In fact, 58 percent of voters voted to reject the proposal, although the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sought to portray the vote as the result of the plastic industry plunking down $1.4 million in advertising opposing the ban.
"Environmental interests, by comparison, only raised about $80,000," the P-I lamented.
Now nearly a year later, the P-I's Amy Rolph seems to think Seattle residents may be "jealous" that Portland, Oregon politicians are looking towards an outright ban of the dreaded plastic scourge!:
Portland's mayor said Wednesday that he plans to ban plastic bags, a move that might make some Seattle activists tinge green with envy.
They might wonder: How come they get to do it, and we don't?
Rolph then recycled the old liberal complaints about how the bag tax proposal went down in flames, namely that big bad business influenced the outcome with its deep pockets:
Well, not so fast, bag haters. Portland Mayor Sam Adams might be biting off more than he can chew, given what happened here in Seattle.
Seattle voters turned down a similar proposal in August of last year. But that measure wasn't an outright ban; it would have imposed a 20-cent fee on paper and plastic bags at grocery stores.
Lobbyists for the plastic industry spent about $1.4 million in an effort to crush the measure here in Seattle.
Rolph and her colleagues at the P-I just can't bring themselves to believe that Seattle voters just didn't like the idea of silly nickle-and-dime tax hike schemes and/or nanny state "solutions" to such grave threats to Western civilization such as plastic grocery bags.
