Texas Public Policy Foundation — hoist by its own petard

This spring, I blogged about the Texas Public Policy Foundation ready to help out my current town of residence on some community improvement issues. Well, TPPF has gotten official approval from the city to set up a city clean-up program with adult and juvenile probationers.

And, that leads to the petard hoisting of itself by TPPF.

This cleanup work was one of the ideas that TPPF’s Jess Fields mentioned to this city in his initial presentation.

That said, what's one of the major components of trash blowing around streets in dirtier communities?

Plastic grocery bags.

And, TPPF already has a  history that shows its inimical to the interests of this county.

Well, TPPF has a “tag” on its blogs called “over-regulation,” and one piece by Fields himself claims that banning plastic grocery bags, as Austin did, may be “deadly” because reusable bags might harbor killer bacteria. 

Yes, canvas grocery bags, like the ones I’ve used for a decade, could kill you. Last I checked, they had done me a lot less harm than Texas’ mountain cedars. Of course, since many of those cedars in the Hill Country provide shelter for Endangered Species Act-listed golden-cheeked warblers, TPPF would probably love to help me and other allergy sufferers by abolishing the ESA, then chopping down cedars. What swell folks, eh?

Note to TPPF: Any canvas bag toter who croaks in front of the North Austin Whole Foods? It's much more likely to be a botox OD than "baggus salmonellicus." Second guess is finding something non-GMO in that bag or something, not the bag itself. Third? Asphyxiation from finding out that a vial of TPPF hot air was detonated inside the bag.

Seriously, I'd love a statewide push by somebody like Public Citizen to get all communities, including this one, to adopt some sort of plastic bag ordinance.