Horse News

Interior Decorator: “Dinky” Zinke’s Push To Redesign Flags And Accessorize With Dead Animals

By on • ( 14 Comments )
By Chris D’Angelo as published on The Huffington Post

“You can’t make this stuff up.”

“Dinky” Zinke with his dead animals

WASHINGTON — A week after taking over the Department of the Interior, Ryan Zinke inquired about redesigning the agency’s flag, according to internal emails HuffPost has obtained.

The department flag is emblazoned with a bison and has gone largely unchanged for a century. The emails indicate that Zinke wanted to redesign the flags and make them bigger, so that neither his secretarial flag nor the agency flag would be smaller than the United States flag that flies atop the Interior Department’s headquarters on C Street in Washington, D.C. The emails do not indicate how he wants to redesign the flag.

The emails shine more light on Zinke’s revival of an obscure military flag-flying tradition. As The Washington Post reported last month, when Zinke enters the building, “a security staffer takes the elevator to the seventh floor, climbs the stairs to the roof and hoists a special secretarial flag.” When he goes home, the flag comes down.

Zinke was sworn in March 1 and arrived at his post the following morning sporting a cowboy hat and riding a horse. The flag inquiries by the former Montana congressman and Navy SEAL were part of a broader revamping at Interior that included outfitting his office with a slew of taxidermied creatures and a bronze bust of his hero Teddy Roosevelt.

The redesign seems to have left Interior staff scrambling and scratching their heads.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Joe Nassar, director of Interior’s Office of Facilities and Administrative Services, wrote to several other Interior employees a few weeks later, referring to the pending delivery of a stuffed bobcat.

One week after Zinke took office, Elena Gonzalez, Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for technology, information and business services, sent an email to Douglas Domenech, then a senior adviser to the new secretary, addressing several flag-related queries.

“We think the Interior flags can be any size so long as they are not larger than the American flag,” Gonzalez wrote, adding that Nassar would look into current flag proportions. “I am not sure whether the Secretary can re-design either his flag or the Interior flag. Happy to find out if you need that information as well.”

“Great,” replied Domenech, who was later nominated and confirmed as Interior’s assistant secretary for Insular Areas. He requested the chapter of the agency manual on displaying and flying flags and wrote, “Yes find out if [Zinke] can change the DOI flag and how.”

In an email the next day, Gonzalez wrote that the questions about redesigning flags were “taking a bit longer to answer.”

“Apparantly [sic] not a common question,” she wrote…(CONTINUED)

The Rest of the Story: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/interior-department-ryan-zinke-flags-stuffed-animals_us_5a0369d7e4b0937b510f5554

Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs

Tagged as: , , , , ,

14 replies »

  1. These are the worst of times for America because nothing is valued but greed and hate and it needs to be recognized as such and stopped but there is a disconnect of those in power so it will be a painful delay until they are voted out from the top down

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. He has to have his very own flag on the roof whenever he is “in”? Certainly is telling as to the size of his ego! Wonder if the staffer who gets to run up to the roof & either put up or take down the flag will get “hazard” pay??? As is the case with much of this cabinet – yet another jerk! (actually could use many worse descriptions BUT)

    Like

    Reply

    • Is no one in government watching this ridiculousness? There was enough publicity about Price to get him removed – but I guess this guy fits right in with the rest! Frankly, the pictures of the “moneyguy” & his wife should resonate with ordinary people – especially with this tax bill being pushed!
      Maybe “ordinary” people aren’t watching tho.

      Like

      Reply

      • I wondered if he wants to delete the Bison from the flag, and replace it with an emblem of a gate with a dollar sign in the middle to indicate how one gains access to public lands and related policy making.

        Like

      • All I could think was – what the heck – why should the bison be there – right this minute they are hunting them again even tho theres only 847 left in the one herd! That says to me – how can they be the national (?) animal if they get slaughtered every time they leave Yellowstone? That’s sick – but no sicker than the push to eradicate our wild horses & burros, I guess.

        Liked by 2 people

  4. The stuffed bobcat has NO PLACE in his office or anyone else’s office … it had a right to live and die in the wild as did the grizzly and other wild animals.
    Re:
    “Secretary Ryan Zinke ✔@SecretaryZinke
    Not to be outdone by the #Griz the @msubobcats have a place in my office too. Appreciate the piece from @USFWS
    10:43 AM – Mar 27, 2017 · Washington, DC”

    Like

    Reply

  6. “Interior Department to allow imports of elephant and lion trophies from Africa, reversing Obama policies”.

    Removing protection to wild elephant hunting looks like an early holiday present for his sons the trophy hunters. What else could a POS billion-air dad give to his two billion-air POS sons that they don’t already have?

    https://blog.humanesociety.org/wayne/2017/11/interior-department-allow-imports-elephant-lion-trophies-africa-reversing-obama-policies.html

    Like

    Reply

    • This has to be stopped, held up, somehow, some way. These poor animals are on the verge of extinction. What a bunch of idiots.

      Like

      Reply

Care to make a comment?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.