Between 1998 and 1999, Ryan Zinke, then a Navy SEAL Team 6 officer, traveled to and from his home in Montana and billed the Department of Defense for his travel expenses. According to a report last year by Mathew Cole of The Intercept:
Two SEAL officers investigated Zinke’s records and discovered a yearslong “pattern of travel fraud,” according to two of the sources. When confronted about the trips, Zinke acknowledged that he spent the time repairing and restoring a home in Whitefish, Montana, and visiting his mother, according to two retired SEAL Team 6 leaders. The future lawmaker eventually told SEAL leaders that the Montana house was where he intended to live after he retired from the Navy.
After he was warned, he continued the same behavior until he was kicked off the team. That was a light—very light—punishment for his behavior, which would have resulted in a court martial for any officer not in the high-profile SEAL Team 6. But he got away with reimbursing the government a measly $211 for a single trip, and accepting that commander would be his terminal grade.
No one with knowledge of his past should have been surprised in September when, as secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Zinke chartered a plane that cost the taxpayers $12,375 in order to visit his Montana home after giving a speech in Nevada. Airfare between Las Vegas and Kallispell, Montana, ran about $300 at the time. According to the High Country News:
Zinke’s expensive charter flight took place after he gave a speech to the Vegas Golden Knights, a National Hockey League team. The chairman of title insurance company Fidelity National Financial owns the team. The employees and associated PACs of Fidelity National Financial donated nearly $200,000 to Zinke’s congressional campaigns as well as $1 million to Trump’s campaign.
So yeah, sure, there’s no reason to doubt Zinke when he claims that he had nothing to do with the small-town electricians who won a $300 million contract to re-establish electrical service to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. Even though:
The Interior Department sent 50 people to Puerto Rico on Sept. 21, the day after the storm hit, to help with response and recovery operations, including assessments.
And besides, he told us so in a statement that just reeks of honesty, as well as awareness of how our form of government is supposed to work.
I had absolutely nothing to do with Whitefish Energy receiving a contract in Puerto Rico. Any attempts by the dishonest media or political operatives to tie me to awarding or influencing any contract involving Whitefish are completely baseless. Only in elitist Washington, D.C., would being from a small town be considered a crime.
Which might be more persuasive if he didn't spend most of his time at his home in Santa Barbara, California.
If his offenses were only financial, they would be far less troubling that what he seems poised to do to our public lands. Somehow we will deal with the financial impact of the most corrupt administration in American history. But how will we ever be able to repair the damage this administration is attempting to cause to our environment?
His questionable financial ethics aside, Sec. Zinke began reassigning top Interior officials as soon as he was sworn in.
Dan Ashe, who headed the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Obama administration and worked at the agency for more than two decades, said in an interview that having closely watched every transition since Ronald Reagan took the helm of the federal government from Jimmy Carter in 1981, “anything at this scale is unprecedented.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ashe said, adding that the officials being moved from posts at Fish and Wildlife “have records of exceptional service.”
Joel Clement, who served as the department’s chief climate adviser and who has since filed suit ...
... was informed that he would go to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, which collects royalty payments, according to two individuals familiar with the move, while Fish and Wildlife’s chief of law enforcement, Bill Woody, is slated for the BLM.
In other words, take an expert in one field (climate change) and make him an accountant in another. Of all of the reassignments, Clement’s move from being the director of the Office of Policy Analysis may be the most significant in the long run.
Clement co-authored a lengthy 2013 report for former President Barack Obama detailing the “rapid, sustained” changes happening in the Arctic linked to global warming.
One reason for the move is clear: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. From HuffPost’s Chris D’Angelo:
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who chairs the committee, introduced legislation last week that would require that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke approve at least two lease sales for drilling — each no less than 400,000 acres — in the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
Last week, 14 former Interior Department officials signed a letter objecting to the codification of the Republican wet dream of opening ANWR for pillage.
The group of former Interior leaders argue that drilling for oil in the coastal plain “is ethically, environmentally, and economically untenable.”
“As former officials at the Department of the Interior, we know our public lands
intimately, having travelled, studied, managed and championed these incomparable lands and waters,” their letter reads. “In our view, there is no place like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and no place more deserving of protection for future generations of Americans. Some places are just too special to drill. We call on you to defend our natural heritage and native Alaskan culture by protecting our most vital national wildlife refuge.”
But it is not just the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that the Republicans wish to exploit. Earlier this month the U.S. Forest Service, part of the Agriculture Department, recommended that the uranium mining moratorium that was instituted in 2012 (and scheduled to last 20 years) be lifted. Unlike oil and gas extracted from federal lands, there are no royalty payments on hard rock extraction like uranium. So this venal administration has no money to gain from reversing the moratorium. Why do it? Perhaps because the moratorium was instituted during Ken Salazar’s tour as secretary of the Interior, under President Obama.
From the Tucson Sentinel:
"President Trump wants to turn one of the world's greatest natural wonders into a strip mine," said Grijalva, the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee. "There are no boundaries to his need to spite President Obama's legacy and everyone he perceives as his enemy. He's already shown he has nothing but contempt for the environment. Next he’ll show he has nothing but contempt for history, Native American rights, the state of Arizona or the American people."
It is very difficult to overstate the jeopardy that lifting the ban will place on the tribes of the Grand Canyon watershed:
For Arizona's indigenous communities, the legacy of uranium mining is especially egregious. After 1944, mining companies ignored health concerns to fuel the cylinders of the atomic age, causing a painful spiral of cancer, kidney failure, and birth defects that continue to affect the Navajo Nation to this day. Hundreds of abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation are still awaiting cleanup.
And for the Havasupai Tribe near the Grand Canyon, the possibility of renewed uranium mining comes as members are engaged in a fight against an existing mine. This summer, tribal members protested the reopening of the Canyon Mine, just six miles south of the Grand Canyon. Although the Canyon Mine's operator has yet to begin ore production, trucks have started to haul contaminated water past Red Butte, a mountain sacred to the Havasupai tribe, and across the Navajo Nation.
…
"This is a dangerous industry that is motivated by profit and greed with a long history of significantly damaging lands and waters. They are now seeking new mines when this industry has yet to clean up the hundreds of existing mines all over the landscape that continue to damage our home. We should learn from the past, not ignore it," [said Havasupai Tribal Chairman Don E.] Watahomigie.
The Grand Canyon was created by the Colorado River which still flows through it, providing drinking water for 66 million people, according to a statement from Wilderness Society forest planning and policy director Vera Smith.
So yes, let’s put one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World at risk to mine a mineral which is in limited demand and poses a great deal of risk. Because Obama.
And that is what it boils down to: If the name Obama (or even Clinton) has anything to do with a policy that benefits the American people over the Republican or Democratic donor class, it must be destroyed.
It is also why Trump’s demand for Zinke’s review of national monuments was restricted to the last 20 years. It was during the past two decades that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama added lands to our national treasure, and Trump wants to cash in on those lands. Perhaps part of it is motivated by his desire to pay off his donors, as so many of his moves are. But mostly, it is because Obama turned out to be born in Hawaii—and has a long-form birth certificate to prove it.