I’ve been doing some day trips that land me in or near Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s mecca for poorly thought-out anti-plastic policy. From ‘shopping bags‘ to paperboard containers, their war on plastic is relentless, even when those replacements are worse for the environment.
Democrats everywhere have a list of things. Once elected, appointed, or hired into the bureaucracy, the job is to check the boxes even if they make no sense or contradict the stated policy goal. And none of them make any sense, and all of them contradict the advertised outcome.
Democrats don’t think things through. (Progressive Republicans are no different, to be fair.) They enact policies in response to the echo chamber of voices in their ideologically isolationist heads, all the things Edmund Burke warned us against centuries ago. The result is almost always bureaucratic nonsense, another small loss of freedom, massive expense with little … Read more
No, not the kind of question that one would normally get at the cashier’s area, except we all are going to get bagged there, all thanks to our Federal Government. Specifically, we can blame US Senator Dick Durbin from (D-IL) who decided to monkey with the private sector yet again with his Durbin Amendment … Read more
Remember that time some rich white people with too much money funded a treasure hunt for the mythical floating island of plastic? As with most alleged green endeavors, they were doing it wrong. Looking off the coast of Vancouver will get you some ridicule (I was happy to oblige), but if you want to get … Read more
Whale deaths have spiked, and their beached bodies continue to appear on American shores. The people who claim to care about the whales are some of the same folks who love offshore wind, and unfortunately for the whales, Wind Machines can launder a lot more money than marine mammals.
America and New Hampshire are confronting the pandemic. Citizens, businesses, and governments are doing all they can to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Some useless measures instituted in less turbulent times need to be recognized for what they are.
Single-use plastics are cheaper, have a lower carbon footprint than so-called replacements, and are better for the environment and public health. Points we’ve been making for close to a decade. Issues that, in a global pandemic, should prove to be the death knell for Democrat’s incessant desire to ban them.
The Democrat mantra is, hey, let’s force you to behave the way we demand and then claim it will make the world better. What if it actually made things worse? What if the regulatory demands they want for plastics actually exacerbate the problem they claim they will fix?
The NH House is toying with the idea of a regressive tax on plastic grocery bags. Thin-film bags are the least carbon-intensive solution but because of their visibility virtue-signaling leftists have been after them for years. NH Democrats virtue signal with the best.
Democrats virtue signal about everything. And very little, if anything, they promise, does what they say. Banning plastic is a good example. The claim is that this will be better for the environment. What they don’t tell you is that the alternatives to plastic are worse.
With the New Hampshire Democrat-lead Legislature’s war on plastic well-underway, (straws here, bags here) the People Republic of Portsmouth is warming up their war on convenience. Plastic bag bans are a frequent flyer in Portsmouth but these were illegal efforts. With new permissions looming from State Democrats, Portsmouth is getting ready to ban plastic bags, straws, and foam … Read more
The business of government in the hands of a Democrat majority is to legislate away convenient, affordable, useful, free-market solutions (among other things). If it works for you, it doesn’t work for them. Take plastic shopping bags.
No, I’m not talking about ‘plastic guns’. I’m talking about HB102, which would add ‘the distribution of single-use plastics to consumers’ to the list of things towns can regulate. The idea is to let towns ban the use of plastic bags in grocery stores, or plastic drinking straws in restaurants. But ‘single-use’ covers a lot of ground. … Read more
Durham NH fearmonger Judith Spang wants the legislature to allow towns like Durham and Portsmouth to ban plastic drinking straws or bags. Any town that wants to, actually. HB102 would add “the distribution of single-use plastics to consumers” to the list of things towns can regulate without deferring to the Legislature.
When you vote for someone, they suddenly inherit the super-human ability to know better. Or, more likely, the sort of people who run for public office are just predisposed to be busy-bodies. We know this to be true at every level of government with few exceptions. Down in DC the city council has no exceptions. … Read more
Yeah, I think I have that down pat. All over the nation in the bigger cities I read of “needle exchange programs” for people using illicit drugs who then drop them all over the place, including where young children play in parks and playground and schoolyards. There’s even talk of setting up “shoot up rooms” … Read more
Chicago recently instituted a new $0.07 per bag tax on plastic grocery/store bags. No price is too high to save the environment, right? What if the “environment” is the city budget? Roughly 70% of that green-tax will go directly to the city to plug holes in the municipal budget. The stealth tax does not quite … Read more
Portsmouth has a Blue Ribbon Committee on Sustainable Practices, and like any good committee, it must forever practice things that sustain the committee. To that end, the busybodies have identified the next great environmental evil. Single-use plastic bags are bad for Portsmouth (and the world!).
What are the unidentified costs of banning disposable shopping bags? I’ve been speculating for months. In this video PERC Lone Mountain Fellow Jonathan Klick argues that the presence of harmful bacteria (in reusable grocery bags whose use is mandated after plastic bag bans are put in place) creates a health cost that has not been … Read more