Vladimir Putin’s Cheesy Act of Defiance
The United States and European Union have been squeezing Russia with sanctions since it annexed Crimea, a territory that previously belonged to Ukraine, in March 2014. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin established a ban on U.S. and EU foodstuffs a few months later as a snub to the West.
On Thursday, Russia commemorated a tightening of that year-old ban on Western agricultural products by bulldozing bright yellow blocks of cheese. The country also streamrolled fruit and set piles of bacon ablaze. By midday, 28 metric tons of apples and tomatoes from Poland had been demolished, as well as 40 tons of apricots from an unknown country, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Related: Move Over, Santa: Putin Claims the North Pole
The Western sanctions and a plunging ruble have caused Russian food prices to spike this year. Some politicians, religious leaders and other Russian citizens denounced the destruction of the food, noting that millions of Russians are living in poverty. More than 285,000 people signed an online petition that asked Putin to distribute the food rather than destroy it.
The Kremlin has promised to help develop Russia’s own agricultural industries and to promote domestic food products that the middle-class generally ignore in supermarkets in favor of status symbols like French cheese and Italian meat. In addition, the Kremlin announced that any contraband foodstuffs found would be destroyed. Russia’s Agricultural Minister Alexander Tkachyov said on state TV that the quality of Western food products could no longer be guaranteed.
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Stat of the Day: 0.2%
The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”
Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.
Number of the Day: 44%
The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”
Number of the Day: 4,229
The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”
The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.
Number of the Day: $3 Billion
A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”
Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs
President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.
