The overwhelming veto-proof, bipartisan vote today means that New Hampshire is now on a path to doing something that looked impossible just a couple years ago — repeal a cap-and-trade program. In the process, it could deal the death blow to cap and trade both regionally and nationally.
Related: “No, thank you, I would like one for free.”
h/t Maz2
About repealing cap-and-trade: the linked article states —
The cost of those permits is buried in the rate base and passed on to customers in the form of higher electricity prices. The tab is $28.2 million so far and rising — the state budget estimate for the next year jumped to $70 million in hidden energy taxes under the RGGI cap-and-trade program. Moreover, the program has become a honey pot for corrupt special interest giveaways to corporations…
I hope that New Hampshire can recoup those costs: corporations benefiting from the transfer of wealth should be compelled to return the cash to consumers. Special interest groups should be similarly required to issue a refund. If the fly-by-night eco groups no longer exist, pursue the principals of the group. The perps of this wholesale fraud need to refund the stolen funds and do time for the crime.
About the National Post article and the five-cents-a-bag nonsense:
I’ve dealt with bag fees in two ways. At a store in one of the Weston chains, when asked if I want to buy a bag, I’ve insisted on purchasing 100 bags. It’s great fun to make the cashier — who is unionized and is making almost $22/hr! — count out the 100 bags. It’s also great fun to tell the manager that, if you’re going to productize your shopping bags by putting a price on them, you must want people to buy them: keep counting. I use the bags for my kitchen garbage pail, and they work out to be cheaper per bag and better quality bags than commercial kitchen garbage bags.
I’ve also refused to complete sales when staff turn sanctimonious about the bag issue. At a Lee Valley shop, I intended to purchase about $600 in yuppie woodworking tools. When they insisted that I pay 10 cents for their bag, I told them that I did not want the stuff after all — it was all there on the counter; staff had pulled it from the warehouse and I was ready to pay, but I’m not going to be nickel-and-dimed, literally in this case, for eco posturing. Someone who appeared to be a manager attempted to sort things out, but ultimately refused to provide the bag for free — “it’s for the environment, after all.” Before leaving, I asked them to confirm that they did indeed want to forfeit a $600 sale “for the environment”. And indeed they did. I don’t know why they even stay in business.
“The New Hampshire House of Representatives today voted overwhelmingly — 246 to 104 —”
Population:1,316,470 (2010 census)
There are 400 elected State Representatives and 24 State Senators.
This State has to be one of the most over-governed on Earth!
As for free bags at grocery stores,I was in a Superstore the other day,and an elderly lady in front of me complained to the cashier about having to pay 4 cents a bag. The cashier snarled,”well why don’t you go shop at Safeway and pay 25% more for your groceries”.
When my turn came up, I remarked that she must have recently taken the “super host” program. She gave me a sour look and didn’t say anything.
I don’t know which grocery chain(s) does it, but one chain pays customers to use the shopping bags so a friend of mine goes in with e.g. five shopping bags, puts one or two items in each bag and demands the refund payment for all five bags.
2008 was the last time a US presidential candidate will run on the environment. Last time.
The bag thing, the bags were never “free”, they were always a hidden cost. I’m buying the bags anyway and they cost the store more than a nickel each. I just view the -extra- nickel charge as one more Liberal induced ripoff and vote Conservative.
In Ontario the PC’s chief attraction is that they aren’t the Liberals and they aren’t the NDPee, and right now that is good enough for me. With a lot of work I’m sure we can pummel Mr. Hudak and company into giving up their pink underwear.
And in news from Down Under, Gillard, just 6 months after campaigning on no carbon taxes, is looking to introduce one next year.
A lefty politician lied – didn’t see that one coming.
Lickmuffin, may I suggest Teg’s Tools and Princess Auto as alternatives? They don’t do the bag farce. Veritas is the only thing exclusive to Lee Valley, after all.
Neo-AGW Report: Diet Thursday. Free Counselling.
H/T GoreableSuzuki’s Weight Gain Clinic.
I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck, and a tomato/tomahto ’round the neck…. of AGW.
Now, it’s His fault, not Gaia’s fault:
“an “Act of God” winter”.
[Note: It’s not funny**]
…-
“More snow and high winds for Victoria today
Vancouver Sun”
…-
“Cold casualties run high for veggies”
“an “Act of God” winter in Mexico, Texas and Florida, North America is entering a season of tomato crisis, marked by soaring prices and crashing quality.”
“It’s the worst tomato shortage in a half century”.
“due to the Mexican winter, which climaxed in a brutal early-February freeze that killed off 75% of the tomato crop.
Normally, the Mexican crop disaster — described as the worst in 50 years — would send buyers north to Florida, but this year the Sunshine State had its own taste of bitter, crop-killing cold.”
“Add a frosty Texas to the mix,”.
“”It’s very expensive — it’s killing us,” said Marco Abdi, owner of La Brezza restaurant in Bridgeland.”
“ROMAINE LETTUCE
* Prices rising; epidermal blistering, discoloured peeling, freeze damage, and tip burn
BELL PEPPERS
* Scarce supplies until March
* Mexican supplies to drop 70-80%
CELERY
* West Coast supplies limited
* Blistering, peeling and growth cracking widespread
CUCUMBERS
* Mexican supplies limited
* Floridan supplies tight
* Prices elevated throughout March
TOMATOES
* Mexican, Florida supplies limited
* Market prices climbing rapidly
LIMES” (more AGW casualties)
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2011/02/24/17388061.html
**H/T Liberal Kyoto Citoyen Dionky
A caller to Adler yesterday told the story of going to groc.store,that offers to ‘assist’ the shopper to take your groc to your car.So,when same caller purchased over $200.worth of groc.,then refused to purchase bags,he loudly said,”and yes I DO want someone to help carry out”..same customer was given the bags FREE!
I refuse to buy plastic bags, if they aren’t provided I simply leave the purchase on the counter. Superstore started charging customers but they lost so much business to Sobeys who doesn’t charge they reversed the policy.
Phantom wrote —
… may I suggest Teg’s Tools and Princess Auto as alternatives?
Thanks for the mention of Teg’s — I’ll check them out.
I already use the Chinese Navy (Princess Auto) for disposable items.
Veritas products are the only thing I get from Flea Valley; planes in particular, but occasionally one or two of their more clever tools.
The $600 purchase mentioned earlier was a couple of Veritas planes. And boy, did I ever teach them a lesson! I went to another Toronto-area Lee Valley a few weeks later and bought the planes there. Oddly enough, the second outlet did not raise a fuss about the bag!
I love it Lickmuffin, I think I’ll do the same. $5 bucks is cheaper than a movie, and likely more entertaining.
I think I mentioned this story before, but not long ago a cashier at Super Store got indignant with me about my reusable thicker “Super Store GREEN” plastic bags. These bags are close to 10 yrs old and we’ve got about 10 left from an original purchase of 30. The fact that a) the bags were from Super Store, and b) they said “Green” on them in bold green letters, and c) that they’re 10 years old; seemed to go right over the head of the lady giving me an environmental guilt-trip. BTW, we purchased these bags because we correctly perceived them a good value; not to save the environment.
I too like to irritate silly union employees. Another recent experience at the Super Store happened this time at the deli. It was very slow and I’d asked for a few 100 grams of sandwich meat. I then decided to purchase some of the hot food that has to be paid for at the deli till(right next to the sandwich meat). It was at that time the ‘sandwich meat girl’ told me she’d have to get someone to help me with the pizza that was within reach. While I waited 5 minutes for the ‘pizza girl’ I thought “hmmmmm… could this inconvenience be a union thing?” so I thought I’d be a little devious. Of course the ‘pizza girl’ showed-up alone, got the pizza packaged, and then I said “I think I need some more pepperoni”. Care to take a guess what happened next? I got the full fledged eye roll(same as I get from my daughters), a sigh, and got told to….wait for it….”wait a few moments while I get someone”. Fortunately for all of us, they thwarted my plans to cause mischief and both showed-up this time to ensure I didn’t ask for more pizza I guess. I would have btw.
We really do need to continue to voice our disapproval at being forced to do things we don’t agree with.
Let the clerk know how you feel, they will pass it on eventually. There are a couple of checkout clerks at my grocery store who become indignant when I show up with no cloth bags. I smile and tell them that sometimes I remember to bring them and sometimes I don’t. Then I make them double bag the heave stuff so I can get it all home.
I smile a lot through this process as I know it makes them crazy. Who says leftist tyranny can’t be made to be a bit of fun. They need to be tormented and we need to torment them.
A marvelous idea, Lickmuffin. I’m going to start doing that next time I go grocery shopping.
As for the cost, the bags in the quantity the stores buy them cost much, much less than 5 cents a unit.
It’s not as much fun as making them count out five hundred bags, but I used to have a trifecta for annoying the Bag Police:
1) I reuse my grocery bags as garbage bags everywhere in my home. That means I’m not buying separate garbage bags and all their associated packaging that gets thrown away.
2) See that cloth/recycled plastic bag you’re using? See the “Made in China” tag on it? I wonder how much oil and carbon it took to send our plastic waste to China so they could remanufacture it in a pollution spewing hell-factory and then ship it back to us.
3) A kid in Waterloo discovered a year ago that you can biodegrade a plastic bag to nothing in six months with naturally occurring soil bacteria. So they were never a problem in the first place.
Local Zellers store started charging the 5 cents per bag (they just started adding the charge to the bill without asking), so I used a shaming behaviour to get free ones: I brought my own bags – from Walmart.
Since then I’ve also used Safeway and Save-On-Foods bags at Superstore.
CRC
Daniel Ream wrote —
See that cloth/recycled plastic bag you’re using? See the “Made in China” tag on it?
Whenever I get the eye-rolling nonsense from staff or even from customers, I always point out the “Made by people who were then shot in the back of the head and had their organs harvested” label. I then ask people to consider the environmental impact of cotton itself: it is one of the most resource-intense (water in particular) materials you can buy. And don’t get met started on the studies showing the bags are heavily contaminated with e. coli after just a couple of shopping trips.
Damn, but I am just a barrel of laughs on my shopping trips!
Another thing that cheeses my sausage about Loblaws / SuperStore / Zehrs / etc. eco harangue is the fact that they lecture us about what we consume, and then they import pickles from India! Bottled pickles in brine are heavy — what is the energy cost in shipping those things half-way across the planet? Even if they don’t ship the bottles from India — say they are just shipping the product in bags and then bottle the stuff in Canada — what is the energy cost of the transshipment and repackaging process?
Frig.
“A kid in Waterloo discovered a year ago that you can biodegrade a plastic bag to nothing in six months with naturally occurring soil bacteria. So they were never a problem in the first place.”
~Daniel Ream
They designed plastic grocery bags to be biodegradable about 20 years ago.
I’m surprised so many people have forgotten this because they touted it pretty proudly in all the grocery stores at the time.
and Dulton in Ontario just committed to paying, I mean “investing” $8 billion dollars of Ontario taxpayer’s money in Greenie power projects, including paying Eco-Grifters 80 cents for the same amount of electricity that costs 3.5 cents to produce thermally.
Not there’s a Windfall Profit for ya!.
Maybe in Ontario they should start referring to Wind Turbine Profits instead ?
The first time I went grocery shopping up here, the cashier looked at me like some kind of mental defective when she asked me if I needed bags and I just stood and blinked for ten seconds.
“I don’t understand.”
“Do. You. Need. Bags. For. Your. Groceries?”
“It would make them easier to carry, so yes.”
“They’re five cents apiece.”
“That’s all? I’d like forty bags, please.”
“You don’t need that many. You can fit all this into 6 or 7.”
“Sure. I’d still like forty bags, please.”
Heavy sigh and glare as she is forced to separate and count out forty bags.
Meanwhile Premier Pinocchio comes out with another boondoggle so that he can shaft more people like he did when he scammed those he suckered into spending money to erect birdblenders and then canceled the contracts or refused to honour them.
Here is the link to Fred’s post.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-awards-3-billion-in-green-energy-contracts/article1918679/
and Dulton in Ontario just committed to paying, I mean “investing” $8 billion dollars of Ontario taxpayer’s money in Greenie power projects…
Do not get me started. My electric bill went up noticeably last year. Over the entire year, we paid over $500 more for electricity in 2010 than we did in 2009 — and we used less power in 2010 than we did in 2009.
McGuinty and members of his government need to be held criminally responsible for what they have done to this province, along with the cronies who have pocketed the money spent on green schemes and alternative generation scams.
Hang onta your hat Fred….
The suckers who invested in PV solar arrays to sell @$0.80/kwh got upset because then they were told that it was not possible to connect them to the grid “at this time.” Seems the grid is designed to distribute power from major generators not to accept small variable inputs from a plethera of sources….such an attempt would involve black outs and power spikes……or billions in upgrading. Solution…Hydro 1 says “sorry can no do”.
Rose
Sobeys here in Woodstock charge for shopping bags.
Some of the cashiers seem annoyed when I say no and pull out Bulk Barn, free,heavy guage bags from my pocket. My jacket pocket easy holds 5-6.
BTW Bulk Barn gives seniors discounts and free big reusable bags to any sale over $50.
Back in the day, I rolled over to a ware-house in South Carolina for a haul-back. Plastic produce and shopping bags. Due to the border I had invoice for #s and the declared cost. The unit cost of produce bags was less than 1/10 of a cent per and same for the shopping bags….at the time I reasoned…”no wonder they hand them out for free”………..
Inhofe, Jackson Testify on Bill to Strip EPA of Power to Regulate GHGs
http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/3429.html
Haven’t paid a cent for “green” bags and I have bags of bags in the back seat of the car. Almost every time a store introduced their “enviro” bags they give them away to get you in the mood, so to speak. I’ve even been handed them to me from mall merchant’s groups and just picked up two new fancy ones at the boat show. I love the look of the clerks when I bag my groceries in a really nifty bag from a marine paint maker.
Did you miss this one?
http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/local/article/115488–hydro-rate-hike-approved-to-cover-fines-court-costs
Hydro overcharges customers, gets caught, gets fined, then gets a rate increase from the same customers to pay the fine. Where is the punishment?
The CBC version says that it would be unfair to punish Hydro shareholders, typically municipalities. But aren’t those municipalities also made up of those same overchanged customers?
When I have a small purchase at Extra “Slow”, I take a bag. 5 cents.
Then I throw it away in their parking lot.
Eco-bullshit….
If I could get over the ick factor, I could have lots of fun with my really cool bag from a funeral home.
Started charging me for bags at the Extra Foods.
They don’t charge for the hard-plastic shopping baskets, though – those things are useful around the house.
🙂
[deleted, and you know why. – ED]
Agent provocateurs are trolling, it seems. Is that you, Lucy?
Not sure where I saw it but carbon footprint wise need to reuse bag 300 Times or plastic is better. 600 If plastic bag is used again for garbage. As usual green dimwits do much harm and no good
I was shopping last Christmas at Home Outfitters. The cashier asked if I would like to buy a bag for ten cents. I asked why they were charging for them as I had to get my purchases home and thought I should get a bag with my commercial transaction.
She went on to tell me that by charging for the bags they were saving the environment. I told her I would take two (only needed one) and help her and her cause out. She looked at me funny and stated that I only needed one bag, I agreed but told her that I wanted two, and that when I got home I would throw both of them in the garbage.
This started a dialogue between us, and upon my third visit back to this store she has realized that both enviromentalism and global warming is a scam.
Cheers.
You can empty several large ashtrays into every grocery store bag.
The most annoying stores where I live are the BC liquor stores who seem to be determined not to give you a bag to carry very expensive purchases in. I’ve had to forcefully tell some of the moronic employees that I don’t want a paper bag, I want a plastic bag with handles and that the only thing paper bags are to be used for is to cushion multiple bottles that are put in a plastic bag. If I’m buying a $70 bottle of scotch, I damn well want it in a plastic bag that isn’t going to tear in the rain and can be hung from my forearm with the 10 bags of groceries I’m also carrying up the stairs.
Although BC liquor stores are claiming to be doing this “for the environment”, they no longer allow people to recycle empty liquor boxes which I used for multiple moves. Only in a province run by moonbats.
I save all my plastic bags and am very glad I did so in Vancouver as I used an incredibly number of them to wrap stuff in when I packed up my apartment when moving out. WalMart will take used plastic bags; those that don’t get used as garbage bags or packing stuff that’s mailed.
The other thing I point out to cashiers that ask me if I’ve brought a bag is the prominent sign at the stores entrance saying “No bags allowed”. I’ve never had any store employee explain this paradox to my satisfaction. And, like others above have noted, I’ve left a couple of hundred dollars worth of potential purchases behind when I was asked to pay for a bag.