If you’re interested in the next feel-good legislation about to be passed by the Dallas City Council, look no further than Arlington, where the council there is considering passing a complete and total ban on retailers’ distribution of plastic grocery-type bags in the city, according to the DMN’s Jacquielynn Floyd (who I recognized at the Stars marathon overtime win over San Jose this week, but only because she was sitting next to her husband, who used to play on a softball team with me). Anyway, Floyd apparently is a convert to the anti-plastic forces, hauling reusable bags to the grocery store and such. I bring this up not because I think it’s a good or bad idea (I honestly don’t know the answer to that one, since it means more paper bags will be used, causing more trees to be felled, etc.), but because it’s the kind of thing that will sweep like wildfire through city councils throughout North Texas.
After all, here’s an issue that every councilman can "feel good" about voting for and that virtually no one (retailers included) can speak against, lest they be branded anti-Earth. One difference between this potential ordinance and some of the others the city has passed (cell-phone ban in school zones, pooper-scooper law) is that it will be enforceable — there were be lots of volunteer narcs in the stores willing to raise hell if anyone violates the law.
And you know what’s most scary about this deal? The Dallas council will probably spend more time "debating" this issue and patting themselves on the backs for approving it than they’ll spend blowing through $500 million of our tax money on the downtown convention center hotel.
