Zinke Another Crude, Stupid Liar, As Shown By His Handling Of NP Board Resignation - Outside
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“Our resignation was not something that we came to lightly,” Knowles says. But after nearly a year of watching Zinke reverse the previous administration’s orders (notably, bans on lead ammunition in wildlife refuges and plastic bottles in national parks, and a director’s order to factor climate mitigation into park management), as well as plans to increase entrance fees and privatize campgrounds—all without any board consultation—the members felt they had no choice. “It’s like being on the phone and someone puts you on hold for a year,” Knowles says. “At some point you have to hang up.”
Neither Knowles nor Long found the quip about the board’s alleged inaction on sexual harassment within the NPS amusing. Personnel management doesn’t fall under the board’s legislative mandate, and Knowles says he thinks the Zinke team fired back with the sexual harassment barb as a diversionary tactic. “I was really sad to see that a secretary, through a spokesperson, would resort to mudslinging and character assassination to distract the discussion from what I thought were some very legitimate points that we were trying to raise.”
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I asked Brengel if she thought the response was a knee-jerk misfire by overeager staffers without approval from Zinke. She says it is not likely that such an important and public document would leave the Interior Department without Zinke’s approval. “No way that someone has free reign to make that choice for the secretary,” she says. And, crucially, Zinke hasn’t rebutted any part of Willens’ letter. However, Brengel didn’t discount the possibility of pugnaciousness on the part of Zinke’s staffers. “In D.C.,” she says, “the way things typically operate is that you reflect the people you work for.”
Faced with a choice between taking the high road and grabbing two fistfuls of mud, Zinke’s team chose the latter. And if Zinke’s team reflects their leader, then surely Zinke reflects Trump just as clearly. So what does Zinke mean when he says, as he did during the conference call with reporters in which he bashed Patagonia, “I don’t yield to pressure, only higher principle”? Where is the higher principle in slagging a group of nonpartisan volunteers?
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https://www.outsideonline.com/2277116/zinke-shows-his-true-colors
