The voracious appetite of liberals in Sacramento to use government to manipulate our behavior, and steal more of our freedom has no greater poster child than Assembly Bill 1998.  Sponsored by the “environuts” at Heal The Bay, the legislation would ban every grocery store (regardless of proximity to a bay, tributary or river) from being able to put your groceries into a plastic bag. 

Heal The Bay’s bag ban bill amounts to a massive tax increase on Californians (well, assuming that you go into a grocery store).  Those plastic bags you use now – the stores give you those.  Under AB 1998, if stores put your groceries in a paper bag, they will charge you a per-bag tax of a minimum of a nickel.  It could be a lot more.

AB 1998 is not the first attempt by Heal The Bay and their allies to ban infringe on your ability to use plastic bags to take home your groceries.  But this year represents the first time that the lobbying arm of the large grocery store chains is supporting the bill.  Why would they do that?  The key is that the per-bag tax does not go into government coffers, that money goes into the pockets of – you guessed it – the grocery stores.

By my reckoning, grocery store chains will collect hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars from we, the shoppers.  They no longer will have to pay for the free plastic bags that we have grown accustomed to receiving gratis.  They will be able to charge whatever they want to sell you bags, and the whole time use clever marketing to tell you that the government is “making them” do this.

If you need no better indication of the money moving behind the scenes on the bag ban bill, look no further than the support from the grocers union for the measure.  Unions do not make their decisions based on altruistic concerns about potential (and questionable) environment issues.  They only engage when it materially benefits them or their members.  You would almost think that the grocery store conglomerates who are now backing this “fee” from which they will profit have agreed to “share the wealth” with their workers…

AB 1998 shot out of the Assembly, and is now in the Senate.  A pivotal factor in its passage, support from the former political director of the union for grocery store workers, who is now an Assemblyman.  His name is John Perez…

The grocery store chains lament that some cities are passing local bag bans, and that this is a reason to support this legislation – “statewide standards,” they say.  How about taking on these liberal local politicians where they are doing this, rather than subjecting all Californians to suspension of their liberties for their convenience?

There are so many reasons to oppose the bag ban bill – I literally could write a 3,000 word essay.  But the number one reason, hands down, is that this is nanny-state government rearing its head once again.  Why should the econuts have to figure out how to wage a public information campaign to persuade consumers to their point of view when, instead, they can use the coercive force of government to achieve their goals.?

Every member of the legislature should oppose this offensive piece of legislation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.