By Jon Bauer
Herald staff
A moment of silence please as we memorialize the departure of EPA chief Scott Pruitt, following his resignation Thursday as ethics allegations and investigations piled up and threatened to compete with funding for other toxic Superfund sites.
We ask for silence only because Pruitt no longer has use of his soundproof phone booth, and he’ll need to hear the calls coming in from oil companies with job offers.
Pruitt announced he was resigning so he could spend more time with his used “Trump Home Luxury Plush Euro Pillow Top” mattress.
As for the rest of the news from the swamp that wasn’t:
Upstairs, put-downs: During his planned visit to the United Kingdom, President Trump reportedly will avoid London — and crowds of protesters — and instead will make a tour of mansions and other country estates during talks with Prime Minister Theresa May.
However, Lady Violet, Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess, is on the guest list for dinner that evening and is ready with: “When you talk like that, I’m tempted to ring for Nanny and have you put to bed with no supper.”
A brisk trade in tariffs: The United States and China have officially launched the first salvos in what Beijing has called the “biggest trade war in economic history.” Each country imposed billions of dollars of tariffs on each other’s goods in a long-simmering dispute over trade imbalances and intellectual property.
We don’t want to predict a long trade war, but you might want to start looking into how to make your own iPhone.
Anticipation, it’s making me wait: Meanwhile, another trade skirmish is brewing with Canada, which announced retaliatory tariffs against President Trump’s added taxes on Canadian steel and aluminum. Among the products that Canada slapped border taxes on were lawnmowers, motor boats and ketchup.
If anyone is interested, we’re leasing a motorboat, filling it with Heinz 57 and Lawnboys for the trip north and taking orders for Horton’s doughnuts and Molson Canadian for the trip back.
That doesn’t suck: Seattle has barred the distribution of plastic straws and utensils by bars and restaurants to curb the amount of plastic waste going to landfills and littering the ocean.
Portland, responding to Seattle’s plastic straw and utensil ban, said it would go one better by requiring that bars and restaurants serve their customers by asking them to cup their hands together when sold food and drinks.
Look what the stork brought: A Polish environmental group that was using a mobile-phone transmitter to track the travels of a stork has received a phone bill for $2,650 after the bird went missing in Sudan during its migration.
The environmental group fears the transmitter may have been taken from the stork, however the phone bill shows calls to fresh fish markets and an adoption delivery agency.
Jon Bauer: jbauer@heraldnet.com
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