The Republican Crook Operating In Broad Daylight

And no, it's NOT trump I'm talking about. It's his sleazy buddy Scott Pruitt (via Martin Longman at Washington Monthly):

Three months after Scott Pruitt was sworn in as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, his executive scheduler emailed Dan Cathy, chairman and president of the fast food company Chick-fil-A, with an unusual request: Would Cathy meet with Pruitt to discuss “a potential business opportunity”?

A call was arranged, then canceled, and Pruitt eventually spoke with someone from the company’s legal department. Only then did he reveal the “opportunity” on his mind was a job for his wife, Marlyn.

“The subject of that phone call was an expression of interest in his wife becoming a Chick-fil-A franchisee,” company representative Carrie Kurlander told The Washington Post via email...

The deal ended up not happening, but can you imagine the gall of a government official pushing such a nepotistic act so blatantly? Over a freaking Chick-Fil-A franchise?!

At least when Teapot Dome happened, it was over something like oil, you know, actual commodity value. This is penny ante stuff. Back to Longman:

...Chick-fil-A is not Harvard University. They will accept you if you have the dough and a decent business plan. But, I suppose it can’t hurt to throw your influence around a bit if you have some. Making the EPA director happy probably isn’t either here or there to the people who run Chick-fil-A but it can’t possibly hurt. All Pruitt had to do is to make this call himself on his own time. Most likely, they would have told him where to download the application and maybe offered some tips for getting approved, much like they would for anyone else making that call. But, who knows, maybe he could have greased the skids a little bit. That’s how things often work, and it’s not a big problem.

I dunno if Longman's being sarcastic on that point, because trying to influence a corporation into doing something for your wife seems unethical as hell.

Instead, Pruitt uses his staff to make the call and thereby crosses a bunch of ethical lines. It’s such a lazy form of corruption...

And here we get to the nub of the problem. Pruitt's corruption is blindingly lazy and trivial and wasteful. It'd be funny except that it's costing taxpayers every time he indulges in this shit. Just look at this from Huffington Post:

• A bizarre and insanely cheap rental agreement with an oil lobbying firm.
• Trying to fly first class instead of business/coach, and spending on expensive luxury hotels in violation of government travel guidelines.
• An obsessive and paranoid spending spree over security, millions of dollars towards armored cars, extra security (20 guards, almost triple the number the previous EPA chief hired), and some weird super-secure phone booth for his office (that ended up costing double what the original invoice was set for).
• Firing or demoting agency staff who questioned his spending. Also booting scientists off of various committees for clearly partisan reasons. And giving raises to personally-loyal staffers far above what other pay raises have been in the agency.
• This is not on the HuffPo list, because that came out in April and this stuff is new (via Washington Post): Sending staffers out to do menial services such as pick up his laundry, take him shopping for his favorite brand of hand lotion (!), and buying a used trump Hotel mattress (?). 

Pruitt is showing the sad sign of a rich man whose business philosophy has been "Other People's Money": why waste your own wealth when you can waste someone else's? Here, he's wasting ours.

There are a few reasons why you don't put a person with a business background in a political office: Above all, where behavior that would be "normal" in the private sector becomes flagrantly unethical and stupid in a public sector where all actions have to fall under public scrutiny.

Let's be honest, people: Pruitt's behavior is at a level of gross corruption we haven't seen since the Harding administration. Not exactly the stuff of Teapot Dome, but more along the lines of Charles Forbes, Secretary for the newly developed post of Veteran Affairs whose personal corruption involving kickbacks was one of the more publicly known scandals before Teapot Dome got out.

Pruitt's behavior is the kind that in a more honest - or more accountable - administration would have led to resignation within days of the first breaking news reports. Instead he's been allowed to continue under trump's aegis, with the Shitgibbon himself singing Pruitt's loyalty to his own greedy self.

Say hello to the new normal, where the scandals that would get you booted from the White House would be if you took trump's second scoop of ice cream.

We are so very royally fucked, America.