In a year where the City of Chico has financially struggled, taken gas-tax money from road maintenance and improvements, eaten $1 Million or half of its general liability reserve, paid for early retirements, reduced police staffing levels*, reduced fire-rescue staffing levels*, closed a fire station*, proposes to cut library funding by $30,000, struggles with uncomfortably low cash reserves, among many many other things, it is good to know that the City is laser focused on the big picture items such as a city ban on plastic bags.
* More on those items later. Much More.
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Again, I don’t get it. How is throwing some bags into the back of the car gonna ruin your life?
The fact is all this “disposable” stuff was a mistake. We’re using up resources too fast, generating too much crud in the production thereof, and it’s gotta stop.
Not that it’s easy. Just this morniing, I made tea in a paper cup, rather than walk back to the desk and get the washable one. Bad, bad, girl. But if my employers refused to stock the paper … I would have had no choice, and, once I get back into the habit … I will never forget my Peet’s skull mug!
The more I hear about our city council the more amazed I am.
The absurdity is beyond comprehension.
All we see from the Gang of 5 is a buffet of buffoonery.
I would like someone to force Schwab to tell us just how much her STF has cost us.
Every voter ought to know this BEFORE the November election.
Welcome aboard Mark!
Libby throwing a bunch of bags in the back of the car is not going to ruin my life.
City government forcing me, and everyone else, to throw bags in the back of the car just because they believe we are in MORTAL DANGER if THEY DON’T DO THIS is not only freaky and stupid but more importantly, it is against basic principles of freedom that I don’t wish to relinquish. It is also very offensive on a personal level. I don’t appreciate being treated like a child and I’m fairly certain they were not hired as public servants to play nanny.
But look at your personal example. NO WONDER you think as you do! Instead of thinking first to be responsible for using your Pete’s skull mug, you think of your bosses obligation to remove the temptation of the paper cups…they must handle this challenge for you and force you to be better.
I don’t buy that we are using resources too fast either. I think that line is part of the discredited enviro scare science, a faux science that relies on fear rather than fact and totally dismisses the ways that innovation can and will change things.
Just in the last 10 years we have discovered huge oil fields that we didn’t know existed and created new and cleaner methods for extracting it. People are working on all kinds of ideas every single day. If we don’t fall into the progressive collectivist trap that murders creativity and invention all will be well.
I don’t have any problem with peer pressure and persuasion but do not mess with our freedom!
But if my employers refused to stock the paper … I would have had no choice, and, once I get back into the habit … I will never forget my Peet’s skull mug!
Peet’s skull mug you say???
Criminy! A google search on that yields this
http://snipurl.com/23upf7a
Sometimes I wonder about you libs…and who on earth do you work for??? I could take a guess but I think I will pass…
I hope you will come down to the meeting Jack.
Libby, I’ll respond to you because you really represent the average bag banner.
I’m sorry you need legislation to do the right thing. I’ve been carrying and using re-usable bags for over 20 years, and I will continue to use them. This ban is a farce because it only bans bags used by grocery chains, it only bans grocery bags, not garbage bags or produce bags or those poop pickup bags that you’ll commonly find along pathways in the park (I call those, “Gifts for Annie!”). Or any of the other plastic film bags that end up skittering along the highways. It doesn’t ban the styrofoam fastfood containers that end up festooning our roads and waterways.
This ban is disingenuous. It’s a joke, Libby. An expensive joke on the taxpayers. It’s just a little star for Ann Schwab to pin on her lapel. Meanwhile, my family, who lives on less than $35,000 a year, pays Linda Herman’s $85,000 a year salary and benefits, so she can play “secketerry” to a woman who is playing “mayyer”.
OK, so we all have habits that could be addressed, fine. Mark’s post, as I read it was more about the absurdity of this city council majority trying to divert attention away from real issues and their own inability to resolve them. So what better way than to take on a Don Quixote approach to the peoples business. Plastic bags are nothing more than windmills of distraction, look at some of the posts so far on Marks point of the inability of this council majority to address real issues. Plastic bags are NOT this city problem, the current council majority is! This council’s majority has not a clue on how to solve Chico’s budget problems, so they divert attention to their inability’s and waste time and TAX money with plastic bags, and other such controlling issues important to them, but unnecessary to our daily city business or needs.
Hi Juanita, I think you meant your comments for someone else, I didn’t publish or write this one. As for attending a meeting, I would love too. I’m calling Casey this morning. The only bad part is I am a volunteer docent for the Chico Air Museum and that means most of my weekends are spent volunteering a few hours Sat and Sun.
Hi Juanita, I think you meant your comments for someone else, I didn’t publish or write this one. As for attending a meeting, I would love too. I’m calling Casey this morning. The only bad part is I am a volunteer docent for the Chico Air Museum and that means most of my weekends are spent volunteering a few hours Sat and Sun.
” … it is against basic principles of freedom that I don’t wish to relinquish.”
Yes, well, unhappily, this puts you right in there with the uncivilized the rest of us got to drag. You don’t get to make a mess, just because you want to make it. That is not civic freedom, that is barbarism. Sorry, but it is.
“I don’t buy that we are using resources too fast either.”
Yes, we know. Denial is very useful to the uncivilized, as it allows them to rationalize what is, essentially, selfish laziness.
A bag ban is just not that big a deal. It will cut (1) garbage generated and (2) pollution generated, and you are going to learn to live with it … says Nanny.
Libby, what you wrote is some of the most cotton headed thinking I have ever read on this blog.
Libby, what the heck is in that Peet’s skull mug you are drinking from?
Joseph, you’re not the first to wonder that! lol But, we love our Libby because she gives us a perspective from the far left and that’s always good to know.
Yes, it is always good to hear from the other side. Or at least try to understand how they see things.
And if you wouldn’t mind, Miss Libby, would you share with us what you do for a living?
I don’t see the city making this a big deal. The only places I read about it are conservative blogs. It would appear that it is you who make the big deal.
Of course it is absurd, but the longer it gets held up, the more it will cost.
No Jack, I wish YOU would come to the Internal Affairs meeting Tuesday, and inject some common sense into this bag ban discussion. We need more responsible members of the public down there, balance things out a little.
the IA is Bob Evans, Andy Holcombe, and Jim Walker. I expect them to vote 2-1 to recommend the ban to council, but at least we could go down there and give Bob a little back up. Bob Evans is a pistol – I expect he will give a pretty good speech about how dumb it is. At least there will be some entertainment value.
I would like to see you at a CTA meeting, but hey, I don’t mind coming down to the air museum, been meaning to get over there. I hear they got a lot of good stuff. I will get on my 1956 Raleigh Superbe and be-bop out there some Sunday. Maybe I’ll call a special CTA meeting at that picnic table there! Hey, you got to keep it fresh, Babee!
Libby: “Yes, well, unhappily, this puts you right in there with the uncivilized the rest of us got to drag.”
That’s a bit smug, not to mention presumptuous.
I have one basic rule that serves me, and the planet, well. ALWAYS leave the area cleaner than you found it.
I’m all for conservation and reasonable management and use of resources. I’m not in favor of witnessing people unable to find work or feed their families over the next fifty or sixty years while greenies attempt to replace fossil fuels with whirligigs by government force and spending. If you believe so much in this stuff then join with the like minded and use/risk your own money to build and promote alternatives for everything from plastic bags to whirligigs. Meanwhile, “Get your government off my freedom”
“Yes, we know. Denial is very useful to the uncivilized…”
Pretending that consensus is science is denial of the highest magnitude! Hyping the lie for profit ranks lower than low. Little ladies like yourself using misinformation and hype just to feel superior and important is something else again…see Joseph’s comment above.
Harold is right. The point of the post is the absurdity of the time spent on this issue when there are much more compelling concerns that need attention.
The mind set that gave us the plastic bags to begin with the “Save the Trees” Agenda are now the ones that say we should not use them. I love the liberal mind.
Most of the bags from the grocery stores are recycled to begin with, I recycle them again as garbage bags or other needs.
You are doing great work. I want to say that every person should look into this matter.