Cuyahoga County Council to ban plastic bags!

If California thinks it’s a good idea, I am probably against it. Here’s the report from Courtney Astolfi at Cleveland.com:

Cuyahoga County Council is poised to pass a countywide ban on single-use plastic bags after all the members of a council committee on Wednesday voiced support for the ban.

Four members of the Education, Environment, and Sustainability Committee signed on as co-sponsors of the ban during the Wednesday hearing, and Council President Dan Brady told cleveland.com he expects the measure to pass.

Committee Chairwoman Sunny Simon and Councilman Dale Miller are the primary sponsors. Signing on Wednesday were Brady, Council Vice President Pernel Jones Jr., and councilwomen Shontel Brown and Cheryl Stephens, giving the measure the six votes needed for passage.

A simple majority of the 11-member council is needed to pass legislation.

Contacted Wednesday, a spokeswoman for County Executive Armond Budish could not immediately say whether Budish supports the measure or whether he would sign the ordinance into law.

If signed into law, the ban would go into effect on Oct. 1 to give retailers time to use up their supplies of plastic bags, and allow time for community education.

The last time Council attempted to curtail the use of plastic bags was a 2017 proposal by Simon and Miller that would have added a 10-cent fee per plastic and paper bag. But that measure faced heavy pushback and never made it to out of committee.

Brady on Wednesday said he believed the proposed ban had garnered a “broad consensus.”

Jones and Stephens said they have received calls and emails in support of the ban from both urban and suburban residents of the county.

Simon acknowledged that the ban would be a difficult change for county residents. But she said it was a necessary one, and likened the environment in America to Paris’ fire-damaged cathedral of Notre Dame.

“This is our cathedral,” she said. “Teddy Roosevelt saw this as something as a legacy that we have to preserve. This is our future.” [hyperbole, anyone? -DP]

The ban applies to all single-use plastic bags and paper bags that are not 100 percent recyclable or made from at least 40 percent of recycled material.

The ban would not apply to plastic bags that customers bring with them to retailers, and bags used for carry-out orders of prepared food or restaurant leftovers.

It also would not apply to plastic bags used for newspapers, perishable items such as produce and meat, garbage, dry-cleaning, pet waste, prescription medication and bags provided at curbside pick-up or points of delivery and bags used for legally transporting partially-consumed bottles of wine.

Exclusions notwithstanding, what’s next? Plastic straws? (Rest of the report is here.)

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It’s not derangement, it’s war.

“It’s Not Trump Derangement Syndrome” – it’s war. Them’s fightin’ words. Karin McQuillan at American Greatness explains:

The Democrats’ onslaught against Trump—the only force that stands in their way—is a testament to their will to power. President Trump didn’t cause the crazy attacks on him. The Russian collusion hoax was foisted on the country by the highest levels of the Obama Administration (likely including Obama himself, although no one will state the obvious) before Trump even entered the Oval Office.

This isn’t delusional or deranged behavior, it is deliberate political behavior aimed directly at the same old political end: power. Democrats — voters as well as party hacks — followed their leaders into the moral abyss because they didn’t care about undoing a legitimate election. They just wanted to win, at any cost to America and to our democracy.

Earlier in her article, McQuillan considered the Democrats' endless and ongoing efforts to corrupt the election processes:

They don’t want any safeguards against voter fraud. In fact, they want to legalize a broad highway to fraud, voter “harvesting.” Paid political operatives go door to door, picking up unused mail-in ballots (sent out without request if Democrats have their way), fill them in for the Democrat candidate, and voilà, the Democrats win. They just rolled out the beta test in Orange County, and it flipped long-time red districts blue.

To win in 2020, Democrats will commit every voter scam and fraud ever invented and they are in the process of inventing a whole lot of new ones. Intimidation and moral grandstanding are keys to success for them. . .

Which is why this report on automatic voter registration at Watchdog Ohio is disturbing:

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced a plan to create a work group that will focus on modernizing the state's voter registration, which would include automatic voter registration.

LaRose said that the current system is unsophisticated and has been used as a tool for political talking points rather than getting people registered and allowing them to more easily update information.

"If you are someone who is concerned about election integrity and preventing fraud, maintaining accurate lists is one of the best ways possible to prevent fraud," LaRose said in a statement. "If you're somebody who like me is concerned that absolutely every Ohioan can participate in the civic exercise of being a registered voter and participating in our elections, this is a great way to do that as well."

Currently, the Ohio voting system requires a person to opt into registration, but the proposal would use interactions that Ohioans already have with the state to automatically opt them in. This way, anyone can participate in elections, opt not to participate or opt out of the registration altogether.

What could possibly go wrong? McQuillan’s article is here. Tyler Arnold’s report at Watchdog Ohio is here.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s "Contact" website is here, with multiple ways to let him know what you think.

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Venezuela tops the list: socialism on display

Monica Showalter at American Thinker reports:

It's no surprise to anyone that socialist Venezuela is an utterly miserable place - there's pictures showing that the capital of Caracas looks like a trash heap, there's the fact that hungry people eat from garbage trucks and drink sewer water, and there's the horrible reality that people are leaving  the country may see a full half of its population flee for any country that will take them.

But there are a lot of crappy places out there and maybe it's just bad press focusing on a few things, right?

Wrong. The sheer awfulness of socialism in Venezuela has been quantified, in hard numbers, by Johns Hopkins University Professor of Economics, Steve Hanke, whose global list, with hard data such as unemployment, inflation, interest rates, minus the percentage change in GDP per capita, quantifies the factors every year. 

Full article, with chart, is here. 

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How the Left is saving me money

image credit: businessingamble.com

James Mullin at American Thinker closed his column “How The Left Is Saving Me Money”:

So, I thought, what else has the Left ruined for me, and in the process saved me money?  Well, I no longer contribute a dime to my college alma mater. . . I attend the movies hardly at all anymore, thanks to Hollywood's antics.  I can't see the character for the repugnant actor or actress.  I also scaled back my cable subscription due to the disgust I have for Comcast and Disney.  I read more and learn more, instead.  Just last week, I chose a much more reasonable store brand sneaker over the odious Nike brand, after it made Kaepernick its spokesperson.  Likewise, I gave up Ben and Jerry's ice cream for store brand and chose AMAC over the costlier AARP as a retirement organization.  I wouldn't give a dime to Progressive Insurance, but in fact, I made a good deal on a less expensive policy from a competitor, with much better service.

Oh, and my savings?  It let me increase my contribution to Judicial Watch. 

To which I would add our own household decisions to change brands (no more Gillette razors or visits to Starbucks, etc.) And I like Mr. Mullin’s plug for Judicial Watch. Full column is here.

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John Boehner gets something right

From The Hill:

Former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he "wouldn't bother" launching a primary challenge against President Trump if he were former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R). 

"No, I wouldn't — I wouldn't bother if I were him," Boehner said during an interview on NBC host Chuck Todd's podcast, "Chuck Toddcast," according to Politico Playbook.

. . .

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How the media manipulates the report

investigaction.net

Mark Steyn walks us through exactly HOW the media transmutes a news report into outright propaganda – step by step -- in his "Taqiyya for Easter." He starts off:

Let's say a fire breaks out at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris at the start of Holy Week, and just after two of the city's other most prominent houses of worship - St Sulpice and the Basilica of St Denis - have been attacked and vandalized.

Well, I think we can all confidently say as the first flames are beginning to lick the ceiling that it's undoubtedly an accident. Cigarette butt. Or maybe computer glitch. Probably just an overheated smart phone. We don't need to get in there and sift through the debris. We can just announce it.

On the other hand, when there are coordinated attacks on Easter services at several churches in Sri Lanka, it becomes a little more challenging to pass off multiple suicide-bombings killing nearly three hundred people as an electrical malfunction.

So, in contrast to the confident declarations of a week ago, on Sunday morning the media opted for a subtler narrative. Lead sentence from The Economist:

IT HAS BEEN nearly ten years since the guns fell silent in Sri Lanka's civil war. But bloodshed returned with a vengeance...

So it's something to do with the Tamil Tigers? Their guns fell silent, but now they've returned with a vengeance, eh?

Well, er, no, er, not, ah, precisely... But it's useful for "context", lots and lots of context. And, if you pile up enough context, you can bury the actual story. 

Do read the rest of the how-to analysis here.

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Happy Easter

image credit: redbubble.com

from Cleveland Tea Party

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