In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has again done her part to make the phrase "pulling a Maddow" an enduring addition to the lexicon.
As I'm sure you recall, Maddow last month wildly overhyped her "exclusive" report -- actually obtained by another journalist -- about Trump's "tax returns," when all she had was Trump's 2005 1040 federal tax return that revealed he paid $38 million in federal taxes that year for $150 million in income. The pushback against Maddow, even on the left, was swift and brutal.
Unchastened by this, Maddow last night breathlessly touted yet another "exclusive," this time concerning documents leaked to her by some like-minded left winger deep within the cubicles of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The documents released to Maddow, in the apparently delusional belief that they are damaging to Trump, came in response to Trump's signing of an executive order on "Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda." Here's Maddow describing the two documents she obtained, and why she considers them significant --
MADDOW: Well, tonight we can report exclusively on how one part of the government is responding to that executive order, how it's going to work in real life. We got this exclusively in the sense that we have obtained new internal administration documents that have not been publicly released. We believe them to be genuine but the EPA is not answering our questions about them.
Note the ham-fisted effort to convey the authenticity of what's she's received, all in the service of touting their alleged bombshell value --
MADDOW: What these documents appear to show is a fairly sweeping change in how the government deals with questions like whether to ban a pesticide from Dow Chemical when the government's own scientific studies have determined that that pesticide is unsafe. And it isn't just about pesticides -- it's broadly about clean air and clean water and things like keeping the public safe from radiation. Again, the EPA did not answer any of the questions that we asked of them over the last two days about these documents ...
The new powers that be at the EPA obviously knowing a hit job in the making when they see one ...
MADDOW: ... but what we believe these are are internal memos from inside the EPA and they show the first steps in how that part of the government is going to carry out that here's your pen, Andrew executive order, the one about health and safety regulations. The memos appear to be from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, they're dated March 24th. You can see, I think we got a closeup, see the 'from' line? It says from E. Scott Pruitt and then it looks to be his signature off to the side on the right.
This first memo that we obtained calls for EPA regulators to start reporting any action they take, any regulatory action anywhere in the country, needs to now be reported in a central database. (Maddow quotes from the memo) "Effective immediately, EPA program and regional offices shall report all regulatory actions in the agency's regulatory management system (emphasis added). Regulatory actions to be reported include, but are not limited to, those related to any statutory or judicial deadlines, petitions, pesticide tolerances, significant new use rules, national priority listings or delistings, permits, federal implementation plans or state implementation plans. As a general rule, offices should err on the side of including actions in the system."
Basically what that means is that any action taken anywhere by any EPA office, any EPA personnel anywhere in the country, you know, a statement on how much pesticide it's safe to leave on a crop or a response to a petitioner, a response to a court, anything, has to be reported to headquarters in DC. Everything, everywhere in the country goes through DC now, everything.
In other words, the type of accountability that those of us toiling in the private sector are keenly familiar with, lest our failure to remember it costs us our jobs. Has Maddow forgotten that all those dutiful employees in the EPA are compensated on the public dime? Accountability in the public sector -- what a concept!
Not surprisingly, Maddow misses what's genuinely newsworthy here -- not that this is being done, but that apparently it wasn't being done before now. "Regulatory actions" sounds like such an innocuous term, albeit only to liberals and other children, but those on the receiving end of its often costly, job-killing, and soul-crushing demands from unaccountable bureaucrats are far less inclined to romanticize it.
Maddow continues in the same mawkish vein --
MADDOW: So that's memo one, that's the first thing that we obtained that's new. Then there's the second memo we obtained specifically cited that 'here's your pen, Andrew' executive order, and then it says this -- "by May 15 (2017), the Offices of Air and Radiation, Land and Emergency Management, Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Water, Environmental Information, Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations and Disadvantaged Business Utilization should provide the task force with recommendations regarding specific rules that should be considered for repeal, replacement or modification (emphasis added). While we intend to do some general outreach regarding this effort, I would like the recommendations from those offices to be informed by consultation with their particular stakeholders." And that is all supposed to be done by (pause for effect) May 15th, which is six weeks from now. And that's the first step in the process.
Gasp, a deadline! It's almost as if these people expect results --
MADDOW: Obviously it makes a huge difference who the EPA considers to be a stakeholder affected by their regulations, right? If it's the Dow Chemicals of the world who are getting daily calls and ceremonial pens from the White House, we can imagine some of what, you know, Dow Chemical would like to have happen. Having it all done by May 15th should be no problem for them since they're talking every single day anyway.
But if it isn't just Dow Chemical, if it's also like (pauses again for effect) our lungs and skin and vital organs (chuckles) that have a stake in these regulations, are those interests getting consulted too as we wholesale plan to get rid of health and safety regulations?
Again with the hyerbole -- never let it be said Maddow isn't consistent, which isn't always the case with clown acts. According to her own reporting based on two hardly earth-shattering leaked memos, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt expects regulators working in his agency to report back to the agency when they actually do something, which -- actual news! -- they apparently weren't doing under the previous administration.
Maddow further reports, again based on the documents provided to her, that Pruitt wants recommendations on which "specific rules" the EPA might consider for "repeal, replacement or modification." Somewhere in there Maddow discerns the word "wholesale" to uncover Pruitt's nefarious plan to discard all health and safety regulations, thus ensuring that many Americans suffer needlessly and, with any luck, perish. Yet another Maddow exclusive!
Government bureaucracy is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth, Reagan once observed. Close behind in longevity are government regulations, which provide bureaucrats with an abundant supply of oxygen. To kneejerk statists like Maddow, there is only one direction for both -- more and ever so much more. Cutting back on either is never an option. Does the name Gorbachev ring a bell? Look at how reversing government growth worked out for him.
Back in the '90s, at the start of the first and mercifully only Clinton administration, Vice President Al Gore was assigned a task to keep him busy while awaiting the next tie vote in the Senate -- "reinventing government" to make it more flexible and responsive to the public. Nothing much came of it as I recall, except a book of the same name that remained dusty and unread on many a bookshelf. A generation later, the Trump administration is making its own attempt at taming Leviathan, but with a crucial difference. This time they do expect results.
