Surprisingly, the Seattle Times comes out in favor of the “annoying” 20 cent bag fee the city has proposed:
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ environmentally friendly green fee on paper and plastic garbage bags will be a hassle for consumers who participate — and an annoying new tax for consumers who don’t. Yet, on balance, the plan is worth the effort.
[…] The mayor goes further by including the fee on paper bags, arguing it takes a lot of energy and resources to make paper bags as well. Might as well make the move on both kinds of bags.
Huh. Again, not taking a position on the bag fee (worthwhile goal, intrusive and irritating way of accomplishing it), I must say that I don’t often see many paper grocery bags littering our streets, parks and sidewalks. Newspapers, yes… paper bags, no. Hmm.
Still, no need for a government mandate to force this messy clean up, as judging from their steadily declining circulation, our local dailies have clearly embraced an innovative voluntary program that more than adequately incentivizes readers to reduce consumption.
Wow! Finally, something I agree with Goldy on…He’s a closet Republican, I knew it.
I propose we start taxing people with more than 1 chin….Get your pocketbook out Nickels, you hyper-obese slag.
Consumers of newspapers should not only pay the 20-cent “rag fee” to the city but the state sales tax as well. The smug presumption of The Seattle Times editorial board doesn’t surprise me anymore. The stated mission of The Seattle Times editorial board, which occasionally appears in the newspaper below the editorials, is to be the most respected editorial voice in the region (or words to that effect, which I can’t find on their website). However, they manage to earn our contempt, seemingly daily, one editorial at a time.
The free weeklies should also pay the 20-cent “rag fee” to the city on behalf of their readers. Erica C Barnett of The Stranger has been one of the biggest defenders of the proposed grocery bag tax. She never responds to bloggers who discuss her hypocrisy.
Oh, c’mon Goldy, take it easy on poor Frank Blethen. A newspaper is a poor man’s blanket.
“The stated mission of The Seattle Times editorial board, which occasionally appears in the newspaper below the editorials, is to be the most respected editorial voice in the region ….”
Yeah, well, the French thought the Maginot Line would stop Hitler. There’s a lot of delusional folks in this world.
It’s a shame that even the liberal people in seattle wouldn’t bring a reusable bag instead of new plastic ones until it was going to be taxed.
And these are the people that believe in global warming.
Massive Inflation Hits U.S.!
I noticed tonight that a can of store-brand beef stew that used to cost $1.99 is now $2.39, a 20.1% overnight price increase, and a can of imported corned beef that cost $2.49 yesterday is now $3.23, a 29.7% overnight price increase!
So how do the Bushliars get away with saying inflation is “only” 3.8%? By not counting food and gas, that’s how!!!
Pretty soon, the Bush economic policies that have made America resemble Argentina will have us looking like Zimbabwe, where currency inflation is a couple billion percent a week. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting there fast. A 1-day price increase of 29.7% is 10,840% a year!!!
Not surprisingly, a Republican is always president when shit like this happens. They can’t pay a $100 gambling debt, let alone run a national economy. And you’ll never seem them take responsibility for their avarice and incompetence, either. The last time we had Inflation like this, they tried to blame it on Jimmy Carter.
Inflation of this magnitude no doubt will lead to demands for higher wages. That’s good for Roger Rabbit, because my Social Security is indexed to wage rates, not the CPI. So, what this country needs is stronger unions, more strikes, and workers demanding 29.7% annual pay raises.
Sure, this will lead to cost-push inflation, but so what? Ruinous inflation is already here, so we may as well use it to screw the rich bastards who own all the debt in this country. There’s nothing like 25% inflation for paying off a mortgage, student loan, or credit card. As a matter of fact, I was quite lucky in that respect, because the Nixon-Ford Great Inflation came along just as I graduated from law school and had to begin repaying over $1,200 of student debt.
God forbid they ever figure out that humans exhale CO2 and poop contains fecal coliform. There will be taxes on breathing and shitting before you can blink.
Roger – you can get the full CPI at the government website. FYI, the CPI rose a little less than 6% between Jan 07 and April 08 including all items (aka food and gas).
@7 Delbert, the stupid bastards are getting
fixed now and not having kids. They are
proving Darwins theory that they are so proud of. The dumb ones do die off, thank God.
@8 Why would anyone believe the official CPI figures? They’re as phony as the official unemployment figures. In fact, without the controversial “birth-death adjustment,” the economy has lost jobs nearly every month of the Bush administration. The BDA is controversial because it adds “statistical jobs” to the employment figures — which are not real people working in real jobs. In short, lying is the only thing that Busheviks excel at.
Careful Goldy, your last sentence uses irony and sarcasm. Lauren Berkowitz will plotz.
@9 “The dumb ones do die off, thank God.”
Yeah, but it takes too long, and meanwhile we’re stuck with Republicans for several more generations.
Pelletizer: You continue to forget 1994 and the Al Gorebasm vote on Ethanol. Now you are paying for Al Gorebasm’s actions. Beef and beef by-products are skyrocketing. Beef eat corn, and it gets more ‘spenive everyday.
9 Well, we’ve now had our first “official” run on a major failing bank, with the financial soothsayers telling us there’s about 100 more to come. It’ll be interesting to see whether a carnival spirit prevails among those sharing the experience of lining up waiting for WaMu to open so they can get their money out while the gettin’s good.
With its action on IndyMac, we have our first clear signal about how Uncle Fed’s going to deal with all this–have the FDIC move in and take over before things get really bloody, and spin the printing presses ever faster to cover the insured portions of peoples’ deposits. This means that for the time being, instead of spiraling into a post-1929 type depression, we’re going to see inflation go absolutely bizerk.
The “smart-money” folks have seen this coming for while now, and have been moving their assets into places that provide the best hedge against inflation. What better than a commodity that everyone knows is in limited supply, but for which there seems to be a virtually insatiable demand….like, petroleum!!!!! This is probably the tipping point where the rest of the world’s going to stop using dollars to pay for oil, whether the US bombs the royal bejeezus out of Iran’s new oil bourse or not.
If you’re a poor working stiff drawing a paycheck, you’d better see if you can get paid in gallons of gas or grilled cheese sandwiches or bottles of beer, because those dollars they’re paying you now ain’t going to be good for anything but wiping your ass.
Pelletizer@10: Are they as phony as the 6.6 million aborted babies since the start of the Iraq war? Just think 65% come from Donkey women. So that means you are culling your own votes!
BrainFartArt: I know you ain’t too mentally nimble so here’s something I know you missed.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.co.....schum.html
Or BrainFartArt, here’s another:
http://186kpersecond.com/blog/.....k-failure/
Yeah, right. A slip of the lip can sink a ship.
What Schumer said wasn’t news, except to dumbfucks like you.
What’s really going on here is that the real world is intruding on the neoconservative fantasy. All the snake-oil salesmanship in the world isn’t going to repeal the first law of thermodynamics.
Goldy — wouldn’t a $2.00 tax on newspapers ($5.00 on Sundays) be more appropriate? The daily Seattle Times probably weighs at least 10 times as much as a paper grocery bag (which would be subject to a 20 cent tax also). Even with the recent declines in circulations, the Times and P-I use up far more energy resources, than all the grocery bags (paper and plastic) put together.
Delbert @ 8: I don’t know about you, but I know that all my non-housing expenses over the past 16 months have increased considerably greater than 6%. I just finished an analysis, and over the past 12 months my utility bills went up almost 20% (despite comparable usage), gasoline 100%, food about 35%. Clothing wasn’t measurable because we buy so infrequently. Only housing remained the same, because we have a fixed-rate mortgage (others aren’t so blessed).
Art Fart, all these troubles started after
Congress was taken control of by the Dems.
Add that to the media telling the public
everyday how horrible the economy was even though the numbers across the board were better
than anytime during the Clinton years. Looks
to me like we get to start killing Dems for food soon. Hope they taste like chicken.