Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 17, 2009

Transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s EIB radio show | Broadcast June 16, 2009

RUSH: I can’t leave here today without mentioning this story. It’s from the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Throwing orange peels, coffee grounds and grease-stained pizza boxes in the trash will be against the law in San Francisco, and could even lead to a fine. The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to approve Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal for the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country. It’s an aggressive push to cut greenhouse gas emissions and have the city sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.

… The legislation calls for every residence and business in the city to have three separate color-coded bins for waste: blue for recycling, green for compost and black for trash. Failing to properly sort your refuse could result in a fine after several warnings, but Newsom and other officials say fines will only be levied in the most egregious cases. Fines for almost all residential customers and many small businesses – anyone who generates less than a cubic yard of refuse a week – are initially capped at $100. Businesses that don’t have proper bins face escalating fines up to $500.”

Now, this is fruity. It’s nutty! The state is practically bankrupt, and this is the kind of thing they’re concerned with out there. Grease-stained pizza box? What if your pizza box is not-grease stained?

As creator of Frugal Café, I encourage frugality and am very supportive of people recycling, but this kind of Draconian mandate goes beyond the pale. Government is meddling more and more in citizens’ private lives.

Once again, I’m flashing back to George Orwell’s 1984.

Another excerpt from the SF Chronicle article:

It was co-sponsored by frequent Newsom critics, Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi, while two of the mayor’s most reliable allies, Supervisors Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd, were the only opponents. “This is a little too much big brother, even for me,” Elsbernd said. “We’ve got a huge problem in my district and a lot of other parts of the city with people who go in and out of garbage cans at night scavenging. Who’s going to be responsible for that? Are we creating a whole brand-new problem?”

Elsbernd also questioned assurances that fines would not be aggressively pursued against residents, saying similar promises were broken on legislation against leaving trash cans visible.

The San Francisco Apartment Association, a trade group for rental property owners, took a neutral stance on the plan after language was dropped that would have held landlords responsible for tenants’ sorting.

Cities from Pittsburgh to San Diego have mandatory recycling. None, however, requires all food waste to be composted. Seattle passed a law in 2003 requiring people to have a compost bin but, unlike San Francisco, it did not mandate that all food waste go in there.

Additional:
Overlawyered: Mandatory composting in San Francisco
Hot Air: CA Republicans threaten to scuttle budget deal

Categories: Conservatism, Economy, Frugal Ponderings, Government, Law & Constitution
Tags: 1984, coffee grounds, compost, garbage, garbage fine, garbage law, government mandate, orange peels, pizza boxes, political, politics, recycle, Rush Limbaugh, San Francisco, trash