This note is printed with recycled electrons

The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation has just sent me a long letter notifying me that my garbage fee is going to be increased 40% in September from $26 a month to $36.32. That's an outrageous increase but that's not the thing about the letter that irritates me to the most. The first paragraph of the letter assures me that Los Angeles doesn't discriminate on the basis of disability and follows that up with a note that the letter is printed on recycled paper. It is not until the third paragraph of the letter, which is alternately printed in English and Spanish, and I discover that the purpose of the letter is to prepare me for this enormous fee increase.

I don't know who wrote this letter but it occurs to me that if you are going to give somebody bad news you need to give it to them up front, all at once and without a lot of totally irrelevant assurances that the city doesn't discriminate against the disabled. I mean what does it matter in a letter about usurious fee increases? The real news in the letter comes practically as an after thought: "We don't discriminate against anyone. All our notices are on recycled paper and oh, by the way, we're increasing the trash fee 40%." Do they think we're nuts? That we're going to hear about the fee increase and say, "This is totaly bullshit. These people are totally evil. I bet they discriminate against the disabled and cut down virgin timber to print their back-breaking bills?"