Democrats, for reasons that are both unclear and deeply disturbing, clearly hate wage workers in the restaurant business. Most famously, they continue to push for minimum wage increases that, once enacted, result in fewer fast-food employees and more robots.

Always with the robots.

Well, the workers lucky enough to work for tips in sit-down restaurants are the next to be targeted by Democratic lawmakers in California.

California: HEY I HAVE AN IDEA! LET'S SEND LOTS OF WAITERS INTO POVERTY WOO!!!

California Considers 6 Months Jail and $1,000 Fine for Waiters Offering Unsolicited Plastic Straws https://t.co/cAQwUL4jxf @reason @christianbrits #CJReform pic.twitter.com/bsQsh9YHFN

— Shoshana Weissmann, Sloth Committee Chair 🦥 (@senatorshoshana) January 25, 2018

Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California’s lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon’s law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

“We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans,” Calderon explained in a press release.

Of course, this is about the environment. You knew this was about the environment. The nanny state is not content until we ban all the things for the good of Mother Earth, even if the punishment is to completely bankrupt minimum wage earners in the process.

This isn’t just Calderon’s crusade. The California cities of San Luis Obispo and Davis both passed straws-on-request laws last year, and Manhattan Beach maintains a prohibition on all disposable plastics. And up in Seattle, food service businesses won’t be allowed to offer plastic straws or utensils as of July.

The Los Angeles Times has gotten behind the movement, endorsing straws-on-request policies in an editorial that also warned that “repetitive sucking may cause or exacerbate wrinkles on the lips or around the mouth.” Celebrity astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson (always up for a little chiding) and Entourage star Adrian Grenier have appeared in videos where an octopus slaps them in the face for using a plastic straw.

Two points here:

1. This is why I only use Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Rolled Wafers when I need a straw.
2. I want to be the octopus that slaps Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

The slavish devotion to Mother Earth puts Democrats at potential odds with low wage earners, who Democrats are constantly claiming to be looking out for, and putting interests at odds with each other is exactly why the Democrats couldn’t hold a coalition together. They just succeed as opposition to Republicans on a regular basis, but rarely do they actually seem to truly unite people.

What good does it do to ban straws in this manner? I’m not opposed to the idea, as I hate straws in general, but this is such an overreach of the nanny state just to make sure people don’t give out straws willy-nilly anymore.

God help you if you give a straw to someone.