Lunacy
From our American Correspondent:
An Associated Press article published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Christmas Day had a curious title: “455,000 People Petition Target to Stop Using Plastic Bags”. It’s curious because they aren’t trying to get Target to stop using plastic bags – they’re trying to get Target to take the option of plastic bags away from other customers.
The leader of this drive, Theresa Carter, and the writers at AP, are apparently completely oblivious to the fact that it’s other people’s choices they’re trying to eliminate. Ms. Carter is quoted: “I’m a Target shopper. Hundreds of thousands of my petition’s signers are Target customers, and we have one clear message for Target: please act to end plastic bag pollution”.
Now personally, I think the Greeniacs have a silly obsession with plastic, but even so, I’d respect her effort if she was trying to persuade other people to curb their use. But no, she wants to go straight to the top and take away other people’s choices, never mind if many of them, at least at times, have very good reasons why they need to use a plastic bag. Making omelets and all that you understand.
Further, it was striking to me that neither the AP writers nor Ms. Carter seem to realize that it is false to claim that they’re asking Target to stop using bags. I suspect that they’re not intentionally being misleading, but, being on the Left they don’t even realize that they’re dictating to other people, millions of them, without knowing the circumstances of their lives.
One other thought – she has hundreds of thousands of petition signers, Target has tens of million of U.S. customers. Somehow that concept eluded Ms. Carter and the AP. Blinders much?
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She should complain that the bags are gender-assuming thus trans-exclusionary. They will be withdrawn within 24 hours and a grovelling kowtow will be issued as well.
Where do people get these "single-use" plastic bags they keep banging on about? I can't remember ever using a plastic bag once. At the minimum I use any plastic bag at least twice, the final use being to hold rubbish.
Does anyone still shop at Target? Half a million customers saying "Do not give me a plastic bag" is probably a big slice of Target's remaining market. The number of signers of this petition is probably off by a few orders of magnitude. But if there are lots of people who actually refuse to use plastic bags (instead of just signing a silly piece of paper to get away from the annoying street person being paid to gather signatures), then it is likely even Target's benighted management would pay attention. On the other hand, if the signatures are gathered on-line, then they are worth even less than signatures collected by street people.
There are declared preferences and revealed premises. At the end of the day when the fat lady sings and push comes to shove, five thousand of those half million might visit the opposition for their next big shop, but the week after they'll be back.
Simple here. Target removes the option of plastic bags, I remove the option of buying at Target. It's not as if there aren't other stores, sometimes cheaper, also available.
Aldi arrived here with the same customer-hostile policy. I shopped there a dozen times, never buying more than I could carry in two hands, but eventually fell back to the local chain, which would never inconvenience the customer for the sake of global posturing.