Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the Senate on February 3, 2005

Click here to view bill details.

grocery stores do not have the room escalted recycling efforts would provide enough recycling deposit is basicilly a tax because the state gets all the unclaimed bottle funds

>grocery stores do not have the room< Then they will have to find the room when this proposal becomes law. >escalted recycling efforts would provide enough recycling< Nonsense. Escalated recycling efforts mainly will wind up costing taxpayers a lot more of their hard-earned money. Michigan’s existing bottle bill has been very effective in providing real incentive for recycling beverage containers it covers for more than 25 years, at very little net cost to taxpayers. There is no reason to believe that expanding it will not be equally efficient in encouraging recycling of “new age” beverage containers. >deposit is basicilly a tax because the state gets all the unclaimed bottle funds< Nonsense, again. First, this is not factually correct. The State retains 75% of unclaimed bottle deposits. The remaining 25% is paid out to retailers who handle deposit transactions. This also is nonsense based on twisted reasoning. A container return deposit is 100 percent refundable upon return of the container. There is no known tax that is 100 percent refundable upon turning in tangible evidence that it has been paid. Unredeemed deposits occur because qualified containers are not returned, either through consumer choice or neglect.

> Then they will have to find the room when this proposal becomes law.< So much for the concept of a limited, servant government. Are there any more areas in which the majority should bow to the will of the minority?

>Are there any more areas in which the majority should bow to the will of the minority?< Ah, our resident genius speaks once again. Last I looked, grocery store owners constituted a distinct minority in ther State of Michigan. Has something changed radically while I was catching forty winks this morning? Even the Senate Task Force that examined a version of this proposal in 2003 concluded there is broad, public majority support for expansion of the bottle deposit law to cover “new age beverage” containers. But our senators bowed to a minority constituency of beverage distributors and retailers to spike the earlier bill.

An elected official is actually going to bow to the will of a lobbyiest before adhereing to the mandate from their home district during an election year. Any more fantasy tales you wish to pass along here?

Read the facts in the 2003 Senate Task Force report on this issue, and in the subsequent Legislative record. Facts. Facts. Facts. Facts. You can't beat 'em.

If you check the contributors for our exalted legislators you'll see nearly all are onthe take from the Grocers PAC and the Beer and Wine PAC. Linda Gobler of the Grocers Pac has publicly stated that we should do away with the bottle bill because terrorists will blow up grocery stores by returning bottles. Talk about scare tactics. It's widely known that 70% of Michiganders support the bottle bill, but 70% of the legislators are on the take from the anti-bottle lottery. When it come up for a petition drive and gets on the ballot the PEOPLE will vote it in.

Is ther anything you do not coment on?