Sohn: Do we really want to buy more gas?

FILE — Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, at a recent White House meeting about infrastructure. The EPA in March 2017 signed off on a pipeline-expansion plan by Canadian energy company Enbridge at the same time that Pruitt was renting a condominium linked to the company's powerful lobbying firm. On Friday, Koch Industries Inc. purchased a new stake in Enbridge Energy Partners, and on Monday, Pruitt said he plans to rollback Obama-era fuel efficiency rules. (Tom Brenner/ The New York Times)
FILE — Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, at a recent White House meeting about infrastructure. The EPA in March 2017 signed off on a pipeline-expansion plan by Canadian energy company Enbridge at the same time that Pruitt was renting a condominium linked to the company's powerful lobbying firm. On Friday, Koch Industries Inc. purchased a new stake in Enbridge Energy Partners, and on Monday, Pruitt said he plans to rollback Obama-era fuel efficiency rules. (Tom Brenner/ The New York Times)

What is happening in our country when our government acts more like a Soviet regime - lining American oligarch pockets, gouging the rest of us, tearing down the rule of law and slashing at the few health, environmental and consumer safeguards we have?

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency destructor - opps, director - Scott Pruitt offers the newest example. He announced Monday that he would revoke Obama-era standards requiring cars and light trucks sold in the United States to average more than 50 mpg by 2025. He says the auto industry asked him to revisit the fuel-efficiency targets just days after he took office. And he and some auto groups suggested that lowering fuel standards would "keep new vehicles affordable to more Americans."

Let's see if we have this straight. We can pay a grand or so less for a car so we can pay more for years to come on the additional gasoline it will use. And we can carve a payment or two off our car loans so we can make more doctor and hospital visits as asthma, emphysema and cancer climbs. Never mind climate change.

No, the real push here is far more insidious. Pruitt and Trump and their ilk are looking to the futures only of the richest of power brokers - those in whose company they travel on expensive jets and junkets. Those who give them sweetheart deals like the Washington condo Pruitt rented for $50 a night from the wife of an energy lobbyist whose clients in turn get sweetheart deals from the Trump/Pruitt EPA.

But rolling back rational future car technology isn't enough. Pruitt hints that EPA may take on California's authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own nation-leading emissions limits. So much for state's rights - which you can be sure will be watched closely by 12 other states (representing more than a third of the country's auto market) now looking to follow California's standards.

Have we gone mad in this country - pushing for car companies to make more profits by increasing air pollutants and cancer? Has exploitation become a synonym for protection?

What ordinary consumer wants lower fuel efficiency? Who wants to go to the gas station more often? Most of us seek out and boast about our new car's good mileage. And even if climate change were not real, increasing fuel efficiency clearly helps poor families over time and extends our access to finite fossil fuels.

The Obama CAFE standards would have reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and particulate matter from light duty vehicles by 75 percent by 2025. With unemployment at a record low and a booming GDP, what part of pollution standards are hampering our economy?

Things are upside down.

Our president - who was elected with Russian support and who dragged his feet to sanction the Kremlin for meddling in the election and using nerve gas in Great Britain to silence a former spy and enemy - has now invited Vladimir Putin into the Oval Office for special face time. We know this because Russian propaganda news tells us so.

Meanwhile, American conservative television empire Sinclair Broadcast Group is vying to make the reach of a U.S. version of that propaganda much larger - complete with Trump sycophant Boris Epshteyn "must" broadcasts. The unabashedly pro-Trump group already owns or operates nearly 200 television stations across the country (including WTVC, Channel 9 in Chattanooga) and is in the process of buying Tribune Media Co. for $3.9 billion. If that deal is approved, Sinclair would add about 40 more stations - several in major markets - to its ranks.

Trump thinks that is great. After a chilling video went viral of local Sinclair anchors (WTVC's, too) reading in lockstep a Trump-like corporate "must" station rant on "biased and false news," our president tweeted: "So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke."

The total joke is Trump and his people - not the least of which is Scott Pruitt.

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