bottled water forces suing Chicago

Chicago's new tax on bottled water is not popular with the industry or retailers. That's understandable, but the exaggerated talking points they're using are interesting:

If business goes, it will jeopardize the 4,500 jobs and $270 million in wages that goes to Chicagoans working in the bottled water industry, the retailer groups said.

Let's see documentation of this claim.

"If this tax is allowed to go into effect, then what is to preclude the City Council from deciding to tax salad dressing or lawn mowers?"

City councils are unpredictable. But bottled water imposes its own tax; it takes water from the public domain for private profit; it wastes oil used to manufacture and transport containers; it undermines publicly funded drinking water systems. The industry simply wants to keep taking and not giving. All the while it couches its arguments in the cloak of choice and consumer convenience.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-watertax_27dec27,1,2611215.story?ctrack=1&cset=true