Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | On Race and Redemption in 'Three Billboards'

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | On Race and Redemption in 'Three Billboards'

THE BLIND LEADING THE INCOMPETENT? 

ALBERT KELLY COULDN'T RUN A BANK, HAS NO SCIENCE BACKGROUND 

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, left, and Albert Kelly, senior adviser, visit Bird Creek on the Chapman Ranch in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, May 26, 2017. (photo: Getty)

Scott Pruitt's Superfund Adviser Holds Stake in Company Responsible for Major Contamination
Mark Hand, ThinkProgress
Hand writes: "A disgraced banker who Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt hired to advise him on the nation's toxic waste cleanup program holds as much as $75,000 in financial stakes in several fossil fuel companies, including a company responsible for contaminating a bayou in southwestern Louisiana and a stretch of river in Oregon."
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Kelly had never worked in the environmental field or developed environmental policy prior to being named last April as an adviser to Pruitt and head of the EPA’s Superfund Task Force. His home city of Bristow, Oklahoma, though, has a Superfund site and several other contaminated sites.

Under the terms of a settlement reached with the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010, Phillips 66 and Sasol North America agreed to reimburse the EPA Superfund program more than $4.5 million and pledged to spend about $10 million to clean up Bayou Verdine within the Calcasieu estuary.

Kelly also has holdings between $1,001 and $15,000 in Alliance Resources Partners, Chesapeake Energy, NGL Energy Partners, and Phillips 66 subsidiary Phillips 66 Partners, Politico reported Wednesday. Among his other income, Kelly disclosed in a financial form filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics that he is the sole proprietor of a ranch that has earned him $40,000 in oil, gas, and mineral rent and royalties on lands in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Alberta, Canada, according to Politico.

Pruitt appointed Kelly to lead an effort to streamline the Superfund program. Around the same time, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) fined Kelly $125,000 over banking violations. That was followed by a ruling in July by the FDIC to ban Kelly from banking for life, The Intercept reported in December. The FDIC determined that Kelly’s actions showed his “unfitness to serve as a director, officer, person participating in the conduct” of a bank, according to documents obtained by E&E News.