Should he have been spending on himself the way he did? Hell no, but what will it cost us, compared to Trump's trade war? Nothing noticeable. The tariffs alone will cost us far more, and the indirect effects will be incalculably more. What about policy? Pruitt's successor will behave no differently. Deregulation is the order of the day, regardless of how much the EPA director spends on "tactical pants" (and c'mon, tactical sporks too because that dude's nuts).
In contrast, we are now at war. A trade war. Are you paying attention to that? This is not good. Trade wars don't have flashy videos of "smart" bombs and Seal Team 6 and other things to get 24 hour cable news anchors up at night, so to speak. Costs for everyone go up, jobs are lost, and people just hurt. Economic costs have human costs, too. Human lives. As I wrote in my Pratchett post, the human toll of Trump's trade war will be more severe than the human toll of family separations. You just won't see it as dramatically, or directly. That's not how economics work, but this thing is getting ramped up. Our tariffs have gone into effect, and China has retaliated.
Scott Pruitt's resignation? It is good for the employees he mistreated and against whom he retaliated. It is nice to see there be consequences for retaliation. Every policy that he would have enacted will still be enacted, though. Meanwhile, our mercantilist idiot President has started a trade war because he's a "fucking moron" (source: Tillerson, Rex). That matters, and it matters more than any "human interest" news story that you see just because someone with a camera found an easy way to stick a face on the screen associated with the tale.
Don't get manipulated. Focus on what matters.
