St. Louis Magazine has a balanced piece on the creation of the trash districts in the county. Well, it twitches a nod to balance anyway by writing about a hauling company that will go bankrupt when it loses its share of a free market (although the author uses his creative writing chops to even tilt the verbiage against the free market solution in this portion of the story) and then, on the other side almost, adoring licky love to a sales manager for a recycling company (who gets more money from the mandated, unfree, forced recycling program, so he’s in favor of more county-mandated income for his company).
What really got my dander up, though, was this insight from constitutional scholar and unelected bureaucrat in charge of the county’s Solid Waste Management Program John Haasis:
Again, the phone started ringing in Haasis’ office: “We don’t want you to pick who our hauler is. It’s our American right. It’s our right from God to pick who hauls our trash.” Haasis sighs again. “Last time I checked,” he says, “it’s not in the Bill of Rights.”
Understand that, citizen. This fellow asserts that all of your rights are right there in the first ten amendments to the constitution, and the government can do what it wants otherwise.
And fear your government and its disciples.
