Enviro-Wackos Triumph - Los Angeles Bans Plastic Bags From Markets

In case you haven't heard, all of Los Angeles' problems with deficits,unemployment, decreased revenues and crumbling infrastructure have now been solved.

The Los Angeles City Council just voted 13 to 1 to ban plastic shopping bags and to charge a fee of 10 cents per bag for paper. Councilman Bernard Parks cast the lone no vote.

The rationale on this is supposedly to cut down on landfill. In reality, the city has been mandating that plastic bags get recycled in a separate trash can as they're disposed of, just like the paper ones. The plastic bags can be melted and re-used, while the paper ones can be re-pulped.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wanted to ban paper bags as well, but Council members felt that the extra fee will probably depress paper bag use to the point where that won't be necessary. Besides, the city wants the money. Hey, an additional tax of ten cents per bag for every load of groceries!

Councilman Paul Koretz, who pushed for the ban, put a nice cover over the real motivations for keeping the paper bags available by saying that city officials would conduct a study in two years to determine whether the prohibition should be expanded to include paper. “My hope is that so few paper bags will be used as a result of this measure that the formal ban … on paper bags may not even be necessary,” he said. Of course the taxpayers will pay for this study.

Wednesday’s vote kicks off a four-month long environmental review of the bag ban, followed by passage of an ordinance putting it into effect, a foregone result at this point. Larger stores will then have six months to phase out plastic bags and smaller markets a 12-month phase-out period. For paper bags, retailers would be required to charge 10 cents per bag starting one year after the plastic bag ban is enacted.

"Let’s get the message to Sacramento that it’s time to go statewide," said Councilman Ed Reyes. He's right of course. Other California cities like San Francisco and San Jose have already banned plastic bags, and state-wide ban is almost certainly just a matter of time.

Another aspect of the ban is that Los Angeles' unemployment rate will grow since bag manufacturers will be closing down and leaving the state, taking all those jobs with them. Some of the smaller markets may leave too, and shoppers, at least for awhile, will avoid the fees and taxes by patronizing stores in local cities like Glendale that are not part of Los Angeles. That will likely cost the city a lot more in tax revenues than the bag fee is going to provide, but who's counting? Employees of companies like Crown Poly turned up in droves to plead with Council members not to kill their jobs, but Gaea was triumphant - and who cares about those carbon dioxide emitting humans anyway? Let 'em leave.

Just another chapter in the saga of Wack-a fornia. Kill jobs and businesses while nanny stating to make the life of the average person more difficult, less convenient and more expensive..that's the California Way.