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Republican lawmaker mercilessly mocked after freaking out about California’s straw laws.

Protecting the planet isn’t socialism.

Republican lawmaker mercilessly mocked after freaking out about California’s straw laws.

The world has a massive plastic problem. Currently, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii is twice the size of Texas and is in no signs of shrinking.


According to Strawless Ocean, t’s estimated we use over 500 million plastic straws every day in America, making up a significant part of the nine million tons of plastic trash that ends up in the world’s oceans and coastlines each year.

So reducing the number of plastic straws we use is a pretty darn good idea.

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California recently passed a law that prohibits sit-down restaurants from providing single-use plastic straws unless they’re requested. So customers can either sip out of the side of their cups or use a paper straw.

Heck, if they want a plastic straw all they have to do is ask.

The law is similar to a single-use shopping bag law recently enacted in California where supermarkets now charge for shopping bags. That forces people to either bring their own multiple-use bags or purchase a bag at the store.

Although it’s still too early to gauge the California ban’s effectiveness, similar policies have reduced plastic bag use by 70 to 80%.

Republican California Representative Devin Nunes lost his mind recently when a server had the nerve to ask him if he wanted a plastic straw. “At restaurant tonight waitress asks if we want straws,” he tweeted. “Says she has to ask now in fear of “THE STRAW POLICE”. Welcome to Socialism in California!”

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First of all, a law that doesn’t ban plastic straws outright, but kills the knee-jerk reaction to slip a straw in every beverage isn’t socialist.

However, some of America’s most popular government programs are socialist, from social security to medicare to publicly-funded schools and police. The U.S. military is essentially a socialist program where government employees are provided with free healthcare, living arrangements, food, and retirement benefits.

After his tweet, Nunes got dragged pretty hard for not knowing what socialism really means.

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Then he got slammed because his family takes government farm subsidies. Government handouts? Sounds socialist.

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And then he got burned because single-use plastics are a pretty damn big problem.

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Amongst all of the tweet-flaming, somebody posted a pretty great solution to the plastic straw problem.

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