Author Archives: AdelePlatz

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How Producers Manage The Trump Show

by AdelePlatz Posted on May 15, 2017

Mother Jones

Over at Politico, “How Trump Gets His Fake News” is getting a lot of play this morning. And why not? In one sense, it’s an old story: Trump’s staff has to treat him like a volcanic nine-year-old lest he decide on a whim to move the Oval Office onto a barge in the Chesapeake Bay or something. We’ve read dozens of pieces like this in the past few months because Trump, by all accounts, really is a lot like a high-strung nine-year-old. At the same time, this kind of stuff is liberal crack: you can never get enough.

So what’s the best part of this latest installment in the Trump saga? The fake Time cover that got Trump lathered up about climate change? How Katie Walsh almost got fired because of a blog post from a conspiracy theorist? The fact that aides desperately try to ply Trump with good news to keep his temper in check? The endless search for whoever fed him the latest unapproved tidbit of Trumpbait? They’re all good. But maybe this is the best:

More recently, when four economists who advised Trump during the campaign — Steve Forbes, Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore — wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “now is the time to move tax reform forward with urgency,” someone in the White House flagged the piece for the president.

Trump summoned staff to talk about it. His message: Make this the tax plan, according to one White House official present.

Once again, we see that Trump couldn’t care less about policy. Any old health care plan is OK. Any old tax plan is OK. Just announce something and get it passed. Who care about all the stupid details, anyway? Just smug PhD types and annoying tea party crackpots.

Nothing matters. It’s all just a big show.

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How Producers Manage The Trump Show

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Breaking News: Kids Don’t Like to Eat Vegetables

by AdelePlatz Posted on August 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Excellent news! We have new research on whether kids like to eat vegetables:

The Agriculture Department rolled out new requirements in the 2012 school year that mandated that children who were taking part in the federal lunch program choose either a fruit or vegetable with their meals.

….”The basic question we wanted to explore was: does requiring a child to select a fruit or vegetable actually correspond with consumption. The answer was clearly no,” Amin, the lead author of the study, said in a statement.

This will come as a surprise to exactly zero parents. You can (usually) make your kids eat vegetables if you refuse to let them leave the table until they do, but that’s what it takes. Ask my mother if you don’t believe me.1

I’m not actually making fun of the researchers here. Sometimes seemingly obvious things turn out to be untrue. The only way to find out for sure is to check. And in fact, the study actually did produce interesting results:

Because they were forced to do it, children took fruits and vegetables — 29 percent more in fact. But their consumption of fruits and vegetables actually went down 13 percent after the mandate took effect and, worse, they were throwing away a distressing 56 percent more than before. The waste each child (or tray) was producing went from a quarter of a cup to more than a 39 percent of a cup each meal. In many cases, the researchers wrote, “children did not even taste the fruits and vegetables they chose at lunch.”

Yep: when kids were required to plonk fruits and vegetables onto their trays, average consumption went down from 0.51 cups to 0.45 cups. Apparently sticking it to the man becomes more attractive when kids are forced to do something.

In any case, the researchers kept a brave face, suggesting that eventually the mandates would work. We just need “other strategies” to get kids to like eating vegetables:

Because children prefer FVs in the form of 100% fruit juice or mixed dishes, such as pizza or lasagna, one should consider additional factors, such as the types of whole FVs offered and how the cafeteria staff prepares them. Cutting up vegetables and serving them with dip and slicing fruit, such as oranges and apples, can positively influence students’ FV selection and consumption by making FVs more accessible and appealing.

I dunno. Cutting up veggies and serving them with dip decidedly doesn’t make them taste anything like pizza or lasagna. I speak from decades of pizza-eating experience here. Anyway, parents have been trying to get their kids to eat their vegetables for thousands of years, and so far progress has been poor. I’m not sure what the answer is. Shock collars? DNA splicing? GMO veggies that taste like candy bars?

1Yeah, yeah, some kids actually like vegetables. Little bootlickers.

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Breaking News: Kids Don’t Like to Eat Vegetables

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Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

by AdelePlatz Posted on May 2, 2014

Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

By

Southeast Environmental Task Force

When tar-sands oil is refined, a nasty byproduct called petroleum coke, or petcoke, is produced — thick, dusty gunk that is increasingly being stored in huge piles along Midwestern rivers. On Chicago’s Southeast Side, unfortunate neighbors have been fighting to get rid of three such piles, noting that the petcoke blows over their communities and even into their homes. But they’ve failed, at least for now.

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday voted to ban new petcoke storage facilities, but the old ones will be allowed to remain in place and uncovered for up to two years. City lawyers said stricter proposed regulations might not stand up in court. The Times of Northwest Indiana reports:

Aldermen voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure by 10th Ward Alderman John Pope that will require petcoke to be stored in indoor structures within two years. …

Currently, Beemsterboer Slag Corp. and KCBX Terminals Co. are the only companies storing petcoke within Chicago, both at sites along the Calumet River in the 10th Ward. …

2nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti, the lone alderman to vote against the petcoke measure, said he … thinks city officials, in creating this measure, were more concerned with protecting the business interests of Beemsterboer and KCBX than they were in looking out for city residents.

Activists are not backing off — they’re filing an unusual lawsuit that directly targets the Koch brothers, owners of KCBX Terminals, among other parties. Climate Progress has the story:

Two environmental groups on Monday sent a letter to billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, saying they intend to file a lawsuit against them for polluting a primarily low-income area of Chicago with thick, black, oily dust.

The letter sent by the Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) gave official 90-day notice of intent to sue the Koch brothers and 10 of their companies, including the KCBX Terminals Company, in federal court. The lawsuit will seek to hold them liable for the harmful effects of pollution caused by coal and petroleum coke, or petcoke …

It will likely be difficult to hold the Koch brothers individually responsible for the alleged actions of their large companies. Suing company officers requires a legal maneuver called “piercing the corporate veil,” a tactic used in “exceptional situations” when it can be proven that the officers themselves were the main drivers of the alleged violation. Because a large corporation like Koch Industries has many levels of decision-making, it won’t be easy to prove in court that the brothers were at the helm of each one.

Meanwhile, officials at the city and state level are also filing suit to stop the petcoke pollution, as the Chicago Tribune reports:

The mayor’s office also has joined Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Gov. Pat Quinn in fighting two companies that store petcoke and coal on the Southeast Side.

KCBX Terminals, a company controlled by industrialists Charles and David Koch, faces a lawsuit filed by Madigan and [Mayor Rahm] Emanuel that accuses the company of violating air pollution laws … Another state and city lawsuit urges a Cook County judge to cite KCBX for violating water-quality and open-dumping laws by failing to prevent petcoke and coal from washing into the Calumet River

Detroiters managed to get rid of their petcoke piles last year. Maybe Chicagoans should call them for a little advice.


Source
City Council OKs petcoke restrictions, The Times
Koch Brothers To Face Lawsuit Over ‘Swirling’ Chicago Petcoke Pollution, ClimateProgress
Chicago stops short of petroleum coke ban, Chicago Tribune

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

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This GOP House Candidate Proposed Eliminating the Weekend

by AdelePlatz Posted on April 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Wisconites tired of relaxing on weekends and staying home on federal holidays are in luck: On Thursday, GOP state Sen. Glenn Grothman announced his challenge to 13-term moderate Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.). In a conservative district that went to Mitt Romney by seven points in 2012, Grothman hopes to channel dissatisfaction with Republicans in Congress whom he believes haven’t done enough to slow down the Obama administration’s policy agenda. But he comes with some baggage of his own.

In January, Grothman introduced legislation to eliminate a state requirement that workers get at least one day off per week. “Right now in Wisconsin, you’re not supposed to work seven days in a row, which is a little ridiculous because all sorts of people want to work seven days a week,” he told the Huffington Post. Eliminating days off is a long-running campaign from Grothman. Three years earlier, he argued that public employees should have to work on Martin Luther King Day. “Let’s be honest, giving government employees off has nothing to do with honoring Martin Luther King Day and it’s just about giving state employees another day off,” he told the Wisconsin State Journal. It would be one thing if people were using their day off to do something productive, but Grothman said he would be “shocked if you can find anybody doing service.”

MLK Day and “Saturday” aren’t the only holidays Grothman opposes. At a town hall in 2013, he took on Kwanzaa, which he said “almost no black people today care about” and was being propped up by “white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans.”

When he’s not advocating for people to spend more time working, Grothman has gotten in trouble for advocating that (some) people be paid less. “You could argue that money is more important for men,” he told the Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg, after pushing through a repeal of the state’s equal pay bill. And he has pushed to pare back a program that provided free birth control, while floating a bill that would have labeled single parenthood, “a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.” Grothman justified the bill by contending that women choose to become single mothers and call their pregnancies “unplanned” only because it’s what people want to hear. “I think people are trained to say that ‘this is a surprise to me,’ because there’s still enough of a stigma that they’re supposed to say this,” he said in 2012.

Enjoy the weekend.

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This GOP House Candidate Proposed Eliminating the Weekend

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