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Illegal ContraBAG

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Multibillion-dollar debt? Countless millions of illegals streaming over the border? Criminally inept public schools? Joblessness so bad that the Obama administration doesn’t want the state’s statistics included in the national unemployment numbers? Five-dollar gasoline? Corrupt politicians who have never read the Constitution? Vicious death row inmates dying of old age after decades of being cared for by the taxpayers? Forget about all that--the true threat to California has been identified, targeted, and destroyed…

Plastic bags. No, wait, let me do that again… plastic baaaaags! :fear:

Yes, the above problems will never be solved, but it seems that when it comes to the plastic bags you (used to) get from stores to take your purchases home in, the mighty engine of government has positively roared to life, allowing intervention to charge full steam into the affairs of private business, politicians moving so swiftly to attack the problem that they simply did not have time to ask questions or even think about what they were doing.

I don’t get paid for this, and now that I’m actually sitting down and typing about it, I find myself wanting to wander off and read a comic book or something, so real quick, here’s the gist of what’s going on in my county:

:bulletblack: Retail establishments are legally unable to provide bags made of plastic to customers. It’s against the law. A crime.

:bulletblack: Retail establishments may provide paper bags, but are required by law to charge ten cents per bag. They are unable to decide for themselves if they want to offer them for free to their customers; the government is making that business decision for them.

:bulletblack: Plastic bags were so popular and handy to use again for other purposes that customers offered to buy, to pay money, for our remaining supplies of them.

:bulletblack: The paper bags take up seven times the amount of space the plastic ones did. My store’s stockroom does not have room for even twice the space to be taken up for that, let alone seven times; every inch is valuable, and the situation will only get more dire come Christmas, when we will be storing not only more merchandise, but more of the paper bags. We will have to deal with that, not the people who passed the law.

:bulletblack: Taking up seven times the space means cashiers can only keep one-seventh the amount of bags on hand at their registers than they used to, meaning someone has to restock them seven times as often, spending man hours we do not have.

:bulletblack: Forget holding gallon jugs or multiple two liter bottles in the paper bags, and if you have a heavy load in them and don’t hold them by the handles so the bag is hanging perfectly vertical, there’s a nice chance you’ll end up crawling around the parking lot, trying to get that can of clam chowder that rolled beneath a car after you’ve gathered up the rest of your spilled purchases.

:bulletblack: It rains where I live. Do something that the passers of this law apparently did not, and think about what happens to paper when it gets wet. Not only that, you can’t close the top of these bags with a quick spin, like you could the plastic ones… your stuff’s gonna get soaked.

:bulletblack: If you don’t find a way to close these worthless new bags, they’ll fall over while you drive and you’ll be repacking them when you get home.

:bulletblack: Roadside pollution was allegedly the reason for the banning. It may be the reason… I don’t know and don’t care. Littering is already against the law, which means the government is doing what it always does, which is to--instead of enforcing laws already on the books--adding new ones we have to live by in addition to the old ones.

:bulletblack: This makes my county look like a joke. People not from around here are rightfully laughing at us or perplexed by our stupidity, like explorers stumbling upon a tribe of especially backward pygmies throwing their own feces at one another. This is annoying because I live in a fairly decent town; there are violent amigos to the north and aging hippies who refuse to die to the south, but they have voted in big-government morons, and I have to pay for their bad decisions.

:bulletblack: Cashiers are being berated for this mess by rightfully annoyed customers. Trust me, nobody in my store is happy about this, from the cashiers and stock boys to the management. The people who are the cause of it are not in the stores, and therefore not facing daily criticism for what they have done.

:bulletblack: Customers are encouraged to bring in reusable cloth bags. Carrying around big, opaque bags greatly aides shoplifting, as anyone with a brain that works better than a Southern Californian politician’s will be able to grasp instantly.

:bulletblack: Said reusable bags cost one dollar, and we give a five cent bonus to customers who use them. This means that after twenty uses, we will be losing money every time the bag is used… that adds up.

:bulletblack: And nearly worst of all? My store is putting a smiley face on this! Why? Why put signs like the one above all over the parking lot, with more clogging the store? Why not have signs that simply state what has happened? Private enterprise is not yet required to be cheerleaders for the very government intervention that is hampering it, so why are we going out of our way to do so now? “Yay, we’re not allowed to run our business the way we want to, and you’re not allowed to have something convenient that actually works as intended! Oh, yippee!:dance:


There you go, my first foray into photo journalism. Was it professional? No way, but like I said, I don’t get paid for being pissed-off, so it is what it is. Besides, what journalism is professional nowadays? Alright, that‘s done; where did I put that stack of She-Hulk comics…

Comments welcome, even if it’s to point out that should local hippy politicians start being found suffocated to death by plastic bags, I’ll be the prime suspect…=D

(I just realized there’s an American flag in the background. Interesting how it is dwarfed in the picture by the huge banner happily announcing government intervention and the loss of freedom, huh? Wish I could say I composed the shot like that on purpose…)
Image size
1600x1120px 682.02 KB
Shutter Speed
1/251 second
Aperture
F/4.0
Focal Length
9 mm
Sensor Size
6mm
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rommel39's avatar
This is why I will never set foot in the Peoples Republic of California.