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The Truth About Meal-Kit Freezer Packs

by ChristieTobey69 Posted on June 4, 2017

Mother Jones

People love to complain about the wastefulness of meal-kit delivery companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. The baggies that hold a single scallion! The thousands of miles of shipping! The endless cardboard boxes! Those problems are annoying, but ultimately they’re not environmental catastrophes: The baggies don’t take up all that much landfill space, the cardboard boxes are recyclable, and it’s not clear whether shipping meal kits is less efficient than transporting food to grocery stores and then to homes.

But there is a much better reason to criticize meal-kit companies—and as far as I can tell, few people are talking much about it. That’s surprising, because it’s actually the biggest (or heaviest, at least) thing in every meal-kit box: the freezer packs that keep the perishables fresh while they’re being shipped. Blue Apron now sends out 8 million meals a month. If you figure that each box contains about three meals and two six-pound ice packs, that’s a staggering 192,000 tons of freezer-pack waste every year from Blue Apron alone. To put that in perspective, that’s the weight of nearly 100,000 cars or 2 million adult men. When I shared those numbers with Jack Macy, a senior coordinator for the San Francisco Department of the Environment’s Commercial Zero Waste program, he could scarcely believe it. “That is an incredible waste,” he said. The only reason he suspects he hasn’t heard about it yet from the city’s trash haulers is that the freezer packs end up hidden in garbage bags.

Given that many meal-kit companies claim to want to help the planet (by helping customers reduce food waste and buying products from environmentally responsible suppliers, for example), you’d think they would have come up with a plan for getting rid of this ever-growing glacier of freezer packs. Au contraire. Many blithely suggest that customers store old gel packs in their freezers for future use. Unless you happen to have your own meat locker, that’s wildly impractical. I tried it, and in less than a month the packs—which are roughly the size of a photo album—had crowded practically everything else out of my freezer. Two personal organizers that I talked to reported that several clients had asked for a consult on what to do with all their accumulated freezer packs.

As Nathanael Johnson at Grist points out, Blue Apron has also suggested that customers donate used freezer packs to the Boy Scouts or other organizations. I asked my local Boy Scouts council whether they wanted my old meal-kit freezer packs. “What would we do with all those ice packs?” wondered the puzzled council executive. (Which is saying a lot for an organization whose motto is “be prepared.”)

The meal-kit companies’ online guides to recycling packaging are not especially helpful. (Blue Apron’s is visible only to its customers.) Most of them instruct customers to thaw the freezer packs, cut open the plastic exterior, which is recyclable in some places, and then dump the thawed goo into the garbage. (Hello Fresh suggests flushing the goo down the toilet, which, experts told me, is a terrible idea because it can cause major clogs in your plumbing.) The problem with this advice is that it does not belong in a recycling guide—throwing 12 pounds of mystery goo into the garbage or toilet is not recycling.

To its credit, Blue Apron is the only major meal-kit service to offer a take-back program: Enterprising customers can mail freezer packs back to the company free of charge. But Blue Apron spokeswoman Allie Evarts refused to tell me how many of its customers actually do this. When I asked what the company does with all those used freezer packs, Evarts only told me, “We retain them for future use.” So does that mean Blue Apron is actually reusing the packs in its meal kits, or is there an ever-growing mountain of them languishing in a big warehouse somewhere? Evarts wouldn’t say.

Now back to that mystery goo, which, in case you’re curious, is whitish clear, with the consistency of applesauce. Its active ingredient is a substance called sodium polyacrylate, a powder that can absorb 300 times its weight in water. It’s used in all kinds of products, from detergent to fertilizer to surgical sponges. One of its most common uses is in disposable diapers—it’s what soaks up the pee and keeps babies’ butts dry. When saturated with water and frozen, sodium polyacrylate thaws much more slowly than water—meaning it can stay cold for days at a time.

Meal-kit companies assure their customers that the freezer-pack goo is nontoxic. That’s true. But while sodium polyacrylate poses little to no danger to meal-kit customers, it’s a different story for the people who manufacture the substance. (Meal-kit companies typically contract with freezer-pack manufacturers rather than making their own.) In its powdered state, it can get into workers’ lungs, where it can cause serious problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted in 2011 that workers in a sodium polyacrylate plant in India developed severe lung disease after inhaling the powder. Animal studies have shown that exposure to high concentrations of sodium polyacrylate can harm the lungs. Because of these known risks, some European countries have set limits on workers’ exposure to sodium polyacrylate. Here in the United States, some industry groups and manufacturers recommend such limits as well as safety precautions for workers like ventilation, respirators, and thick gloves. But on the federal level, neither the Occupational Safety and Health Administration nor the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health have any rules at all. (The companies that supply freezer packs to Blue Apron and Hello Fresh did not return repeated requests for information on their manufacturing processes.)

Beyond the factory, sodium polyacrylate can also do a number on the environment. In part, that’s because it’s made from the same stuff as fossil fuels—meaning that making it produces significant greenhouse gas emissions, a team of Swedish researchers found in 2015 (PDF). It also doesn’t biodegrade, so those mountains of freezer packs sitting in the garbage aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

So to review: Freezer packs create an epic mountain of garbage, and their goo is not as environmentally benign as meal-kit companies would have you believe. So what’s to be done? One place to start might be a greener freezer pack. That same team of Swedish researchers also developed a sodium polyacrylate alternative using biodegradable plant materials instead of fossil fuels. A simpler idea: Companies could operate like milkmen used to, dropping off the new stuff and picking up the old packaging—including freezer packs—for reuse in one fell swoop.

A little creative thinking might go a long way—yet none of the companies that I talked to said they had any specific plans to change the freezer-pack system (though Hello Fresh did say it planned to reduce its freezer pack size from six pounds to five pounds). And when you think about it, why should they fix the problem? Heidi Sanborn, head of the recycling advocacy group California Product Stewardship Council, points out that the current arrangement suits the meal-kit providers just fine. “It’s taxpayers that are paying for these old freezer packs to sit in the landfill forever,” she says. “Companies are getting a total freebie.”

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The Truth About Meal-Kit Freezer Packs

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James Mattis Doesn’t Really Fit In With the Trump Administration

by QuentinShapiro Posted on June 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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From our Secretary of Defense earlier this evening:

Oh snap. Do you have any more shade you’d like to throw at your boss?

He seems to have a firm grasp of who he works for, anyway.

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James Mattis Doesn’t Really Fit In With the Trump Administration

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Donald Trump’s Vision of Pittsburgh is Sooooooo 80s

by MonroeW02xi Posted on June 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump officially announced the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change on Thursday, framing the 2015 deal as a kind of global plot to sabotage America.

“The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense,” Trump said. “They don’t put America first. I do, and I always will.”

And if Paris was the symbol of that ideology, the alternative, a nation of miners and pipelines, belching smoke like a charcoal grill, was represented by…Pittsburgh? “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump said.

It was a bad comparison, since citizens of both Pittsburgh and Paris share an interest in averting a minimum projected sea level rise of 2.4 feet by 2100, in the scenario in which the climate accord’s goals aren’t met.

But it was an especially bad comparison because Pittsburgh isn’t the burned-out steel town Trump thinks it is. In fact, it’s a pretty good example of how a city can recover and adapt to changing economic circumstances. Pittsburgh’s doing OK.

Once again, Donald Trump has shown himself a man who has acquired little to no new knowledge since the 1980s. And during the 1980s, Pittsburgh was indeed having a very tough time. The city lost 30 percent of its population between 1970 and 1990; in 1983, unemployment in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area hit 17 percent. Neighboring counties fared even worse. Deindustrialization and globalization slammed the Monongahela Valley. But that was 35 years ago.

Today, Pittsburgh’s biggest employer is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Its other university, Carnegie Mellon, is home to a world-renowned robotics laboratory. The Golden Triangle is a landmark of downtown renewal. And Homestead, site of the great American labor battle of the 19th century, is a mall.

Before Pittsburgh was the poster child for a midsized, postindustrial city, it was a symbol of the ills of pollution. The soot from the steel mills hung so thick in the air the streetlights had to be on during the day. In 1948, 25 miles south of the city, the town of Donora was enveloped in a thick yellow smog that killed 20 people and sickened half the town. It was the worst air pollution disaster in US history and led to the passage of the Clean Air Act.

There’s no city in America that stands to benefit from climate change, whose enormous costs are and will continue to be borne mostly by the federal government (and hence distributed among us). But as a symbol for withdrawal from a global climate treaty, Pittsburgh is an especially poor choice.

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Donald Trump’s Vision of Pittsburgh is Sooooooo 80s

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Democrats Are Setting Their Sights on "Putin’s Favorite Congressman"

by Dana40Vllne Posted on June 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) won his first election to the House of Representatives in 1988 with 64 percent of the vote. He’s been reelected 13 times since then. And even though he walloped his most recent challenger by nearly 17 percentage points, some Democrats now think that this could be the final term for the Southern California conservative Politico has dubbed “Putin’s favorite congressman.“

Protesters, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, assemble outside Rohrabacher’s office every Tuesday at 1 p.m. “He has been our congressman for a long time,” laments Diana Carey, vice chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County. “But because the district was predominantly Republican, my view is he’s been on cruise control.” Thanks to changing demographics in Orange County and newly fired-up liberal voters, Carey doesn’t think Rohrabacher’s seat is safe anymore.

Recently, Rohrabacher has been swept up in the scandal over the possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. Like Trump, Rohrabacher, who claims to once have lost a drunken arm-wrestling match with Vladimir Putin in the 1990s, believes the Russian government is being unfairly demonized. (During the 1980s, Rohrabacher was a staunch anti-communist who hung out with the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan.) He has shrugged off allegations of Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election by pointing out that the United States is guilty of similar actions. In May, the New York Times reported that in 2012 the FBI warned Rohrabacher that Russian spies were trying to recruit him. Two days earlier, the Washington Post reported on a recording from June 2016 in which House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” (McCarthy assured Rohrabacher the remarks were meant as a joke.)

In a 2016 conversation with Republican House members, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” Washington Post

But of all the issues where Rohrabacher and Trump align, Russia may be the least pressing concern for the constituents who are rallying against him. So far, Rohrabacher has voted in line with Trump’s positions more than 93 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, including voting in favor of the GOP health care bill that would effectively end Obamacare. Rohrabacher pushed hard for the bill, warning his GOP colleagues that letting Trump’s first major legislative effort die would stunt the president’s momentum. “If this goes down,” he said in March, “we’re going to be neutering our President Trump. You don’t cut the balls off your bull and expect that’s he’s going to go out and get the job done.” Health care is a hot-button issue in the 48th District, Carey says. “I’ve had conversations with people who are absolutely beside themselves, scared that they’re going to lose coverage.”

While Rohrabacher won his last race in a near-landslide, his district went for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. She won by a slim margin, but it was enough for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to flag the district as a top target to flip in 2018. If the Democrats hope to best Rohrabacher in the midterms, they have a lot of work to do, says Justin Wallin, an Orange County-based pollster who runs an opinion research firm. “I don’t think Dana has carved out a position as a fire-breathing supporter for any political personality except for Ronald Reagan,” says Wallin, referring to Rohrabacher’s early days working in the Reagan White House. “He tends to align quite naturally with that district in his perspectives, his persona, and his political views. His district views him as being independent, and when Dana takes a position on something that seems to be outside the mainstream, that can actually buttress his favorable regard.”

Two Democrats have announced bids to run against Rohrabacher. One is first-time candidate Harley Rouda, a businessman and attorney who gave $9,200 to Republican congressional candidates and nothing to Democrats between 1993 and 2007. The other is Boyd Roberts, a Laguna Beach real estate broker who has vowed to work to impeach Trump and who finished last among five candidates running for a school board seat in Hemet, California, in 2012. Both are attacking Rohrabacher over his sympathetic stance toward Russia. “The district will vote Rohrabacher out because i think there is something with the Russia thing. I think I can raise money off it,” Roberts told the Los Angeles Times. In an online ad, Rouda calls Rohrabacher “one of the most entrenched members of Washington’s establishment” and vows to get “tough on Russia” if he is elected.

“They’re both kind of waving the flag of the Russia thing, and I just don’t think that’s gonna get them over the line,” says Wallin. Carey declined to comment on either candidate, though she says a third challenger will be announcing a bid this summer. Meanwhile, the DCCC hasn’t thrown its backing behind anyone yet. “Barring something dramatic happening, I’d say he is far more safe than a number of other districts in the area,” says Wallin.

Yet Carey thinks that so long as the Democrats continue organizing with the same intensity they’ve shown so far, they can turn the district blue. “We have a lot of folks who said they never paid attention before, a lot of no-party-preference people who are really concerned about democracy,” she says. When asked whether people in the district continue to be engaged, she responds, “So far I think the energy is staying. I tell people, ‘This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.’ But I think as long as Trump keeps tweeting, we’ll keep having interest!”

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Democrats Are Setting Their Sights on "Putin’s Favorite Congressman"

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Quote of the Day: We Need a Better Electorate

by HollyA59bq Posted on June 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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From Jonathan Ladd:

The country would be substantially better off if the electorate penalized parties for nominating inexperienced, uninformed, impulsive, corrupt candidates for president.

Yes. Yes it would.

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Quote of the Day: We Need a Better Electorate

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Look at All the Ways Trump’s Staff Is Avoiding Answering This Basic Question

by KLTAugusta Posted on June 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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Nobody at the White House seems to have asked President Donald Trump about his position on climate change. For years, Trump has been calling global warming a hoax, sometimes alleging that it was invented by China.

So why not just confirm that this is still his opinion? Especially when, after withdrawing the United States from the most important climate deal in history, aides might want to use the opportunity to show that the president understands the basic science.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House press secretary Sean Spicer had several opportunities to share the president’s current thinking on the issue. At Friday’s press briefing, four different reporters asked Pruitt four variations on this basic question from ABC’s Mary Bruce: “Yes or no, does the president believe that climate change is real and a threat to the United States?”

And four different times, Pruitt basically gave this response: “All the discussions we had over the last several weeks was focused on one singular issue: Is Paris good or not for this country?”

But Pruitt isn’t alone. Over the last several days, many of his closest advisers have revealed they spend no time discussing global warming with the president.

At Tuesday’s press briefing, when a reporter asked if Trump believes that human activity contributes to global warming, Spicer replied, “Honestly, I haven’t asked him. I can get back to you.” When he appeared at the podium again on Friday, Spicer still didn’t have an answer.

On Thursday, after the Paris decision was announced, CNN asked Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, whether or not the president believes climate change is real. “You are going to have to ask him,” Cohn responded.

During a press briefing following the Paris announcement, a reporter asked about Trump’s beliefs on climate change. “I have not talked to the president about his personal views on climate change,” a White House official said.

Earlier on Friday, Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway also refused to answer if Trump thinks global warming is a hoax. When pressed by news anchor George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America, she assured him “The president believes in clean environment, clean air, clean water.”

Many of his advisers may not broach climate change with Trump, but recently, K.T. McFarland, his deputy national security adviser, slipped him two Time cover magazine stories about global warming to get the president riled up.

The only problem? One of the stories turned out to be an internet hoax.

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Look at All the Ways Trump’s Staff Is Avoiding Answering This Basic Question

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Samantha Irby Has Some Diet Advice for You: Stay Fat

by NumbersTISP Posted on June 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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Photo of Samantha Irby by Eva Blue

On this week’s episode of the Mother Jones food politics podcast, Bite (you should really subscribe!), we’re talking about fat shaming—and we hear from two amazing writers who try not to internalize all the messages about the importance of being skinny. First up, writer Lindy West, author of the book Shrill and many pieces about body image, including one for the Stranger called “Hello, I Am Fat.” Next, we talk to Samantha Irby, writer of the blog Bitches Gotta Eat and author of the new collection of essays We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Listen to the episode and read a short excerpt from Irby’s book below.

The following is an excerpt from Samantha Irby’s essay “Fuck It, Bitch. Stay Fat.”

Fuck it, bitch. Stay fat.

I mean, isn’t this what we really want to do anyway? Because we already know how one loses weight: eat less and exercise more. Or get surgery. Why are we still playing around with the Oreo diet or the whole-milk-and-unpasteurized-cheese diet or the diet where you still get to eat a pound of pasta?! Either you’re ready to eat vegetables and get on a treadmill, or you are not. And I’m ready. I just lost five pounds and here’s how: for two weeks I quit drinking booze and soda and I stopped eating dessert. I didn’t exercise—someone please tell me how you fit heart-rate-raising exercise into a schedule that includes working a real job and trying to get a good night’s sleep?—but I tried to set reasonable goals like “Don’t order one meat on top of another meat at lunch.”

Cover art provided by Penguin Random House

Dieting is crazy and turns most of us jerks into insufferable babies. Either (1) you’re a crabby asshole on the verge of tears all day long because you’re desperate for a handful of Cheetos, or (2) you’re perched atop a high horse made of fewer than twelve hundred daily calories, glaring down your nose at me and pointing out how much saturated fat is in my unsweetened iced tea. Man, don’t you hate a fat-skinny bitch more than anything else on the planet? You know who I mean—your friend who used to eat mayonnaise straight from the jar but who recently lost twenty pounds doing Whole30 because she was going through a midlife crisis and is now suddenly an expert on health and nutrition, totally qualified to rip the corn dog out of your greasy little clutches. HOLY SHIT, SHUT UP, GIRL. Can’t we all just decide that if you’re over the age of twenty-eight you don’t have to worry about being skinny anymore? Thin is a young woman’s game, and I’m perfectly happy to chill on the bench this quarter with a chili dog. And if I happen to burn a few calories while texting, then great.

Now, let’s not be crazy. Should you work out? Of course you should. But you don’t need some magazine intern cluck­ing at you from behind the computer screen about taking a jog around the block every once in a while. It doesn’t even have to be hard—just go to Curves a few times a week and trade a couple of meals a day for some Special K or a salad (but not the meat-and-cheese kind). And drink water. To make your belly feel full and distract you from how much you would die for a Dove bar. Also running to the bathroom all the time has to qualify as minimal cardiovascular exercise.

The hard part isn’t the knowing what to do, it’s the doing. I just had a yogurt. It had 150 calories in it and 2 grams of fat. I wrote it down in a little notebook full of lies that I keep in my backpack to motivate myself to try to eat better. In theory, that notebook is supposed to hold me accountable for all my food choices so that I can get on a path to better eating. In reality, I willfully ignore its existence every time someone brings a pizza to the office or the nights my friends coax me out to the bar or the entire week I spent in LA pretending I didn’t just vow to end my love affair with cheese. I know what I’m supposed to do; I just need someone to tell me how. Every single day until I die.

Seriously, though, every woman in America is probably an expert on health and exercise based solely upon her subscrip­tion to SELF magazine. Do you really need another article about how important it is to eat a big breakfast full of healthy fats and whole grains to curb afternoon snacking? NO, YOU DO NOT. You need bitches to write about how comfortable maternity jeans are for women who aren’t really pregnant. And sexy ways to remove a bra that has four hooks. I’m always amused when they encourage you to eat “instead” foods, like eating an apple when you really want to rub a bacon cheese­burger all over your boobs is a fair substitute. Why not instead list which ice creams have the least calories, by the pint? Oh, sure, you can tell a woman just to run five miles and take up crafting after she gets dumped by some asshole and her friends won’t call her back because they’re tired of listening to her dissect every single aspect of their relationship (“Do you think we’d still be together if I hadn’t hated on that Flight of the Conchords show in 2009?”), but she’d much prefer knowing whether an entire pint of Talenti has fewer calories than one of Häagen-Dazs. That’s an “instead” a girl could really go for.

The above is an excerpt from WE ARE NEVER MEETING IN REAL LIFE by Samantha Irby. Copyright (c) 2017 by Samantha Irby. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Samantha Irby Has Some Diet Advice for You: Stay Fat

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The Biggest Beneficiaries of "America First" Are . . . Russia and China

by AntonioNPN Posted on June 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is addicted to dramatic announcements, and he’s had a bunch. He killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first day in office. He’s weakened ties with Europe and trashed NATO. He’s cozied up with autocrats and given short shrift to our usual democratic allies. He’s focused all of his attention in Asia on North Korea. Yesterday he pulled out of the Paris climate accord. Who do these actions benefit?

TPP: Mostly China, which was left out of TPP and now has an open road to create its own trading bloc. The benefit to the US is minuscule at best.

NATO: Russia, of course. I assume this needs no explanation?

Paris: Mostly China, which can now take the high ground and bill itself as the global leader in combating climate change. The benefit to America is probably zero or negative.

North Korea: China. They’re pretty obviously stringing Trump along, doling out tiny claims of progress in return for concessions by Trump. I’m guessing their claims in the South China Sea are very safe as long as they keep up this charade with Trump the global bumpkin.

Autocrats: China and Russia, which very much like the idea of the leader of the free world affirming that human rights are for suckers. America gets nothing from this policy of alienating the allies we have in return for kowtowing to autocrats who share no values with us and have no intention of becoming allies.

I’m not saying this is a deliberate policy from Trump. I doubt he really has one. But it’s pretty remarkable that America gets nothing from “America First,” while China and Russia are big beneficiaries.

For a more coherent take on this, check out Max Boot in the LA Times today. He has a pretty clear-eyed read on what’s going on.

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The Biggest Beneficiaries of "America First" Are . . . Russia and China

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Why Is Mick Mulvaney Complaining About CBO’s Score of the Republican Health Care Bill?

by NorbertoSymons2 Posted on June 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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Republicans have a problem. The party of fiscal discipline and a balanced budget really, really wants to pass a tax cut for the rich that will blow up the deficit. Unfortunately, Senate PAYGO rules don’t allow this,1 and Democrats can filibuster any attempt to change those rules.

But there’s a metaphysical issue embedded here: how can you know—really know—that a bill will increase the deficit? That’s like seeing into the future! What godlike intelligence could possibly do that? It’s impossible!

Nonetheless, in our fallen state this task has been given to the Congressional Budget Office. And they have an annoying tendency to produce results that Republicans don’t like. So Trump’s budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, is making the case that we should get rid of the CBO entirely:

“I would do my own studies here at OMB…And other folks would do their studies from the outside. And those would come with their natural biases. The Heritage Foundation comes in and says it’s going to cost a lot. Brookings comes in or the Center for American Progress says the benefits would be great.“

….Asked what would happen in a scenario in which, say, a Democratic administration says a bill costs $500 billion and Heritage Foundation puts out a report saying the same bill would cost trillions, Mulvaney responded, “Then they would do it and if it works, they would get re-elected and if it doesn’t, they don’t. And that was the way it worked before the Congressional Budget Office.”

In other words, there would be no rules at all. You’d just do whatever you wanted, and if you get reelected it must mean you were right. This is a fascinating ontological approach to budget estimation.

But what’s more fascinating is Mulvaney’s pretense that what he’s really upset about is the CBO’s score of the Republican health care bill:

Mulvaney was particularly critical of the CBO’s recent estimate that the House-passed healthcare bill would result in 23 million fewer people with health insurance. He argued that the CBO’s model assumed that the mandate requiring individuals obtain coverage has a lot more influence on people’s decisions than it does in real life.

“Did you see the methodology on that 23 million people getting kicked off their health insurance?” he said. “You recognize of course that they assume that people voluntarily get off of Medicaid? That’s just not defensible. It’s almost as if they went into it and said, ‘Okay, we need this score to look bad. How do we do it?'”

But CBO’s most recent estimate says the health care bill will reduce the deficit by about $100 billion. Mulvaney has no beef with this, nor any reason to be upset about the estimate of 23 million people losing insurance, since that’s the very thing that reduces costs enough to make the bill compliant with PAYGO rules. So why is Mulvaney kvetching about this?

In fact, Mulvaney doesn’t care a fig about AHCA. He’s just preparing the ground for an assault on the CBO when it comes time to score his cherished tax bill. A few years back Republicans finally badgered the CBO into accounting for the “dynamic” effects of tax cuts, but they’ve never been satisfied with CBO’s refusal to use the most fanciful dynamic models, which assume that tax cuts pay for themselves entirely. And CBO is obstinate about this even with a Republican in charge! What to do?

Answer: Get rid of the CBO. But Democrats would filibuster any attempt to do that. So what is Mulvaney up to? Just this: it turns out that the Senate Budget Committee isn’t actually required to use CBO estimates. They always have in the past, but that’s a custom, not a rule. They have the authority to make their own estimates, and all it takes to make them stick is a majority vote in the committee.2

Mulvaney is basically trying to start up a campaign to put some spine into the SBC’s Republican members to ignore the CBO and simply score the tax bill using a model that will pronounce it deficit-neutral. That’s what this is all about.

1The House has no PAYGO rules for tax cuts.

2There are also Byrd Rule problems with the tax cut bill, but Republicans already think they might have a way around those.

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Why Is Mick Mulvaney Complaining About CBO’s Score of the Republican Health Care Bill?

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Today’s Terror Attack Was Fake News

by ToniaHorseman Posted on June 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States:

I would like to begin by addressing the terrorist attack in Manila. We’re closely monitoring the situation and I will continue to give updates if anything happens during this period of time. But it is really very sad as to what’s going on throughout the world with terror. Our thoughts and our prayers are with all of those affected.

What? A terrorist attack in Manila?

Oh. So what was going on?

A masked gunman stormed a hotel-casino complex in the Philippine capital early Friday, shooting up a TV screen, torching gambling tables and stuffing a backpack with casino chips before fleeing, authorities said….A guard was shot during the melee but survived, and more than 70 others suffered mostly minor injuries in a stampede to get away from the gunman, who was wielding an assault rifle.

Within three hours of the violence at the complex near Manila’s airport, police said that they uncovered no ties to terrorism and suggested the motive could have been robbery.

Roger that. As usual, Trump was just making stuff up.

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Today’s Terror Attack Was Fake News

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