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Whatever

RFK Jr COVID vaccination mess is only the beginning…your food is next

The country is trying to deal with the CDC breakdown this last week, with limited COVID vaccination access and important CDC personnel quitting because they refuse to lie or to issue recommendations they know are bogus and harmful.

This follows the tragic shooting at the CDC by a man who bought into the lies about the COVID vaccination. A police officer was killed in the shooting…an event the President still has not acknowledged.

Now, thanks to Secretary Kennedy (RFK Jr) many people who could get the new COVID  vaccinations can’t, because they’re only allowing the vaccinations for those over 65 or those who are at higher risk. Kids under 5 can get a vaccination if their pediatrician approves. In my own state of Georgia, which has a requirement that vaccines be recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunizations (ACIP) and the CDC, you can’t get  the new COVID vaccination without a prescription at any pharmacy regardless of your age and health.

Normally ACIP would have met by now, but RFK Jr has fired all previous members, and now Senator Cassidy doesn’t want the meeting to happen at all because he’s concerned about what happens to vaccines once a group of quacks get their hands on them. Perhaps he should have considered this before voting to confirm RFK Jr to head the HHS.

The situation with COVID vaccinations, and vaccinations in general, is chaotic. But wait…there’s more.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans

Every five years, the USDA and the HHS release a document, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The document is updated and revised from previous releases based on recommendations from a federal advisory committee made up of nutritional and medical experts.

The committee’s recommendations for the new guidelines, due to be published this year, were delivered to RFK Jr and then just…disappeared.

The Guideline recommendations are in limbo, and one member of the recommending committee, Christopher Gardner, believes it’s because the recommendations didn’t tackle ultra-processed foods. But there’s reasons for this and one reason is that not all ultra-processed foods have an affordable replacement. Telling schools they have to use tomato sauce that contains no HFCS and costs twice as much, as compared to tomato sauce that has a small amount of HFCS is a tough sell with schools with tight budgets. Especially when those budgets have been cut by the current administration.

And try telling people on a fixed income who live in neighborhoods that are food deserts that they should be eating only whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean meats or fish. A goal for a lot of people is they just don’t want to go to bed hungry—a situation neither of the wealthy-born RFK Jr and Trump has ever had to face.

Another reason the guidelines don’t focus on ultra-processed foods is not all ultra-processed foods are bad. It really depends on what you mean by ‘ultra-processed’.

There is a classification of foods based on their processing: The NOVA Food Classification System. It lists foods as minimally processed (Group 1), processed culinary (Group 2), processed (Group 3), and ultra-processed (Group 4). The latter is differentiated by the others by combining multiple ingredients, including those from Group 2, and incorporating additives to enhance flavor or shelf life. It also typically uses enhanced food production techniques.

Think corn, corn oil, canned corn, and corn chips. It’s the chips that are the bad guys.

But, wait a sec…if corn oil is ‘OK’ what about corn syrup? Or the baddy of all, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)?

Then this is where things start to get a bit trickier. It’s not just the ingredients, but how those ingredients are manufactured that can make the difference between  Group 2 processed (corn syrup) and Group 4 ultra-processed (HFCS)). The latter is considered ultra-processed because some of the glucose from corn starch used to create corn syrup is enzymatically converted to fructose.

So, it’s not just the ingredients but also the processing that’s being targeted.

Well, not quite.

The Kessler Petition

Early in August, a former FDA chief, David Kessler, petitioned the FDA to revote GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe” designation from certain refined, processed food products to force the makers to either successfully petition to continue using the product or remove it, entirely. Specifically, he targeted refined carbohydrates.

One of the ingredients Kessler wants to dump is corn syrup, yet corn syrup is considered a Group 2 processed food in the NOVA classification, not Group 4 ultra-processed. It’s corn from the minimally processed food group (Group 1) that is further refined using milling. It’s definitely something you can buy, and use, from the grocery store.

And this is where things get confusing, because Kessler is fine with people buying corn syrup in the store. So, on the one hand, I can use corn syrup when making bread at home; on the other, I can’t buy commercially made bread that uses corn syrup as an ingredient.

Kessler also targeted refined flours and starches using extrusion technology. The problem with removing GRAS on this food technique is it’s also used to incorporate vitamins and minerals into flour and starch products, such as vitamin enriched breads. One use of extrusion is being explored as a way of making rice more nutritional, since rice is such a main staple throughout the world. It’s also the primary technology behind plant-based milks, which have become a popular nutritional replacement for dairy milk. In fact, extrusion can make dairy milk healthier.

This demonstrates that the problem with going after ‘ultra-processed’ foods is we don’t really understand what this term encompasses, and by its very nature, it’s too vague to be useful. Because of this vagueness, we might get rid of ‘bad’ food, but we also could eliminate good food, too.

Though it’s been crippled by budget cuts and firings, the National Institutes of Health still maintains a medical library that carries a paper by Allen Levine and Job Ubbink. Published in the Obesity Science and Practice journal it touches on the complicated problems with defining ultra-processed foods based solely on the processes used.

Group 4 products are not necessarily unhealthy. Infant formula, an often‐quoted example… can sustain newborn babies in the first half year of their lives, when breast milk is unavailable and is considered safe and nutritious. The verdict on the health impact of meat analogs based on plant proteins is still out, as many are formulated with high salt and saturated fat contents but there is no reason they cannot be formulated with acceptable amounts of salt and saturated fats next to a high protein and fiber content and thus fit in a healthy diet in addition to being animal friendly and more sustainable than meat.

This confusion about ultra-processed and what it means and when is it good versus bad is why the Dietary Guidelines for Americans don’t incorporate restrictions against ultra-processing; preferring to focus more on clear food choices organizations and people can easily understand.

Kessler’s recommendations are a mashup of NOVA categorized processed and ultra-processed foods, some based on their use, others based on how they’re created, and even others based on whether the use is personal or commercial. Except that he’s incorporating a procedure (a petition to revoke GRAS designation) that would result in a catastrophic and sudden undermining of our food system with seeming little concern for the short or even long-term consequences.

And all indicators show he has a receptive audience in RFK Jr.

Ominous nutritional clouds on the horizon

I mention the Kessler petition because I believe that RFK Jr is going to use this petition to give credibility to his own ideological biases to redefine The Dietary Guidelines for Americans. And this will not be a good thing.

RFK Jr ignored the advisory committee’s recommendations and has claimed the new Guidelines will only be a few pages, four at most. The problem is, the Guidelines themselves are not intended for a general audience, they’re intended to provide the scientific basis for all of the recommendations. In other words: they’re not used by parents to determine what milk to buy for their kids, but for schools as justification for the type of milk they serve. It is the summaries contained within the guidelines that are released to the public. To remove all of this in order to just provide a simplified push for a few foods removes all transparency to any decision made in the guidelines.

Why is this harmful? After all, we’ve had years of ignoring the Guidelines and can continue doing so.

It’s harmful in how the Guidelines can impact on what foods are accessible. For instance, the Guidelines can be used to define what food can be purchased with SNAP funds, or that schools have to serve for meals. Eliminating ‘ultra-processed’ foods, especially when we don’t have a clear understanding of what this term even means will eliminate a whole lot of affordable food options for most folk. That school tomato sauce purchase is a good example.

And what about ‘good’ ultra-processed foods, like some forms of yogurts, enriched flour, or plant-based meats and milks? These can be nutritionally superior to minimally processed alternatives but the processes used for them would become taboo.

I suspect even something as essential as the peanut-based paste used to feed kids in starving countries would fail any ultra-processed test RFK Jr would provide.  And the sensible recommendations for listing beans, peas, and legumes as a protein source will die a quick death in favor of raw milk and beef fat.

The impact on the Dietary Guidelines could be bad, but worse would be for RFK Jr to actually act on Kelling’s petition. Combined with the Trump immigration effort’s impact on the food industry and the Congressional budget cuts for SNAP, we could be heading into times when price of eggs is the least of our concerns.

Will we survive?

Will we survive RFK Jr’s interventions on vaccinations and food? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, but it won’t be easy and will be a battle every day until he’s gone. And the sadder answer is yes, but not all of us.

We can be reasonably sure that any food producer impacted by an RFK Jr version of dietary guideline or GRAS reversal would tie any such decision in court for years. It’s one thing to ask ice cream companies to remove artificial dyes from ice cream; it’s another to completely toss plant-based milks, baby formula, corn syrup, or foods with shelf stabilizers.

And it’s impossible to turn an entire populace back into primitive hunter/gatherers.

And therein is our tiny path to salvation: RFK Jr’s “my way or the highway” form of decision making will undermine whatever he attempts. He’s a fruitcake with fruitcake ideas and absolutely no guardrails to stop him. Trump isn’t stopping him, Congressional Republicans aren’t stopping him, and the talking heads are just chanting “Go Bobby Go!”

But it’s the obvious badness about his arbitrary decisions we can use, both as a target to fight and a rallying cry.

In the last few days, blue states like New Mexico, Illinois,  and others are looking at what they can do to ensure citizens have access to COVID vaccinations:

Pritzker’s health department in Illinois is currently exploring the possibility of purchasing Covid-19 vaccines in bulk straight from manufacturers in response to the mess in Washington, a senior Illinois health official confirms to me. Meanwhile, a coalition of mostly-blue states led by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is planning to coordinate on the purchase and distribution of pediatric vaccines, should the federal government restrict access to them, according to a source familiar with ongoing discussions. This will likely include big states like New York and Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately, though, the fact that only blue states are acting leaves significant numbers of people living in red states that will offered something like ivermectin, instead, and a whole lot of folk will end up dying.

Like I said RFK Jr can be survived…but not by everyone.

 

header image courtesy heaute.at via CC by 4.0 

 

 

Categories
Browsers Burningbird Technology Web

Rebooting Weblogging?

I haven’t been out to scripting.com for a long time, and was surprised to find Dave is not using https. Of course, the page I tried to access (on rebooting weblogging) triggered a warning in my browser. It triggers a warning in any browser, but some are more severe than others.

There were issues with https and having to pay fees for SSL certs, but that all changed with LetsEncrypt. And the load on the server is nothing nowadays. Is it necessary to use https? Not always. But is it worth the pain in the butt people have to go through trying to access my page without it? Nope. I want people here. I like people here.

Hi, you.

(I wrote about my transition from http to https.)

Dave sent me a link on why he doesn’t support https, but I don’t know that Google Is Evil is really justification. You scratch anything and you’ll find someone or something somewhere acting evil from one perspective or another.

I went from http to https and I didn’t break the web with 404s. What broke the web is my determination to use as many domains as I possibly could for one person before I finally wised up and stuck with burningbird.net.

There are not enough redirects in the world to ‘fix’ all the 404s my domain experimentation has wrought. I think I made the folks at the Wayback Machine cry.

The thing for me is, it’s more important to write than get caught up on the tech. Today, there is no tech hill I’m willing to die on, because I’m more focused on not getting discouraged, not giving up on the weblog, continuing to write. That’s why I duplicate my weblog posts on Substack: it’s an easy way of offering email notifications and good comment control.

Yeah, yeah, it’s evil, too.

You know what’s really evil? The fact that I can’t get a covid vaccination right now because RFK Jr has mucked everything up. That trans people are having to cower in fear. That hard working migrants are running screaming from hooded thugs and being sent to gulags in other countries. That we have a President bent on destroying the country.

Google’s push for https doesn’t reach pebble-size on this mountain.

The medium isn’t the goal, it’s just a means. I paid my tech dues in the past, and I want to do other things now.

Anyway, here’s Dave’s reasoning on not using https. Note, this is served using https.

https://this.how/googleAndHttp/

Categories
Environment People Savannah

International Paper is closing in Savannah. Good.

No community likes to lose jobs, and the 1100 jobs lost with International Paper closing two mills in the Savannah area is going to be painful.

But let’s stop pretending that International Paper has been a good neighbor, because this just isn’t true.

International Paper has been one of the largest industrial users of water in our area, and one of the largest drawing down on the Florida Aquifer. This, at a time when water use is becoming problematic in our community…if the recent boil water order Savannah suffered didn’t properly catch all of our attention.

According to an article in The Current in 2024, IP pulls 12 million gallons of water from the Floridan aquifer every single day. That’s 12 million gallons of water that could go to homes, rather than river water currently being utilized.

Why doesn’t IP use the river water? Because it costs money to treat this water, and why spend the money when the aquifer water is so accessible and so pristine? However, it is the nature of this water that makes it more ideal for human consumption.

“This region is growing,” said Ben Kirsch, legal director of the Ogeechee Riverkeeper. “There’s more people coming in, and those people are going to need water, and it’s a prioritization of how the aquifer is used. The aquifer needs very little treating. It’s pristine water, and we really think that it should be used for human uses, whether that’s for domestic supply or for agriculture.”

 

“We want to sustain the aquifer. We want to see it start to recover, and as you draw millions of gallons a day out of it. You’re not necessarily helping it. That’s not helping it recover.”

In addition, IP manages to also pollute the water it really doesn’t want to use.

International Paper Company faces nearly $28,000 in state fines for discharging wastewater with unacceptable levels of potential fecal material from its Port Wentworth mill into the Savannah River over a six-month period in 2023, according to an order made public by Georgia environmental officials Monday.

 

The penalty also would apply to the unauthorized release in December of nearly 185,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater into a storm drain and ultimately into the river, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division noted in the document.

Not just the water, IP also pollutes the air, as so many of us know when the wind runs from a certain direction.

In 2022, International Paper’s northwest Savannah mill released more than 367,000 metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data shows. That’s 84% more than the county’s second-leading carbon polluter, the U.S. Sugar Savannah Refinery, and the equivalent of what nearly 83,000 gas-powered vehicles would emit over the course of a year, according to the EPA.

 

Carbon dioxide is the leading contributor to human-caused climate change.

 

International Paper’s Port Wentworth mill is fifth on the county’s list of greenhouse gas polluters. That facility emits more than 95,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

 

Combined, the two Chatham plants – with machinery powered by burning natural gas and wood – release the equivalent of carbon emissions generated in more than 1.2 million miles of travel by a typical vehicle with a combustion engine, according to EPA.

An interesting thing about that article I just linked: it’s about a taxpayer bond issue giving IP $130 million dollars to expand the plant.

A deal finalized with local officials this week positions Chatham County’s largest greenhouse gas polluter – and source of the city’s infamous sulfur smell – to significantly increase production at its Savannah-area facilities.

 

The Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) on Tuesday approved issuing $130 million in bonds to “finance the costs of certain machinery, equipment and other personal property” at International Paper Company’s Savannah and Port Wentworth mills.

 

The Chatham County Board of Commissioners signed off on the deal late last year.

Of course, this all happened before IP decided to close down the Savannah-area plants in favor of a new plant in Alabama, where it will likely face less pesky oversight than in Georgia. And I’m sure the local area there offered even better deals than a measly $130 million dollars.

No one wants to hear of people losing jobs. Though it helps to know that unemployment is very low in our area, and we have a robust economy with multiple major employers, it’s difficult for people who have worked for the same company for decades to transition to another employer.

At the same time, though, it’s disingenuous to indulge in maudlin reminisces of the history of a company who basically can’t wait to kick the dirt of coastal Georgia from its shoes. IP likely knew that they would be closing these mills long before the announcement. Not providing more notice to its employees is the mark of a large, soulless corporation, not a small town hero.

Good-bye, good riddance, and now let’s worry about the people.

Update: Savannah Agenda has a good piece on the bond mentioned earlier.

Categories
Government

Georgians: About that email you received from Social Security…

I’m retired, and as such, an important segment of my income comes from Social Security. If you’re a retired US citizen, chances are Social Security is important to you, too.

As a Social Security recipient, I occasionally get emails from the Social Security Administration (SSA) with important information, such as a new benefit letter is available for the coming year, or Social Security tax documents are ready.

I was surprised to receive an email from the Social Security Administration a couple of days ago with the following bold headline

Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors

Evidently, Trump’s administration had decided the best way to obscure the fact that tens of millions of people, including many seniors, are going to lose both healthcare and food assistance is to focus on one component of the bill they claim will be a savior for seniors.

I can assure you, my fellow Georgians: it’s not.

What was included in that monster bill just passed was a provision to provide an additional $6000.00 tax deduction to seniors that will apply only in the years 2025-2028.

Currently, we don’t pay taxes on Social Security if our incomes fall below $25,000 for an individual and $32,000 for a couple. Roughly 50 percent of Social Security recipients have income less than these upper limits and don’t pay income tax. In fact, many people don’t even have to file with the IRS annually because their income is too low.

Taxation on Social Security is relatively new (passed in legislation in 1984) and came about as a way to bolster dwindling Social Security and Medical trust funds. All of the money that comes from taxing Social Security income goes directly to these trust funds.

By increasing the standard deduction for seniors, Congressional Republicans have provided some additional income for middle and higher-income Social Security recipients, and will increase the numbers that don’t have to pay taxes. However, the amount seniors receive is relatively negligible.

According to the Tax Foundation, if all taxes for Social Security were eliminated, those in the 60-80% income percentiles would receive an additional 0.9 percent in income. With the increased deduction, these folks will  receive an additional 0.3 percent. The White House touts number of people who won’t have to pay any income tax, but most of these folks have to pay very little anyway. As the Tax Foundation notes:

Overall, the increased senior deduction with the phaseout would deliver a larger tax cut to lower-middle- and middle-income taxpayers compared to exempting all Social Security benefits from income taxation and would not weaken the trust funds as much. But given the temporary nature of the policy, it would increase the deficit-impact of the reconciliation bills without boosting long-run economic growth.

Both the additional amount seniors will receive and the temporary nature of the deduction combine to negate any lasting positive impact of the new deduction. However, there is a lasting negative impact on the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

According to a report in Fox Business:

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) estimated that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s tax policy changes would result in those depletion dates moving up from early 2033 to late 2032 for Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund and from late 2033 to mid-2032 for Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund.

The deduction for seniors is nothing but smoke and mirrors, but it’s smoke and mirrors that actually increases the vulnerability of seniors in the long run.

Tax Foundation: How Would the Proposed Additional Senior Deduction Compare to No Tax on Social Security?

Fox Business: Experts warn Senate tax bill accelerates Medicare and Social Security insolvency dates

Categories
Government Political

Dear Buddy – No Kings edition

Dear Buddy,

Long time, no see. Since I last touched base with you, democracy was kidnapped off the street, put in handcuffs, and hauled off by both National Guard and Marines. Lawyers are frantically working to ensure it doesn’t get shipped off to El Salvador, or some place with an active volcano.

The people rose up across the country and all 50 states—yes, even the Republican ones—in protest at democracy’s treatment. Why people even showed up in your district, which is kind of ironic, considering you never do.

Why all of the protests?

You see, we’re used to the National Guard showing up when our homes flood or get burned down to the ground, and we’re vulnerable and scared, and they look like saviors sent from on high to help us try to return to normalcy. They find us in the debris and they rescue us from rivers and bring us food and water and comfort.

We’re not used to seeing National Guard surround a bevy of masked government agents in street clothes, themselves surrounding a single frightened man, or young child screaming in terror.

Of course, the National Guard troops aren’t used to it, either. They’re used to being welcomed with open arms—and pizza—not cold stares and terrified tears. I have a suspicion they don’t like it and may rethink their membership in the Guard because of it.

As for the Marines, well…the photo of a US citizen being detained by Marines looks familiar. Didn’t I see the same thing in photos in Pravda? I’m sure it must have been some Russian newspaper or another, because I know I’ve certainly never seen anything like that here, in the United States.

Active duty soldiers being turned loose on the people in this country. The idea is so outlandish, I’m sure it will become the plot of some book or movie. Probably one that doesn’t have a happy ending.

Before I continue with improbable movie plots,  I did hear you’re running to be Senator of our state. I find this a little odd, though. I mean, if you find it so hard to meet with people in your smaller  Congressional district, how are you going to meet with the people of the entire state? And I don’t think showing up at luncheons for Republican women really counts, do you?

But I digress…this isn’t about your political chances, or thoughts of hell freezing over. This is about democracy. The small ‘d’ kind. The kind that once upon a time, it seemed both parties supported. Oh, the parties had differences of opinions on exactly what the support entailed, but I’m pretty sure that activating 4000 National Guard and 700 Marines because of a couple of hundred protestors was not on anyone’s Bingo card.

What happened to you, Buddy, so that you’d turn a blind eye to all of this? Are you so lost in reaching for political power that you forgot that with great power comes great responsibility?

Oh darn, now I know that last line was from some book or movie, but I don’t care, because it’s true: power must be tempered by responsibility.

The power of a leader is not in how much money they get, or how many tanks they can roll down the street; it’s not measured in numbers of federal employees fired, or scared hardworking immigrants sent to torture chamber in another country; it’s certainly not measured in how many American people can be cowered or suppressed. The power of a leader is how much of a force for good they are for the people as a whole. Not just some people, not just rich people, not just people of one race and religion, and not just people who belong to a certain party.

To all of us.

Buddy, I want you to listen carefully to what I say, because it’s more important than introducing bills to create a committee of 13 people whose sole purpose is to investigate the mental health of a man who is no longer President.

The true power of a leader is directly proportional to the people’s own power over that leader. A truly great leader is a servant, not a king.