Skvarla Shakes His Pom-Poms

This is either John Skvarla
or Charles Nelson Reilly

Next to Governor Squishy Hisownself, the dumbest member of the McCrory administration in Raleigh is John Skvarla, who used to be McCrory's appointee to head the Department of Environmental Quality, until he did a face plant into coal ash, at which point McCrory appointed him to head the Commerce Department, where he mainly leads cheers for Squishy's "Carolina Comeback."

According to Skvarla, speaking yesterday in Matthews, HB2 has had zero effect on North Carolina's economic well-being. “It hasn’t moved the needle one iota,” Skvarla said, holding an unmelted pat of Country Crock on his tongue the whole time.

Let's consult the dictionary, shall we? Iota -- noun, 1: the 9th letter of the Greek alphabet; 2: an infinitesimal amount.

Skvarla's statement is in the negative: HB2 has not "moved the needle" even an infinitesimal amount. Has not!

Not the loss of 400 new PayPal jobs in Charlotte? Not the loss of athletic tournaments and championship games, with meals sold in restaurants and beds rented in hotels? Not the loss of tickets sold at concert venues of canceled entertainment? Not the cooling of interest by out-of-state investors unwilling to relocate business to the "bathroom state"?

Then, in a truly Trumpian moment, Skvarla contradicted his whole "not one iota" claim by admitting that he had lashed out at PayPal for jilting the state, because, you know, one lashes out when one isn't affected at all by another's actions.

PayPal has our bowl!

"We want our stuff back," Skvarla apparently snarled at PayPal, referring to a carved oak ceremonial bowl that had been presented to PayPal by Governor Squishy back when the company announced its expansion into North Carolina.

Not one iota, but clearly one bowl's worth!

If I were casting the movie version of this historic time, I would cast Charlie Nelson Reilly as John Skvarla.

The McCrory Administration: The Man in Charge of Protecting NC's Environment

Donald van der Vaart is straight out of an Art Pope/Civitas/John Locke Foundation briefing book. He took over the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) last January from big business toady John Skvarla, who had bungled the response to the Duke Energy Dan River coal ash spill. Van der Vaart is twice as dangerous as Skvarla ever was because he's four times smarter and infinitely better educated.

He holds multiple degrees in chemical engineering including a Ph.D. from Cambridge, plus a law degree. He has a wide mean streak. He's confrontational and is not afraid to use his educational attainments to intimidate lesser human beings. In other words, he's the type of take-no-prisoners, "you're fired!" Republican administrator currently in vogue among conservatives. A Donald Trump kind of guy.

The Raleigh News & Observer delves deeply into his one-year tenure at DEQ in today's edition:

1. He's a free market fundamentalist -- let the corporations rule! In other words, he's "economic" in his perspective in that he knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

2. He's following the Art Pope/Civitas playbook in sneering at "renewable" energy -- solar and wind power principally. He would enthusiastically applaud the elimination of North Carolina’s "renewables mandate" that was enacted in 2007 and which the Art Pope Machine has been trying to eliminate.

3. He loves loves LOVES fracking and is a big promoter of off-shore oil/gas drilling.

4. He has proposed a major policy change to the Environmental Management Commission to eliminate the air pollution permit process for rock quarries, concrete plants, and some 1,400 other small businesses in the state that account for 3.4 percent of air emissions. Terry Lansdell of Clean Air Carolina says the proposal will let "businesses police themselves rather than relying on state oversight."

5. In March, two months into his tenure at DEQ, he signed off on a settlement with Duke Energy over coal ash violations. The fine that Duke deigned to accept was $25 million, the largest in DEQ's history but still considered a mere mosquito bite for the multi-billion-dollar corp with a "bad neighbor" history.

6. He submitted a compliance plan for the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power plan that was "designed to be rejected," because he has a bigger fish to fry: he's part of a law suit against the EPA challenging the entire mandate for clean power. Being a prick to the Obama administration's EPA only wins him more hugs and kisses from fighting mad conservatives.

7. "Van der Vaart has said the only way to make drastic reductions in carbon emissions is by aggressive development of nuclear power."

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article42125817.html#storylink=cpy

The Governor Exhibits Some Body Language

McCrory; Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker, jumping ship; and John Skvarla

Could the Guv be any more uncomfortable? Photo WRAL.

Interesting Smoke Signals Out of Raleigh

Breaking News: John Skvarla, the man Gov. McCrory put in charge of the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and who then subsequently presided over Duke Energy's coal ash debacle, is OUT at DENR and will instead take over the Department of Commerce, because his industrial toadying will fit in better there. McCrory never fires anyone. He just shifts them around in various jobs, hoping one of them will draw less press scrutiny.

Skvarla, incidentally, believes that oil/gas are renewable resources (yikes), and he's a climate change skeptic. He'll fit right in with the Commerce Department!

Meanwhile, over at the Department of Health and Human Services, and after 18 months of waiting since the General Assembly passed a new abortion law mandating stringent new rules on abortion clinics, the new rules have been published, and ... meh. Apparently, no clinics will have to close because of them.

Helmet-headed moral scold Tami Fitzgerald is outraged about the laxness of the proposed new rules, so you can bet that the General Assembly will get another crack at blocking off choices open to women. Guaranteed: abortion and women's rights will again be making headlines in NC in 2015:

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services’ proposed regulations were formally published in the state register Monday. That begins a process of public comment before the final regulations are adopted. If 10 or more people object, which is common with a controversial set of rules, then the General Assembly will have to make a final determination, and the abortion debates would begin again in the House and Senate.

Makes one wonder, though, if this isn't another one of McCrory's gestures of moderation. He had promised as a candidate that he would do nothing to make abortion more difficult in NC. Then he up and obediently signed the General Assembly's extreme new law. Now his DHHS goes all wobbly over the new rules.

Skvarla out at DENR ... abortion clinics allowed to continue in service ... what's next?

NC DENR Disappears Climate Change Science

Mr. John Skvarla (bless his heart!) can't seem to scrub anything clean except the website of his Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which has recently been washed of any scientific evidence of climate change.

Maybe Gov. Squishy told him to do it. McCrory too has become a national laughingstock on whether the science of climate change has anything to do with anything other than God's will.

Was it perhaps also God's will for Duke Energy to defy environmental laws and pollute our state's water supply at every last one of their dozen + coal ash dumps?

Nothing Focuses the Mind Like a Federal Criminal Investigation

Looks like Governor Pat McCrory, a former Duke Energy executive and current Duke Energy cuddler, is trying to look as though he's getting right with Jesus. Yesterday, he publicly called on his former employer and current major political contributor to move its coal ash ponds away from water sources.

Those were words, of course, not action. Action would have involved McCrory's top guy at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, John Skvarla, actually taking tough steps against Duke Energy to keep our water clean. So far that action has been sorely lacking.

But now the Feds have opened a criminal investigation, and McCrory needs to look like something other than a creature owned lock, stock, and leaking ash pond by Duke Energy.

Skepticism about McCrory now runs deep in North Carolina, since he's rarely risen above sock-puppet status during the past full year. Said Frank Holleman, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center: “I think it’s good the governor is reacting finally and is communicating with the CEO of Duke Energy, but given everything that’s happened, actions speak louder than words. He says they’re not going to stand for it anymore, but if you’re not going to stand for it any more, clean up the mess.” (Emphasis added, natch!)

It's just sad that it took the tightening reach of federal subpoenas for McCrory to begin to sound like a governor thinking of the public interest, let alone acting in the public interest.

Who Is John Skvarla?

We were reminded last night that John Skvarla, McCrory's appointment to head the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), apparently believes the far-right fringe theory that oil and natural gas are actually renewable resources, that the earth is continually making more of it and that the federal government is covering up the truth, and he's the guy who told the employees at DENR that they must be more "customer friendly," which means "be very accommodating to polluting industries," and so how is that working out for you, North Carolina?

Skvarla is also not sure whether global climate change is real, echoing the opinion of his boss The Guv.

That genius of science John Skvarla has said, of the current crisis on the Dan River (and of every other leaking coal ash pit in North Carolina owned by Duke Energy -- there are 13 of them, and they are ALL already leaking toxins into ground water), that it would be scientifically unwise to relocate those ash pits to lined landfills away from water sources.

What he meant to say was that relocating Duke Energy's toxic waste would be injurious to Duke Energy's profit margin, but, hey! what's a little slip of the tongue among renown scientists?

Welcome To Your Future, North Carolina

We have a corporate shill in charge of protecting North Carolina's water from corporate polluters. Can't wait for these same one-string puppets to begin protecting our water from tracking!

What Did McCrory Know, and When Did He Know It?

The criminal investigation into Duke Energy's pollution of the Dan River will or will not uncover cronyism between the administration of Gov. Pat McCrory and the huge corporation that paid him a substantial salary for almost 30 years and then contributed heavily to his political campaigns. The following builds on data compiled by "Facing South":

1. All the way back in 1994, while working for Duke Energy and serving as a Charlotte city council member and mayor pro tem, McCrory chaired a council meeting and voted on a matter that benefited his employer's bottom line, sparking a case that went to the state Supreme Court. The state's supremes allowed the council's decision to stand though a dissenting opinion from a Republican justice raised concerns about McCrory's conflict of interest.

2. In 1997, McCrory, by then serving as Charlotte's mayor while still working for Duke Energy, went to Washington, D.C., to testify as mayor against federal clean air regulations for the city that would have cost his employer an estimated $600 million to clean up its pollution.

3. Last year, Pat McCrory reported owning Duke Energy stock with a minimum value of $10,000, though he refused to say exactly how much stock he owned and how much it is worth.

4. Employees, former employees, spouses, and political action committees of Duke Energy and its Progress Energy subsidiary gave McCrory's two gubernatorial campaigns over $300,000 in direct contributions in 2008 and 2012.

5. On January 4, 2013, just minutes into actually holding office as governor, McCrory received a letter from several environmental and consumer groups asking him to recuse himself from appointing new members to the NC Utilities Commission because of his ties to Duke Energy. McCrory ignored the request.

6. After McCrory took office in January 2013 and his appointees took over management of the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), environmental groups tried to use the federal Clean Water Act's citizen lawsuit provision to force Duke Energy to clean up its coal ash pits because DENR was doing nothing to enforce Clean Water ... only to have their efforts blocked by DENR, which essentially declared that it was in charge of enforcing the Clean Water Act.

7. DENR, under increasing pressure from environmental groups, recommended a fine of $99,112 in a settlement with Duke Energy over its coal ash pits, while requiring no cleanup of the pits. Given Duke Energy's 2012 operating revenues of $19.6 billion, that fine's dollar equivalent for a person earning a $60,000 salary = 30 cents. (Duke Energy owns some 14 coal ash pits all around North Carolina. All of them are un-lined and are said to be leaking.)

8. February 2, 2014, the Sunday that coal ash was discovered leaking into the Dan River from one of Duke Energy's coal ash pits at Eden. More than 24 hours later, Duke Energy admitted that tens of millions of gallons of toxic coal ash waste were continuing to spill into the river. At about the same time on that Monday, DENR dispatched regulators to the site. The public at large did not become aware of the toxic spill until Tuesday, February 4.

9. Both Duke Energy and DENR's head John Skvarla declare that drinking Dan River water that's treated by a municipal water treatment plant is perfectly safe. The ash pond is still spewing pollution into the river Tuesday afternoon, February 4.

10. On Thursday, February 6, Governor McCrory, with DENR head John Skvarla in tow, made a show of visiting the spill site and said publicly that this needed to be cleaned up. He made a point of bragging about the $99,000 fine his administration had recommended against Duke Energy for its leaking ash ponds. At the same time that Gov. McCrory was visiting the site, both DENR and Duke Energy were issuing data purporting to prove that the water in the river was not toxic to humans or fish. Plus the spill was not yet fully contained, though it had been slowed to what constituted "a dribble," compared to Sunday's deluge.

11. Monday, February 10, DENR asked a judge to put the settlement with Duke Energy (referenced by # 7 above) on hold, including the $99,000 fine … possibly because DENR had been informed by federal authorities that a criminal investigation was being opened and subpoenas of DENR officials would be forthcoming.

12. Wednesday, February 12, DENR warns citizens not to drink, or even touch, water in the Dan River.

13. Thursday, February 13, news broke that the U.S. Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the Dan River spill and that subpoenas had been issued to both Duke Energy and DENR, summoning them to produce records before a federal grand jury scheduled to meet in Raleigh March 18-20.

14. On Friday, February 14, McCrory held a press conference on the state's response to the big snow storm, and he became visibly shaken when reporters asked about his relationship with Duke Energy, and then irritated when reporters pressed him on the issue. He looked guilty.