#2 Thing I won't miss about D.C.

"Do you want a bag?"

These are five words that will cost you five cents in the nation's capital now that the city has forbidden businesses from giving away plastic bags. If you go grocery shopping and don't bring your own, reusable bags, you pay a "tax" of five cents for EACH bag the store provides -- paper or plastic.

Officially, the so-called "bag tax" comes from the "Anacostia River Clean-Up and Protection Act of 2009." According to the law, four cents are to be diverted to a fund that finances the clean up of the Anacostia River which is apparently full of trash -- trash that includes plastic bags. The other cent goes to the businesses who sold the bags.  And when the river is clean, what are the chances this tax will be rescinded?

Many other cities across the country have been quick to adopt their own versions of the law, but I'm not planning to move to any of those places because I say "Yes!" to the plastic bag -- much like Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward did when the measure became law:

...[A]after work today I'll tote my reusable bag—the one I already owned thanks to plenty of private sector initiatives on this front—to the grocery store to buy small trash bags for the garbage cans in my house that used to be lined with leftover grocery bags. While I'm at the store, I'll probably run into the city's dog owners, who now need a new way to scoop and store canine poo. And once we're there, purchasing products to offset the intended effect of reducing consumption... our wait in line will be longer than it was before.

No. 2 thing I won't miss about D.C.: The bag ban.

Do you have an idea of a good place to which I should relocate?  Let me know in the comments!

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1:Intolerant liberals