In sports parlance it's called an unforced error. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke made one the other day when he was captured stating that roughly one-third of his vast workforce is not loyal to him or President Trump. The comment quickly was condemned, including by some who wagered that the percentage was much higher.
U.S. Rep Raúl M. Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, called Tuesday for Secretary Zinke to apologize.
“Secretary Zinke should clarify his comments and apologize to the public servants he is supposed to be leading. He often refers to his military service, so he should be well aware that loyalty is earned and you don’t earn it, or deserve it, with divisive comments like these," the congressman said.
The comment was made Monday to the National Petroleum Council in Washington, D.C.
"I got 30 percent of the crew that's not loyal to the flag," he said in a story distributed by The Associated Press.
On a Facebook page for National Park Service employees, some ventured that the percentage was higher than 30 percent, in some cases much higher, while others said their loyalty was to the agency mission and not elected officials.
According to the Sierra Club, Secretary Zinke went further, telling the oil industry leaders that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff “hated people to a degree.”
The secretary also said Interior staff spend too much time analyzing an issue and not acting on it, and he intends to end that by reorganizing his department to put the decision-makers out in the West where decisions involving energy development and endangered species are most centered.
At the Sierra Club, Rob Vessels, who represents the group's Military Outdoors Campaign, said the secretary needs to reexamine his military background, rather than citing it to explain how he's going to manage the Interior Department and the public lands it oversees.
“Ryan Zinke is all too quick to tout his patriotism for serving in the military, but he fails to recognize the patriotism in protecting America’s public lands," said Mr. Vessels. "Serving our country is patriotic, but so is working on behalf of the American people at the Department of the Interior, so is protecting our public lands for everyone to enjoy, and so is calling for our government to be better at working for every single person here. Given the groups Zinke has chosen to speak to and meet with as secretary, we know where his loyalties currently reside. I, and millions of Americans wish that it was with us the people, and not with the fossil fuel industry.”
The military symbolism was also dismissed by the Center for Western Priorities, where Executive Director Jennifer Rokala said that, “Secretary Zinke clearly views our parks and public lands as a battlefield and himself as a general fighting on behalf of oil and gas companies. In the past two days, he has declared war on his own agency in front of oil executives and told clean energy groups that public lands are best suited for drilling.
"Less than a year into the job, Secretary Zinke has abandoned Western values in an attempt to drill, mine and log our public lands at all costs.”
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Comments
The news at Interior just seems to go from bad to worse ...
Mr. Zinke seems to have forgoten the mission of the department.
John Muir would be vomiting if he were alive and Teddy Roosevelt would be kicking Stinke's rear end. A guy who was guilty of using government jets for private affairs, wait, that's half of Trump's cabinet. Never mind.
"Not loyal to the flag" ??
This is an amazing statement, and completely untrue. What empty headed, toxic person told him this? Certainly he has not met the 30%, or even 1% of the workforce of the National Park Service.
My politics are fairly left-wing, and so those people in the National Park Service who are not conservatives are pretty clear with me on their attitudes. The National Park Service across the spectrum are deeply loyal to the United States of America. I like to think i am open enough with NPS conservatives that few would hold back an assessment, and again my belief is they are as loyal as those more liberal. Overwhelmingly, National Park Service people believe parks and the Service are not for the Left or the Middle or the Right, but for all Americans. These people honor the places and history of America.
I am trying to think this through now with all the cynicism i can muster, after all of course every organization includes SOME spoilers, SOME people who would rather complain than do the work, SOME who have glib hostile throwaway comments about any and everything, even America and the Flag.
This thought experiment says that there may not be ONE-in-a-hundred who are not loyal to the flag.
These people believe in the United States, believe in the laws of the United States, and believe in faithfully upholding the United States and those laws.
In fact a great deal of the morale problem in the Service is not because of cynicism, but from idealism.
Park people believe the parks represent the best of America. When there are problems due to lack of funding, with lack of training, and lack of aggressive recruitment, it makes them upset. They are not stupid. They know all the federal government has problems. They even know that all America has social conflicts such as widespread sexual harrassment. But when they see any bit of it in the National Park Service, or any bit of slowness in dealing with it, it is intolerable. Because they believe in the ideal. They believe with the Constitution, that for every problem in America it can be solved and America made a more perfect union.
Mr. Secretary this is not an organization where 30% are not loyal to the flag.
National Park Service people are the believers, and they are the believers in all Americans, and all Visitors.
Disloyal to the flag for not laying down for oil and gas because of the president? Most educated people know that oil and gas production and use are bad for the planet. The Secretary's interests do not seem to advance conservation of places or land, and maybe he should lay off labeling people.
Disloyal to Trump and himself - sure. Most of the NPS eployees I know aree intensely loyal to the resources that they are sworn to protect. The man needs to learn that TRUMP does not equal FLAG, does not equal COUNTRY, does not equal MOST IMPORTANT PERSON OR THING.
According to its own mission statement, "The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations." Nowhere in that mission statement are the names Trump or Zinke, and nowhere in that mission statement are any words about wringing out profit by depleting resources.
D-2--
As I noted in my comment on another thread, I interpert Zinke's "crew loyal to the flag" as meaning "the flag" as in flag officer & command, not as in stars & stripes US flag. Zinke was Navy, and flag officers command task forces or fleets, and thus have _their_ flags indicating which ship they're on, as in flagship. Googling it, US flag officers are not confined to the Navy, and they require nomination by the President and confirmation by the Senate (USC 10).
That said, I don't think Zinke was going for any particular precision in that sentence, merely ingratiating himself with his oil & gas executive audience by communicating contempt for either "bureaucrats" or DOI natural resource professionals.
And I certainly agree with you: in my experience virtually all of the NPS colleagues I interact with are loyal to the country, the constitution, and the idea of the Park Service from the Organic Act.
The idea of compulsory loyalty and patriotism is, on all levels, wholly un-American. The idea that government employees are required to have or show fealty to appointed overlords is also wholly at odds with having a competent and professional bureaucracy.
Disgusting.
Disloyal?
Disloyal to what? Sometimes the most loyal patriots are those who have courage and determination enough to stand for what is RIGHT and against what is WRONG.
We need loyal Americans now more than ever. I sincerely hope that Drumpf, in his efforts to play to his followers, will wind up actually uniting a majority of our citizens to stand for what is right despite his best efforts to distract us from issues that are important and demean those who disagree with his ugliness and other nonsense.
This guy is a grade A PUTZ and completely unqualified for the position he's in. The DOI is not the freaking military and shouldn't be treated like it.
I do hope that those in the DOI are not just loyal to an administration, or any administration for that matter. Instead, they need to be loyal to the parks and public land areas that they are in charge of administering, so that future generations also have them to appreciate and enjoy. Administrations come and go, but our parks and public lands need to be preserved well past them.
Zinke will be gone in 3 years and some odd months. Unfortunately, this guy will do so much damage before he's out that he'll leave a scar and distort many many acres of public lands for decades, if not thousands of years.
I totally agree with D-2 and the others who have commented on this matter. The Secretary is wrong and should be ashamed of himself. He has some of the best employees who work for government. Show some respect and appreciation Mr. Secretary.
As a retired American , my wife and I have traveled all over parts of this great country and spent a good deal of time in our National parks and State parks and have found not one park member that is not dedicated to the parks or the job they were hired to do. We have however found several that are fed up with the bureaucracy that is constantly interferring with the job they were hired to do with the EPA being number one culprit
Zinke's entire quote in the Associated Press is quite amazling:
Zinke (& Trump) certainly seem like pirates, but it's the Interior Department and the resources it manages that is the real captured prize. His analogy is further confused in that they are not first mate and captain, but mere bagmen for the real pirate captains in the fossil fool industry.
Secretary Zinke obviously knows very little about the employees he oversees. I expect his tenure to come to a very unsatisfactory (to him) end, much like that of former Interior Secretary James Watt.
I was just reading where his future aspirations include running against the current Democratic incumbents in either the Montana US Senate race or the Montana gubernatorial race. The article mentioned, absolutely coincidentally of course, that Zinke's actions on shrinking and/or mining national monuments in the state of Montana are much less severe than elsewhere. Do your research andn draw your own conclusions.
The Fox News crowd is really at fault here. In TN, as deep a red state as Alabama, it is quite common that all public gyms etc are permanantly placed on that network. If Hannity or Rush says it, it is so. Locals here will tell you that all other outlets are fake news and refuse to look at any other source. And that mentality is rampant in this country. When I casually mention to that crowd that Zinke, for instance, was caught with his hand in the travel fraud cookie jar that seems to be all the rave amongst Trump's billionaire cabal this month, the information is met with pure dismissal and disbelief. Because it wasn't on fox.
I really don't know how you combat that kind of growing, rampant insular ingorance.