Getting bent out of shape for the wrong reasons

Plymouth, Minnesota is a large, financially well-off suburb of the Twin Cities. In fact, it was named Money magazine's #1 place to live in 2008.

In this idylic corner of America a problem is brewing. People are angry. The city hall's phone system has been overloaded. What is the crisis?

The city might change their recycling vendor!

That's right. While we are at war and the economy tanks and civil liberties are but a memory and our schools are falling apart and in Minnesota frickin bridges are falling apart and gas is expensive and we're having a bad mosquito year, this is what the good citizens of Plymouth have chosen to get enraged about.

Why, you ask? Two reasons. Citizens are going to be asked to separate their recyclables by the new vendor. (The old vendor asked recyclables to be separated but evidently didn't do anything about it when people shoved their office paper, empty beer cans, and peanut butter jars all together.) And, due to rising fuel costs, the new contract will cost the city nearly 50 cents a month per household!

I mean, my goodness! A community where the median family income is $111,631 is being prayed upon by nasty politicians who want to pry $6 a year out of their hands. I mean, that's a whole 0.005% of their income. A giant five thousanths of a percent! Much is at stake!

For six dollars a family would, um, well...

Well, they might have to do two less visits to Starbucks.

They might have to forego a popcorn at least once a year when they go to the movies.

They might have to say no for once to one of their children's request for a crappy plastic toy at Target.

They might have to stop playing the slots at the Grand Casino Mille Lacs fifteen minutes earlier than they otherwise would have.

Instead, the government will take $6 of their hard earned money for that dirty word: recycling.

Over thirty seven years ago President Kennedy told the nation: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Obviously no one ever made JFK sort his recycling. The line has to be drawn somewhere.