Comments on Memo to Joni Balter: Calm Down.

I've changed my mind, Erica.

If this thing looks like it has any chance of passing whatsoever, I'm going to mail all my collected plastic bags to you.

And encourage everyone else to do the same.

But how does all of that keep all those smelly poor people from sitting next to you on the bus?

God, she is SUCH a moron. Always has been. It's really jarring to read her husband's book The Good Rain and come across all the paeans to nature-loving, with Joni often floating around somewhere in the perfect picture. Only in Seattle could someone like this disguise themselves as something other than a right-winger.

Erica, the best way for you to help would be to shut up.

If Joni Balter likes cities with no environmental laws, she's welcome to come to Phoenix. No urban planning and air so brown you can CHEW it.

At first you had me going, ECB.

But, then, you started ragging on the same things you always do.

And then it became a case of who can be the most shrill.

Having the option to conveniently recycle newspapers is not a big city thing, and is not comparable to anything you have been supporting of late. Neither is organic food nor fuel efficient cars (even though the big honkers are still abound...see your own fucking post about the H2 parking on the street).

telling someone to "calm down": check
sensational bolding: check
shrill exclamation marks!!!: check
Um, ...: check
FUCKING CAPS: check
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAMING: check

the only thing this post is missing is a pre-emptive dismissal of any and all comments to follow. and calling the WHAAAAAAMBULANCE.

it's ok, erica, everyone has an off day.

So, you're telling her to 'calm down' because she's acting hysterical, right?

It might be a little easier to take your position as the Voice Of Reason seriously if you hadn't just spent a record-breaking amount of Slog-space on your cut-and-pasted outrage at the affront to humanity represented by the actions of a handful of socially maladjusted fanboys at a sci-fi convention, framed as though it were a Horrifying Incident with Troubling Broader Implications for the State of Our Society.

ECB: Awesome. Right on. Let common sense rule.

ecb is spot on. joni should fuck off.

Erica, are you single?

I'm serious. You're the only one left who talks about important things. And I need a date.

Thank you.

I agree with ECB on this. Anyone who uses the term nanny state is automatically worthy of the gas chamber of credibility.

re the plastic bag tax paragraph:
"...every breath they take and every move they make."

Wow, I guess she hears the enviro POLICE singing, "I'll be watching you." in the back of her mind.

See, this kind of post is where you really shine. In it you do three things:

1. Confront the recent writings of another local alarmist / borderline-hysterical columnist

2. Out-outrage their outrage over (insert topic here) with your own outrage that they would ever consider taking such an idiotic position.

3. Make sense.

Makes me long for the pre-election cycle days when you were tearing Joel Connelly a new asshole at least two times a week. ECB, sometimes you are super awesome.

See, this kind of post is where you really shine. In it you do three things:

1. Confront the recent writings of another local alarmist / borderline-hysterical columnist

2. Out-outrage their outrage over (insert topic here) with your own outrage that they would ever consider taking such an idiotic position.

3. Make sense.

Makes me long for the pre-election cycle days when you were tearing Joel Connelly a new asshole at least two times a week. ECB, sometimes you are super awesome.

Okay, I don't fucking understand. I went to Whole Foods, spent six bucks on six large, reusable grocery bags. I buy groceries, they're bagged as normal, I put my groceries away, and then I put the bags back in the car. Repeat.

So, since I'm acting like this law is already in place, I've spent a grand total of six bucks. I've added one step to my grocery shopping, that of putting six bags back in my car. QFC also donates a nickel per bag to some environmental group.

What is the big fucking deal, people? This is one of those small steps that requires minimal effort but has a very respectable return.

I just can't for the life of me understand why people are flipping out about this.

Who is this Joni Balter cow? Does this person even know that her arguments sound pro-environmental ? (I don't live in WA so I don't check out the op-eds.)

ps to everyone who says ECB needs to calm down...
It's a blog. If ECB was a writer on the editorial staff, her arguments would be edited down for space and passion, but it's a blog. Blogs are where writers (and others, of course) go to blow their collective stack. If ECB starts writing for the Times or PI, then you can get after her if this keeps up. But it won't. So there.

@16 You're using a car. You're going to hell. You should walk to the store. No excuses. You're so not green.

Militant vegetable growing? Pygmy Goat Policy? Please save us Joni!

I'm all for more "Conlin Unplugged. Right on, ECB.

I find that ECB makes a lot of sense when she's not talking about Metro buses.

Joni Balter is a tool.

@18 When I was single, I walked to the store, but I was in college and lived on pasta and eating out. Now I cook everything and I'm married to a fat man.

18: I walk and use reusable bags. Not a big deal.

Joni Balter is insane. In the late nineties, she, Egan and family had a sabbatical in Italy, which she wrote about in the Times. Turned out that there are too many Italians in Italy for her taste as the series of columns were one tirade after another about how awful Italy is. In case you didn't liver here then, have forgotten them or missed them check out this classic rant on drivers, bike riders and safety.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19970424&slug=2535426

I suppose working with Jim Vesely, the littlest man in Seattle, literally and figuratively, would drive anyone around the bend.

Heh, Erica, Hernandez is right. This is where you really shine. And Joni sounds like the biggest tard in tardsville.

Good article, Erica.

ECB and ratcityreprobate@23 are right on about Balter, as well as the rest of the out-of-touch Times Ed board.

Balter claims she likes clean energy, but she and the rest of the Times ed board took a scorched earth approach to opposing I-937 back in 2006. I-937 set a quite reasonable energy conservation and renewable energy standard for the state. Balter has also been the print media's biggest opponent to Sound Transit, and transit generally.

here is MY joni story. i went to a mutual friend's wedding reception 20 years ago and her husband kept giving me 'baby, i wanna fuck you' looks. can't imagine what he does nowadays.

For some reason, this thread makes me wanna choke a seagull.

What the hell is Balter even talking about? She doesn't like people who grow vegetables? Pygmy goats frighten her? She doesn't want a container to toss her potato peels and coffee grounds into? (I've been recycling kitchen waste for about a year now. I'm the world's laziest person, but it's no harder for me to toss the food waste into the little compost bin the city of Auburn provided than into the trash.)

I'm really not at all certain what she's even objecting to. And I've never understood the Great Plastic Bag Flap. Don't want to pay 20 cents? Then bring your own bag. Want a bag? Pay for it. What is the issue?

Still and all, it makes me kind of tired and cynical that no one dares mention the Great Environmental Elephant in all our living rooms. None of the switching-to-fluorescent, recycling, riding-the-bus changes are going to make all that much difference if people continue to do the single most environmentally damaging thing of all; having more offspring than needed to replace natural attrition. We need to stop reproducing exponentially. Resources increase arithmetically. Population increases geometrically. That is not a good long-term equation for the future of humanity. The best thing any of us can do for the environment is not have multiple kids - certainly not have massive litters like the Quiverfull nutbars.

Well, of course, the best thing you can do for the environment is kill your children.

Then yourself.

Preferably with those taxable plastic bags.

But I guess we're all like those hypocritical biddies at the Columbia Tower Club......

Balter sounds lazy. Lazy in intellect. Lazy in imagination. Lazy in the butt.

30: Well, mainstream environmentalism is about human adaptation to the environment to sustain the planet with ourselves on it. So I guess you're just an idiot or an ideologue.

28: Your posts make me want to choke you.

"militant vegetable growing..."

Does this have something to do with zucchini?

Militant vegetable growing

The only thing i can imagine is that the evangelical movement teamed up with Monsanto to create a Vegetales army to cleanse America of the non-Christian socialists.

Militant vegetable growing for me would be planting tomatoes to throw at Hummers.

Veggie Tales!!! "If you like to talk to tomatoes, if a squash can make you smile, if you like to waltz with potatoes, up and and down the produce aisle..."

p.s. I still think ECB should learn to use jumps in posts so they aren't pages long on the main Slog. And her writing style is still like nails on a chalkboard to me. But, hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day so she has a tiny point about Balter's weird editorial.

Strong Work Erica. Thank you for tackling Joni's editorial, which does a HUGE disservice to us all. When supply chains break down and the only people with food are the nannys, I hope they let Joni eat her own god-damn kids rather then give her one sweet, locally grown potato.

Militant vegetable growing. There's a phrase I never thought I'd see. I never would have imagined that my little bed of lettuces would seem so cool.

Thanks for all the attention today, Strangers. Appreciate the foot-rub. Still won't get you a job though.

Erica is such a shitface.

Can't you PLEASE use a jump so that I can scroll past all your petulant whining quicker?!

Truly is outrageous to see a writer "using a bully pulpit...."

Offense one is the cliche.

Offense two is hypocrisy.

C'mon, Erica, saying a writer is "irresponsible" sounds a bit "disingenuous" coming from you and The Stranger.

Not to mention that she looks like Ed Begley Jr in drag and that's TOTALLY confusing me ... is this "Joni" person a Saturday Night Live skit gone terribly, terribly wrong?

Having once tended a p-patch plot in my neighborhood, I can tell you militant vegetable gardeners exist.

But at least they're growing something edible to stuff down their throats, instead of strident misguided blog posts about strident misguided Times columnists.

@33: Just for that, I'm tossing an empty six-pack ring into Elliot Bay.

Joni Balter is so out-of-touch with Seattle residents. Conlin should be applauded for moving these issues forward.