The last time we met, just over one year ago, I was delivering news that on January 1, 2009, The City of Seattle would be forcing all grocery, drug, and convenience stores within city limits to charge 20 cents per bag issued to its customers. Further, The City deemed the use of foam food and drink containers by restaurants illegal. The latter went into effect without much of a peep. For the most part retailers complied, some taking the hit to their pocket books themselves, others seizing on the excuse to up their food prices. The former act, however was met with scorn by a segment of the Seattle population and never went into effect. Enough petitions were signed and handed over that The City renegged on their mandate and instead promised to put the question to a public vote.

Yesterday I received my mail-in ballot featuring, you guessed it, The Bag Tax question. Here is how they word it:

"This ordinance would require grocery, drug and convenience stores to collect the fee for every disposable shopping bag provided to customers. Stores with annual gross sales of under $1,000,000 could keep all of the fees they collected. Other stores could keep 25% of the fees they collected, and would send the remainder to the City to support garbage reduction and recycling programs. The stores would get a business-tax deduction for the fees they collected."

I will be rejecting this referendum. If the city wants to tell businesses what they can and can't do then force them to stop handing out plastic grocery bags altogether. Don't tax the citizens and let the businesses keep the spoils. It's like passive agressiveness at its most annoying!

If plastic bags are a great scourge on this earth, and I believe they are, then do something serious: end their use altogether. This bit of behind-the-scenes sneakiness is the kind of shit that pisses me off. I'm tired of tax money flowing here, there and everywhere, everywhere that is except back to the people paying the taxes. Creating additional "business-tax deductions" is also the type of shit that allows businesses to be sneaky. At a time when bloated tax law makes a mockery of "paying your fair share" because wealthy individuals and businesses can find loopholes, why add another potential hole?

And I'm not done yet! What about all those plastic bags we use at grocery stores to carry our fruit and vegetables? Are those "good" plastic bags? Are they not "bad enough" to warrant the 20-cent tax as well? A lack of identifying these bags in this referendum adds another layer of idiocy to this stupid potential law that I don't even care to discuss.

Oh, and how come only "grocery, drug and convenience stores" have to collect this tax? Why not fast food places? Why not Best Buy? Why not Target? Why not force the pet shop down the street to charge 20 cents more for the bag you get when you carry your goldfish home? I hate inconsistency, and this potential law has inconsistency written all over it.

If The City deems plastic bags truly "bad" then ban them. Stores will figure out some other way to package our groceries and subsequently charge us the difference. If The City wants to pick and choose business types to enforce their law on then that's just plain stupid. A ban across the board, like they did with styrofoam, would mean a helluva lot more than the namby-pamby, inconsistent sneaky shit The City currently seems to think is saving the world.

Bottom line: It's time to save the world by saving the fucking world, not by letting businesses and governments get sneaky. Get some balls, Seattle and stop walking on eggshells.