Easy Answers

You've been hearing about it for years and you continue to hear about the "plastic problem." What are we going to do about all the plastic in our daily lives?

Plastic bags need to be replaced with fabric bags! You cannot get a plastic bag at the store anymore (actually you can if you're willing to pay for it!) No more plastic straws. And what about all those plastic water bottles? What can we do?

We need to do more recycling, separate the plastic from the cutting and from the garbage. Spend more on different waste bins, spend more on recycling plants. We must stop all of this plastic waste which is killing our planet!

Olay, now take a breath and think for a minute. Where do the plastic bags and straws and bottles and jars and other plastic contains come from? Are they falling from the sky? Are they raining down from Mars? Or are we human beings actually purposely making them? Hmmm.

So if we are manufacturing the plastic containers, which we certainly are, why don't we just stop? That's right, we don't need no stinkin' recycling bins or expensive treatment centers to melt the plastic down and reshape them into more plastic. All we have to do is STOP MAKING PLASTIC CONTAINS FOR EVERYTHING!

But wait a minute, what will we use to package all the stuff that is produced for consumer consumption? Again. Take a breath and think about it. How about this. Use glass. Use cans. Use paper. Use the things we've used for decades before we started relying on plastic for everything. Remember glass bottles? Remember tin cans? Remember paper shopping bags? Remember paper straws? And remember how milk and other drinks tasted better when they came in glass? Glass and tin and paper can all be recycled too, and much cheaper.

You see, if it's really true that all the plastic is choking our oceans and polluting our rivers, lakes and streams and killing our fish and poisoning our environment, then why the hell are we still making the stuff? Seriously, why? It seems to me an easy enough fix if we all decide to go along with it. Just stop making plastic bottles and go back to glass. I want to have my ketchup in glass bottles again! I want to have my peanut butter in glass jars again! People lived for centuries without plastic containers; we can do so again. It's not a complicated mystery. "Woe is me, what are we going to do to stop all the plastic polluting?" Easy. Stop making the plastic.

Another "problem" is crime. Gangs of punks smash into store window and pull out merchandise. They brazenly walk into stores like Target and Walgreens and CVS and fill up bags with all kinds of stuff from the shelves, then walk out the door. Workers are told not to confront them.

Police are told not to chase after them. And, if they are arrested at all, big city D.A.s don't prosecute them. There's no bond anymore for these crimes, it's all cashless bail. The leftist D.A.s send them back into the streets to do it all again. Because of this, major stores in major cities like San Francisco, are closing up and moving out.

Once attractive shopping downtown areas are looking like ghost towns. "Oh, my! What can be done?" Once again, the answer is easy. Start arresting these thugs and keep them in jail. Criminals used to be arrested, remember?

How can we expect anything but an increase in crime and a decrease in civility when cities are defunding police departments and police officers are berated and vilified? Officers are told to stand down in the face of criminal activity. How humiliating. No wonder many of them have left the force, either taking early retirement or simply quit.

The easy answer to all this is to bring back law and order again. Start by hiring more police and let them do their job. Get rid of leftist D.A.s and start prosecuting criminals like we used to do in the "good old days."

So many of our so-called problems are not all that complicated. All it takes is common sense and the willingness to go back to what we know has worked so well for us for so long.

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