Oil Money

Another Swamp Alert for you all.  This is becoming an unintentional series for Smart Dissent.  There's just so many it's impossible to keep up but we try to share a few so here you go.

One year ago, seated between an American flag and a flickering fire, Ryan Zinke, the secretary of the Interior Department, announced the largest overhaul in the agency’s 168-year history.  Within months of his confirmation, he had told Congress that he wanted to slash Interior’s workforce by 4,000 people — 8 percent of full-time employees.... 

A few months later, he told a roomful of oil and gas industry executives that one-third of Interior’s staff was “not loyal to the flag” and pledged “huge” changes to how the agency functions.

Zinke’s reorganization... meant to benefit industry — including weakening the Endangered Species Act and shrinking national monuments in Utah by two million acres — was hailed by the oil and gas industry, 

SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP.  You work for us not oil and gas executives.  Zinke is gone but our problems are not.

Zinke resigned last month under the weight of numerous ethics investigations, but by all indications his “huge” reorganization lives on under the leadership of a high-ranking Interior official named Susan Combs.  Combs is no one’s idea of an environmentalist. She fiercely opposed the federal government’s use of the Endangered Species Act during her time in Texas government....

Combs’ role as an unconfirmed appointee leading the overhaul of a Cabinet-level department and the nation’s main wildlife and public lands agency is problematic.... A joint investigation by Rolling Stone and Global Witness, an anti-corruption watchdog group, finds that Combs earned possibly as much as $2.1 million in recent years from oil companies who stand to benefit from the reorganization.

“It should be shocking that Susan Combs has pocketed up to $2.1 million from oil companies and is heading a shakeup of the Interior Department — a move that the same oil companies support,” says Jonathan Gant, an investigator with Global Witness. “But Combs is only the latest in a long line of conflicted Trump appointees, proving just how critical it is we immediately reform our conflict of interest laws.”

That is literally the definition of corruption...of the swamp.  You may have heard of Susan Combs before.  We wrote about her in our April 18, 2018 post.  Back then we wrote:

Susan Combs, a former Texas state official who compared proposed endangered species listings to “incoming Scud missiles” and continued to fight the Endangered Species Act after she left government, now has a role in overseeing federal wildlife policy.

Combs was selected by Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke as acting secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. Zinke made the move after his bid to make her an assistant secretary for policy, management and budget stalled in the Senate. The nomination has been on hold since July because of opposition from Republicans and Democrats....

If there's one thing we can count on from Trump and his flunkies, it's that they will repeatedly staff departments with people who hate the very existence of the group they're nominated or appointed to lead. 

Apparently being unapproved by Congress hasn't stopped her from running the department into the ground while being paid off by oil and gas firms.  Is it still ok to say "UNBELIEVABLE?"

“Susan Combs has advanced her career by undermining wildlife protections at the behest of special interests and industry. Now an unconfirmed political appointee is rejiggering America’s largest public land and wildlife agency with limited congressional oversight and without a thorough analysis of the implications,” said Chris Saeger, executive director of the Western Values Project, a nonprofit watchdog for public lands.

Sources: 

http://smartdissent.com/article/fierce-opponent-endangered-species-act-picked-oversee-wildlife

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-interior-department-susan-combs-779855/