Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHow Much Of A Rabid Clown Is The Head Of BLM? It's Even Worse Than You Could Imagine
In July 2017, William Perry Pendley, a crusading conservative attorney, delivered a speech to a group of rightwing activists in North Carolina in which he was completely candid about his ideological commitments. He accused the media of selling their soul to the greens. And after criticizing the Endangered Species Act, he made light of killing endangered species. This is why out west we say shoot, shovel and shut up when it comes to the discovery of endangered species on your property, he said, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by the Guardian. And I have to say, as a lawyer, thats not legal advice, he added, as some in his audience quietly snickered at the reference to the illegal extermination, and the burial, of endangered animals.
It has been almost three years since he gave those remarks, and Pendley is now the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, a powerful agency that oversees more than 240m acres of federal land belonging to the American people, manages mineral resources and is required to comply with environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act. Pendley has helped turn BLM into what one high-level employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, called a ghost ship in which suspicion, fear and low morale abound, despite the best efforts of career civil servants to support each other.
As Pendley and his superiors at the interior department press ahead with an effort to move BLMs headquarters from Washington DC to Grand Junction, Colorado, the agency has hemorrhaged staff members and lost critical institutional memory, which many critics believe was the true purpose of the relocation effort all along.
A skeleton crew is left at BLM headquarters, said the employee. So few people were able to move west that a lot of people retired early and a lot of people took other jobs, so my ballpark estimate is there is only about 20% of permanent employees left at headquarters. As a result, the agency is failing to fulfill its most basic duties, like responding to public records requests and conducting oversight of state and regional operations, the staffer added.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/20/william-perry-pendley-trump-pick-top-environmental-post-endangered-species
bronxiteforever
(9,287 posts)is another poison spread by the GOP. Sonny Perdue at AG has done the same thing as BLM.
The goal was to purge expertise and employees committed to the mission as opposed to the party.
mountain grammy
(26,631 posts)Hes insane.
Martin Eden
(12,872 posts)Government by the worst people.