The Texas Tribune: Mixed Reviews for Brownsville Ban on Plastic Bags

“I have a whole bunch of these in my truck,” she said, noting that she often forgets to take them in when she shops.

Ms. Orozco’s collection of tote bags stems from a recent ordinance in Brownsville, one of Texas’ poorest big cities: a ban on plastic checkout bags in virtually all businesses. The policy, which took effect in January, has eliminated more than 350,000 bags per day, according to Mayor Pat Ahumada, who said in an e-mail that it has “transformed our city from littered and dirty to a much cleaner city.”

Two other Texas communities, Fort Stockton and South Padre Island, have also approved bans on plastic bags, which will take effect in September and January, respectively. Several large cities, including Laredo and El Paso, have previously considered bans, and even the small town of Poteet, south of San Antonio, plans to assess its bag-banning options.

Brownsville’s policy, the first of its kind in Texas, has stirred controversy. While Ms. Orozco said she liked reusable bags because they helped the environment, others have concerns.

Edmundo Arizpe, 84, who left the A&V Lopez store clutching two small bags of peanuts, said that when he needed to buy lots of groceries, he often went to the nearby city of San Benito.

By driving, “I’m doing worse to the climate,” Mr. Arizpe said. He wishes the ban exempted customers spending more than $50.

The ordinance also worries Duro Bag, a large maker of paper bags with a factory in the city’s port, because, unlike bans elsewhere in the nation, it also restricts paper bags, said Christopher Klein, manager of strategic initiatives at the company.

Paper bags at many Brownsville checkout counters must be extra sturdy and have handles, which Mr. Klein calls “somewhat counterintuitive to reducing trash and litter.” (The requirement is intended to make paper bags reusable.) Duro Bag’s Brownsville factory does not make this kind of bag, but it plans to add equipment so it can; currently Duro Bag ships bags with handles in from another plant for distribution in Brownsville.

Legislation being considered by state lawmakers would encourage shoppers to recycle plastic bags by requiring large retailers like Walmart to place bag recycling bins prominently in their stores. It would also pre-empt local ordinances, however, and that worries advocates of bag bans who fear that it could derail local policies already in existence or under consideration.

Senator Troy Fraser, Republican of Horseshoe Bay, who sponsored the Senate legislation, said that his bill was “not moving” right now, but that a House version had made more progress. Mr. Fraser said he did not intend to overturn policies of cities with existing bans. In the long run, he said, “we would like to wean people off the using of not only plastic but paper” and shift Texans toward reusable bags.

Walmart has backed Mr. Fraser’s legislation, which it sees as more workable than all-out bans.

“Walmart is committed to reducing its plastic bag waste, but we would rather see voluntary programs to reduce plastic bag use” instead of stricter policies like Brownsville’s, said Daniel Morales, a company spokesman in Texas.

At one Brownsville Walmart, customers could be seen carrying bottles of juice or even prewrapped lettuce to their cars — without a bag. Walmart shoppers can still get plastic bags for $1, which is the standard fee established by the ordinance and which goes into a fund to clean up the city. Others opt to buy reusable blue bags for 25 cents, or take bags in with them.

Rose Timmer, executive director of Healthy Communities of Brownsville, which pushed for the ban, said tourists had called plastic bags “Texas wildflowers.”

In South Padre Island, the Surfrider Foundation strongly endorses the town’s ban, partly because plastic bags besmirch the dunes and harm seabirds and sea turtles.

“Using reusable bags is good,” said Rob Nixon, chairman of the group’s South Texas chapter. “They’re not only great shopping bags; they’re great beach bags as well.”

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Political Memo: Mixed Feelings for Blagojevich Retrial, None of Them Happy

For some Chicagoans, fatigued by the former governor’s often circuslike legal travails, the notion of a new trial inspired only shrugs this week. Yes, they explained, Mr. Blagojevich, whose political unraveling had mortified an entire state and brought government to a standstill, ought to be tried on charges that he tried to sell the United States Senate seat that once belonged to President Obama. But no, they did not really care to watch it. Not again.

For some in this state’s Democrat-leaning political universe, the worries and threats of such a trial against a fellow Democrat also seemed to have faded. The election of Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, who served as lieutenant governor during Mr. Blagojevich’s administration, was sealed last fall. And Democrats held onto their control of both chambers of the state legislature.

Still, the possibility that new details might emerge of Mr. Blagojevich’s political dealings and from his phone conversations, secretly recorded by federal authorities, posed risks.

A new trial — and Mr. Blagojevich’s return to the headlines — certainly were not part of the inauguration script for Rahm Emanuel, a fellow Democrat and a former White House chief of staff who takes over as mayor of Chicago next month.

Mr. Emanuel, who had telephone conversations with Mr. Blagojevich and with Mr. Blagojevich’s chief of staff shortly after Mr. Obama’s election as president in 2008, received a subpoena to appear at Mr. Blagojevich’s first trial but was never called to testify.

A White House report found that Mr. Emanuel had indeed provided the names of some possible replacements to fill the Senate seat Mr. Obama would be giving up (an appointment assigned, by law, to the governor). But the report said he did not discuss Governor Blagojevich’s getting anything?in exchange for appointing a particular person.

Yet, if Mr. Blagojevich, 54, a former member of Congress and of the legislature, has shown anything since his arrest at his North Side home in December 2008 and his impeachment, it is that he defies the predictable behavior of a criminal suspect. (Since his troubles, he has sold his autograph at a comics convention, performed an Elvis Presley song at a block party and peddled pistachio nuts in a commercial.)

“You don’t know what he’s going to say,” said Kent Redfield, a political scientist at the University of Illinois. “If Blagojevich takes the stand this time, he could dirty some people up. If anybody has vulnerability to that, it’s probably Emanuel.”

Some grumble about the new trial as “a rerun,” though it will look different. Mr. Blagojevich’s legal team has shrunk. The charges have shrunk a bit, too. After a jury deadlocked on 23 of 24 counts against him last August, prosecutors streamlined the case to 20 counts, including attempted extortion and bribery, the most serious counts carrying maximum penalties of 20 years in prison.

Mr. Blagojevich’s first jury convicted him of one of the least serious charges — lying to federal agents, a conviction that could carry up to five years in prison.

Some people are hoping that the initial fury doesn’t fade entirely.

“It’s understandable that people sort of want him to just disappear,” said Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which has pressed for campaign finance reporting and increased access to public records. “What concerns me is that there’s a sense on the part of some that this incredible outrage has died down, so let’s just edge back a bit on reforms.”

Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.

 

Mixed Martial Arts Makes Inroads in Baseball Training

Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox, Brad Penny of the Detroit Tigers and Russell Martin of the Yankees have used the sport’s punches and kicks to improve their throwing and swinging. In addition to improving overall fitness, Martin said, mixed martial arts can make an athlete mentally tougher.

“You tolerate the pain and get through it,” he said. “Mentally, I know I’m in a good place because I worked hard.”

Mixed martial arts is a combination of karate, judo, jujitsu, boxing, wrestling and tae kwon do. The sport is also popular in Brazil and Japan. Pay-per-view telecasts in the United States began in 1993, with the Ultimate Fighting Championship staging the most lucrative matches.

Unlike Martin, Dunn and Penny guard the secrets of their workouts as if they were team signs.

Penny acknowledged training with Dan Henderson, a star M.M.A. competitor, but he declined through a Tigers spokesman to discuss his training. Dunn declined through the White Sox media-relations office.

Henderson said that he had had Penny practice the kicks and punches used in M.M.A., but there was no sparring.

“We use focus mitts,” Henderson said, referring to the oversize padded gloves that he wears while athletes kick and punch them. “Physically, it works different muscles than players tend to use in their own sport. The training gives them something different to push themselves through.”

Henderson said the workouts could indirectly help Penny’s strategy on the mound.

“It might give Brad a little more confidence when he’s pitching inside,” Henderson said. “And he’s prepared in case anyone rushes the mound.”

Jay Glazer, a football analyst for Fox Sports who runs MMAthletics with Randy Couture, a mixed martial arts star, has trained N.F.L. players in the sport. Glazer said his clients included Ryan Grant, Jared Allen, Clay Matthews and the Atlanta Falcons team.

While the workouts for the football players emphasize wrestling and hand-fighting techniques, Glazer said the routine for baseball players concentrated on emulating the movements of their sport.

Ryan Rowland-Smith, a left-handed pitcher in the Houston Astros organization who battled arm and back injuries the last couple of years with the Seattle Mariners, worked with Glazer in the winter. “I’m in the best shape of my life, for sure,” said Rowland-Smith, a surfer while growing up in Australia.

Glazer said: “In the case of Ryan, we look at film and break it down frame by frame and come up with a combination that mirrors his pitching delivery. A knee, a punch, followed by a kick. We have him do a ton of that for his hips. Power comes from his core, his hips and his legs, even though he uses his arm to pitch.”

Mentally, Glazer said, the mantra is the same for baseball players as it is for N.F.L. players.

“Own your space,” Glazer said seveal times. “We get the players thinking like a cage fighter. When the door shuts, it’s time to break that man’s will across from you. For Ryan, as a pitcher, it’s that 60 feet 6 inches that you own.”

Rowland-Smith said the rigors of M.M.A. training made it easier to tolerate physical and mental challenges on the mound.

“If you have some small injuries or you’re not feeling 100 percent, nothing can compare with what you go through with the training, so you can fight through it,” he said.

Martin, a catcher, worked with Jonathan Chaimberg, who trains Georges St.-Pierre, the U.F.C.’s welterweight champion. Martin said he was searching for a way to regain his All-Star form after two injury-marred seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

After a few months of six-days-a-week M.M.A.-style training sessions with Chaimberg in Montreal, where he lives, Martin increased his endurance and explosiveness and lost body fat. He said his upper-body routine was called the big rope.

“It’s a thick rope that you attach to a base of a wall and has a loop,” he said. “You create waves with the rope, and it’s like a 20-second sprint, a 10-second rest. You don’t do it for a long period of time. You do it for five minutes, get a good workout in and work on your conditioning.”

It seems to be helping. Martin is hitting .300 with three homers and eight runs batted in.

Bobby Valentine, an ESPN baseball analyst, has managed in the major leagues and in Japan, where one would think mixed martial arts training is popular among players. But that is not the case, he said.

“It’s more prominent in the States,” said Valentine, who said he believes the training is beneficial.

He added: “Most mixed martial arts instructors teach balance, quickness and awareness of your surroundings. There are a few cases in Japan, but most players just play baseball over there.”

INSIDE PITCH

The Yankees’ scheduled game Tuesday against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium was postponed because of rain and was not immediately rescheduled. Manager Joe Girardi said that A. J. Burnett (2-0), Tuesday’s scheduled starter, would pitch Wednesday, and Phil Hughes (0-1) would start Thursday. Girardi said he planned to start Freddy Garcia for the first time later this week; Girardi added that the date had yet to be determined. ... Reliever Pedro Feliciano, who has been sidelined with tightness in his left triceps, played catch, but Girardi said the session “did not go well.” Feliciano will have another test Wednesday. “It’s a concern,” Girardi said of Feliciano, who had to cut short a similar throwing session March 27. “We were hoping after these two weeks that he’d be able to take the next step.” DAVE CALDWELL