Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 268 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

Depends On What “Bellwether” Means

July 14, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

I hate essays and articles that start with a definition from the dictionary. So, in a fit of self-hatred, here’s the definition of bellwether:

1. a wether or other male sheep that leads the flock, usually bearing a bell.
2. a person or thing that assumes the leadership or forefront, as of a profession or industry: Paris is a bellwether of the fashion industry.
3. a person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend; index.
4. a person who leads a mob, mutiny, conspiracy, or the like; ringleader.

Now, square that with an article entitled Missouri slips from political bellwether status this fall:

Missouri has been a bellwether state for more than 100 years, with presidential candidates lavishing attention on Show-Me State voters and spending millions on field operations, glossy campaign mailers, and TV ads. But this election? Not so much.

Roy Blunt’s 13 percentage-point victory in a U.S. Senate race led a strong Republican wave in Missouri in 2010.

This year, Missouri isn’t on the list of top swing states — those vote-rich battlegrounds that political experts and campaign strategists say will determine who wins the White House on Nov. 6. Most political handicappers instead have Missouri in the “leans Republican” column.

Somehow, to this professional commentator, “bellwether” means something like “toss-up,” “swing state,” “independent,” “contested,” “battleground,” or “undecided.” None of these are true.

Either the commentator is ignorant as to the meaning of the word and the implication that Missouri is leaning Republican–as the nation in the aggregate did in 2010, or the commentator wants Missourians to, I dunno, straighten up and fly tight to get more ad dollars (evil, I thought, unless I guess they’re spent in your market, maybe) to fill the airwaves with irritating, offputting, and often marginally mendacious approved-by-the-candidate messages.

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Hipsters Can’t Wait For Huge Chain Store To Put Mom & Pop Small Businesses Out Of Business

July 14, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Sure, it’s a friendly, happy story about how high-income hipsters want an Ikea store to come to St. Louis:

Perhaps no other store has been rumored more often to be coming here soon than that elusive retailer whose very name gives many residents heart palpitations: Ikea.

The absence of the Swedish retailer — whose hulking blue and yellow stores are filled with sleek bookshelves, modern bedroom sets, and eclectic knickknacks— is a sore spot among many St. Louisans. As one of my colleagues put it, it’s one of the last bastions of our retail insecurity.

We now have Trader Joe’s, Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom Rack, American Girl, H&M, Ross Dress for Less, and buybuy Baby (which recently opened a store in Ballwin).

To be sure, there are still some left on our retail wish-list: Zara, American Apparel, Bloomingdale’s, and Room & Board, to name a few.

But there is no bigger Holy Grail than Ikea.

As you can probably guess, I have never been in an Ikea. I’ve done my share of assembling particle board furniture, including a huge honking desk that cost me almost a thousand dollars, more than a dozen Sauder bookcases, many laminated storage cabinets with doors hanging awry, and a couple Sauder printer stands that even today function as major pieces of furniture in my domicile. I’ve bought none of them because of the logo on the box, though, so I can’t understand how prestige and status stem from furniture you have to put together yourself.

But I digress.

So the crowd that we would have called Yuppies thirty years ago want their Ikea in St. Louis. Even though this will put small businesses out of business:

As I wrote last year, there are a handful of businesses that have sprouted up around town that take orders and pick up items from one of the stores in Chicago and then bring them back to St. Louis. One of them is Expedite STL.

Another such company popped up earlier this year called Blue Square Delivery. It was started by brother Dave and Bill Carruthers of Des Peres as a side business. They take a big moving van to Ikea about every three to four weeks.

Sorry, I guess that’s brother-and-brother businesses. But still.

So, how does this differ from Walmart?

Mainly in that hipsters like Ikea, and hipsters do not like Walmart.

Don’t worry, yuppies. Some municipality in St. Louis County will eventually throw enough tax credits, special taxing districts, and other perks to draw Ikea to town.

(Hey, aren’t you a yuppie? No. I’m not that young anymore, and I live in the country.)

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Meanwhile, Elsewhere…

July 13, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Things have been a little light here this week, but check out these posts at Missouri Insight:

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A Perfect Score!

July 13, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Entertainment Weekly presents a list (come on, it’s really a quiz!) called 50 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen (warning: gallery form).

I got a perfect score. That is, I haven’t wasted my time on any of them.

I am no modern cinemataste. I prefer my best movies no one else has seen to be seventy years old and in black and white.

I have to admit, though, that as I got further and further into the gallery, I was a little afraid that it might include something like Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but whoever compiled the list is a real aficionado (that is, he or she likes to flaunt his or her familiarity with the obscure) and really seems to favor British films and documentaries.

Now, let’s discuss my imperfections: I have not seen every Adam Sandler movie, although I have seen Click and Going Overboard, so I’ve knocked off some of the harder titles.

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St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Message: DON’T HIRE CONVICTS!

July 13, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

The St. Louis County Prosecutor has a message: Don’t hire convicts:

St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch on Thursday denounced the county Economic Council’s recent hiring of a convicted felon, and called for the employee’s dismissal.

Last week, the council hired Dean Burns, 60, to serve as its vice president of real estate and community development, with an annual salary of $127,816.

Burns was working in the very same job in 1999 when he acceded to then-County Executive George R. “Buzz” Westfall’s demand that he quit after Burns pleaded guilty of diverting federal funds.

Burns admitted illegally transferring $30,000 in Housing and Urban Development rent deposits to his private company in 1994, about two years before he joined the Economic Council.

Actually, McCulloch has it in for this particular hire, and it’s all about appearances:

McCulloch said Burns’ hiring was akin to the county Health Department hiring a former drug addict to purchase pharmaceuticals.

“Hiring a felon is one thing, but you have to have some common sense about it,” he said. “I don’t know what the people who hired him were thinking, but I have to question their judgment. This makes the county look bad, and county government ought to correct it as soon as possible.”

Leaving aside the question of exactly how much Percocet the county is buying, McCulloch fails to understand the way his argument can look against hiring any felon for any job.

When you’re hiring for a job, you’ve got a lot of legal risks and liability not only for your organization and company, but for you personally within the company. If you’ve got someone with the right skills but a little box is checked on the application with the little handwritten explanation with it, your organization will probably hold you responsible if you bring a former drug addict in to work anywhere dealing with money. Or a former burglar dealing with small electronic devices. Or someone guilty of a sexual assault who deals with the members of any gender, frankly. Not only might the organization be responsible for any recidivism, but the person behind the hire internally will be on the hook for any infraction, whether just by taking a reputational hit or by actually being let go.

The man McCulloch talks about has experience in the position and has a combination of real estate development and sucking up to government skills acquired in the private sector for the position. He was convicted of the crime almost 20 years ago. Perhaps his one night in prison convinced him to be a good boy for the rest of his life.

As some of you know, there are two tracks one takes when arguing for prison and legal justice: one, you can rehabilitate the offender, and two, you can punish the offender. McCulloch seems to indicate his belief that offenders cannot be rehabilitated, they can only be punished. Forever, if possible.

McCulloch does say one thing that’s almost Tea Partier, though, when he says:

He said, “If Burns really is the most qualified guy in the country, I’d say we probably don’t need this position.”

A St. Louis County Economic Council who dishes out hundreds of thousands or millions in salaries every year and is part of the county government? Does St. Louis County really need that? Not the St. Louis County Government, mind you; it needs as much as it gets to continue its existence as a growing organism. But the County itself. By what right is this a function of government?

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People Move To City For Action, Energy; People Then Decry Action, Energy

July 11, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Some residents of downtown St. Louis are growing older:

The scene picks up pace on weekends, with the streets even busier and the bars even fuller — offering regular proof of how the neighborhood has transformed in the last 15 years.

But the changes have also brought simmering tension that has now come to the forefront. Residents, business owners and police acknowledge that crime is steadily increasing along Washington, and that cruising on the strip has gotten out of hand. They’ve complained about motorcyclists revving engines, cars blaring music, fights, loitering by teenagers, even some shootings.

They’re just not sure what to do about it.

In the last month, police have experimented with closing off the street to vehicle traffic, circling the area with a helicopter and enforcing a curfew for those under 21.

The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis has helped form a task force to come up with a “code of conduct” for the area, hoping to crack down on noise, littering and congestion.

“We all wanted this growth,” said Tammika Hubbard, alderman for the 5th Ward. “We just didn’t know how we were going to handle it.”

At a residents association meeting two weeks ago, the consensus from speakers was that the area had become a victim of its own success.

The residents moved to the lofts from their quiet suburban homes because they wanted that. Now they’re getting older a couple years later and are outgrowing the party-all-night mentality and want to get some sleep, so they want governmental recourse.

It’s akin to the people who claim that The Simpsons isn’t funny any more. The cartoon hasn’t changed. They have.

Prediction: If they succeed in pushing out the bar and clubbing crowd (who preceded the residents and most of the other businesses), the businesses will follow, as they won’t survive without that crowd. Washington Avenue and other parts of downtown St. Louis will not be a shopping destination (see also Union Station and St. Louis Center), and the hundreds or small thousands of people scattered among the lofts will not support them. Eventually, Washington Avenue will become quiet again, and the loft dwellers will move on.

And the cycle will repeat in 2033 or so. Maybe.

(No, I am not a downtown booster, especially when it comes to centrally planning a Renaissance. It hasn’t worked in downtown St. Louis in the thirty or more years that government officials have been applying the paddles. The minute they lay off with the defibrillator of taxpayer cash, the city or neighborhood flatlines again. The government cannot will a self-sustaining reaction and revitalization through its action, but it sure can put the pillow over the face of one when it tries too much to help or to inspire its citizens.)

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Book Report: Painting Glass by Moira Neal and Lynda Howarth (1997)

July 11, 2012July 9, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

I know what you’re thinking: the same thing that I thought. “Gee, Noggle hasn’t decided to try any sort of strange new crafting hobby, one where he reads a book on something after getting a notion and then spends a pile of money on it before shelving it when he can’t make time for it in a reasonable fashion.”

Friends, this book is the one you’ve been waiting for.

It’s an old British book (did he call something from 1997 old? Yes, he did. Remember how much simpler things were then?) that has a number of projects for painting on glass. The designs within are traditional, and it’s a book that you read the basics for the techniques and tools and then flip through for design ideas. What do they call that again? Oh, yes, a craft book.

As I said, traditional designs, the silver on blue projects are a winning combination, but the more I read up and look through the design ideas, the more I sense this isn’t a thing I’ll like to do to express myself.

That said, coming soon to Craigslist, hundreds of dollars in misbeboughten supplies.

Books mentioned in this review:

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DéJà Vu, Government Style

July 10, 2012July 11, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

I just got a check from my insurance company for $261 rebate on my insurance premiums. Apparently, this is part of the PPACA, that I get money back if the insurance company does not pay out 80% of its premiums as benefits.

This check, stamped COURTESY OBAMACARE by statute, no doubt, came just days after I received a letter from my insurer that my premiums are going up $1200 a year, or $300 a quarter. Also COURTESY OBAMACARE, no doubt.

So this month, I will write out that insurance check, and the government’s check to me personally will not actually fully cover the increase in the premiums. Where have I seen this before?

However, as a self-employed small business owner, I am not the target of this gambit. The real target of this largesse is someone whose health insurance costs just disappear from the weekly or bimonthly paycheck, but to whom this check might appear, courtesy the Democrats in the Federal government. Their insurance costs will go up, too, assuming their employers keep them on it, but the gravy has a .gov return address.

I hope they’re not fooled.

UPDATE: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch covers the story, along with this quote from a believer and recipient:

“I imagine there will be a bunch of people who change their minds about Obamacare when they get their checks,” Fox said. “I think it will make them feel better that their insurance companies are being held accountable for gouging.”

He is the target audience. Kudos to the St. Louis newspaper for making sure he got to laud appropriately in paragraphs 3 and 4 and to get a critic of the move, an industry spokesman, to criticize it only in the final paragraph.

The article clarifies that I was mistaken in who gets the refund. Mostly people who buy directly from insurance companies, like me and Fox.

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Book Report: Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove (1987)

July 10, 2012July 9, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

This book collects a number of related short stories that Turtledove published in Davis publications. Back in the olden days, all the personally named genre magazines were owned by Davis Publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Isaac Asimov’s Literary Magazine. Come to think of it, I probably have some rejection slips myself from that very era in my book. So they published a collection of short stories here under the big letters ISAAC ASIMOV PRESENTS. It seems kind of funny that now, in the 20th century, Turtledove is more known than Asimov. Or maybe that’s just in the blogosphere, which went through a big Turtledove phase some years ago.

Anywho: This set of alt-history pieces is set in the late middle ages. In it, the Roman Empire never fell, as Byzantium held out. A young man in the military leads a daring mission to recover a new tool of the barbarians, which turns out to be a telescope, which is giving them an advantage. He becomes an intelligence officer and the stories feature him working on cases where he ends up recovering or applying new technologies to thwart the Persian empire.

It’s a good bit of reading. The interrelated stories make for easily chunked reading. The characters are engaging. The stories are interesting. On the whole, it reads better than a whole novel of Turtledove, which sometimes can drag on as he shows how much research and imagining he has done (such as Ruled Britannia).

Books mentioned in this review:

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Finally, Some Christmas Music On Purpose

July 9, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

On Independence Day, I spun some records in the spirit of the holiday. Of course, my grandfather’s marches got a spin. So did An Open Letter to My Teenage Son. Which was the extent of pure patriotic music I had in hand, although I could have uncorked the whole Reader’s Digest set of Kate Smith to get to “God Bless America”.

Instead, I went to Tchiakovsky’s 1812 Overture. Yes, I know the record was not about the American troubles in 1812 and was more about the Russian troubles in 1812 (DWL!), but it has freakin’ cannons in it, okay? Well, I thought I was going to spin “1812 Overture”, but I discovered it was “1812 Overture” with “The Nutcracker Suite” with “The Nutcracker Suite” on Side 1. Which would make it more “The Nutcracker Suite” with “1812 Overture” if you ask me. So I spent a bit of Independence Day celebrating Christmas in July.

Then I cracked out the boxed set The American Spirit, which I would have expected to be about America and its spirit. Well. I didn’t look too closely as I was doing other things with patriotic and other music in the background. So I put this new set on and….

It’s a collection of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops and a bunch of songs that are American. Including “Sleigh Ride”, which was a hit for Fiedler in 1949 or 1950 and a hit pretty much for anyone who can simulate a whip crack ever since.

So I listened to two Christmas songs on Independence Day.

Fast forward (or move the needle to) Saturday, when I’m in a thrift store on the wrong side of Branson, and I run across a real Christmas album, and I buy it.

Let me ‘splain:

When I was a child in the 1970s, it was a tradition for my father to play two records on Christmas morning: This one and Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs by Marty Robbins. I don’t know why he did it. It might have seemed amusing to him. Maybe he got the LPs on Christmas. I don’t know.

All I know is that this tradition had run for several years, which is all it takes for something to become “a tradition” in the eyes of the child.

And now I can share that tradition with my children.

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Balloon Animals? Are You Kidding?

July 6, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

On Independence Day, we took the children to the local town fair to see what they had to offer. The Battlefield City Park, which now works in Trail of Tears into its name somewhere, had a band, some food stands, a number of inflatable bouncy-house kinds of things, a couple of politicians under tarps, and a guy twisting balloons.

But if you think he was making giraffes and doggies, you’re in the wrong corner of the state, brother.
Continue reading “Balloon Animals? Are You Kidding?” →

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The Lessons of a Blooming Public-Private Partnership

July 5, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

In Nixa, the city fathers are considering whether to turn part of their community center over to the YMCA:

Since the first of the year, City Council, together with the Parks Advisory & Stormwater committees, has searched for solutions to help fund the city’s parks and stormwater operations and maintenance. Discussions involved a possible stormwater/parks sales tax initiative and the privatization of the Community Center’s second floor as a fitness facility.

A request for proposal (RFP) advertising the availability of the second floor enticed the Ozarks Regional YMCA to submit a partnership proposal for Council’s consideration. The public is invited to share their opinions on the YMCA proposal that transfers responsibilities of Nixa Parks recreational programs to the YMCA at two public meetings held on July 5 and July 9.

If your city is looking for ways to get out from under the onerous burdens of the programs and facilities it created in flush times and/or in response to peer pressure from other regional governments (Ozark has a community center! We should, too!) and wants to turn them over to private, nonprofit or for-profit enterprises, your city has extended itself beyond basic services into things best accommodated by the private sector.

Lesson learned? Probably not.

Full disclosure: I am a member at the YMCA, and I have been off and on for fifteen years, and the last three have been at the Ozarks Regional YMCA.

For other local YMCA follies, see how the city of Ozark considered turning its rec center over to the YMCA (it didn’t) or how the Springfield Parks Board wanted to replicate the YMCA’s services with a new expensive rec center (Of course, they went ahead on it.)

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High Concept (III)

July 3, 2012July 8, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

We’ve got a band geek. She’s on a band trip somewhere. She’s in her hotel room, leaning over her balcony, looking down on the strange city, thinking about the parade tomorrow and not sure she’s going to be able to eat much tonight she’s so nervous. She’s thinking about the parade, and she’s got part of her band uniform draped over her shoulder. Wistful, sexy, with a hint of John Philip Sousa.

Message: Band chicks are hot.
Continue reading “High Concept (III)” →

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Optimism Must Be Educated Out Of The Populace Or Regulated

July 2, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Dustbury links to a story about the Feds worrying about the uninformed masses who must be shepherded: Study: Nearly Half Of Consumers Fooled By “Up To” Claims In Advertisements:

The Federal Trade Commission recently commissioned a study that looked out how consumers perceive and comprehend the “up to” conditional in advertisements.

The researchers used different versions of an ad for windows — one that stated that the windows were “proven to save up to 47% on heating and cooling bills,” and one that simply stated, “proven to save 47%.”

Of those who looked at the “up to” version, 45.6% mistakenly said the ad promised to save 47%. Meanwhile, only 58.3% of consumers who saw the unconditional version said the ad promised to deliver 47% savings. According to the FTC, the small difference between the two results indicates that the use of “up to” did little-to-nothing to change consumers’ perception that the ad was promising the maximum level of performance.

Friends, Americans, and countrymen under the DREAM thing, this results from the Lake Woebegone Effect and self-esteem based educational curricula. People all believe they are better than average, better looking than average, smarter than average, and in the tops in whatever they’re measured. Whether they are or not.

So of course they believe that the absolute best possible result of a product applies to them. Some people, not just in Chicago, spend their winters thinking the Cubs might win the World Series. People like blood sausage, too.

Now that the FTC has discovered this fact, what does the FTC want to do about it? Solve the problem of optimism, no doubt.

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Just Saying No to the Keith Cut

July 2, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

We took our children in for a shearing this weekend, and as always, the hair stylist asked if we wanted the hair off of the children’s ears. I’ve seen that this is starting to come back into fashion, probably because of that Justin Bieber kid or because of the Hanson brothers or the Jonas brothers or whichever or all of the kiddy sensations who and whose fans were not alive in the 1970s and whose parents are braindamaged from the same.

Me, I just say no to the Keith cut. Continue reading “Just Saying No to the Keith Cut” →

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Book Report: Ozark Tales and Superstitions by Phillip W. Steele (1983, 1998)

July 1, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover This book is a short collection of tales from Ozarks lore, broken into categories such as “Tales of the Supernatural”, “Indian Tales”, “Treasure Tales”, “Outlaw Stories”, and so on. None of them are well-researched or well-documented, but they do give one interesting stories to tell the children and ideas for little essays and historical bits if one wants to put in the time to conduct real research.

The best bit about this book, though, is this written on the title page:

William Quantrill

As some of you assuredly know, the William Quantrill led a pro-Confederate band of guerrillas in the Civil War. The William Quantrill does not appear in this book, so it’s not a notation of a previous owner. I assume it was the name of the previous owner, perhaps a distant relation of The William Quantrill. So I can boast I own a book once owned by William Quantrill, but given that this is the 1998 reprinting of a book that first appeared in 1983, it’s not The William Quantrill. But those to whom I boast need not know.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Brian J. Recycles

June 29, 2012July 1, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

What to do with that old laptop you’ve got lying around? Well, if you’re me, you…. Continue reading “Brian J. Recycles” →

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Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Principled Opposition Is Insanity

June 29, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Over at Missouri Insight, find out how St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley thinks I’m not in my right mind.

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Glenn Reynolds: The Paul Harvey of the Internet

June 29, 2012June 30, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Ladies and gentlemen, Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, is the Paul Harvey of the Internet.

Now, I realize that many of you who have all the answers have all those answers because you’re not old enough to have the answer to who Paul Harvey was. You can click to Wikipedia, but I’ll summarize it for you: Paul Harvey was a syndicated radio broadcaster whose little programs appeared on a pile of stations. Your grandparents probably trusted him more than each other. He carried quirky offbeat stories interspersed with commercial pitches for national products, and his “The Rest of the Story” segments told you interesting trivia, real or not, about celebrities and famous people.

This comparison occurred to me after I ordered something that Instapundit mentions a lot, and I thought it was a worthwhile purchase because of the good testimonials and endorsement I found there.

So how is Instapundit like Paul Harvey?

Paul Harvey was everywhere. When I traveled from Wisconsin to Missouri to visit family, the same voice that was on the radio in Milwaukee was on the radio in St. Louis at the same time each day. This was before the real rise of AM syndicated talkers, so it was a big deal. And Instapundit is everywhere there’s an Internet connection.
Paul Harvey aggregated news from various sources. He didn’t do original reporting; he just scoured the wire services for interesting tidbits and reported those. Like Instapundit does with the news and the blogosphere.
Paul Harvey came on several times a day. Of course, if you read Instapundit, you read it several times a day, too.
Paul Harvey had his trademarks. His voice and delivery were distinct, and he had a number of phrases he sprinkled into his broadcasts. Instapundit? Heh. Indeed.. ‘Nuff said.
Paul Harvey pitched products. During his broadcasts, Paul Harvey had a series of drop-in advertisements for a series of national advertisers, and he placed them smoothly before going on. Instapundit talks about various consumer goods, deals on Amazon, and books mailed to him. Although he’s not compensated by the people whose product he discusses, he does get some dinero from Amazon if people buy through his site. So he talks about what he likes and packs it with testimonials from other readers. And, crikey, if I’m not taken to purchase some of those things.

So he’s not exactly Paul Harvey, but even though it’s a similar set of wires and tubes, the Internet is not the radio.

But, as I said, the analogy came to me as I bought this book Instapundit was mentioning, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It.

Other blogs mention things and have ads and stuff, but I ignore most of it. But if it’s on Instapundit with testimonials and it’s something I’m looking for, I remember it. Sometimes I remember it when it becomes something I need to look for (which explains the Midland WR300 weather radio in my bedroom).

(Unrelated, sort of: This post by Instapundit from almost 10 years ago.)

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers. If you’re in IT, you might like my blog QA Hates You. Don’t forget my novel John Donnelly’s Gold, about which Professor Reynolds said, “IN THE MAIL:”, is available for 99 cents on Kindle and in paperback.

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Charlie Dooley Thinks Those Who Disagree With Him Are Insane

June 29, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

A sidebar in the May 2012 St. Louis magazine profile of St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley includes a little snapshot that identifies a certain mindset amongst government officials and citizens who continually want to cede more power to the government and its officials: namely, that disagreement with policy is a sign of insanity.

Here’s what Dooley says regarding the relatively recent decision to have the government decide who hauls away the trash for people in unincorporated St. Louis County:

At the end of the day, it was the best thing that could happen to St. Louis County. Great prices, we got recycling… It was said, ‘You took away my choice.’ When somebody comes to the County Council and says, ‘I moved to unincorporated St. Louis County and built my own home because I wanted to pick my own trash collector’—why would you say that? Do you think anybody in their right mind would believe that?

The mindset he finds abnormal is the mindset that governments, even local governments, have proper limitations. That perhaps local governments can identify hazardous conditions and make them illegal, but that governments should not mandate solutions, particularly specific commercial solutions and vendors, to provide the solution to citizens under the penalty of law.

In the case of the trash collection issue, the government should have the power to come together and say, “Hey, no piles of rotting filth on your land.” And then leave the citizen to take care of making sure his behavior does not lead to violation. There are alternate solutions to the city selecting a vendor to provide a service the city mandates: The citizen can decide not to consume things that produce garbage, the citizen can haul the garbage to a collection point when the citizen gets enough, the citizen can hire someone to take it away, the citizen can pool his resources with neighbors to voluntarily hire someone to haul their garbage away, and such.

True story: In an affected part of unincorporated St. Louis County, namely Lemay, I know of some elderly women who lived near each other that together every week produced only a couple of bags of trash total. They got together and hired a waste hauler, and they all threw their bags in that garbage can. With the new mandate, every address needed to have a waste hauler, which burdened a number of the older people on fixed incomes with additional monthly expenses so the county’s preferred vendor could dump one bag per trash can.

Asking for a defining principle that identifies the limitations of government: Insanity! The government has chosen a trash hauler for you. The government selected, some long time ago, a cable television company for you (except in certain areas). What service can’t the government decide you need to purchase and from whom you purchase it? (Certainly not health insurance any more.)

A wireless provider? Why not? Think of how much more beautiful the county’s skyline would be if only one carrier had to build all those transmission towers. That will never happen! you might say, but why not? Because wireless data and phone is somehow different from garbage hauling or cable television? How? Please, if you have a good distinction, put it in the comments below. I’ll grant you that it requires less costly infrastructure than digging up the streets to drag a cable, but trash hauling does not require physical infrastructure. (Roads, they might say. Roads, though, are public infrastructure not for use by one user. I’ll play the devil’s counselor and say that the skyline is a public resource, too, littered up so everyone suffers. That’s just the sort of argument that some people make for fewer streetlights and other things.)

You’re right, though. The governments won’t single out a wireless company to protect the skyline because some municipalities tax those towers, and they wouldn’t allow the county to take tax money out of their pockets.

But I digress.

Any time you give the ability for the government the opportunity to award large contracts to individual companies, you increase the chances of corruption. Take, for example, Chicago:

A major federal investigation of corruption in Chicago`s government has turned up allegations of everything from payoffs by the nation`s biggest trash hauler to some old-fashioned shakedowns by a freshman alderman.

Aside from the actual potential corruption, compulsory use of a preferred government vendor leads to the whiff of impropriety that political opponents can carp about. Say that the vice president of the chosen waste hauler, a lifelong Democrat who thinks Charlie Dooley is doing an excellent job keeping the county’s fiscal house in order in turbulent economic times, gives Charlie Dooley some money for re-election. Suddenly, the punditry is all awash in the possibility of quid-pro-quo going on, and nobody bothers to explain why, as a principle, compelling people to use a garbageman under the penalty of fine, imprisonment, or death is wrong. Instead, we get celebrityesque dirty laundry.

Now, you have to take everything I’m saying with a grain of salt, because I’m a Dooley-diagnosed schizophrenic who moved from a heavily regulated municipality in St. Louis County to unincorporated Greene County. Did I move solely because I can let my grass grow to over 12″ high or some days, Heaven forfend!, mow my lawn and not run the weed trimmer around the fence posts until the next day? Did I move just so that I could choose my own waste hauler, settling upon the waste hauler whom my neighbors all use without careful analysis of the costs and the benefits and the alternative plans offered by other, smaller haulers? I moved for a variety of reasons, but the fact that I was moving from an area of higher regulation to lower regulation did have some consideration. I chose, after all, an unincorporated area rather than a city (which is what we call municipalities down here, at least until they grow together and small patches of subdivisions band together defensively to avoid annexation) because I did want more liberty.

But any of these arguments or argument stumps are mere examples of my being not in my right mind, according to Mr. Dooley and to others who have the right mind and, with the right will, will impose that right mind upon everyone.

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