Every law, no matter the law, no matter how petty it seems, it ultimately backed up by violence and lethal force. It is an inescapable fact.
So when deciding upon what laws to create and what laws to enforce, ultimately someone should (but never does) ask “is this worth sending a SWAT team to kick someone’s door down over?”
It’s not something we like to think about, but it is very much the truth.
Enter the city of Santa Barbara.
Banned in Santa Barbara
No More Plastic Straws or Styrofoam
Santa Barbara has joined the ranks of about 100 California cities that have already voted to ban Styrofoam food containers, and it has become at least the 10th to ban plastic straws. Plastic coffee stirrers and cutlery — knives, forks, spoons, and sporks — lived to survive another day but will be available only upon request. Exceptions will be made for people with handicaps severe enough to meet the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act, for whom the durability and flexibility of plastic straws is paramount.
But Santa Barbara upped the ante over every other Liberal city.
Santa Barbara, by contrast, has banned even compostable straws, permitting only drinking tubes made from nonplastic materials such as paper, metal, or bamboo. The city also has made a second violation* of its straw prohibition both an administrative infraction carrying a $100 fine and a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Each contraband straw or unsolicited plastic stirrer counts as a separate violation, so fines and jail time could stack up quickly.
Yes, you read that right. Possession of two drinking straws could net you 6 months in jail.
I’m not sure how this law is going to be enforced, but a box of Capri Sun, like the kind I put in my kid’s lunch box contains 10 juice pouches and each one has a straw. That’s 10 violations per box if I take the law at face value.
That means, if this law is enforced at face value, a mom with two kids’ lunches, each containing a juice box can be thrown down on the ground and handcuffed by cops with guns.
To put that into perspective, a soccer mom with two juice boxes for her kids in the back of the minivan can be sentenced to the same amount of jail time as a person in Santa Barbara deliberately infecting another with HIV.
This is in the same state, a sanctuary state mind you, that, in violation of Federal law, allows people to smoke recreational marijuana.
If a illegal immigrant, driving drunk without insurance and marijuana in his pockets slams into that soccer mom van with her kids and their juice boxes, that mom with spend more time in jail than than the drunk driving illegal.
The state that banned boxes with springs in them has no banned hollow plastic tubes.
A ban which is punishable with jail time and enforced by people with guns.
They may not have stated it explicitly, but the City Council of Santa Barbara thinks it’s reasonable to kill someone over a short hollow plastic tube.
Plastic straws, evil, metal or bamboo straws, ok. Yikes!
I see large contrabands of caprisun and juice boxes in their future, raids ala 1920’s prohibition., gansters, etc.
//Statist Stooge tinfoil hat on//
This is actually a good stepping stone for them. Remember that the ultimate goal of every Statist is control, ergo, they want to bend you over the barrel and spank you until you sing their tune in the appropriate falsetto. Be that a beer barrel, oil barrel, or gun barrel, depends solely on their mood at the time, but as you pointed out, with the force of law behind this law, you will sing _or_ you will bleed and then you will sing.
What this does is establish precedent and moves the overton window on Global Warming. The precedent is that, by banning straws to protect the environment, they can begin moving more laws to ban more common products to discourage behaviors they don’t like. Don’t like cars? Ban or render difficult to acquire tires. Don’t like birthrates? Ban diapers. Don’t like meat? Ban the styrofoam trays used to ship and sell meats. I’m sure any engineer reading this can come up with a whole host more ways to cripple modern society.
The Overton Window aspect is more sinister. By moving the aperture of perception on the issue farther left, it becomes harder to resist crippling damage to everyday life because the threshold of action against global warming becomes more and more negative with each movement. Soon enough, any attempt to hold status quo in our society will be screeched down as ‘killing the planet’ ala Greenpeace’s harping but now in mainstream circles.
If this stands, we’re screwed.
//Statist Stooge tinfoil hat off//
Oh, come on, man! A MAXIMUM fine of $1,000 and UP TO 6 months incarceration.
This isn’t going to be used to jail anyone. It’ll be used against productive taxpayers as a revenue generation tool. State & Local governments in CA know people like to live there and when you have something someone wants you can make them pay. It certainly helps that the collection is backed up with State violence.
The illegal immigrant drunk driver could also be handing out straws to people as he drives by them. If he has no legal income he won’t be fined because they know that’s a waste of time. That lady in the park with her kids on a Saturday with the 10-pack of Capri Sun? Oh, she’s an IT specialist… We’ll be gentle and let her off with a $300 fine.
Listen to Adam Carolla sometime. His rants about local government in CA are spectacular .
We need to inform them how pavement is an environmental disaster.
It prevents rainwater infiltration, causes runoff (usually contaminated with OIL), contributes to flash floods, and on an on.
They really should tear up all their sidewalks and roads and parking lots, and let their people tramp around in the mud and excrement like the undeveloped hell holes they are trying to emulate.
Well, they already have the excrement.
So have a straw, get fined. Don’t pay your fines, get a summons. Don’t show up, get a warrant. Ignore the warrent, get your door kicked in. Don’t comply with every command, or contradictory commands, get shot. They’ve established a nice little system. Submit to extortion or be summarily executed. And every accessory along the way will just say “they were just following the law”. All the while our “leaders” become increasingly lawless. When the time comes remember folks, after the first felony the rest are free.
The maximum penalty in California for rape is 8 years. Possession of a box of Capri sun in California is now more heavily punished than is rape.