Austin’s Plastic Bag Ban-Classmate Commentary

The lift on the ban of single-use plastic bags, as Lizzie said in her commentary, is an unfortunate setback in our state’s goal to become fully sustainable. It is sad that we went back on a plan that reduced the use of almost 200 thousand plastic bags annually. I agree with you that the ban helped reduce the littering of many unnecessary plastic bags. The City of Austin helped to clean up the surrounding environment by implementing this plan. It helped remove bags from many streams and general litter around the city. The move we made was in the right direction to make the city overall cleaner. The ban also convinced many people to switch over to reusable bags which are better for the environment. So even after the ban has been lifted, many people have continued to use reusable bags like they did during the ban. I agree that is pointless to keep spending money on plastic bags which are made of non renewable resources like petroleum and natural gas. Also like you said, many plastic bags are recyclable, but most do not end up being recycled due to one reason or another. The cities ban on plastic bags was a great step forward, and even though it was repealed, citizens can keep working on making its impacts last for a long time to come.

The Democratic Resurgence in Texas

Texas has been a dominantly Republican state since 1980, which has meant that the democratic party has spent little effort or money in Democrat’s elections. This disregard of the Texas democrats has started to shift especially with the momentum around Beto O’Rourke in 2018. Texas new young and minority voter base is starting to expand and become invigorated in Texas State and National politics.

Many 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates are starting to visit Texas, showing its growing importance. Texas is typically a state that is ignored by many democrats due to it being a heavily red state, but this presence of 2020 Democrats is showing that Texas’ changing demographics might play a big role in our next Presidential election. The Democratic party seems to be investing more in Texas state and local politics too. More prominent democrats are also being elected and having very close races at the state level. Many Democrats are being to state office positions for districts surrounding many of Texas’ large liberal cities which did not used to happen. Texas is being setup to be considered more of a battleground state in 2020. Democrats are preparing for another Beto O’Rourke style campaign to run against John Cornyn. They are ready to see if we can start getting Democrats in office to represent Texans.

Many Democrats see that Texas is going to become an increasingly important state as the population shifts to minority voters becoming the majority in the state. The change was clearly seen in how close the vote was between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke was in 2018. You could tell how much Texans wanted change by the extremely high level of turnout for a midterm election. Texas is shaping up to become an important battleground state between Republicans and Democrats due to its large size and influence in politics. It is becoming more likely than ever we are going to see Democrats in Texas state and local government offices in 2020.