Seattle is one of the few big cities with continuing economic prosperity. Building cranes fill the sky and unemployment is still only 3.9 percent.

But, unfortunately, both state and local governments appear to have used the good times to expand government growth far beyond the dictates of prudence, and the results are now in. Even without an economic downturn, new taxes and fees are "necessary".

In Seattle garbage rates are going up 29 percent, water 18 percent (though there is no shortage of natural water in Seattle) and bus fare increases are anticipated at seven percent.

Local governments also will ask the voters this fall for approval of three new property taxes to support repairs to the beloved Pike Place Market, maintain city parks and expand rapid transit. Such a heaping plateful would be be seen by voters as overfeeding even in the most optimistic of times. Seattle is very liberal, but even the digestive capacity of liberals may have a limit.

But now I turn to the real argument clincher, the kind of new tax that is mainly show and therefore truly annoying. The mayor and City Council have just approved a 20 cent tax on each paper bag and plastic bag used at supermarket checkout counters. A nickel will go to the grocers and 15 cents to the City. Supposedly, this will encourage people to use canvas shopping bags brought from home and thereby save the world from global warming.

But will it do any good at all? Many people line their kitchen garbage cans with the plastic or paper bags they get from shopping. As of January, 2009 they will simply have to purchase plastic bags--also at the grocer--to take over the task. Is this a big help to the environment? There may even be a net increase in plastic bags in this town.

Of course, the people who will get clipped by the grocery bag tax meanwhile are the poor and improvident who don't keep a stash of cloth bags to use for shopping, plus anyone who suddenly finds himself needing to stop for milk or bread on the way home from work (the home where the cloth bags are kept).

The beneficiaries of the new bag tax are the grocers--who didn't ask for this tax but are keeping very quiet--and the City Government that (I think I mentioned) is on the lookout for new revenue sources. Oh, and the environmental showmen who often seem more interested in putting other people in the wrong and reordering other people's habits than in doing any well-researched good. Recently some unknown source put up a lot of money to promote this bag tax idea with costumed dancers and bands at public events this summer. "Polar bears" flounced and a giant revolving globe was displayed at one such parade I watched a couple of weeks ago. It reminded me of the hoopla of the anti-WTO demonstrations in 2000. I wonder who paid for this campaign. I wonder why the media don't bother to find out.

I have to add now that the local Seattle Times has backed the new bag tax, at least, on its editorial pages. I was thinking how odd it is that they would take such a position, since every single day their own product arrives on my porch placed inside a plastic bag. Unlike the ones at the grocery check out stand, moreover, these plastic bags have no secondary use. They are inconvenient for garbage cans, packing lunches or picking up dog poop.

And on Sunday the news folks deliver 500,000 of these plastic bags in Western Washington, along with about three inches of printed flyers with ads that instantly go into the trash and, presumably, contribute to global warming. Today, however, the paper contained an Office Depot ad that I actually saved. It was a garbage pail sized paper bag with their ad copy written on it. Very useful. A real 20 cent gift from the Seattle Times.