{"id":14527,"date":"2020-04-25T13:19:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T17:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=14527"},"modified":"2020-09-17T13:11:06","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T17:11:06","slug":"pandemic-security-theater-liberal-maryland-politicians-betray-grocery-store-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/25\/pandemic-security-theater-liberal-maryland-politicians-betray-grocery-store-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic Security Theater: Liberal Maryland Politicians Betray Grocery Store Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"<\/a>American Conservative, April 25, 2020<\/h3>\n

County Puts Bag Recycling Before Grocery Workers\u2019 Health<\/span><\/a><\/h1>\n
\n

A liberal Maryland municipality caved to environmentalists and is sustaining a tax on single use plastic bags amid COVID.<\/p>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Politicians nowadays are shutting down everything except their own virtue signaling.<\/strong> The COVID-19 pandemic is spurring restrictions and lockdowns across the nation. But one Washington area government showcases the shams behind some of the political rescue efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoco MoCo\u201d is the nickname for Montgomery County, Maryland\u2014one of the most zealous liberal jurisdictions in the nation. Unfortunately, the county of a million people is also a pandemic hotspot, with 2,868 cases and 110 deaths as of Wednesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Until last month, federal health officials vigorously discouraged average citizens from wearing facemasks to curtail COVID. Surgeon General Jerome Adams even warned that wearing a mask could increase<\/a> people\u2019s chances of becoming infected. But almost overnight, wearing masks went from a dangerous indulgence to a legally commanded performance.<\/p>\n

On April 9, Montgomery County\u2019s chief health officer, Travis Gayles, decreed that any grocery store customer who failed to wear a mask would be fined $500<\/a>.\u00a0Gayles discouraged local residents from acquiring and wearing the most reliable protection, such as surgical masks or N95 masks, which the county said<\/a> \u201cshould be reserved for health care workers.\u201d At least Gayles did not threaten to send SWAT teams after any citizen who procured good masks. Gayles later rescinded the threat to fine individuals, but added new restrictions on grocery shopping in the county.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of grocery workers nationwide have been infected by the coronavirus and at least 30 have died<\/a>. One of the biggest sources of contagions in grocery stores is ratty old recycling bags that customers drag along to tote their purchases home. New York Times<\/i> science columnist John Tierney reported that a study<\/a> of \u201csupermarkets in Arizona and California found large numbers of bacteria in almost all the reusable bags\u2014and no contamination in any of the new single-use plastic bags.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Department of Public Health stated that it was plausible that \u201cwidespread use of reusable bags may cause<\/a> gastrointenstinal infections if they are not regularly cleaned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dirty grocery tote bags put grocery workers in peril, and a Chicago union called for<\/a> an \u201cend to the disease-transmitting bag tax.\u201d The evidence on the peril of reusable bags was so strong that San Francisco, the Valhalla for American leftists, banned customers<\/a> from bringing their reusable bags to stores, and many other localities and states suspended<\/a> their bag taxes or banned the use of reusable bags.<\/p>\n

LoCo MoCo, which imposed a tax on plastic grocery bags in 2011, momentarily lurched in the direction of sane health policy. Councilmember Will Jawando, a former Obama administration official, crafted a bill to suspend the grocery bag tax to \u201cminimize risk\u201d because \u201cthe health and safety of all Montgomery County<\/a> residents must come first.\u201d He quickly garnered five co-sponsors on the nine-member county council. Councilmember Nancy Navarrodeclared \u201cit is critical that we do eliminate<\/a> whatever kind of possibility of transmission there might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Sierra Club and other environmental groups vehemently objected. The Sierra Club warned that suspending the tax \u201cwill erode the County\u2019s significant progress<\/a> in addressing plastic pollution.\u201d The environmental group fretted that suspending the bag tax will leave \u201cthe public with a false sense of security in encouraging single-use plastic shopping bags\u201d which \u201care difficult to clean.\u201d Yo, Sierra Club! That\u2019s why they are called \u201csingle-use\u201d<\/i> bags.<\/p>\n

The County Council quickly capitulated to the environmentalist backlash. Instead, they offered a farcical Solomonic solution\u2014at least as far as sawing off a chunk of grocery workers\u2019 life expectancy. The bag tax was sustained but, as Jawando announced<\/a> in a press release, chief health officer Gayles will encourage people to wash reusable bags after each visit to the grocery store<\/i>. Jawando also revealed that the local \u201cDepartment of Environmental Protection has agreed to work on a campaign and resources to remind consumers to wash their reusable bags that can be posted at grocery stores and retail establishments.\u201d<\/p>\n

These efforts will be as effective as an edict requiring all shoppers to hop through grocery stores on their left foot while holding their breath. A veteran grocery clerk at a large chain store scoffed when I told him the county would urge shoppers to wash their battered bags. A University of Arizona study found that \u201c97 percent of people never washed<\/a> their reusable bags, thereby turning them into petri dishes of bacteria growth,\u201d as Tierney noted. But \u201cwash your bags after every shopping trip\u201d finger-wagging permits liberals to pretend to give a damn about grocery store clerks.<\/p>\n

Maryland officials predict that the coronavirus epidemic will peak in the coming days\u2014long before county education efforts on grocery bags get rolling. I asked the health department how many local residents \u201ccurrently use proper sanitary methods with their reusable bags,\u201d but got no response. The health department also failed to provide \u201can estimate of how many additional cases of COVID-19 may result from residents bringing contaminated bags to the grocery store.\u201d Similarly, Councilmember Nancy Navarro did not respond to my emailed question: \u201cHow many additional COVID-19 infections should Montgomery County be willing to accept or tolerate to signal the county government\u2019s support for recycling?\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the only thing more sacred in Montgomery County than environmentalist posturing is government revenue. County Councilmember Hans Riemer, who co-sponsored Jawando\u2019s initial bill, said that suspending the bag tax was \u201ctoo complicated \u2026 expensive,<\/a> and [addressed] a minimal health issue.\u201d Riemer also noted that suspending the tax, \u201cwould have cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement,\u201d the DCist noted. Riemer explained: \u201cA lot of councilmembers just thought it wasn\u2019t worth the effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides, any grocery clerks who perish as a result of tainted reusable bags were probably not major campaign donors anyhow. Maybe Montgomery County and the Sierra Club could formally consecrate grocery store clerks who die of COVID as martyrs in the recycling wars. The MoCo grocery bag tax flip flop helps explain why so many Americans scoff at Pandemic Security Theater.<\/strong><\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of\u00a0<\/i>Lost Rights<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/i>Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>. He is also a\u00a0<\/i>USA Today\u00a0columnist. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0<\/i>@JimBovard<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Conservative, April 25, 2020 County Puts Bag Recycling Before Grocery Workers\u2019 Health A liberal Maryland municipality caved to environmentalists and is sustaining a tax on single use plastic bags amid COVID. by James Bovard Politicians nowadays are shutting down everything except their own virtue signaling. The COVID-19 pandemic is spurring restrictions and lockdowns across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1926,2332,122,2328,203,2269,2329,2330,2080,1126,2331],"class_list":["post-14527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bullshit","tag-facemask","tag-hypocrisy","tag-liberal","tag-maryland","tag-montgomery-county","tag-progressive","tag-recycling","tag-san-francisco","tag-sierra-club","tag-travis-gayles"],"yoast_head":"\nPandemic Security Theater: Liberal Maryland Politicians Betray Grocery Store Workers - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/25\/pandemic-security-theater-liberal-maryland-politicians-betray-grocery-store-workers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pandemic Security Theater: Liberal Maryland Politicians Betray Grocery Store Workers - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"American Conservative, April 25, 2020 County Puts Bag Recycling Before Grocery Workers\u2019 Health A liberal Maryland municipality caved to environmentalists and is sustaining a tax on single use plastic bags amid COVID. by James Bovard Politicians nowadays are shutting down everything except their own virtue signaling. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15095,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14527\/revisions\/15095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}