Robert David Sullivan

The newest crime drama from CBS?

The New York Times reports that "garbage collectors" have become an important source of information for local police:

Drivers’ tips have led to drug-trafficking arrests, Mr. Henschen said, and to the discovery of a corpse in a home that had gone so long without having any trash that a driver grew suspicious...

Riding high in the cab of a garbage truck, it is impossible not to notice things. Signs of family life are evident in trash: a birth is announced by a crib’s big cardboard box, the aging of children shown in the abandonment of a kiddie pool. Garbage collectors are also informal, hands-on economists, [collector Gary Garcia] said, explaining that when times are good, everyone produces more garbage and that the absence of trash is often a sign of a foreclosed home...

I can't wait to see Dross, a crime drama about a sanitation worker who's also a special consultant to the police, and who can see things in the trash that escape the attention of everyone on CSI. The cross-over episode with Monk should be hilarious.

Forbes writer must not get many party invitations

Matthew Ygelsias objects to this passage in a Forbes column by Bruce Bartlett that slams the US Postal Service:

While some Democratic spending will be called "investments," Republicans can make a strong case that the only ones that really add to the nation's capital stock are those directed by the market. Historically, government-directed investment has been very inefficient. That's why Amtrak and the Post Office don't work very well and why there was a privatization movement in the 1980s and 1990s, which led governments everywhere to sell their state-owned enterprises.

Ygelsias is correct that Amtrak has disappointing service because it's underfunded, and that the Post Office actually works very well. That's why the phrase "the check is in the mail" is universally understood as a lie. If someone claims that they sent you something through the US Post Office and it still hasn't arrived five days later, there's a 99.99% chance he or she didn't send it.

If Bartlett thinks the Post Office doesn't work very well because acquaintances are always claiming that he was sent invitations, Christmas cards, admiring notes, etc. that must have gotten "lost in the mail", he needs a reality check.