A chance at unbanning your grocery bags

[DBP]

Sadly, nothing is ever “a done deal” in Seattle.

Whenever the Council passes a law that pisses someone off – and what law doesn’t piss SOMEONE off? – citizens groups and/or corporations launch a petition to overturn it.

If the people pass a law by initiative, then either the Council invalidates it or some other group ties it up in court.

And then there’s the never-ending tussles between Council and Mayor that can gum up the works at any point in the process of making or implementing a law, as we saw with the viaduct replacement saga.

Whatever happened to the spirit of political compromise? Why do people approach problems from the angle of How can I get everything I want? instead of How can we do the most good for the most people?

I’m for the bag ban, but as someone else pointed out, we just took a vote on this a couple of years ago and a majority of voters said: We want our bags.

In retrospect, I think the Council should’ve let this dog lie.

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[munchkin22]

No, but that was a friend of ours. His heart is in this one. We introduced him to the WS Blog yesterday so we may start seeing his input soon.

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[kootchman]

DPB…making laws, restricting rights, imposing freedom limits should be contentious, long, drawn out things. The City Council rules by fiat… not consent of the governed. We have initiatives as a check on the powers of government. Ya know that wind blows both ways dear blogger… some times the initiatives are disgustingly naive, expensive, (yes, my opinion) however, I tend to settle down and accept the result of an initiative as more representative of the will of the people. Even the stupid ones.

The city council defied the will of the people. We voted against the bag ban and the bag fee. It should have died and we should have moved on to other issues. Remember how we voted DOWN the damn ball stadium 4 times? Yet vested interests kept bribing the city, and they repackaged that turkey until it passed. Wait and see… now we have a basketball team subsidy they will try and sell… do you remember how they did it? I do. They declared a damn ball stadium an “essential service” a clause intended to put waste treatment plants, power stations, bus terminals etc… by eminent domain. Not ball stadiums. Clear abuse of power.

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[JoB]

kootch…

defied the will of the people?

i remember the ads on the bill you think defined the will of the people..

they were anti-tax ads

once again people in washington voted against something that was presented to them as a tax..

from the ads you would have hardly known plastic bags were the issue at all

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[JoB]

Diane..

those cartons your eggs come in have been known to harbor e coli.

but i am guessing that if you move them to another container when you get them home, you simply wash them first.

you can wash your reusable grocery bags too…

i do.

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[metrognome]

I for one am kind of curious who is funding the website ‘Save Our Choice Seattle’ as their is absolutely no info except a PO box and phone number (oh yeah, our buddy and fellow occasional poster FreeRangeAuthor, is id’d as posting info.) I’ve heard that at least some of these petition sites are funded by the petrochemical industry (i.e. plastic bag manufacturers.) Kind of odd to me that it ends in ‘.us’.

Also, the germ issue is a red herring. First, I am confident Seattlites can be educated on the need for washing their reusable bags; after all, we learned to recycle.

Second, here’s a news flash: germs are EVERYWHERE!!!! OMG!!! Seems like every week there is another study published about germs on:

– door knobs and elevator buttons;

– paper currency (and anything over a $20 can get you high if you sniff it);

– water from restaurants, particularly if you have a slice of lemon or, shudder, ice cubes (if you drink it you may not make it to dessert);

– pets;

– children (never ever send your kids to a pre-school, a K-12 school or the pediatrician, esp. if their classmates have pets);

– drinking fountains;

– public restrooms (an article in the PI a few days ago mentioned that something like 80% of changing tables have measurable amounts of cocaine on them)

– pretty much anything that can be touched or breathed on by more than one person.

oh, yeah, and I second what CJB said in post 4. And I pretty much don’t understand anything kootchman said.

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[kootchman]

First. e coli is more virulent today. Meat processing involves massive amounts of antibiotics injected, and laced in feeds. E coli is a disease of congestion and frequency of exposure. In meat plants that can process 1000 tons a day, a small contaminant can be a massive recall. E coli is evolving to live amongst us in the face of antibiotics, hand cleansers etc. You may be fine with it. But young children as you readily point out are little incubators..they bring home all kinds of crap from school… precisely because they have an underdeveloped immune system. Their first e coli attack could be their last. Add immuno compromised, diabetics, AIDS, hepatitis and the aged and you are putting unacceptable number of people at risk. I didn’t think you would metro… that’s why you vote for these things. So the bag industry defends their record of a less polluting, more sanitary. product? Beats a teeny weenie little cabal of rabid dog eco stooges with their little “progressive: meet ups to defy the will of the people behind the scenes with our city council. People like metrognome are typical… they choose not to understand a lot.. and metro. ask any pregnant women..how many DO avoid cats during pregnancy to minimize exposure to taxoplasmosis…quite a few. Water from restaurants treated by UV, chlorine, and ozone processes is not the same as raw organ secretions and blood product from an IBP meat processing plant with cattle from a confined feedlot. And my dear JoB IT WAS a tax initiative.. a very clear message was they wanted to screw us with a bag tax..they just happened to find a way to make it sound “progressive”…and used plastic bags as the medium. Proof of that? Easy…. they sure didn’t put a plastic ban on the ballot again did they? With or without tax… but you know what every voter was thinking when they turned it down? You are pissed at the bag industry because they also pointed out your gospel had flaws .. one being junk science….and the people chose them as more credible. Everytime I start to question the ethics of lobby and PACs …. then I remember.. ya gotta have that counter balance and alternate sources of information and access…cause there is no truth like the truth of a believer…right?We voted the initiative down… that was the expressed will of the people…cheap politics..

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[tjk]

Its not just about plastic bags. Its about the lousy governance we are getting from the mayor and council. Neither has ever seen a budget increase they didn’t love:

After years of raising water rates, they raised the rate again by 18% this past January. Then they turned around in October and raised the rate one more time by 33% to be implemented over the next two years…..a 51% increase in less than a year. When I sent emails to every councilmember and the mayor requesting an explanation only the mayor and two councilmembers bothered to respond. Shortly after they approved the 33% increase, we learned that City Light is poorly run and inefficient. I didn’t need a study to know that……and neither did the council and mayor.

This past year, the King and Seattle councils each raised car tab fees by $20 for a grand total of $40. So what does the mayor do…….he proposed raising the same car tab fee by an additional $60 for unspecified purposes. The mayor apparently thinks we all are part of the 1%.

This past year the mayor and city council raised parking fees throughout the city by a significant amount amidst considerable uproar. These higher fees are hurting small businesses. Do the mayor and council care? Apparently not.

This past year the mayor and council tried to extend a hotel tax that had been set up to pay off certain bonds even though the bonds had finally been paid off. Fortunately, that effort at more taxation was stopped.

Excuse me but this is not responsible management of the city……not by any standard. And Seattle has some serious problems…….like downtown crime, an unemployment rate of 8%, a sizable homeless population, deteriorating infrastructure. These issues need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

So yeah, in a perfect world, charging money for plastic bags, which is still one more tax on the Seattle consumer, may be a great idea. But for me, its just one more example of how this council and mayor like to pander to its eco-friendly constituents by putting in another bike lane or discouraging plastic bag usage………….while never dealing with the real issues, or doing any of the heavy lifting of city government. And its not like Seattle residents don’t already diligently recycle plastic bags.

Frankly, I don’t like getting pandered to………so for that reason I will be signing the petition opposing the plastic bag tax. And then, I will be working to constructively unseat the mayor and councilmembers. Neither have shown they have the ability to run a great city and don’t deserve to be in their current positions.

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[Diane]

agree keetz4 and kootchman

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[munchkin22]

Diane: We second your agree to keetz4 and kootchman. Are you sure you’re a white liberal?

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[Diane]

thank you munchkin22 for best laugh of the day; I needed that

~

yep, it’s true

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[NFiorentini]

1. A “tax” is money that goes to the government. This five-cent fee goes to the merchant for the additional costs incurred by having to purchase, stock, and mess with paper bags. Therefore, calling this fee a “tax” is not accurate.

2. People should research what plastics are capable of out in nature. I recommend starting with a Google Image Search of “plastic bags”. For me, it was difficult to look at pictures of birds and turtles that had swallowed these bags and to *NOT* want to voluntarily change how I shop. I had never used canvas bags until about three years ago and the transition has been super-easy.

3. People should also study the issue and perhaps talk to biologists, especially marine biologists, affiliated with our local colleges and universities. These are people who actually know first-hand what they are talking about, unlike many of the folks here.

Truth and correct information doesn’t always come from those who shout the loudest, have the niftiest soundbites, or who say things in which we already agree. With this issue and many others, truth is most likely to come from the researchers and scientists who have made it their life’s work to investigate nature.

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[kootchman]

Obama plays those semantics. At first Obamacare wasn’t a tax.. remember that? Ah.. then to fortify their argument that Obamacare was a “commerce clause” issue.. it became a tax…paid to private insurance companies. First it was now it isn;t. The left does these things. Nfiorenti.. EXACTLY… we live a a google nation. Fact.. paper pulping is more damaging to the natural environment.. consume more resources, .. it’s all documented. People do “study” these issues… some more so than to google as the extent of their research. All that aside… the decision was made.. by majority vote to not ban plastic and not have a bag tax… there are surprise , surprise conflicting intepretations of the science.. A tax is anything a government forces you you to pay for. Anything they will use the powers of police to enforce .. so…. is it a tax? This wasn’t to reimburse the merchants … please don’t be so naive… it’s a payoff to the merchants, to charge for what they do not now charge us.. to be quiet and not contribute to the repeal effort. It’s more of the same.. crony capitalism… makes no economic sense.. GM, Solyndra, bank bailouts, etc… it it taxing us to make payoffs to silence a polticial opponent… fools.

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[tjk]

Full disclosure: I am a white liberal. You don’t have to be a conservative to be disgusted by poor governance and unnecessary taxation.

To NFiorentini, look up the definition of a tax……the recipient of a tax does not have to be the gov’t. And even if that were true, the charge for the bag as stipulated by the new law does act as a tax to the consumer.

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[JoB]

so once again the conversation focuses on taxes and spending, not on the plastic bags.

do you see a pattern here?

I do.

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[JanS]

talking about bags…want to avoid that bag fee? Take your own bags…how hard is that? Come on, people, this is not rocket science here. You all are acting like someone is threatening your life. It’s 5 cents. If left up to voters every time, the people in this country would pay for nothing, but expect everything. Take your own bags…wash them periodically. It’s not difficult.

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[metrognome]

for y’all who are pushing the germ issue … where do you think those germs come from? Wait for it … from the items you are buying at the store, from the checkout counter, etc. Those same germs are on the food that gets bagged in plastic.

And, plastic bags aren’t free; not to the grocer and not to you, since the store adds their cost to the overhead that gets added to everything you buy. You are already paying for those ‘free’ bags, they just aren’t itemized on your bill. The Morgan Thriftway refunds you .04cents for each bag you bring, so 5cents sounds about right. If they continue that practice, I end up making money.

keetz — I did look up the definition of ‘tax’; you should take your own advice, as every definition I found said that a tax is paid to a government.

JoB — that’s a common neo-conservative propaganda technique; divert the conversation to something marginally related and scream it at the top of your voice until it’s the only thing people hear (to wit, Rush Limbaugh.) Oh, and you have to use the kind of language that disguises what you actually mean. A neo-con would never refer to a ‘tax’ when proposing it; it would be ‘revenue enhancement’; it is only a ‘tax’ when liberals propose it. Neo-conservatives are afraid to discuss the actual issues.

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[JoB]

I can understand the argument that city hall has gone too far…

I can understand the desire not to be further taxed when you see no benefit to the taxation…

but the bag ban is clearly not a tax…

what i don’t hear from those who would fight to the death for their plastic bags:

how they would keep them out of the sound..

did you know that every water sample taken from the sound recently contained minute bits of plastic?

or how they would keep them from jamming the recycling machines

if everyone actually used their plastic bags responsibly,

then perhaps this would be a different conversation..

but they don’t.

the “free” in those plastic bags in nothing more than an illusion…

we pay for them at the grocery

we pay for them in increased recycling costs

and we pay for them environmentally

aside from the marine animal loss due to the ingestion of plastic bags…

there is the floating island of plastic junk that threatens to overtake our oceans..

in this case,

out of sight is not out of mind.

is it perhaps the personal responsibility of bringing and maintaining our own shopping bags that is the real problem here?

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[Diane]

talk about wasteful one time use: “Wrapping paper and holiday cards from the UK could generate enough biofuel to send a bus to the moon and back 20 times!” http://su.pr/89VMBW

by: Inhabitat

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[kootchman]

Sure JoB nothing is free… my god,, from a democrat no less!

the “free” in those plastic bags in nothing more than an illusion…

we pay for them at the grocery

we pay for them in increased recycling costs

and we pay for them environmentally”

That is true,,, bit we pay MORE for paper, They COST MORE to recycle And WM dumps it all in landfills, paper an plastic… AND uncontested by anyone is paper uses more energy and natural resources than plastic…. and who the hell carries reuseable, bags everywhere they go? No one.

A tax on the poor

An increased environmental stress

higher natural resource untilization

least sanitary option

that about sum it up?

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[JanS]

excuse me, but some of us carry reusable bags with us all the time. they fold up into little packets…and women carry them in their purses. Men are at a disadvantage, but don’t make generalized statements, thank you very much..:)

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[oddreality]

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using electricity.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using coffee.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using medications.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using disposable diapers.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using plastic toys.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using rubber soled shoes.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using the shower.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using tires.

The environment is more important than my individual choice about using electronics.

Etc….

Where does it stop??

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[kootchman]

Well I don’t… as a friend of mine so astutely said… they are the condoms of left… carry em wether you are neeed to use em or not… it was funny. Anytime, any government agency, by force of law takes money out of my pocket … it’s a tax.

tax 

noun

1.

a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.

2.

a burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand.

There ya go… Merriam Webster See JoB… and the tax thread that got you in an uproar was a challenge to the comment “it;s not a tax” … au contraire’ .. it is all that.

JoB you are rabidly committed to the notion that the last bag ban turned down by the voters was because it was a tax. Undeniably that was a portion of the measure… as it is part of this one… but reviewing the threads… there is far more wrtten about the junk science, the energy costs, and the sanitation.. and inconvenience. .. this is soooo funny…like if you keep denying it’s a tax, magically it won’t be one. It is.

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[oddreality]

I am a woman and I will not carry those icky things in my purse thank you..Not to mention I need at least a dozen per trip as I do all my shopping at once to save gas.Please do not make those same generalizations you accuse Kootchman of using.Thank you very much.

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[kootchman]

Jan won’t address the issues in a thread… she will ever so carefully glean over a post to find anything she can do to discredit anyone who is not a doctrinaire thnkalike..never a muse about does the counter arguement have some validity. nooooo, that is not Janesque…get used to it…. now, my question is.. Jan.. when or if you become immuno supressed if you aren’t now … and you get an e coli infection…will you assume this city ordnance places an avoidable, and unreasonable risk on your shoulders? e coli is of particular threat to kidneys…. pyelonephritis is an e coli infection of the kidneys and the most common source of kidney infections and scarring.

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