PAPER OR PLASTIC? … my friend Glen writes to say he “doesn’t get” the requirement that retailers must charge a dime for paper bags requested by their customers in the proposed plastic bag ban ordinance … that makes two of us, partner …

The dime does not go into city coffers, because that would constitute a tax and trigger all sorts of nasty side effects … so, what we have here is the first time in city history that a retailer will be told what he or she must charge for a specific product … or at least the minimum that must be charged for that product … presumably, a retailer can charge a dollar for a paper bag without risking time in the slammer …

It’s like telling McDonalds it must sell fried chicken for 10 bucks a bucket, with specific dimensions for the bucket, no exceptions … Nugget or Safeway or the Grocery Outlet cannot even have a special “Bag Giveaway Saturday” to entice customers into their store … they can give away mayonnaise, ice cream or a cup of coffee, but not a single paper bag … they can’t even give away a “sample” bag like they do with slices of cheese or free cookies for the kids …

These stores can charge what they wish for any other item on their shelves, but a bag will cost a dime by order of the Commissioner … and trust me, there will be a Commissioner, with full benefits, to administer this program … let’s just call it the City of Davis Plastic Bag Ban and Full Employment Act of 2013 … if you don’t like it, take it up with the Bag Action Group (BAG) that’s advising the council on this matter …

As Glen notes, when he walks around town he marvels at how very little litter there is along Davis’ gutters, streets and sidewalks … my experience as well … in fact, if we could eliminate single-serving potato chip bags and wrappers from Snickers Bars, we’d be pretty much squeaky clean …

Clearly, we live in an extremely tidy town with sensible, environmentally conscious citizens … why the city doesn’t trust them to do the right thing with plastic bags is a mystery … the ban is “a solution in search of a problem” Glen claims, and it’s hard to disagree …

WORDS FROM ON HIGH … got my urgent tweet from newly minted Pope Francis (@Pontifex) the other day … “We pray for a heart which will embrace immigrants,” he writes … “God will judge us upon how we have treated the most needy.” … presumably his tweet has reached all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including that very Catholic Speaker of the House, John Boehner …

IS THERE A PROOFREADER IN THE HOUSE? … while he claims to have “enjoyed” some of my recent columns on fluoridating the Davis water supply, Hiram notes that I quoted the April 21, 1960 edition of The Davis Enterprise that said “Measure B — Flouridation — was defeated by the narrow margin of 1,076 ‘for’ and 1,044 ‘against’ “ …

Hiram points out the 53-year-old misspelling of “fluoridation” and kindly says “I believe the actual Enterprise article from 1960 misspells the word, so I don’t think this is your fault.” … of course not … my dad always taught me to quote accurately or not at all … plus, “fluoridation” was spelled correctly elsewhere in the same column, when not quoting from the 1960 article …

“Possibly, the 1960 measure wasn’t about adding fluoride to the drinking water, but rather about adding ‘flour.’ Possibly, another groundbreaking move so that bread-making would be more convenient. As it happened, the wheat-intolerant lobby won the day on that vote.” … actually, you’re not far from the tree here, Hiram …

I remember that 1960 was a banner year for backyard apricots, which were rotting faster than Davis folks could eat them, can them or transform them into jam … the proposal to add “flour” to the water was to aid residents in the making of apricot cobbler … unfortunately, it failed by 32 votes and the stench of mushy apricots could be detected all the way to Arbuckle …

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]

Comments

comments