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West-Coast Nannyism
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008The Governator signs a trans-fat ban for all of Cal-ee-fornia.
Meanwhile, Seattle slaps a 20-cent tax on plastic bags, and bans foam packaging at fast food restaurants.
16 Responses to “West-Coast Nannyism”
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I suggest we ban water ,it’s been the main cause of death in several cases just by drinking too much at once.It doesn’t take years like trans fat.In truth there are no bad foods( unless their spoiled),just eat the right amount.On another point,it’s almost impossible to live you life and not break a law
For a nice thought excercise, I Googled some bulk grocery plastic bag prices. Most o fthem ran between .7 – .9 of a cent…so, going with the smaller number which I am sure the large supermarkets have at least that pricing level, the 20 Cent “fee” the city will implement is a 2,850% TAX. WOW. Of course, its “voluntary”.
From the “Seattle approves bag fee and foam ban” article:
The city will distribute at least one free reusable bag per household, and it will consider providing more free bags to low-income shoppers.
How tender is the city’s concern and how thorough is it’s planning. So many people have neither a bag nor any way to obtain one except through the grateful acceptance of one provided and delivered to their door freely at tax-payers’ expense. The poor, of course, are apt to have greater needs than most and the city will not forget them.
I wonder if the average food stamp recipient or section eight tenant will be able to flip open the phone and say: “Hey, we gettin ready to run to the corner. Could you bring us over 2, maybe 3 bags? Hurry up and just meet us down at the store with them and we send one of the kids out to get ‘em. Thank you so much.”
And some people worry that the $0.20 per non-city-supplied bag tax might not be really really really needed for a very very good cause.
Trans fats. Wasn’t it just a few years ago, mebbe about 20 years that it was these same types of people who pushed, petitioned, protested restaurants to get away from the “unhealthy” animal fats and go with the much healthier……..vegetable oils?
*shrug*
He said the association has no plans to challenge the law, in part because restaurants already are phasing out trans fats to satisfy customers.
But god forbid we just let the market take care of anything! I mean, if we did that, then people might have choices! And if they had choices, they might make the wrong one! Best just to eliminate choice altogether. The CA Legislature knows best.
“The Market” has had plenty of time to deal with the litter problem from plastic bags and foam containers from fast food restaurants. It failed, so now its time for non-market solutions.
…Seattle slaps a 20-cent tax on plastic bags…
Funny tangentially related story… There was just an article in the Chicago Tribune last week about a farmer who recently started charging $0.25/four bags at a local farmer’s market. It was hilarious to hear all these supposedly “green” market patrons bitching and moaning about shelling out a quarter instead of bringing their own damn bags.
““The Market” has had plenty of time to deal with the litter problem from plastic bags and foam containers from fast food restaurants. It failed, so now its time for non-market solutions.”
The market can’t make people be nice. So now they’ll just be littering with bags and containers that use up far more resources and energy. What a great idea!
bobzbob,so,companies make a product that works and is popular.Some people misuse is and they punish the seller?Sins of the father?
Seattle steals ALL its ideas from “the market”. The market was voluntarily making the switch to non-smoking, but the government was not to be out done. Every supermarket I shop at was slangin’ reusable bags like there was no tomorrow, but, to impress the liberal clique, our overwhelmingly Democratic city council couldn’t pass up the opportunity for unnecessary legislation.
It is for this reason that I proudly live *just outside* Seattle. I still enjoy all the beauty of the area and all the convenience of urban living, but, frankly, I have enough to worry about at the state level to be dealing with Seattle’s asinine, self-righteous policy as well.
Athena, if you aren’t part of the solution you must be part of the ……..
if you aren’t part of the solution you must be part of the…
Precipitate.
I don’t like the idea of eating trans-fats. But I also dislike the idea of randomly banning things. I mean the war on drugs has been a failure, are we going to have an underground market for hydrogenated oils now?
I would gladly eat food fried in beef-tallow or a pure oil over hydrogenated vegetable shortening. I guess what it really comes down to is restaurants use this crap because it is cheap.
So fuck-um I guess. Pass the ban nation-wide. If it causes some restaurants to close because they cant afford friar grease, that would probably be a good thing!
Isn’t taxing plastic bags a market solution. If plastic bags cause a significant portion of litter, and I believe they do, doesn’t taxing the bags give the end user the option to opt out of the tax by not using them? Isn’t this a more libertarian solution then using general tax revenue to clean up litter? I would prefer a specific user tax.
Someone is going to suggest heightened enforcement of existing litter laws, but wouldn’t that in the end also be a drain on general tax revenue for more law enforcement, when the cops could be better spending their time delivering body blows to unsuspecting cyclists.
“Someone is going to suggest heightened enforcement of existing litter laws, but wouldn’t that in the end also be a drain on general tax revenue for more law enforcement,”
Instead of heightened enforcement, what about leaving the litter problem up to the INDIVIDUAL, like good libertarians? Just imagine, if instead of allowing the GOVERNMENT and local municipalities to decide where we could put our trash, we took its fate into our own hands and could just toss it wherever the hell we please!
Or better yet, if we took responsibility, as INDIVIDUALS to dispose of our trash appropriately, instead of allowing our precious tax dollars to be squandered away on taking care of someone else’s trash. I can see the backyard landfills piling up now, in time overtaking all those beautifully landscaped suburban neighborhoods. Maybe then, reusable bags won’t seem like such a bad idea.
If only.
I am so sick of the PTB’s (powers that be) telling me what I should and shouldn’t do because it’s unhealthy. These are the same people who decided that eggs were bad (opps we made a mistake they’re not), sugar was bad (another mistake) but allowed factory farms to feed cows..cow meat…which they now think caused Mad Cow disease! These same people set up stupid laws to “track” animals owned by small farms but allow meat contaminated with feces to be served to us.
Yet they don’t seem to care about the things that are their business.
I don’t see them worrying about the stress they cause with all their crap. Stress is much worse for you then fats, sugar, or even being overweight.
They push drugs to fix problems that weren’t problems in the past (acid reflux, ADD, shyness, little boys kissing little girls…little girls showing little boys their underwear, implosive temper disorder, chronic constipation {apparently you’re supposed to go every day…what happened to people being individuals?} I could write a book on this.
I notice they don’t worry about the fact that many people have to work 2 jobs (both mom and dad) to keep their heads above water. Or that we have a generation of kids who can’t read but can pass the national “no kid left behind” test or kids that have no clue that you can lose and still live. What are these kids going to do when they get fired from their job because they asked the boss why they had to do something?
What about the number of people who kill themselves because insurance companies are allowed to “not approve but not deny” care? Or the fact that our government wastes so much of out tax dollars? Or the fact we have a unemployment rate that doesn’t really reflect the number of unemployed or an inflation index that has no food, gas, and other things that we must have to live included?
Are they worried about the number of American jobs they allowed, no encouraged CEO’s to outsource to other countries? What about the fact that they give unlimited power to banks and credit companies and essentially created the “housing crisis”.
What about the money that was extorted from the cigarette companies under the guise it was going to be used for the upcoming health issues of smokers yet was wasted on tons of other crap?