Why do we have so many useless laws and regulations that backfire? Because we have so many useless lawmakers with nothing to do but look busy and spend taxpayer money.

Our elected officials won't touch the TBTF banks w a 10ft pole, yet they are more than happy to push around mom and pop / joe 6-pack.

Commit securities/mortgage fraud for billions? Vaporize billions by "re-hypothecating" funds invested in commodities (John Corzine)? No penalty, jail time, or bad press for you!!!

Knock off your local 7-11 to feed your family? Hard time and a good ass kicking at the hands of the local pension earners enforcing the law!!!

Then what? I live in Clackistan, and I am tired of seeing plastic bags blowing through my neighborhood, stuck in tree branches etc.

All law profs are not left-wing loons?!?! Kidding. I'm not a plastic bag hater, but I don't see how the cloth ones are contributing to food poisoning. Am I the only one that places raw meat in those thin plastic bags and the same for the produce? So my groceries are already covered in plastic before they are placed in the carryout bag.

1. The point of this was to cut down on the use of plastic.

2. After a while, take a whiff inside those "cloth" bags (often made of plastic). The smell will tell you all you need to know.

The reason our good friends on the right side of center will never agree to the concept of man made climate change is because of the virtual guarantee of a never ending onslaught of absolutely imbecilic remedies, including but not limited to plastic bag bans, etc...

I say fight the science for as long as the greenies insist on contradicting good common sense.

So I don't get it. Plastic bags never appealed to me. They don't stand up like paper (spilling crap all over the back seat, they can't be packed like paper, they aren't recycled as efficiently as paper, and a paper bag is made from recycled... paper! Sounds about as sustainable as you can get.

But it's just not that hard to stash the plastic bags that inevitably find their way home in a bigger plastic bag that everyone gets at one time or another, and bring them all, along with bubble pack, rigid plastic, white styro and other accumulated recyclables to the center near you. In my case, the one off Denny Road by Far West recycling.

I agree the plastic bags in the trees are absurd. Don't have that problem with paper. That stuff made from wood waste that gets pulped, then reused and recycled over and over and over.

Paper is our friend.

You don't have to go to Denny. Fred Meyer and Whole Foods both have plastic bag dropoff bins.

Paper is not your friend when you have wet garbage.

Just a word of a real life hospitalization of my wife for five days in May due to contracting NOROVIRUS from a reuseaable plastic type bag.

So what's the surprise?

This is just another case of the shortsighted greens getting people hurt & killed.

The prime example is biofuels putting food out of reach of those in third world poverty.

And alternative energy has raised energy prices to the point that some elderly in England have died because they could not afford heat.

And there are persistent claims that the DDT ban was unnecessary (as opposed to more careful usage) and millions of black people in Africa died of malaria as a result.

Then there is the $BILLIONS wasted on climate control that could be better spent actually helping poor people.

Thanks
JK

File under: Laws of Unintended Consequences.

I see this as less a matter of useless lawmakers making useless laws, but rather "progressive" Know-Besters re-engineering society for the greater good. Oops.

A fascinating analysis of causes and effects, costs and consequences. And I read through the whole thing.

Not many people clean those plastic like reuseable bags! And they get nasty!
And where are those made?....Viet Nam and Cambodia. Not too many Eco controls in those places, I bet! I would be willing to wager the green house gasses are about the same for both types of bags.

Silly.

I have noted a certain political correct attitude by those who bring their "reusable" bags. Are they now using hot water to wash them?
PC can keep people busy with their symbolic part of being good for the planet while the real polluters pig out!
Look at the big picture.
Sort of like having a membership of an environmental group is doing one's part.
Check to see if the leaders of that organization are in the "veal pen" category.

Along with the "unintended consequences," clinamen's comment above, and in keeping with the general attitudes expressed on this blog... Please read the first of the Letters to the Editor, "A wider Compost Issue," here:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2013/01/letters_compost_uo_football_co.html

Spot on. One of the best letters I've seen in a while.

A good letter.
I also will not be a part of throwing food waste in my yard debis container.
My "slop pail" is being used as a file to keep city recycling propaganda brochures.
I would like to think it would make a difference if the citizens in our city took heed and no longer threw food waste in with yard debris, and to show North Plains people we do care what happened to them as a result of "bad decisions" by our city.

PDX Lifer: I am the opposite. I don't see the appeal of paper bags.

1) They rip when you pick them up anywhere but from the bottom, which is hard to do when you have kids to wrangle.

2) They get wet and soggy, then rip when you have frozen foods or anything with condensation (or when it's raining) (or...).

3) They are a uniform size and shape, which makes it hard to put them behind the seat in my car, next to the baby car seat, etc. And when I do get one down behind the seat, when I go to take it out it (surprise!) rips.

4) I can carry 10+ plastic bags full of groceries with one hand, just by putting the handles around my forearm and lifting them. This gives me a free hand to open doors while also letting me get them all in one trip. Paper doesn't usually have that option.

Plus, it takes a lot of energy to recycle paper products, which makes them a lot less sustainable than logic would suggest.

Agreed TacoDave! That's why freedom of choice is a good thing. Legislating choices away is not.

I find it interesting they want to ban grocery bags, but not the single use plastic bags used to wrap and deliver newspapers. Yes, we have a royalty class in Oregon.