Combine this story with my local supermarkets' penchant for one-item-per-bag bagging policies, and you've got a hellacious revenue stream:
San Francisco may become the first city in the nation to charge shoppers for grocery bags.How typical of the PC crowd when they get ahold of a government - they want to legislate to prevent a specific behavior, then go out of their way to also prevent a different, unrelated behavior so they won't 'discriminate.' Discriminate against whom? People who want to have something convienient to collect their recycled newspapers in?
The city's Commission on the Environment is expected to ask the mayor and board of supervisors Tuesday to consider a 17-cent per bag charge on paper and plastic grocery bags. While the goal is reducing plastic bag pollution, paper was added so as not to discriminate.
It would be pointless of me to observe that this would be active discrimination against everybody who doesn't already use reusable organic cruelty-free 100%-renewable-hemp-with-10%-of-sales-donated-to-Amnesty-International canvas bags, because that's the whole point of this chowderheaded scheme.
But it isn't about the money, oh, no:
"The whole point is to encourage the elimination of waste, not to make people pay more for groceries," said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste.
It isn't? OK, let's run the numbers. They want a 17 cent per bag tax, because
Officials calculate that the city spends 5.2 cents per bag annually for street litter pickup and 1.4 cents per bag for extra recycling costs.which leaves over 10 cents per bag to go straight (heh heh) into the general fund, to pay for interspecies sensitivity training or whatever the PC Cause Of The Day is.
Yeah, sure, it isn't about the money. Pull the other leg - it plays The Internationale.
I didn't know paper bags had feelings.