Guess the Bag Monster didn't scare up enough votes after all.
California lawmakers late last night rejected a bill that would have banned plastic shopping bags. Indeed, things got downright libertarian under the left-leaning Capitol dome, with much debate preceding the vote over whether the
state was going too far regulating personal choice.
I know: in California! What on earth has happened to my nanny-statin', overreegulatin', Earth muffin-sniffin' state?
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You'll recall that the Surfrider Foundation's South County chapter and the Earth Resources Foundation brought the Bay Area's Bag Monster to the Orange County district offices of state Sens. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Tom Harman (R-Costa Mesa) and Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Hills) last week.
However, when the rubber hit the road–actually, the plastic ban bill hit the Senate chambers–only 14 of the 21 votes needed to pass were scrounged up as of around 11 p.m. Tuesday.
Plastic bag islands infesting waters off the Cali coast are one thing; plastic bags stuffed with campaign contributions are another. Heavy lobbying by the plastic industry was credited with killing the bill.
See, Benjamin, Mr. McGuire was right.
“Plastics!”
As what would have been the nation's first statewide ban dips into the sunset like that aforementioned plastic bag island off the California coast, the bill's main shopper, Sen. Julia Brownley (D- Santa Monica), vows to shift the campaign to individual cities
and counties.
Of course, the Bag Monster would be as welcome under the right-leaning Orange County Supervisor's dome as a nasty case of painful rectal itch.
Attention, Kmart shoppers: your matching luggage is safe.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.