“It’s hit, deep to left field…”

Volume 1, Number 19

It’s baseball season so I serve up this analogy: Assembly Democrats have hung a curve ball and the Republicans have hit it deep to left, on its way out of the park.

Late last week the State Assembly passed legislation to impose a 25 cent per bag tax on all grocery bags used in California. They call it a fee, but explain that subtlety to consumers. This was a surprisingly stupid move given the historic highs of food prices. Wheat bread now costs $4.39 a loaf. A carton of eggs will set a single mom back $3.60. A gallon of milk costs a struggling family $4.50. I paid $4.66 a gallon today for gasoline.

Despite the struggling economy, unprecedented food prices and continually rising price of gasoline, Assembly Democrats cannot seemingly help themselves when it comes to passing legislation that is said to be good for the environment. This particular bill, AB 2058 by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is said to encourage the recycling of plastic bags. It enacts a complicated and convoluted system that retailers must follow in order to avoid charging the bag tax. Among other things, stores must recycle at least 70% of their plastic bags to avoid charging the tax. Well, first of all, how does a store even know how many plastic bags it uses? Are we going to install little “bag counters” at the checkout stand to measure compliance? And who will be monitoring the accuracy of the bag counters to make sure there is no tampering occurring? Let’s hire hundreds of bag counting inspectors, make them SEIU members, and send them out to grocery stores all over California to make sure this new system works. Oh, one more thing. The supposed aim of the legislation is to increase recycling of plastic bags, but the measure applies to paper bags as well. This leads one to conclude that a primary purpose is to tax consumers to generate more money for the state. (There are apparently 19 billion plastic bags used by Californians every year.) It’s one thing, politically, to propose to tax “big oil” or “big tobacco” but when Democrats propose to tax grocery consumers at a time when food prices are sky high, that is an incredibly stupid thing to do. Even Republicans won’t miss this opportunity to punish them in the fall campaign.

I can’t help think that the passage of this legislation was designed to help Levine in his hard-fought primary election battle against former Assemblywoman Fran Pavely. If that was the point, it failed since Levine was soundly trounced by Pavley by a 2:1 margin. It now falls to Senator Don Perata to stuff this bag tax in the trash bin before Republicans can make more political hay out of it.

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So Scott McClellan is out with a book ripping the Bush Administration over its handling of the war. I haven’t read it and I have no idea whether what he alleges is true or not. However, one issue that has emerged is the role of the press secretary and whether this person is in an inside position of knowledge in an administration. In my experience, while the press secretary is a critical person and certainly is privy to many facets of an administration, the person in this position is rarely involved in sensitive high level policy or political discussions. There is a good reason for this. If the press secretary has inside knowledge about an administration’s plans, and then is asked about it by the media, he must either plead ‘no comment,’ spill the beans, or lie. None of those responses are helpful to the cause. If he isn’t informed, he can tell the media honestly, “I don’t know.” This is why I almost never talk to the media during a hotly contested initiative campaign. I would much rather have a press secretary handle those chores. First, if the media thinks they can talk directly to the campaign manager, they will always want to talk to me and not the press secretary. Second, the press secretary can honestly avoid discussion of subjects about which she or he is not informed. If the media asks me, for example, how much money we are going to spend on an ad buy, I have to tell them, “I’m not going to say.” That sort of response doesn’t make the campaign look very good in print.

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Well, the primary elections have come and gone, so let’s revisit some past subjects of my Rant:
• Obama has clinched the nomination and apparently avoided a floor fight over delegates. But he isn’t out of the woods yet. Hillary Clinton is actively lobbying for the Vice Presidential spot. You can bet your first born that she will put up a fierce internal fight to force Obama, to whom she now refers as “my friend,” to choose her. She may well succeed., even thought Obama surely must hate her by now. Isn’t this delicious?!
• Kevin Johnson has nearly knocked the inept Sacramento Mayor, Heather Fargo, out of office. Returns thus far show him with almost 47% of the vote, with her just shy of 40%. With nearly 16,000 votes yet to be counted, it’s possible that he may eke out a 50% margin and win the race outright. Even if it goes to a runoff, however, I’ll take bets that Fargo is finished. And she should be since her accomplishments in office are invisible. Let’s hope that the next Mayor will be a dynamic, visionary, can-do person who harnesses the vast potential of Sacramento’s downtown area and transforms the central city. Think Austin, San Antonio and Portland and you’ll understand what Sacramento has not been able to accomplish because of lack of Mayoral leadership.
• Tom McClintock has soundly beaten Doug Ose for the GOP nomination in the 4th Congressional District, my home area. I supported Ose, but offer my congratulations to Tom. Whatever differences I have with him pale in comparison to the differences I have with the Democrat nominee, Charlie “Good Grief” Brown. McClintock should win handily in November and enjoy the support of most of Ose’s backers, including me.

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Comments

[Blueline Bill]

If bag recycling is the true goal then simply order stores to curtail the supply. No tax, no expense.
The bag-makers will freak...but if it saves just one tree then isn't it worth it? (hee-hee).
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Totally agree re: the role of a spokesman -- McCurry was one of the greats and McClellan, well, by shooting off his mouth he has shot himself in the foot (at least with GOP loyalists).