Government Rubbish or Rubbish Government

I live in Cary, North Carolina.  Cary is widely regarded as a well-run small city.  The city bills for water use and trash collection monthly.

This month, when I received my water bill, I could not help but notice a steep jump in the amount billed for trash collection ("Solid Waste Disposal").  From $17.00 in June to $19.50 in July.  That is a whopping 14.7% increase.

Now I guess one could argue that governments are slow at making these moves, and maybe, the increase was overdue.  And therefore, somehow justified.  But of course, the city raised the rate from $16.00 to $17.00 just one year earlier.

Okay, part of a multi-year pricing correction, you might ask?  Let's see.

I don't happen to have water bills back to when I first moved to Cary in the year 2000.  But I do have them back to June 2003.  My fee for Solid Waste Disposal for that month was $7.67.

This is a 154% increase from 2003 to 2019.  Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for that period has risen around 39%.  Meaning that the price of garbage collection in our supposedly well-run city has increased at roughly four times the inflation rate, during this period.

Yes, this is a very small example of government inefficiency.  But I would argue, this is a very good example of government, period.  This is government.

And we all know this is true.  It's just that some of us are more accepting than others.  But many people argue that government is the answer for all societal needs and ills, large and small.  Or more government is the answer, or more money for government is the answer.  I think we should seriously question the motivations of people making these arguments.  For these people, is it about service or services?  Is it really?

Or is it about power?

Update, 10 August 2019

When I switched this weblog to the Disqus comments system, I lost some of the original Blogger comments.  For the most part, I thought that was the price to be paid for the switch, and well worth it because so many readers find the Blogger comments system to be unusable.

But this post did have one comment that I think is worth preserving because it is so illustrative of how left-of-center people think.

Sherry Shaw, 9 August 2019

Reuben.  Really?  Your argument doesn't hold water.  You use your water/garbage bill increase as an example to extrapolate that people in local Cary government are all about "power"?  They cleverly disguise their power-hungry quest as "providing services to the citizens."  Really?  You are so much smarter than that.  However, I do understand our disgust for people who are in positions of authority or wealth who disguise one thing ("this is good us!") when it is really ("not good at all for us at all we realize now!")  Bait and switch.  One can help but think of Trump supporters.  I'd love to see you write a piece on what I refer to as "the blue collar lie" that Republicans have been selling lower and lower/middle, vastly uneducated white people for decades that got traction with Reagan's trickle down economics lie.  An equally sinister but secondary effect of this is that it has made our country meaner, uglier.  And it's made it okay to be mean.  The lie that someone is waiting to take what is yours justifies the meanness.  The two are twins, bound.  I admit the "blue collar lie" is a brilliant political, marketing strategy.  It has worked for years because it scares the hell out of people.  Middle class (the small business owner, the factory worker) must have an awakening.  An enlightenment.  They must understand the conservatives et al who push this blue collar lie as their agenda (their only agenda because they have no other real ideas) don't care about them.  At all.  They don't care about their jobs or lack thereof.  They don't care if their families have health care.  The middle class voter, the Trump voter, for example, must swallow hard and admit they've been used.  The "conservatives" are whores to corporate welfare and the groups who line their pockets.  And no, it does not trickle down.  The middle class in turn have become whores by default.  Well, one-night-stands who go to bed with Trump.  At least whores get paid.

Reuben Moore, 10 August 2019

Well before you so casually dismiss my concerns, I would remind you that local government has a long history of patronage and nepotism, two forms of political power.  I have no idea whether Town of Cary employees care about power, or merely increasing the size of their fiefdom.  But of course, that is not what I said above.  I questioned whether those who argue for more government (and I mean at all levels) really care about service?  Or efficient government?

It is fascinating that one can write a comment, longer than the original post, without so much as a mention of the substance:  These particular government expenses have risen at four times the rate of inflation.  This example speaks for itself.

As for the rest of your screed, why do people who start with You are so much smarter than that always veer towards ugly emotional arguments.  In this case, conservatives are lying, mean, uncaring whores.  Would your argument not be stronger if you just said:  Four times the rate of inflation is NOT enough; we need to raise your taxes.

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Two on Literature in the Academy

Patrick Gillespie:  Let Poetry Die:

The best thing that could happen to poetry is to drive it out of the universities with burning pitch forks.  Starve the lavish grants.  Strangle them all in a barrel of water.  Cast them out.  The current culture, in which poetry is written for and supported by poets has created a kind of state-sanctioned poetry that resists innovation.  When and if poetry is ever made to answer to the broader public, then we may begin to see some great poetry again – the greatness that is the collaboration between audience and artist.

Ted Genoways:  The Death of Fiction?:

[T]he less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion.  Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism.

Most fledgling writers and poets require another source of income.  And teaching is clearly a legitimate route.  However, the insular world of the academy provides university-affiliated writers and poets with long term income and publication, with or without readership.  The academic-publishing-complex produces an almost infinite supply which is totally indifferent to demand.  To make this possible, this excess supply is funded by someone else, that is, the tax and tuition payers.  I can think of no other field where we see so great an imbalance in supply and demand.  This situation is finally receiving the attention it deserves.

To writers I would ask, which is preferable:  Publication in an obscure literary journal (readership, maybe, a few thousand) or on a Google-searchable website?  I suppose it's a question of prestige versus availability.  Make that incestuous prestige versus the risk that no one will want to read your easily-available work.

To readers:  If you want to be intellectually stimulated, or God forbid, entertained, look for poetry and fiction produced by writers who are not part of the academy's infrastructure.
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Attention Writers: Plot Trumps All

In a follow-up to Fiction Need Not Be Boring, it is interesting to note all the pompous criticism of popular fiction.

Look, this highbrow distaste for plot produces a never-ending series of novels that:  A. Don't live up to the authors' literary aspirations, and B.  No one wants to read. Sure, you can legitimately criticize Dan Brown's writing.  But I choose to criticize the lack of plot in modern literature.

The lesson here is that great writing is a distant second to having a great story to tell.

And, let's take it a step further:  Writing is a teachable skill.  There are creative writing classes on every college campus.  They may not make you a great writer, but they certainly inculcate an academic sense of what is great writing.

Personally, I'm not at all convinced this is a good thing.  These classes surely cannot give you an imagination.  The best writer I know, by far, has a comfort with the English language which I envy, but more important, she has a story to tell.  Truly great writers always have a story to tell.  Pretenders wax lyrically about the wallpaper.  And endlessly develop psychologically complex characters who never get around to doing too much.

Bottom line:  Having something to say is infinitely more important than how you say it.
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Fiction Need Not Be Boring

I remember an old Lev Grossman piece in The Wall Street Journal which was headlined:  Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard (archive).  But his somewhat condescending article should have been entitled: Fiction Need Not Be Boring.  Here's Grossman:

If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it:  The ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot. 

[The Modernists] trained us, Pavlovianly, to associate a crisp, dynamic, exciting plot with supermarket fiction, and cheap thrills, and embarrassment.  Plot was the coward's way out, for people who can't deal with the real world.  If you're having too much fun, you're doing it wrong.  

The novel is finally waking up from its 100-year carbonite nap. Lyricism is on the wane, and suspense and humor and pacing are shedding their stigmas and taking their place as the core literary technologies of the 21st century. 

These books require a different set of tools, and a basic belief that plot and literary intelligence aren't mutually exclusive.

Emphasis mine.  I would agree that it's not so much that modern literary fiction is difficult.  It's just boring.  One reason Grossman left out is the modern affiliation of literary writers with academic institutions which, in their own self-interest, value pretentious "literary" obfuscation.
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The Graceless

I have a friend and colleague who occasionally reminds me that, with other people, we have to take the good with the bad.  We have to make allowances and accept that people, no matter how much we may like them, will have some traits that we do not like.  And we all know this is true.

But when I turned 50, I looked around, and I was not happy with the people surrounding me.  Friends and family, colleagues and co-workers, clients and vendors, even acquaintances.  Many of these people are not chosen, certainly not family.  Others just sort of drift into our lives and, well, stay.  Somehow.

These people, I came to realize, enjoyed our relationship on their own terms.  Terms that I had long tolerated, but never accepted.  And I always knew that if I changed these terms, then the relationship would wither and likely die.

A relationship, especially a friendship, is an honor.  We should be honored to have someone as a friend.  And grateful.  But at the same time, the reverse is true.  Others should be honored to have us as a friend.  And grateful.  There should be a certain reciprocal grace to it all.

Is this really such a high bar?  Apparently so.

So I decided, enough.  I ended my relationships with two close friends.  And I had another friend who did the ending with me; which was fine.  I stopped returning calls and messages of some others.  I severely limited new relationships of any kind.  Total house cleaning.

I never really tolerated toxic people.  But I found that avoiding toxic people was not enough for me.  I needed to rid myself of the graceless.  And the noise and clutter of the graceless.  With less noise comes more clarity.  And more focus.  On who and what is important.

Now I know what you are thinking:  Be careful, you will end up a lonely old man.  Relationships are messy by nature and we should be grateful for any of them.  But surely we, all of us, can expect some minimum level of goodwill and behavior.  Surely we owe this to ourselves.
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The Catholic Church in 2019

The Catholic Church is morally bankrupt and the time has come to ask about the people who continue to support it.

In the year 2019, after seventeen years of reported abuse cases, if you are still supporting the Catholic Church, financially or otherwise, I think you should ask yourself a simple question:  Am I a good person?

You supported the church for all these years.  But, you claim, you did not know the horrors of priestly behavior.  Okay.  Okay, but now you do know.  Now that these issues, these sins, have been brought into the light, that is no longer a legitimate excuse.

Another argument seems to be:  But the church does so much good.  Why withhold support just because of a few bad apples?  Well for one thing, no one can seriously argue, any longer, that it is only a few.  And for another, this, these problems, and certainly how they have been dealt with, stretch right up to the top of the church hierarchy.

We now know that it has not only been the priests who have sinned.  But some of the good sisters as well.  The way they handled unwed mothers for a start.  And now we learn of rape in their quarters as well.

And the problem goes beyond the Catholic clergy and extends into the Catholic community at large.  Those who knew what was going on but kept quiet about it or facilitated it, or even helped cover it up.  Doctors, nurses, police, prosecutors, social workers, teachers, other influential & important members of the laity, and yes, even some of the parents.

If you are religious and if you need the support of an organized church, why not find an alternative?  If you are a priest or a nun, that is those of you who are truly good-hearted individuals, why continue to associate yourself with such behavior?  Are you not repelled by it?  Your continued support, congregant, nun, and priest alike, implies tacit approval of this behavior AND the manner in which it has been handled by the church hierarchy.  I urge you to disassociate yourself from both.

I'll leave you with this thought:  What percentage of Nazi's were actual decision makers or participants in the atrocities?  And whatever the answer to that question, what do we think about those who were not decision makers or participants?  Some knew, some suspected, some tolerated.  Some stuck their heads in the sand.  All did nothing.

What do we think of them?
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Balm and Benison

*** Click if not crisp ***

From:  Charles Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1898.

Though I first encountered this term in The Jewel That Was Ours, 1991, by Colin Dexter (Inspector Morse Series).

From the Oxford English Dictionary:
balm (noun):  6. A healing, soothing, or softly restorative, agency or influence.
benison (noun):  1. A blessing.

I have included a full definition of balm and benison in the lexicon.
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Definition of Sequacious

Author's note:  The original title of this weblog was Non-Sequacious.  But as my friend, Sherry Shaw, pointed out, that title was pretentious and unspellable.

sequacious, adjective

I suppose my favorite definition is from Merriam-Webster:

2 : Intellectually servile.

And from the Oxford Dictionary (no longer available online):

Of a person:  Lacking independence or originality of thought.

Finally, the definitive definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:
(Login required)

a. Of a free agent or his attributes:  Given to following another or others, especially a leader.

b. Given to slavish or unreasoning following of others (especially in matters of thought or opinion).

I have included a full definition of sequacious in the lexicon.
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Searching for Alice

Perhaps you know the work of one of my favorite authors, Calvin Trillin.  He is often described as a journalist.  But I think of him as a master essayist.

He frequently included his wife, Alice, in his work.  He wrote about their adventures big and small, and about their life together.  Alice and I this, and Alice and I that.  He not only writes about their adventures, but delights in writing about Alice’s reactions and opinions and responses.  As one reads Trillin, a careful observer comes to discover that, in fact, she is the central character.  It’s all about Alice.  All of it.  He is either writing about her or not, but he is always writing for Alice.

He admits this in one of his later books on the dedication page.  I cannot quote it verbatim, but it was something like:
I wrote this for Alice.  In fact, I write everything for Alice.

Personally, I like to believe this is true.  He wrote everything for Alice.  And, if anyone else was interested in what he had to say, well, that was a bonus.

Anyway, a few years ago, Alice died.  You can imagine the response from his loyal readers.  He quoted from some of their condolence letters in a subsequent book, called About Alice.  I found one comment particularly memorable.  A woman wrote to Trillin and said that she asks herself:  Does my boyfriend love me?  And, will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?

A high bar indeed.

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What Happened to my Newspaper?

I woke up this morning, put the coffee on, and like every morning for the last 20 years, went outside to get the newspaper.  Alas, there was no paper to be found.  Of course it might have something to do with the unpaid renewal bill still sitting here on my desk.  For $183.  For another year of the Raleigh News & Observer.  Let me look at it again; yes, my subscription expired a week ago.  No doubt my carrier was hoping I’d get around to paying it and gave me a week’s grace.

But I am not going to pay it.  In fact, I decided not to renew it months ago.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the ritual of sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the paper.  Tangible news.  Well tangible newsprint anyway.  It’s a comfortable ritual and it used to be the very first thing I did in the morning.  But in recent years, its become the second.  These days, the first thing I do is, well, read the news…on the internet.  Okay I confess, email first, then news.

Sure, reading news articles on the internet takes a little getting used to.  But just like the printed newspaper, most articles are not very long.  I used to print out long articles from the internet and read them on paper.  And, I still do that occasionally – a recent New York Times Magazine cover story comes to mind.  But over time, I have come to read longer and longer articles online.

Now, we all know newspapers are in trouble.  Their problems are real:  An outdated business model, diminished advertising, and falling subscriber base.  But, I have long resented paying for the newspaper.  For me, it is a quality issue.  They just do not do a very good job.  Simple as that.  And objective journalism is an oxymoron.  The only people in the world who do not recognize this fact seem to be the so-called journalists themselves.  But I paid anyway.  I wanted to know what the heck was going on, and regardless of what I thought about their competence or fairness, they were able to inform me who won the election yesterday.

But I no longer need them for that.  Consequently, I no longer feel compelled to give money to the undeserving.

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