I’ve been following the plastic bag ban and tax proposals since the beginning but I’ve never heard this story from Portland Mayor Sam Adams. That’s because he hadn’t made it up or recovered the memory yet.

On Friday’s program I interviewed the Mayor about his Emergency! Plastic Bag Ban Ordinance which is being considered by council at 3:45 on July 21st and, if passed, would be enacted in October. He told me (here) that as a youngin’ in Newport he’d opened the bellies of fishes and seen plastic bags. He even alludes to this “devastating” problem in his open letter to Portlanders,

Growing up on the Oregon coast, I saw firsthand the devastating effects that discarded plastic has on our waterways and wildlife.

So we thought we ask a real fisherman in Sam’s home town of Newport, Oregon about the situation. We spoke to him on the program (The Victoria Taft Show AM 860). He spoke only for himself but works at a fish processing plant and has fished the Pacific for decades. He hates plastics and ethylene bags but says you won’t find any in the bellies of fishes (here).

Just tell the truth, Sam. You don’t like “plastic” bag manufacturers because, well, you just don’t like them. Someone told you they’re bad and now you’re so wedded to this fallacious and bankrupt plan that you can’t turn back. Just tell the truth.