March 28, 2007
“Look…
… at the communist friends you left” was the subject line of an email I received from my friend Jeff. Jeff is not a politics person at all, so coming from him, that statement says a lot.
He was referring, of course, to my having left San Francisco nearly a year and a half ago, and in his email he linked to this article.
SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) — San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to become the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets to help promote recycling.
Under the legislation, beginning in six months large supermarkets and drugstores will not be allowed to offer plastic bags made from petroleum products.
Naturally, the alternatives will be more expensive for the stores, which means they’ll have to commute the cost of the bags to the consumer. Granted, there are legions of good little liberal “friends of the library” types in their tweed outfits in San Francisco who already bring their own totes to the grocery store, the same ones who make their little five dollar donations to causes they believe in while demanding that all citizens be forced to contribute through our taxes.
What do you bet that the “free” bags city supervisor (that’s what they call a city councilman in San Francisco) Ross Mirkarimi hands out in the video linked in the article were paid for out of city tax money?
As a matter of note, while I still lived there, city supervisors were considered as having part time jobs, and were paid a little under $40,000.00 a year as such. We voted their office to full time status and their salaries were raised to somewhere in the vicinity of $115,000.00 a year, but all that seems to have done was provide them the incentive to expand the boundaries of their leftism.
“I am hopeful that other U.S. cities will also adopt similar legislation,” he said. “Why wait for the federal government to enact legislation that gets to the core of this problem when local governments can just step up to the plate?”
There they go again — “let’s make this a federal case. After all, isn’t it the U.S. Government’s job to become involved in and make laws out of our every whim? Screw the War On Terror, second only to Wal-Mart these plastic bags are the real menace to our country!”
The city’s Department of the Environment said San Francisco uses 181 million plastic grocery bags annually. Plans dating back a decade to encourage recycling of the bags have largely failed, with shoppers returning just one percent of bags, said department spokesman Mark Westland.
Well, Mark, perhaps the shoppers have more pressing issues in their lives than the frantic need to recycle those flimsy grocery bags, or perhaps a large number of these folks use them for garbage or for hanging storage in their tool sheds.
Here’s a city whose streets and sidewalks, even with entire brigades of welfare people sweeping them every day, are perpetually filthy and filled with litter, lined by aggressive panhandlers and drug dealers who sell their products openly while an entire subculture of trashy Goth street people, winos and dopers use the sidewalks unrestrictedly as an open air living room with whatever doorways are handy as restrooms, doing so with total impunity…
…and the city’s political leaders are more concerned with plastic grocery bags.
San Francisco’s mismanagement is the prototype of what we can expect if liberals ever have complete control of the nation.
I have no regrets whatsoever about having moved far away from that leftist hell hole….
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=647
March 29th, 2007 at 5:34 am
Seth,
Off topic….I’ve given you the Thinking Blogger Award!
March 29th, 2007 at 6:27 am
AOW –
Why thank you, I’m flattered, especially as this comes from as profound a thinker as you are.
I’ll be spending tonight at the Sheraton near the airport, handy to leaping on a plane to Chicago tomorrow (Seth: The Journey Begins), and will begin my own narrowing down for 5 Thinking Blogger Awards.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:22 am
The “Thinking Blogger Award!” Good going, Seth!
I’m one of those people who use plastic bags for garbage and also for what I scoop out of the kitty-litter box, and we know what that is; I’d like to send San Francisco’s city supervisor’s a few packages of that stuff! Wasn’t it the enviro-nuts who forced everyone to go to plastic in the first place because paper bags meant cutting down trees - while completely ignoring the fact that trees are a crop, of course. It must be whatever drugs they’re taking.
Another thing and a bit off-topic; perhaps drugs is why San Francisco has laid out the welcome mat to illegal immigrants. They don’t want their supply to be cut off!
March 29th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Gayle –
The stuff you scoop out of the kitty-litter box is probably of more value to society as a whole than the sum total of spewage that comes from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
The same nuts that pushed us from paper to plastic were the idiots that are now attacking plastic. So they’ll take us to burlap or whatever, then in a few years discover that burlap causes friction as it moves through the air and is depleting the ozone layer, and demand that we start carrying our groceries in certified, at least thrice recycled oaktag containers or something.
The biggest drug in California is meth, and most of the importing is from Mexico. There are also training sites in Mexico where they teach people how to cook meth, then send them to California to set up cook houses. So you may have a point there, LOL.
Funny story, but true, and probably good for a commercial, I read this at a DEA website a few years ago: During the meth cooking process, the chemicals have to be strained through a sheet. Because of the weave or thread count or something, cookers prefer to use Martha Stewart sheets.
March 29th, 2007 at 9:17 am
speaking of kitty litter, I usually request the PAPER bags from the grocery when I have that chore to look forward to. The plastic bags often get those small holes in the corner and you’re spreading crap all over the place.
Seth: I like how you point out the priorities of the SF govt. Seems they should have better things to spend their time on.
I’m sure by now you saw the report on using a left wing “comic book” teaching American imperialism and anti-war being used as a “text book” in SF schools.
Cinnamon Stilwell, who writes conservative opinion for the SF Chronicle was kind enough to link back to my post on the subject.
I don’t know how conservatives can stand to live in SF. I had a hard enough time in New York and DC.
P.S. Have you written a review of Louis Freeh’s book yet?
March 29th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Mike –
San Francisco exemplifies every reason there is why liberals should never be in charge of anything larger than a bumper sticker factory. They ignore all the problems that really need to be addressed and concentrate on the mares-eat-oats BS, and take enormous pride in bashing America for all the things that make this country the best place to live in the world while simultaneously enjoying all those same things. They want us to lose the war in Iraq, they want to turn the U.S. into a socialist country, they want to sacrifice our national identity on the altar of multiculturalism and they want us live and breathe political correctness.
Their lefty indoctrination of school children is no different than what one would have expected in eastern Europe during the Cold War.
I would never live there again, that city has no soul.
I’m only part way through the book just now, but I’m finding it a great and informative read and probably will review it when I finish it.
March 29th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Maybe the city council is afraid someone will place a plastic bag over their head and tie the handles around their neck. Seems like a much more appropriate use for a plastic bag in SF.
Congrat’s on the Thinking Blogger Award. Well deserved, my friend!
March 29th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Old Soldier –
Thanks, I am humbled that AOW would include me in such a short field, considering the large number of great bloggers out there.
The teeth gnashing frustration factor involved in arguing with San Francisco liberals makes the concept of such use of a plastic grocery bag an inviting idea. Just imagine a municipality with a population of perhaps 750,000, and about 3/4 of that number being clones of Mudkitty, LOL.