The politics surrounding poor people is always interesting. When it’s in someones interest to fight for them, they do. When they aren’t, they won’t. I won’t leave myself out of that. I do it, sometimes. But, I find it curious that The Times is protesting the “twenty cents for a plastic bag” because it’s bad for poor people. Via ECB:
Nickels says we need to recycle kitchen waste and stop using plastic and paper bags to help the environment. The rub is, citizens are not rewarded. A rate increase pinches an already strapped lower and middle class.[…]
Leadership should find a way to make the numbers work better. Seattle is becoming a very expensive place to live.
Poor folks are poor, not stupid. To think they can’t handle a rule change is nuts.
The Seattle Times as “crusader for the poor”… that’s funny!
So now Frank Blethen fancies himself a champion of the poor? Next thing you know he’ll be shilling for an equitable tax structure …
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
The fishwrapper’s editorial bleatings remind me of Willie Hearst Jr.’s cawing on the front page of the P-I back in the sixties …
I guess when your daddy was a robber baron and there’s no inheritance tax you can make everyone else read your personal opinions …
Right…the Blethens live on Mercer Island, because the cost of living (esp. housing) is so much more reasonable there than in Seattle.
/snort!
Well, it will force me to buy kitchen garbage bags to replace those bags I won’t be getting from the store.
The Times looks at the poor as cannon fodder, and nothing else.
So Blethen. Insane McCain keeps getting Shia, and Sunnis, Iran, and Iraq, Al Queda, and Insurgents mixed up. Ever think of printing the fact that he may be more stupid than Bush? How about printing the fact that he voted 11 separate times to not support the troops?
Yeah I thought so…
Love the title of this post!
Um… I’ve seen, “Poor Folks” using cloth bags for the last couple of years. The poor folks I see lack cars and cloth bags hold up better on the walk home from the store. Poor people can afford to have their sour cream and cereal spilling on the sidewalk.
I lug some of my groceries home on my bike using pannier bags that a friend of mine sewed me for about $10.00 as my shopping bags.
4 gallon food buckets (which you can score for free or buy for around $5)also work well for shopping bags and bike panniers. Follow the link for how to build them.
http://www.bicycletouring101.c.....nniers.htm
I got a pretty HEFTY laugh out of that one, Will, and I’m GLAD you brought the topic up. You are definitel the QUICKER PICKER-UPPER (hope that is not too off topic).
It’s probly another libral plot from thos bad guys who refused to believe there’s WMDs in Irak. Shoot. Thier probly all over the place, probly buried in the sand somewheres.
I just wish the dang librals would let Georg W. Bushe just do his dang job protectin’ us without meddlin’ all over the dang place. He is protectin’ us even while we sleep, wiretappin’, torturin’, killin’, eavesdroppin’, torturin’, and other stuff that’s already in the dang bible.
@10
Now you sound like a Piper operator….
@10
Classic.
Simple math.
10 bags a week of groceries @ .20 cents a bag. And that’s really not buying much in those small bags they give out at Safeway. $2.00.
2. x 52 = $104 a year in a new tax that will hit the poor the hardest. On top of soaring garbage bills (a tax) that won’t decline one cent.
It’s always refreshing to read so much vitriolic hatred of everyone and everything at a leftist website. The question is: Why does the left HATE so much?
will-
You make this generalization:
“Poor folks are poor, not stupid.”
Are you sure about that?
Yes, I know some rich folks who I consider stupid.
But not too many.
Seems like we have a lot of stupid people floating around Seattle as evidenced by Seattle Public School stats.
I doubt that many of them are rich or middle-class.
Seems to me like most of the stupid people are probably POOR! But not that all poor people are stupid. Some are lazy. Others have problems. Other make poor choices & priorities.
You may want to rethink that statement will.
PS–
Did you reading the warning on the plastic bag NOT to place it over noggin and tie a rope around your neck or you might suffocate?
The warning is for stupid people!!
I’ll bet quite a few of them are poor too!
Rightwing attacks on the poor are nothing more than a malicious attempt to justify their desire for a hereditary stratification of society for their own selfish benefit.
Of course, absolutely everything rightwingers think, say, and do has malice behind it.
@11 Sounds more like well crafted satire to me.
@13 How fucking hard is it to buy two or three of the cloth bags grocery stores sell for 99 cents and use those all year? And why do you think the landfill costs and adverse environmental effects of burying billions of plastic bags that last essentially forever isn’t relevant to this discussion? My God, you wingers DON’T have to work this hard to prove you’re stupid, we already know that.
@14 I hate to break this to you, Cynical, but I consider you stupid in an obstinate sort of way. In other words, I think you would know better if you didn’t wilfully refuse to know better.
The interesting thing about paper bags is most people assume they quickly dissolve in a landfill, but in fact deprived of air and sunlight paper can last for thousands of years.
Roger Rabbit is having a relapse of his pulmonary infection and will not attend DL tonight.
re 13: Hate? Surely, you jest. We love all you WingTards™ — purely in an intellectual, Christian sort of way. Like, Pat Robertson and his followers love us.
The best ‘bag’ advice I read recently and should share, so here goes.
1. When asked, “Paper or plastic?” answer, “Neither.”
2. Put the stuff in the cart.
3. Take the cart to the car.
4. Put the suff in boxes in your car.
5. Carry the boxes into your house, then take them back out to the car when shopping.
6. Repeat steps 1-5.
I thought it sounded like one reasonable solution.
21 RR
Right wingnuts quickly dissolve in a landfill, though. Depriving them of air is not a problem.
@24-THAT is actually a great idea! Just keep the boxes from Costco!
Hey, here’s a concept, kiddies: Why not use the Seattle Fish Wrap….TO WRAP FISH?
Or meat, or lettuce, or garbage, or birthday presents…or any old thing.
Reading the thing beforehand is, of course, optional.
27 AF
Doesn’t that make it hard for them to swim?
I liked it better when they removed money from your bill when you gave them the reusable bags. Almost like a reward for being environmentally-minded. But that’s just me.
Here’s something for the “surge is working” dead-enders:
So there are a lot of prblems in Iraq. There are problems like lack of food, water, electricity, jobs, and so on. There are problems like that the factions in the government do not agree and possible canot ever agree enough to make things happen. There are problems lik the the US, Saudi Arabia, and Iran (at least) are financing and arming militias in the country but doing little to help them rebuild.
So, if the the hand-wavey slogans “the surge is working” and “things are improving” are true, how, in a concrete way, does this solve any of those problems? Or any problems?
Connect the dots for us.
Hey, wouldn’t it be better for America to eliminate actual al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area than to eliminate alQaeda in Iraq (AQI)? Our ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, thinks so.
Funny how we aren’t doing that.
Will
I think the Times was pointing out that there is an increase in costs involved here. 20 cents may mean little to you, but it is one more burden for a poor person. Also, many poor people are literally at their wits end .. they have all the challenges better off folks have and more! I suspect the increased stress of sorting garbage is a lot more significant for a a single Mom , working for waitress wages, with five kids to support than the stress for even a single guy like yourself.
I have some sympathy for the Times POV. Victor Steinnbruck (spell?) fought for the idea of Seattle as a mixed class society. As my own level loves down on the local scale, the city seems less and less like his concept. Sometimes I feel like the mouse in that cartoon about the chef .. Ratatouillee?
But, looking back on my own writing, I guess I am just a naif. The Times ahs as much interest in Seattle as a multiclass society as I do in bringing the papacy here.
You are having a great day Cmiklich because the bums in Seattle are due to this bag flap. Yes they are going to sell grocery bags out of the recycle bins to those air head folks shopping in Seattle for 15 cents. That’s better than selling old newspapers for 10 cents. Like the Seattle Weekly, or the Seattle Stranger, or the Seattle Times, and let’s not forget the Seattle PI who are having lay-offs folks due to hard times.
cmiklich says:
Simple math.
10 bags a week of groceries @ .20 cents a bag. And that’s really not buying much in those small bags they give out at Safeway. $2.00.
2. x 52 = $104 a year in a new tax that will hit the poor the hardest. On top of soaring garbage bills (a tax) that won’t decline one cent.
It’s always refreshing to read so much vitriolic hatred of everyone and everything at a leftist website. The question is: Why does the left HATE so much?
Well it’s the nature of the beast and they can’t get over it. Eight years of the Republicans making their lives so miserable and no valid way to get even. They hate everybody including themselves, what a shame. Maybe their new Socialist Democrat candidate will give them change and hope that they will be more miserable. Chow
Roger Rabbit says:
The interesting thing about paper bags is most people assume they quickly dissolve in a landfill, but in fact deprived of air and sunlight paper can last for thousands of years.
Put a rabbit in that bag and it will rot in a week. Problem solve.
Anyone want to take any bets on how long it’ll be before Mr. Crocker joins the legion of senior officers and other officials who “choose to leave” the service of this administration after showing an unpardonable amount of sanity, honesty or integrity?
Is Klake a Nazi???
@22 Looks like we might have to pry that keyboard out of
Rogers cold, dead hands.
Just kidding, wingnut humor. Sorry.
No really, Roger, bury you in paper or plastic?
Sorry. Sorry.
We don’t want to lose you Roger. Who would we make fun of
at our militia/anti abortion/anti healtcare for kids/starve
kids/kill old people/NRA meetings?
@42 – now that was funny I have to admit!
The right was enthralled with eugenics back in the 20’s and 30’s.
Crikey, talk about crocodile tears. “OMFG we can’t tax plastic shopping bags because it might hurt poor people!”
Rising food costs and energy prices are much more of a concern to those who are trying to make ends meet. If people are really that concerned I’d suggest donating a bunch of re-usable shopping bags to a social service agency to hand out to the poor.
Those who care about the cost will find a way around it, those who don’t won’t.
As for garbage bills you are aware it costs money to come pick up your trash and haul it to the landfill? The cost to do this has been going up like anything else. Garbage bills are no more a tax than a heating oil bill is. Though I suppose those complaining just want to burn their trash or throw it over the back fence.
Middle class grow fearful about their prospects
Poll says predictions for short-term progress grimmest in nearly 50 years
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24032411
Does anyone, I mean anyone want to bet that John McCain will not ask this following question during the presidential campaign: “Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago?”
This is why the Republicans could not field a stronger candidate than John McCain. Who has Mitt Romney on his short list for VP.