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Ideology exposed by trash talk
(by Dave Lange - September 28, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Ideology exposed by trash talk
There's been a lot of trash talking lately regarding the great divide between conservatism and liberalism in our "one nation indivisible," as the original Pledge of Allegiance had it.
As I understand it, the extreme right side of the divide believes the government should collect virtually no taxes whatsoever and perform no services, with the possible exception of national defense, and the far left believes the government should tax and spend wealthy citizens' road to the poorhouse and provide every expenditure imaginable, except for trillion-dollar military invasions around the world. Beliefs that lie somewhere in between are muted by the trash talk.
Another kind of trash talking may be a way to gauge the political ideals of communities right here in Geauga County and the Chagrin Valley.
A lot of it was muttered the past couple years in Russell Township, where the free-market conservative majority so far has held sway against the liberal forces of government intrusion into trash collection.
As an aside, I do not hesitate to note, I have lived in townships for the past 28 years and have been a loyal supporter of the private trash-hauling industry. By and large, we denizens of townships, by virtue of our rugged individualism and refusal to demand government intrusions into our refuse, are the truest conservatives in America today.
My personal participation in recycling at a government-subsidized drop-off center is only due to my inability to sell used newspapers and empty beer bottles on the open market, by the way, and should by no means be misconstrued as an endorsement of such socialistic operations.
Efforts by certain Russell officials to institute a single-hauler rubbish contract for all township residents, which could degenerate into a political bag of worms this fall, however, remain on conservative ground. Forcing citizens to pay for private contractors, including corporate-run prisons, charter schools and garbage collectors, either with taxes or through direct payments, commonly is known as outsourcing, which is a four-letter word to liberals, even though it has 11 letters.
The village of Chagrin Falls, for instance, has turned a portion of its tax dollars over to a private garbage contractor and denied freedom of choice to its citizens for many years without losing support from the local Republican Party. The conservative enclave of Gates Mills did the same thing until 2009, when voters there refused to raise their property taxes and were rewarded with forced billing for a private contractor, proving that the bill of rights is superior to tax and spend.
Moving in the opposite direction, though, nearby Hunting Valley, which had been a stalwart supporter of free enterprise, was so flush with tax dollars in 2008 that the village government began picking up the tab for a single trash hauler and denied residents the right to pay for their own.
Perhaps in the most liberal community of all, Pepper Pike, entitlements have run so far amok that the city uses precious tax dollars for government workers not only to collect everybody's garbage equally but to trudge across private properties to pick it up in their backyards or garages.
All of this goes to show that talking trash and collecting it go hand in hand.
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