Signs of excess during times of woe - Look no further than a Yankees World Series victory. The “Canyon of Heroes” is littered with 5500 tons of confetti after a ticker tape parade.
Lucky for Earth the Yankees haven’t won in nine years. If they made it a habit, we’d all be wearing oxygen masks.

    WHOAAAA, Mr. Tree Hugger! People need to celebrate, especially those poor-financial-district-paper-shredding-stock brokers whose bonuses were cut to only a million dollars last year. Yeah, do you know how far a million dollar bonus gets you in New York nowadays? Barely up to Central Park, that’s how far. Things are expensive in New York. Just ask Mayor “Megabucks” Bloomberg, who spent $110 million dollars on a Mayoral campaign to get 5% more of the electorate than his opponent. Bloomberg spent five times as much getting elected mayor as Kerry spent trying to get elected president. Included in his $110 million dollar expenditure was one foot thick of election brochure propaganda paper mailed to every voter in the five boroughs. I’d do the math but I can’t type and calculate at the same time I’m reaching for my oxygen mask.

    WHOAAAA, Mr. Anti-Stimulus Tree Fondler! Printers have businesses, too… they employ people and many of these printers are nice hard-working Americans! Printing presses cost money, presses need paper… and paper costs money, too, which is made from, er…guess what… paper! Do you know how that paper gets to the millions of New York voters? By mail carriers, that’s how. Mail carriers have families to feed. And the people who make the sorting machines to sort your mail and figure out your barely decipherable zip codes need to eat, too!  And do you know what? They’ve made it where our mail carriers lugging the tons of Bloomberg generated tree pulp can hook an oxygen tank device to their mail carts. So there!
 
    So you’re saying 11 million pounds of shredded paper littering the Canyon of Heroes is a GOOD THING?

    Not exactly, Martha Stewart! Just saying 11 million pounds of beer-soaked paper is easier to clean up than 11 million pounds of spaghetti.

    But if we had 11 million pounds of spaghetti (flat noodles we assume) wouldn’t C.C. Sabathia clean it up all by himself?

    Hey, garbage workers have families to feed, too! We can’t let Sabathia do all the work.

    So you’re saying the Yankees, with their bloated payroll outspending the rest of the league and Mayor Bloomberg, outspending his mayoral opponent by a rate of 15 to 1, with the both of them winning while the rest of us cinch up our belts… is a good thing?!

    Yes, Martha. Us little people, we need to scrimp and scramble while leaving excessive indulgences to those who have no idea the value of money. Who else better to run your city or shack up with Madonna? Editor’s note: Bloomberg is not doing Madonna. Mr. Silliman was referring to the Yankees.