Straws and Dixie cups. Moms are dying in childbirth, kids are leaving for better jobs, and we’re all on meth, but some legislators are fighting to save straws and Dixie cups.
Senate Bill 54 is another exercise in hypocritical Archie Bunkerism, as the Legislature’s clueless cranks shout back at their television sets about those darn hippies ruining the American way of wasteful life. Senator John Wiik (R-4/Big Stone City) wants to add cups and straws to the list of garbage the state doesn’t allow local governments to regulate. The same folks who preach the value of local control want to prevent any county or city in South Dakota from regulating straws or other landscape-littering, landfill-clogging “auxiliary containers,” defined by SB 54 as…
any bag, cup, bottle, package, container, or other packaging, whether designed to be reusable or single−use, that is made of cloth, paper, plastic, cardboard, corrugated material, aluminum, glass, postconsumer recycled material, or similar material or substrates, including coated, laminated, or multi−layer substrates, and that is designed for transporting or protecting merchandise, food, or beverages from or at a food service facility or retail facility [2020 Senate Bill 54, as introduced 2020.01.17]
Straws, Dixie cups, aluminum cans, glass bottles, burger boxes, plastic sacks—those are the objects of our Legislature’s concern. Our state government can’t support an amendment protecting the equal rights of women, but straws and Dixie cups must not be oppressed!
Businesses and local governments around the country are recognizing that we can do the environment a lot of good by generating less trash. Leave it to South Dakota’s Legislature to fight for willful waste… and to contradict its own principles of local control in the process.
Well, it’s nice to know that someone is going to represent the “let’s waste our time so that we can keep pushing the actual budget discussions to the last day of the 2020 Legislative Session.” Straws indeed.
Former Watertown radio talk show host, John Wiik is about as truly stupid as they come. This is the same guy who wanted to take away rural property rights by allowing cafos to run their poop pipes over peoples driveways without needing permission. No local control, no property rights. Some Republican.
Wiik must have missed the memo. Worrying about tree huggers banning straws is so 2018.
Rolling back efficiency standards on dishwashers and toilet is the new cause celebre
Want to know why young people are leaving the state? It’s legislators like Wiik. They know more about these issues than this dippy legislator. Plastic one-use straws are so 1950s. Young folks around here carry around their own multi-use straws and reusable cups and containers. Try to keep up, legislators. Get with the times.
We seniors in one or two person households use plastic grocery bags as our primary trash stash. Without them we’ll have to buy other trash bags and other trash bags will have to be manufactured to meet our needs. Requesting that plastic grocery bags be made from biodegradable material makes more sense. (asking instead of telling almost always gets the desired results, when retailers need to change)
Since almost every product used by South Dakotans is produced in a liberal state or in China, what those producers think about plastic being misused after use is what ultimately matters. It’s a grocery store or fast food outlet’s reputation being disparaged when dolphins die not Pierre, SD’s stubbornness. Raising prices on items that will go to SD to cover the negative environmental impact seems like something I’d do. And then publicizing that price increase to embarrass the “wrong side of history” legislators would be appropriate, also. (Observers note that being embarrassed nationally hurts SD conservatives more than anything.) China will follow suit because if it hurts Republicans it helps China.
BUT what if the plastic straw manufacturer advocates a boycott against Israel — then what???!!
Good post and comments.
SD, get your head out. So embarrassing.
WTF.
I agree with Eve Fisher. The strategy in Pierre every year seems to be have a couple big controversial bills like Abortion, gender, etc and then some way out legislation like this to consume time. On top of that, repeat the doomsday message of no money again this year. As Eve stated, then after all this, pass a last minute budget and leave Pierre as quickly as possible.
Why would the republicans change what is working for the republican party in SD
“Team … I want you to do a small job, today.” Imagine if your boss had a meeting every morning and issued that unenthusiastic morale booster.
[Small Government is Lazy Government]
Friendly FYI to D.Pay: In the 1950’s we used paper straws.
Something new at sporting events in Colorado. When you buy a beer or soda it comes in an aluminum cup. There are recycle receptacles all over the different stadiums. Ball Corp., the biggest maker of aluminum cans in the world, started the program on it’s own, without state funding. It’s costing them millions to produce the first few million cups but soon their costs will level out to nearly nothing once they don’t have to use new aluminum. Lots of people take the metal cups home, use them for camping and picnics and really enjoy them. It’s a big win in popularity for Ball.
This is what it looks like when rural legislators think deeply, creatively and at their very best about which problems need to be tackled first.
You know, the most pressing problems of our time? Like abortion and abortion and abortion and abortion etc.
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plastic-recycling/
Plastic has its own lobbyists and they are winning.
Cathy B is right. In the 1950s we did use paper straws. They did get soggy, if you didn’t get to your drink fast enough. Eventually they wouldn’t suck. I’m not going to make the obvious joke. I have heard the paper industry is working on that (the not sucking, not the joke).
Donald Pay’s comment at 2020-01-21 at 11:05 makes me question whether those Republicans who preach self-reliance are serious.
I watch a metric crapton of “everyday carry” or EDC videos on YouTube. Those folks carry a knife or two, a multi tool, a tactical flashlight, a tacticool pen, a gun with backup magazine or three, an occasional tourniquet, and other assorted accoutrements. Some mention using their folding knife to cut steak at a restaurant. The vast majority of these folk vote Republican and qualify as ardent Trumpists.
All of that stuff is part of being prepared and responsible, but Wiik and his cohorts seem to be claiming that adding a metal straw or reusable grocery bags to mix is beyond the pale. There’s got to be room for straws in one of the pockets of their tactical pants.
If they can roll up $100 bills to snort cocaine, how hard can it be to make a paper straw? Twizzlers red licorice sticks make good straws, too.
People out here only vote on abortion. They play with a couple new little ideas, like this, just so they can feel diverse and considerate at times, while they’re most certainly not, never have been, and never will be.
It like watching a 5 year old lecture an adult on ‘healthy foods.’ It’s effing ridiculous – as always.
Eve, what a wonderful context for work of the legislative session. I suppose now I look at leadership in Pierre differently. Why not in very early caucus (or pre-legislative planning sessions) map out the key issues and let the tough discussions – like budget – hit earlier and be allowed more time for discussion?
“Everyday Carry”? That’s a thing? Wow! I’m reminded of the giant pen I fashioned in junior high: multiple pens, pencils, a ruler, and other desk knick-knacks held together in a wild cloud of repurposed spiral notebook wire. The thing might have weighed a pound, and I wrote with it, with one of the pen tips sticking out from the handheld junk sculpture.
I do a quick YouTube search on EDC and find a preponderance of male images and headlines talking about must-have tools for “men”. Are there any women’s EDC channels? Or wait—haven’t women been practicing EDC for generations with their purses?
… and Kal Lis gets me thinking that if I can get pocket knives with forks, spoons, and toothpicks, I should be able to get one with a drinking straw. But for convenience, it would have to be a collapsible, telescoping straw…
Such straws exist. Can anyone find one attached to a Swiss Army knife?
Wiik and other legislators surely fashion themselves as manly man, standing up against an effete and emasculating culture. They should be all about telling us to abandon our flimsy disposable items and get some manly EDC gear, like metal straws! Wiik and the SDGOP could make straw-EDC their new motto: Always ready to suck!
A preponderance of the crapola going on in the USA is due to trembling white males fearful of losing their privileges and being played for suckers, mostly by other white males, the GRB. (Greedy Rich Bastards.)
Plastic straws are made from cheap plastic that passes dangerous chemicals into your mouth and down your esophagus to your stomach. Especially straws from convenience stores and fast food joints. I haven’t used a straw in over 40 years, since paper ones went away. I kept a couple in my home because my late girlfriend would have diabetic seizures and I had to get Coke into her. A straw was better than pouring it into her mouth and down her shirt.
i.e. Do you think the Chinese manufacturers of cheap plastic straws care about making straws with safe plastic if they can make an extra buck per ton? Remember before Trump when there were health inspectors?
Same as Mike 8:04
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/20/plastic-bags-have-lobbyists-winning-100587?utm_source=pocket-newtab
This is NOT about the little mom-and-pop grocery store staying open. Rather it’s about the socialization of pollution and corporate irresponsibility.
So – according to the original law, cities were already prevented from restricting the use of plastic bottles, garbage bags, and plastic packaging. Why was this ever necessary? Now they are expanding the definitions to include straws and literally everything that food might be carried in.
What “problem” do the legislators hope to fix by this? How does the state enforce such a law?
Correct, Joe! Republicans have already trampled on local control in this area of waste management. SB 54 simply expands state interference in local decisions.
Enforcement is simple: if any city passes an ordinance exceeding the scope permitted by the ban, the state simply sends the Attorney General to sue the city in court and overturn their ordinance.
GOP-> Governing Over Practically [Everything]
Okay, I couldn’t get it to entirely work out, but it was close. I’ll keep trying.
GOP-> Greatly Over Powering ??
Well, Debbo, I have a friend who says GOP -> Grope Our Panties.
That fits. Bunch of old pervs.
Thanks, John. You found the link I was looking for.
News SD’s bassackwardness has reached an even larger audience. CNN has the story.
is.gd/gsmPtD
That and Criminal Creep coming to Mt. Rushmore can’t be good for tourism.
From Debbo’s link to the CNN story: Senator Jeff Monroe says he “added that he puts pieces of plastic in his garden because it helps separate the soil and allows his plants to grow better.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.