New Plastic Bag Ballot Measure Targets Greedy Grocers

From Breitbart California:

For many years, the most extreme elements of the environmental movement pursued a statewide ban on plastic grocery bags in California. Every time they would do this, despite the overwhelming liberal majorities in the state legislature, their efforts would fail.

Over and over the arguments on the junk-science behind defaming the bags, the negative economic impacts of a ban, and the impressive political coalition opposing the ban combined to kill the effort.

Until last year, that is, when something happened.

The California Grocers Association (CGA), which had been a key member of the coalition stopping the ban from passing for many years, threw its full weight behind SB 270, which added to the statewide ban on standard plastic grocery bags a ten-cent “fee” (read: TAX) on each paper bag and thicker plastic bag provided to customers. The profits from those fees will go to–you guessed it–the grocers.

Crony capitalism at work again.

A couple of weeks ago the American Progressive Bag Alliance, the same group that spent several million dollars gathering signatures for the referendum on SB 270, filed a petition to place yet another ballot measure before voters, entitled the Environmental Tax Protection Act. If passed by the voters, it would require that the ten-cent paper/thicker plastic bag tax collected under SB 270 be redirected to an environmental purpose.

Specifically, this new measure would require that those hundreds of millions of taxes be deposited into a state Environmental and Enhancement Fund that is administered by the State Wildlife Conservation Board. These funds would then be available for legitimate environmental grants (e.g., drought mitigation projects, recycling).

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or a sophisticated political analyst, to figure that the public, if forced to pay a tax at grocery stores, would far more prefer that the money go to a public benefit than simply to profit major grocery chains. Especially when they learn during next fall’s campaign the self-dealing role that the California Grocers Association actually played in the process.

Another case of schadenfreude. A pox on both their houses.