The environment
Regarding “EPA watchdog? (Page A14, Friday), the editorial very cleverly divided “people who work in certain government jobs into three categories: attack dogs, lapdogs and watchdogs” then categorized EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt as an attack dog when Oklahoma’s attorney general, who has morphed into “a lapdog for the very industries he’s supposed to regulate.”
I think it fair to apply your categories to classify environmentalists, former President Barack Obama, the EPA and state attorneys general during Obama’s eight-year reign. Obama took office as a quintessential attack dog with a goal of ending fossil fuels, especially coal, as viable energy sources. Alternate energy sources were his wave of the future.
Obama then ceded the attack dog role to the EPA which obliged by appointing Al Armendariz to head up District 6 including Texas. After wreaking havoc for about two years, Armendariz was forced to resign when a video surfaced in which he said “in order to get the attention of other companies he would follow the tactics of Roman soldiers: select a couple of companies and ‘crucify’ them.”
With EPA serving as his attack dog Obama became environmentalists’ lapdog siding with them even when it meant opposing organized labor with his Keystone pipeline ruling. Attorneys general in states bearing the brunt of EPA’s heavy-handed regulations had two choices: sit on the sidelines as watchdogs to watch as their industries were overregulated or counterattack EPA regulators and the Obama administration, a role where they were true underdogs.