Wholly Punched

You may remember back at the end of May I wrote a post titled “Whole Punch” about how the eco-socialist cult have ruined the recycling industry with their militantism (coincidentally, it was post #2020). Sadly, I now have to tell the tale of how that topic can become a bad one to bring up.

You see, there are some AlGore style ‘true believers’ at my place of employ. People who work there because we are the industry leader in recycling, not only in Seattle, but in most of the cities in the nation. A couple of them are drivers who, rather than take the ‘promotion’ to work in yardwaste or trash collection, choose to stay on a recycle route past their time. Mind you, they aren’t losing any money, they say that to them it seems like a better job.

One of the non-driving ‘true believers’ who works in the ‘Promotions’ department stopped by my office last Thursday morning before heading to do what I like to call her “recycling act” at a couple of the local elementary schools.

She said she wanted to see if there were any more recent numbers on the increase of recycling within the city, but she also chatted for over an hour to a couple of the other folks in the office, one of whose desk is next to where I sit.

As she sat on the desktop and talked to the lady there while facing towards me, she started in on how wonderful it was that the whole city was recycling and yada, yada, yada. Near the end, she asked me a question to which she knew I hadn’t the answer because I have nothing whatsoever to do with that department, and I decided that I’d move the topic back to the mandatory recycling and to how I thought it was disgusting that people are being fined for non-compliance.

She replied with the standard “It’s for their own good” speech to which I came back with that there was a whole set of new fees dropped onto people ‘For their own good’ with the city’s recycling program and that some of the people probably couldn’t afford it.

To which, I shit you not, she said “well, we’ll just have to give them some sort of subsidy to cover the cost”

She said it without hesitation or questioning the logic of it. After sitting there stunned for a second, I asked if we should also subsidize their trash, mentioning this upcoming rate increase so that the city can build a new transfer station.

She answered “Absolutely” and talked about other government programs to help people with their water, electirc and phone bills, and that seeing as how trash collection is a utility, some people should get that service paid for by the government as well.

I countered with the fact that electricity, water and phones weren’t mandated by the city, adding that neither was the most expensive city in the state mandating that people without means live here.

To which her only reply was that I was a racist.

At no time during the conversation was race brought up by either myself or her. But one mention from myself, asking why people who are perpetually without decent quantities of money are living in a town where property values are edging towards those in San Francisco, and she automatically thinks of black people, yet I am the racist.

No, there hasn’t been any fallout from this spat, I’m pretty sure that she just wanted to exit the arena. Which is really sad, because I wanted to move the topic to transportation and pollution issues. Mostly because she drives a 20 year old Honda Civic and, since I’ve seen the emmissions reports of both aging Civics and the newer F150s, I know that my truck runs cleaner per mile than hers does.

Maybe next time. I’d like to see her try the “Racist Runaway” on that one.