Fenty Gives The Finger to The Anacostia

Adrian Fenty, our esteemed mayor, is trying to appropriate the revenue from the bag tax to go to the general fund.

Shocker.

To quote myself, July 8, 2009:

"The chances of the revenue from this actually going to clean up the Anacostia river, instead of paying for trips to Dubai and fur coats for OTR employees, is probably about zero. Do you really think that this "fund" will go to pick up trash in the river when we can't make the annual budget ends meet? Yeah, right."

As my numerous rants on the subject should make painfully clear, getting rid of bags might help a little, but what the river really needs is money. Goodbye, money.

How come if we have a bag tax, we're still left holding the bag?

Get Your Future In The Bag!

Many people are concerned about the "bag tax" in DC. This communist program is a scourge that shackles us all, but what can we do about it?

I have both the answers to the "bag problem," and your financial security. I know you're wondering, how is this possible? How can you be your own boss, earn as much money as you want, and at the same time save the Anacostia River?

With your help, we can accomplish all these goals:

• Clean up the Anacostia River


• Liberate the residents of DC from the tyranny of the bag tax


• Assure your financial security forever

Sounds crazy, right? But just give me a few minutes of your time, and I bet you'll be convinced.

Join my winning sales team!

For only $39.95, you can become an Associate in my unique Bag Upsell Program. Your starting packet includes 1,000 bags, with a street value of $50.00 (at 5 cents a bag), and promotional materials to help build your downline.

For each new bag sales associate you recruit into the program, you will receive $10.00, plus 10% of their downline sales. In no time at all, you will be receiving residual checks and living the American dream! Imagine working from home, as much or as little as you want, smiling all the while because plastic bags are working for you.

But how does this clean up the river?

Every bag we sell is impregnated with our patented BagEater nanotechnology. When a bag is exposed to water for an extended period of time, the bags break down, and releases the BagEaters. These amazing little guys then seek out and attack other plastic bags, reducing them to pieces of plastic small enough to be eaten by blue crabs. The more bags that end up in the river, the cleaner it gets! Honest! It's the future... today.

Why not just switch to reusable bags?

Because bags aren't just for carrying groceries!

Bags are sexy. You wouldn't like it if Big Brother took away your designer jeans, would you? Well, how come you'll stand for him taking away your bags? We should all be free to carry around any kind of bag we want. Don't let government tell you what's fashionable and what's not!

Bags help the homeless! Bags provide vital clothing and can-carrying services to DC's large homeless population. At five cents a bag, how could this man have possibly afforded to clothe himeself? Fight this discrimination against the homeless by ensuring that bags are available to all.

Bags for personal freedom! By building your network of Bag Sales Associates on sidewalks in front of grocery, liquor and Chinese/Italian/Mexican/Southern carry-outs throughout DC, you will be building your own financial security, while ensuring justice and liberty for all residents of DC.

Take the first step - join my program today. Only you can save the Anacostia. Only you can ensure your financial security in these uncertain times. Join today.

Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal accepted. No checks. No refunds. Estimates of future revenue streams do not constitue a guarantee. BagEaters may be unsafe for some or all organic life.

No Bag Tax For Charm City

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, (Lucky) Charm City declined to move forward with a proposed 25 cent bag tax.

What they appear poised to do instead, however, is a remarkably reasonable sounding alternative. Rather than outright banning bags, they would require any affected business that wants to hand out plastic bags to participate in a "plastic bag reduction" program.

The terms of this program are as follows:

• Stores must not give out bags unless the customer asks for them.
  
• Stores must collect bags for recycling.
  
• Stores must offer reusable bags for sale, and post signs encouraging their use.
  

The new policy would also require stores to report on the number of disposable bags they hand out, as well as the number of reusable bags they sell. This information will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

Nobody in the US is likely to pass a 25 cent bag tax.

Typical denizens of Seattle

If there's one thing we can all agree upon, it's that Seattle, Washington is a bastion of patchouli-wearing, clove-smoking, bio-fuel-using hippies. And yet even so, these guys soundly defeated a 25 cent bag tax in a referendum last year. If Seattle isn't willing to tax plastic bags like they were unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes, then really, who is.

I have to believe that anyone who proposes such an onerous tax on something that has about the same environmental impact per person per year as driving your car for a half-hour, really doesn't think it's going to pass. Well, maybe in Seattle, the tofu-eaters really thought they could pass it. But not anywhere else.

The reality is probably slightly more sinister: whoever wrote this legislation in Baltimore knew full well it would never pass the laugh test. But in doing so, they were able to appear to be progressive among the compost-heapers, while being able to quietly reassure the business community that it would never pass.

And sinister though this may be, it's also smart. Because it paves the way for a much more reasonable approach to the issue.

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Sin taxes in DC

DC has among the lowest taxes in the United States on gas, beer, and liquor. Yet we choose to raise revenue though a regressive tax on consumer purchases.

Beer: $0.09/gallon. Tied with one state for lowest in the nation.
Liquor: $1.50/gallon. Only Vermont is lower.
Cigarettes: $2.50/pack - slightly above the median.
Gasoline: $0.20/gallon. Only 11 states are lower.

Oil, when used to make a plastic bag: $10.00/gallon (approx. 200 bags/gallon)

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Anyone who reads this blog knows I oppose DC's bag tax, primarily because I think that it's using a big stick to swat a tiny gnat. I don't think bags are a major contributor to the trash problem, and I know they represent a tiny fraction of the oil/greenhouse gas problem. So I think that implementing a brand-new tax that's regressive, inconvenient, and is likely to have inconsequential benefits, is a really bad idea. Apart from the minimal benefits it will likely create, it wastes valuable political capital that could have been saved up for something that would be really effective, like a bottle bill.

But I'm an environmentalist and I am 100% behind efforts to change people's habits -- but without legislating that change where it's not absolutely necessary to solve a big problem. In this case, the problem is not big, and the tax is not necessary to effect change.

There's something about human psychology that makes people resist doing things that are good for them, even if they're easy, when you tell them it's going to be illegal to do that. But if you encourage people, and help them understand the benefits without shoving it down their throats, they will, in time, usually adopt that change. It's a simple as catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

An example of this kind of policy is the U.S. EPA and U.S. DOE's ENERGY STAR program -- which I actually work on in my career. ENERGY STAR is a labeling program that identifies the most efficient products in its class. The basic premise is to change consumer attitudes with education. Let them know that they'll save money, educate them about energy use in consumer products and appliances, and make it easy to distinguish between energy-hogs and energy-sippers. The program, which has been around for nearly two decades now, has been remarkably successful. And the industry changes and reacts to consumer preferences. For example, the market share of front-loading clothes washers, which use much less water and electricity than conventional top-loading clothes washers, is over 35% in the U.S. today, compared to essentially zero fifteen years ago.

And all that without a law that told you what you had to buy.

Kudos to Baltimore for rejecting the "big stick" approach to the bag issue. I hope this passes and am very interested to see the results.

DC Clarifies Bag Tax, Saves Planet

In response to confusion about the bag tax, DC has posted this "notice of proposed rulemaking."

It is 9 pages of single-spaced type which supposedly clarifies exactly who is subject to the bag tax. I couldn't make head or tails of it. And beyond that, I am completely unclear on what this thing even is. Didn't we already pass a law?

Yes, we did. Apparently, though, nobody could understand it, so we need to pass another law to clarify the orignal law. This "notice of proposed rulemaking" is open for comments until March 5, 2010. Comments can be emailed to Marylynn Wilhere. I plan to do so, if I can figure out what exactly is being proposed.

So now that we have the bag tax, has the apocalypse come?

Where the hell have you been? Yes, it has! Obviously the bag tax is responsible for the two weeks of hell we've endured under the yoke of endless snow. The nation's first plastic bag tax just happens to coincide with the worst snowstorm in DC history. Coincidence? I think not.

Okay, well, maybe it is just a coincidence. But the bag tax has certainly generated a lot of attention. Not just in DC, but from outside. Attention from other cities who are wondering if this is an easy, politically correct way for them to make some cash. Attention from economists who are marveling at the social experiment that this tax represents. In many ways, even though I oppose the tax, I think I've actually been enjoying it from this perspective. How will the reality of its effects match my predictions? How much will people cut of their own noses to spite their face over this tax?

The Post did an online poll last month asking people how they felt about the tax. There were three choices: strongly oppose, strongly favor, or mostly indifferent. Only one percent of the 2,200 respondents chose the "indifferent" option. And everyone else was pretty much evenly split among loving and hating it.

This is really remarkable. I can think of very few social issues which generate such strong opinions. I mean, this is like abortion or gay rights as far as the conviction with which people choose a side. And over a freakin' 5 cent tax on plastic bags! How could this possibly inspire people to drive miles out of their way to avoid it? This interesting article discusses some of these quite unexpected effects and describes the tax as a "behavioral economist's dream."

The other thing that I think is worth noting about the very unscientific Washington Post poll is that it more or less proves that the tax is unpopular. That is - even though the poll respondents were evenly split, the demographics of someone who reads the Post online and responds to a poll like this is very different than the demographics of DC overall. The average online WaPo reader is almost certainly more tech-savvy and "green" than the average DC resident overall. Poorer people are much less likely to have internet access or to participate in this sort of online community. I think it's safe to say that the strongest support for this tax is among young, progressive, people -- a demographic that is almost certainly overrerpresented by an online poll.

With Every Challenge Comes An Opportunity

As soon as my foot is better, I plan to take advantage of the obvious loophole afforded by this law. While it prevents stores from giving away bags at checkout, obviously, you can't make it illegal to sell bags. You will see me, or one of my army of minions, selling "go-packs" of 10 plastic bags outside Giant for 25 cents.

I'm only half kidding. I'm kind of surprised that the supermarket chains don't just give DC the finger by offering for sale 10 or 20 packs of bags at the checkout. It would be perfectly legal, and any effort to prevent such sales would be pretty tough to legislate, unless you were planning to ban plastic bags from being sold, period. Good luck with that.

But what's interesting is that, actually, five cents for a plastic bag is not a terrible deal. In quantities of 1,000, these bags are around 3.5 cents each. Biodegradable plastic bags are 7 cents each! While I am sure someone like Giant who buys millions of these things is getting a better deal, at the end of the day, 5 cents is actually a pretty reasonable retail price for a supermarket bag. In order to have any kind of decent profit margin selling these things on the street to undercut the tax, you'd have to buy them in vast quantities. I must admit that I assumed they would be a lot less expensive, like on the order of a penny each.

Okay, so maybe I'm not quite ready to put the folding table up and fight for space with the shady guys selling incense and handheld-video copies of "Avatar 3D." But I really, honestly do use these bags all the time for picking up trash. The tax has already created a serious dearth of these things in my household.

But luckily, I have someone looking out for me. Someone who the architects of the law will despise, because barely six weeks into the law, she has reacted to it in the most obivous, yet despicable way.

For Valentine's Day, N. gave me a 1,000 pack of disposable supermarket bags.