President Trump has picked David Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, to be the Interior Department’s next secretary. Bernhardt, whose past clients include oil companies and others with business before the Interior Department, will lead an agency that oversees about 500 million acres as well as the energy production on that land. It has 70,000 employees in various agencies overseeing federal land, offshore drilling, endangered species and American Indian affairs, among other duties.

As deputy secretary, Bernhardt, worked closely with former, ethically challenged, Secretary Ryan Zinke on his oil and gas leasing agenda and the administration’s push to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He champions the rollback of a number of Endangered Species Act regulations and called the Endangered Species Act an “unnecessary regulatory burden”.

Bernhardt’s lobbying activities have been so widespread that he carries a card with him listing all the recusals he has to make, no doubt with misgivings.

Bernhardt is accused by environmental organisations, appalled at this move by Trump, of pandering to oil, coal, and gas industries. One environmentalist is quoted as saying, ““As an oil and gas lobbyist, Bernhardt pushed to open vast swaths of public lands for drilling and mining. As deputy secretary, he was behind some of the worst policy decisions of Secretary Zinke’s sad tenure, including stripping protections for imperiled wildlife.”

It is sad to comment that this in-your-face example of corruption, pandering to special interests and acting against the interests of American citizens seems to have been normalised. Congress has lost so many of its experts (Republican policy) that it now relies on lobbyists, (who have their own agendas) when it comes to technical knowledge and expertise. The selfish and ruthless are picking at the bones of the United States, while China quietly separates the US from its allies. So much for Making America Great Again – it’s a joke in poor taste.

The UK and Switzerland have signed a deal to continue trading after Brexit as they did before it. The “continuity agreement” – based on the EU’s existing free trade deal with Switzerland – was ratified on Monday. Around £32bn of trade is done between the UK and Switzerland each year, with 15,000 British exporters involved.

The UK is seeking to replicate about 40 EU worlwide free trade agreements, covering more than 70 countries. In 2017, the government announced that the UK could complete them all before leaving the EU on 29 March, to avoid disruption to trade. But with only 46 days until the UK is set to leave, continuity agreements have been signed with only:
Switzerland
Chile
The Faroe Islands
Eastern and Southern Africa
Mutual recognition agreements – where a product lawfully sold in one country can be sold in another – have also been signed with Australia and New Zealand.

The director general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Carolyn Fairbairn, said the lack of other trade deals being signed was an “emergency” – particularly in the case of South Korea and Japan. (adapted from a BBC report)

Gosh! Four agreements in two years! Right wing Tories don’t like a customs union because they claim they can do better deals than the huge EU has been able to do. Easy, they said. But if all you are going to do is to use the identical EU wording, what precisely is the point of all this chaos and angst? Oh, sorry, of course it is the keep the pesky foreigners out.

All the same, we never thought the Faroe Islands would come so readily to the rescue. Thanks, fellows!

Meanwhile, 36 more agreements to go before March 29th! What an incompetent bunch!

It seems to me plausible to imagine that Trump could default on the US national debt. He could quite likely stand up at a rally when things get bumpy for him and say, “we don’t actually owe China that money,” Everywhere he goes Trump finds things that people trust and he undermines them e.g the media, the political process, government departments and clean and competent government What’s left? The money,

Trump has made a career out of stiffing his suppliers and his workers and refusing to repay his loans. He’s already grumbling about the Federal Reserve. All he now needs now to say is, “The Chinese stole that money in bad trade deals and theft of hi-tech know-how.” Suddenly, you get a dollar that is under seige, even though people still trust the dollar. (why is a mystery) and there is no mechanism for stopping it. Actually, you used to have a mechanism – it was called the “government”. But Trump controls the government and has installed corrupt yes-men as department heads. Imagining that because Trump is rich and has lots of rich friends who don’t want a financial catastrophe is wrong thinking. Trump has huge dollar debts that shrink if the dollar goes into freefall. It is actually in his interest to undermine the dollar; his other assets are in land, buildings and hotels, which will survive probably adequately.

Just a suggestion about reneging on the national debt at a rally would be enough to get the supporters talking about the idea and thus make it respectable in right-wing circles. He won’t do it just now because he has a good economy, inherited from Obama, but given a dangerous boost by a massive tax cut. The bust will come and it could come in early 2020. The national debt is growing rapidly because tax income is way down. But bust there will be. The whole world will be affected and mountains of promissory notes and promises made by a basically dishonest president will be worth nothing. (an edited version based of an article in Prospect magazine by Jay Elwes, reporting on Michael Lewis’s book “The Fifth Risk”)

What has this to do with Epicureanism? It has to do witheace of mind and a life of pleasure (or, rather, a. pleasant life. I qualify this so that critics stop claiming that Epiurus advocated endless booze and sex – a total travesty.)