Tiny Jewel Box
The account manager at the Tiny Jewel Box, which calls itself Washington’s “premier destination for fine jewelry and watches,” had promised to expedite the order of a dozen customized silver fountain pens — each emblazoned with the seal of the Environmental Protection Agency and the signature of its leader, Scott Pruitt.
Obviously a basic need.
Now all that the EPA staff member working with the store needed was for a top Pruitt aide to sign off on the $3,230 order, which also included personalized journals.
“The cost of the Qty. 12 Fountain Pens will be around $1,560.00,” the staffer emailed Aug. 14 to Millan Hupp, Pruitt’s head of scheduling and advance and a trusted confidante dating to his Oklahoma days. “All the other items total cost is around $1,670.00 which these items are in process. Please advise.”
“Yes, please order,” Hupp responded later that day. “Thank you.”
The exchange, included among thousands of pages of emails released this week as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Sierra Club, offered another glimpse of the high-end tastes of the EPA chief, who has faced months of scrutiny over his expenditures of taxpayer money on first-class travel, an unprecedented security detail, a $43,000 phone booth, a top-of-the-line SUV and other office upgrades.
Well you wouldn’t want the head of the EPA using some plebeian ordinary fountain pen would you?
And here I thought that I was crazy agonizing over the purchase of a $20 fountain pen.
The people Trump has appointed apparently view their government jobs not as a public service, but as a way to enrich themselves at the public purse. Meanwhile, they think the things that ordinary people need – like clean water, clean air, other species – are too expensive to stick the taxpayers with the bill.
You can get a decent fountain pen for $15-20, but very good ones really are $100 and upwards. The price ($130 each) isn’t the outrageous part. The outrageous part is buying a dozen on the taxpayer’s dime.