Q: What's the difference between the New York City trash police and the Stasi?
A: The Stasi has gone away
What with Donald Trump’s bullying and bumbling into unforced errors that will overshadow and besmirch the worthwhile parts of his agenda, and thus will be used to impeach it and (probably literally) him (since assassination hasn’t worked, yet), it’s getting harder to remember why 77,000,000 people or so voted for him; I doubt they were rooting for a crash in their 401(k) plans.
Never fear! The Democrats are here to remind us day in and day out. As my father used to say, thank God for your enemies. Hence this story from the New York Sun.
New York City’s composting mandate is nearly two weeks old, and critics say the Sanitation Department’s campaign encouraging tenants to report landlords who don’t comply with the new regulations is turning New Yorkers against each other, all in the name of composting.
Can you hear it? “Herr Kommandant, the red-haired guy in the corner room on the seventh floor is putting plastic straws — PLASTIC STRAWS, I TELL YOU — in with the orange rinds, and the landlord has been letting him get away with it for three full days. Do you not take your authority seriously? Or do I need to talk to the Uber Kommandant?”
On April 1, the city started issuing summonses, ranging from $25 to $300, to New Yorkers who are caught mixing material like food scraps, yard waste, and compostable packaging with regular trash.
Summonses today, education camp tomorrow, Compost Gulag right after Easter. I would say these people don’t hear themselves, but that seems like a comical understatement.
Thus far, the Sanitation Department has issued a total of 2,462 summonses to property owners citywide while reporting a 240 percent increase in compostable material kept out of landfills, according to a city Sanitation spokesperson.
There are right wing freaks — I confess to being one of them (confessions to the government apparently being the order of the day) — who think that disarming Iran or confronting China’s increasingly belligerent military are what we need to be thinking about, but people like me just don’t take seriously enough the (a) coming Ice Age or (b) deadly global warming (choose one) (or two if you attended World Day).
But critics say the city’s recent mail campaign is indicative of the Sanitation Department’s enforce-first, educate-second approach to the compost mandate.
“Encouraging tenants to report their landlords just days after the mandate went into effect sends the wrong message. Instead of fostering cooperation, it creates tension and pits neighbors against one another,” said the chief of staff for City Council member Robert F. Holden, Democrat of Queens, Daniel Kuryzna.
With all respect to “critics” who have their heads almost in the right place, the problem here is not that the garbage dump iron fist is “sending the wrong message” about “community cooperation.” The problem is the iron fist.
Attention, Comrade, you need to get the picture. So here it is:
I can’t quite tell whether the officer has a gun in his belt. I think probably not — but I also think it’s suggestive for a reason.
The mailer [above] was sent at the end of March, just one week before the mandate went into full effect, according to a Sanitation Department spokesman.
The seemingly rushed timing of that mailer is one of many examples the Sanitation Department’s awareness campaign has fallen “abysmally short,” said Mr. Burgos [a landlord representative].
Ummmmm, Mr. Burgos, this is not about the gently-titled “awareness campaign.” It’s about the government’s controlling yours and everyone else’s life one little step at a time so you won’t notice how far it’s already gone.
I mean, golly, I’m a suspicious enough man to think that the next thing the Democrats will try to put over on you is how much water pressure you can have in your shower. I know that seems totally paranoid, but………..how’s that?………..oooooooooops…………seems like I’m behind the times again!!!