Page 20 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • January 27, 2010 the private sector because the public sector controls the printing presses at the U.S. Mint. The public sector will go on paying its employees and drive up inflation even after the private sector tanks and makes the paper money as worthless as it was during the first years of the Weimar Republic, when a wheelbarrow full of freshly printed bills would pay for a pair of socks or a loaf of bread. Just keep that printing press going and you can afford those tropical escape vacations and college for the kids long after the rest of us have fallen back on potatoes, rice, and beans – if we let you get away with it. The second meeting in question took place in Allendale. The members of the municipal council, caught between the rock of rising taxes and the hard place of the state cap, had tentatively proposed that they could save the taxpayers almost $100,000 if the borough switched from back-yard garbage pickup to front-yard pickup. The assembled populace said no to this proposal at a meeting where taking your own garbage to the curb was seen as a harbinger of the collapse of Western civilization. We all wondered what would happen to those Russian soldiers once they had to give away their cats if they couldn’t prove they were 1/16th Jewish and avoid extradition from Germany. They are obviously headed for Allendale, and the way to stop them is to make sure nobody ever mentions curbside garbage pickup again. The people spoke, often with considerable eloquence, and told the council that they were an upper-class community and didn’t want curbside pickup. Not even the concept that people too old to lug their own garbage to the curb could ask for a waiver could dissuade the vast majority of those who spoke from arguing that this measure to save money was a threat to the American way of life – meaning their property values. The people whose jobs are supported by taxpayers were mortified by the resistance. They understood that the borough cannot afford to impose luxury living on people who could not afford any more taxes, and that when push comes to shove, somebody’s going to get fired – maybe the sanitary workers, maybe the people who were born here, sent relatives into the armed services, paid U.S. taxes for decades, and thought they were safe. Nobody’s safe. Face it, America: We’re running out of money. The “globalists” who decided, perhaps quite correctly, that China was no longer a market as in the days of John Hay and Theodore Roosevelt, but a manufacturing power, finished us off. We have a strong agricultural base and pharmaceuticals industry, and we will be able to support ourselves if we cut a few corners, but we are not running the world anymore, and we had better get used to it. The Chinese are not going to invade America, but they don’t need to. Through loans they already own a substantial part of our economy. They already have enough of our manufacturing base to make sure we cannot throw our weight around in any way they would find threatening. Clinton and Clinton made absolutely sure they would be able to do this in return for campaign contributions. We are sunk in terms of controlling the world, but we can still control the United States if we remember the principle that made America great: Those who will not work should not be allowed to starve, but they don’t deserve to live on the same scale as those who do work. Useful labor produces income. This applies not just to people on welfare, but to people whose public-sector jobs do not generate salable products. Trimming is vital. The idea that government exists to fulfill our fantasies that we have somehow turned in Hamilton Fish or Henry Cabot Lodge because we temporarily have a good job and can afford the right address is pernicious to our neighbors and, ultimately, to ourselves. The people who have mega-millions they never had to earn consider the rest of us ludicrous buffoons and use politicians to pursue their private delusions and fantasies. If we let our lives revolve around spectator sports and sticking it to the neighbors because we can afford a better vacation or a bigger car, we let them get away with it. Any tax saving that does not cause our neighbors to stare or freeze is worth doing right now. If you want to be a snob, buy season tickets to the opera. It’s time for everybody in America to get the picture, and get it big time. People who do not contribute to the economic well-being of the United States or to the real needs of the communities they live in do not deserve to freeze or perish– it may not be their fault. But they do not deserve the same kind of salaries and benefits as people with productive jobs. We can thin out public-sector jobs through attrition, or through the dismissal of those who are caught stealing or are found basely incompetent, or we can keep building an edifice based on nepotism or partisan influence that must eventually fall and take the rest of us down when it inevitably collapses like a pack of cards. Two recent council meetings brought it all home: Everybody wants to save the economy, but no one wants to take the necessary measures. In Ridgewood, a former German popped up from the audience and made a speech that left everyone else speechless. In 1964, when he was a teenager, he departed from what was then East Germany and arrived in what was then West Germany by swimming the Baltic Sea at risk of execution if he were caught, because he could not stand living under a communist regime he described as corrupt. The German Democratic Republic was proof of the fact that communism was such a bad idea that even the Prussians could not organize it well enough to make it work. The proclivity to escape from East Germany was notorious. People swam the Baltic, tunneled under the Berlin Wall, and flew balloons over the DMZ with its guard dogs, land mines, and rows of barbed wire. I used to work at a newspaper where a lot of people had attended colleges in New York City in the 1960s. They constantly extolled the virtues of “revolution” and believed communism was a great idea, mostly because they did not want to join the U.S. Army. They were nice people, and opposed racism and any form of snobbery that did not revolve around where you went to school. But their politics made me want to puke. I had been in the U.S. Army while they were hiding behind their student deferments, I knew how to load and fire a rifle, as opposed to just waving one, and I had talked to enough Germans, Poles, and Hungarians to know something about the realities of communism. East German Joke of the 1970s: The Russians, the Americans, and the East Germans organized a joint dive on the wreck of the “Titanic.” The Russians wanted to steal the “ultra-modern” plumbing fixtures, the Americans wanted to loot the drugs in the captain’s safe, and the East Germans wanted to find out why the musicians hadn’t escaped when they had the chance. East German musicians and athletes defected routinely. I would bet that some very good orchestras probably included as many informers as musicians. When communism collapsed, the Russian soldiers stationed in Germany also defected. The German constitution provides sanctuary for people of Jewish ancestry as penance for the Holocaust, and the Russians hired genealogists to prove they were of partial Jewish ancestry so they could apply for asylum. Those who could not find any Jewish ancestors stoically gave away their pet cats to Germans because they knew they would never be able to find cat food in Russia. Finding anything other than potatoes, cabbages, and fish at the stores was a rare event. Cat food was not an entitlement even if you could pay for it. The man who risked his life to swim to West Germany had an answer to the property taxes that were driving his restored rental properties into bankruptcy. He said half of the people employed by Ridgewood should quit their jobs and try the private sector. I found this heroic and naïve. Nobody in the public sector wants any part of A tale of two cities in the worst of times Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: The Franklin Lakes Shade Tree Commission urges all borough property owners to take inventory of their trees. If you remember any trees from last year that had bare limbs sticking out of the foliage, or if you now see trees where the bark is peeling off the trunk, those are most likely dead or dying trees. These will be hazardous, especially if they are located near public or private thoroughfares. Winter storms can wreak havoc with such trees, especially now that there is no surrounding foliage to halt the fall of dead limbs. Now is a good time to take care of such hazardous trees. The ground is still frozen and the impact of falling logs and branches to the ground, and to surrounding shrubbery will be minimal, since they are now in a dormant state. In addition, tree services are not overly busy during the winter Tree safety urged months and you might be able to negotiate a good price. You can use the logs in your fireplace and have the branches chipped and use them for mulch. No birds are nesting now, so the disruption to wildlife will also be minimal. Although the Borough of Franklin Lakes holds an easement of 10 feet from the curb into your property, you are responsible for the welfare of any trees that are growing in that space. Please remember that a tree removal permit is required for the removal of any tree, dead or alive, that exceeds a seven inch diameter. The form for the permit can be downloaded from the borough’s website, printed, filled out, and sent back to the borough. An inspection of the trees will done before the permit will be given. Marion Mahn Shade Tree Commissioner Franklin Lakes Midland Park The Midland Park Public Education Foundation’s 2010 Spring Fling Blue Jean Ball will be held on Saturday, March 13 from 7 to11 p.m. at Saint Nicholas Church in Wyckoff. In preparation for this event, the Blue Jean Ball Decorating Committee is seeking upwards of 300 to 400 gently-used blue jeans in all shapes and sizes. After the event, the MPPEF will donate these jeans to a charity. Jean donations may be dropped off in the boxes located on the front porches at 4 Westview Place, 148 East Center Street, 252 Vreeland Avenue, and 264 Park Avenue, from Feb. 1 through 26. All the proceeds from the 2010 Spring Fling Blue Jean Ball will go toward funding the “Access to All” grant. The cost of Phase I of this grant is approximately $70,000 and Public Education Foundation seeks used jeans will enable Midland Park schools to purchase the technological equipment necessary to bring the schools on par with others in the area. Anyone who would like to join the Blue Jean Ball Decorating Committee is invited to contact MPPEF Board of Trustee members Kristin Fiore at fiorefam4@verizon.net, or Christine Odell at ccodell@optonline.net. For tickets, contact Tiffany Gallagher at igallag@optonline.net, Melissa Stanton at stanton264@msn.com, or visit www.mppef.org The Midland Park Public Education Foundation is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit foundation that funds new curriculum initiatives and enrichment opportunities in Midland Park’s public schools.