Transcript for the Piece Audio version of A Ship Without A Rudder

Voters in a small Maine town have fired the town manager and eliminated the annual contribution to a local library. Their cry is, “No more taxes.” But because town governments are required to fill out and mail a vast amount of paper to the state and federal governments nowadays, one might well ask if the voters in that town have any idea of what they are getting themselves into. Only an experienced paper shuffler knows how to correctly fill in the blanks in the most basic form to be circulated in triplicate today. If brought in off the street, even that rare individual blessed with both intelligence and education is not going to be able to do it. And yet, someone is going to have to fill out those papers. If more town managers are fired in Maine towns, and they probably will be, it might answer the question that many of us have asked for years: --- Is our health and welfare dependent upon the shuffling of mountains of paper from one office to another? --- One might also well wonder if this firing of the town manager is the plot of anarchists who want to see the ship of state founder and sink. By the way, Maine taxpayers should keep in mind that when anything goes wrong, the town manager also serves as a whipping boy, and isn’t that worth quite a bit right there?