The Plastic Bag Scandal

It goes without saying that plastic waste is a significant global environmental problem! The world generates over 300 million tons of plastic waste each year, only 10 percent of which is recycled. More worrisome, 17 percent of this material ends up in the ocean. Just how effective, do you think, will California's war on plastic take-home bags be in reducing the environmental pollution caused by plastic waste? Most likely we will never know the answer to this all important question. After all, the politicians have made an effort to "fix" the problem and that’s all that really matters in the la-la land in which liberals live. Whether or not the "fix" works is of little or no importance. Common sense should tell us that the ban on plastic take-home bags will have little or no effect on the mountains of plastic waste we humans generate each year. This is so, because nearly everything you buy at a retail outlet these days is contained in a plastic sack or container, even corn flakes. Thus, what difference does it really make if our purchases are carried home in yet another plastic container? I will argue that it doesn't

make the slightest bit of difference, none at all! In fact, the liberal do-gooders who passed this meaningless legislation are making a giant mountain out of a infinitesimally small mole-hill. But, I have led the reader slightly astray because this absurd piece of poorly crafted legislation is about a lot more than simply banning plastic bags at the supermarket. Rather, it is about banning all take-home bags at retail outlets unless, of course, you pay an extra charge for paper. How in the Sam hill, you might be asking, did paper get into this fight? Good question! As we all know paper products including grocery bags, cardboard containers and the like, decompose relatively rapidly when disposed of and are not a significant problem, wherever they end up (by the way, my composting earthworms love paper products of all kinds). More importantly perhaps, paper comes from trees which are a renewable natural resource in ready supply. People make money growing trees and turning them into paper, so what’s not to like about the paper industry and their products they produce for us? No, something went badly wrong when the liberal politicians in Sacramento crafted this destructive piece of legislation. Why, include paper bags in legislation designed to decrease the amount of plastic which ends up in our landfills, streams and oceans? That’s the $64,000 question. Well, first because there is a lot of money to be made in bags if the retailers do not have to provide them for free! Second, politicians live on the campaign contributions provided to them by corporations like Safeway who will profit handsomely from the plastic bag ban. I have been unable to determine how much money Safeway contributes to the campaign coffers of politicians they consider to be "business friendly" however, you can be sure it is substantial. So, how do you convince customers to pay for something they are accustomed to receiving for free? The first step is to outlaw the plastic grocery bag and force customers to bring their own cloth bags or pay ten cents for ones made of paper. Remember that before the social engineers got their fingers in the grocery store’s "bag of tricks" you had a choice of plastic or paper, both of which were free. At this point, plastic bags are a thing of the distant past and the previously free paper ones now cost ten cents. As a result, merchants are way ahead of the game because they now only have to stock one type of bag; more importantly, they made a nice profit by selling the paper bags they previously provided for free. Nice work if you can get it! Sure, some of us who were accustomed to free grocery bags are pissed, just as we were when gasoline hit $4.50 a gallon. But, as with the gasoline rip-off, time has a way of deadening the effect of what you pay for things and we consumers undoubtedly will soon forget that bags were once free and be willingly pay an added charge for the convenience of transporting our food and beverages home in bags rather than piece-meal in the trunk or back seat of the car. However, the "rip-off artists" at Safeway, in cahoots with their political cronies in Sacramento, were just "warming up" when they decided to screw the public by banning plastic bags and requiring us to buy ones made from paper! As I made my way through the check-out line at our local Safeway yesterday morning I noticed something new, a large rack of fancy plastic take home bags. I kid you not, less than two weeks after banning free plastic bags, the bureaucrats in Sacramento authorized the sale of similar plastic bags- at 25 cents a pop! I was told that the new bags were more environmentally friendly and would last longer than the previous free ones. Really? Somehow, I am a bit skeptical of these claims and common sense tells me that, sooner rather than later, the new 25 cent bags will end up in our landfills and oceans, side by side with the previous free ones!

The Price We Pay For Gender Equality

Before beginning I want to make two points. First, I am all for equal pay for equal work and all other forms of gender equality. If Carla Fiorina runs for the Presidency, I will be one of her strongest supporters! I might even support her campaign financially, although that would be unlikely considering my reluctance to squander money on hopeless endeavors. No, this article is not about equal rights for women; rather, it is about the cost society is paying for a females right to forgo her traditional role as a wife and mother to compete with males in the world of politics, finance and, yes, even truck driver. Second, this article pertains primarily to the white, Caucasian, world, not the peoples who are descendants of the Negroid and Mongolian branches of the species know as homo-sapiens. One could make the argument, however, that all members of the human race have suffered, and will continue to suffer, from the deterioration of traditional family unit brought on by the feminist movement. I want to begin this discussion by pointing out that in the early twentieth century fifty percent of the smartest whites on the planet were house wives! Oh, where were a few exceptions to this rule even then, but those who gave up their traditional roles of wife and mother to enter the work force in the early 1900s were miniscule in number and their effect on society of little consequence. To keep the remainder of this discussion in perspective, recall that, on average, each female of a given ethnic group must give birth to 2.2 live children just to maintain its status quo. The birth rate in 1911 for white women in the United States was 3.4; by 1992 it had dropped to 1.89! By comparison, the birth rate of black women in 1992 year was 2.2 while the fertility rate of Mexican American women was 2.47. As Hilary Clinton would argue, “What difference, at this point, does it make? Well, a great deal of difference! Here's why. I have concentrated on Caucasian women in this blog because America was predominately a white nation when our society began to unravel in the mid-twentieth century. However, the genetic makeup of all ethnic groups in this country, and most of the western world for that matter, have been ill-effected by women's liberation. This is so because smart well educated women of all races have significantly fewer children than do their uneducated and duller counterparts. For example, the fertility rate of educated white women (with a masters or higher) was 1.4 in 1992 while the birthrate of similarly educated Blacks and Latinos was 1.3 and 1.7 respectively. Thus, the effects, good and bad, of the feminist movement cuts across all races; the smarter they are, the lower their fertility rate. As a result, America and her sister Western Nations are becoming dumber with each passing second! In fact, western civilization has lost approximately 1.5 IQ points with each passing generation since the Elizabethan era and I believe the race toward national stupidity is accelerating. This loss of inherent genetic IQ is made all the more significant because the replacement population is largely comprised of Mexican and South American illegal's who have a mean IQ of 86, a full fourteen IQ points below that of the average Caucasian women. Now, I can hear the yelling, screaming and gnashing of teeth from the liberals who may, by chance, have stumbled onto this blog. These people have been educated by the liberal intelligentsia who, based on studies performed on rats and pigeons, would have us believe that all humans, irrespective of race, are born with roughly equal intelligence. If this were so, obviously, it wouldn't make a lick of difference who are having the babies, just as long as someone is turning them out in large numbers. I addressed this issue in some length in my book America in Decline and will not argue the point further here, other than to point out that every single one of the 167 creditable studies on human intelligence (those performed on humans, not rats and pigeons) have shown that there is a significant racial difference in mean IQ. The only question argued amongst the researches who performed these studies related to the magnitude of the racial differences in IQ, not the fact that such differences in innate intelligence exist. Still not convinced? Well then, consider this fact. Thirteen point five percent of the world's 1,226 billionaires are Jewish even though they make up less than 0.2 percent of the world's population. This is an astounding statistic considering the fact that the Jewish population has been the most abused and discriminated against race on the planet earth throughout recorded history. Those who wish to study the racial differences in intelligence between the races should consult Herrnstein and Murray's magnificent expose on the subject in their book, The Bell Curve. In a world where education and intelligence are the keys to success in life, what, if anything, can be done to reverse our countries intellectual slide from greatness to mediocrity? As I point out in America In Decline, most of our social and economic problems could be solved relatively easily if there were simply the will to do so. To reverse our intellectual slide, however, will be a difficult and possibly even impossible, no matter how much of our national treasure is throw at the project. Certainly we should not discourage females from, being all they can be, as they make their way through the twisted paths of the professional, political and academic worlds we live in; however, we might provide economic incentives (tax incentives, monetary rewards and the like) to encourage, and make it easier, for successful bright women, of all races, to have children while they pursue their professional careers. Similarly, on the other side of the equation, we should consider paying low IQ women not to have children, especially if they are unmarried. A Norplant injection program, which would prevent conception for five years, is feasible and, of equal importance, cost effective. Finally, if we are to have any hope in reversing our national decline into intellectual mediocrity, we must stop the flow of low IQ illegal's from Mexico and South America into our country. I ask you, how hard would it be to accomplish that goal?