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| Evil Skulking Stranger Seeks Your Opinion |
The Zero’s editorial writers are moonlighting as news reporters, and editors again. Take this story which appeared on Friday and which we talked about yesterday on the program.
See the headline to the right? Yes, that’s a dispassionate, objective, story about—mysterious pollsters asking— GASP — questions about the proposed plastic bag ban sponsored by State
Senators Mark Hass and Jason Atkinson.
The plastic bag ban and paper bag tax are based on false assumptions which I’ve spoken about on many occasions on the program and blogged several times here,here, here, here.
The Zero reports that the mysterious pollster is asking questions about bacteria in reusable bags, lead in bags imported from China, a source of many, if not most, of the reusable bags in use now. Both of these assertions have been alleged and shown to be true. See here and here. The pollsters in this story may have been engaging in push polling for all I know. What’s interesting to me is the fact that the Zero reports this story but fails to report on the polling done to support their side of the “plastic” bag ban when the city of Portland considered it. Whatever they’re asking on the phone to Oregonians about the bag ban can’t be as bad as THIS poll question asked of Portlanders last July:
“Single-use petroleum-based plastic shopping bags pollute our land, contribute to a swirling mass of garbage twice the size of Texas off Oregon’s coast, and continue our dependence on dangerous foreign oil supplies. Making paper shopping bags is a toxic process that pollutes our rivers. To encourage more use of reusable shopping bags, do you favor or oppose banning plastic bags in the City of Portland and requiring a 5-cent fee on paper bags?”
All the lies, half truths, mischaracterizations in the above statement have been highlighted. I haven’t looked into the process of making paper bags so didn’t fact check that part of the question, but something tells me they’re not polluting Oregon rivers to the extent the pollster asserted.
And what did the Zero report on THIS poll? Nothing. Well, ok, that’s not entirely true. See the search here. They did have one report on their website about this outrageous, rickety poll. It was Here.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com
