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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
FEMALE_1: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian, and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, political science professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I've got a tiny little bit of a cold because I've been around students because we're back in school, and it's all fabulous. There's eight billion people, and it's great. But at least one of them has sneezed on me in the last several days. That's my world. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, in your situation, you couple that with central air. You're going outside into standard Richmond August weather.
N. Rodgers: Which is gross.
J. Aughenbaugh: The last week of August, it is gross, and we fluctuate. This is the time of year where the Richmond weather teases you. Because you'll have two or three days where it's really comfortable, and then all of a sudden hell returns.
N. Rodgers: You wake up in the morning, and it's like 68 degrees, and you're like, this is so nice. Then in the afternoon, it's 91 degrees and humidity of 400% and you're like, what did I do? How did I make the weather gods angry?
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you go inside buildings, all of which happen.
N. Rodgers: And it's minus 50.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, which, thank the Good Lord, we have central air. But nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: I'm grateful.
J. Aughenbaugh: You go in and all of a sudden your body's like, whoa, hey, easy, Nellie. What's going on here?
N. Rodgers: Because the temperatures in the buildings at least on our campus, are set by the outside. It's 91, so they want the air conditioning to be cold.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The problem for Richmond is that now we're in the transition period where nothing's going to keep up. On some days, it's going to be cold outside and cold inside, and then some days it's going to be hot outside and hot inside. It's a special time of year. We love Richmond because Richmond is a wonderland of weather.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But one of the reasons why I'm doing good this morning, Nia, is it's not very often on this podcast, if ever, we get to talk about poop. I'm this juvenile.
N. Rodgers: We've talked about some poopy things that have happened, but not poop itself.
J. Aughenbaugh: The poop itself. I'm this juvenile to where just the prospect that we get to spend the next roughly 50 minutes talking about poop. I'm probably going to go ahead and put this on my resume, by the way. Oh, yeah, by the way, we do a podcast in one of our best episodes is about poop. I just want to see the number of people who reach out to me and say, can you explain this, please, Mr. Aughenbaugh?
N. Rodgers: That's going to look really good when you go up to be on the Supreme Court and the Senate doing their thing with you. You're like, we'd like you to explain.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, good luck, Nia, on your Angel report when you go ahead and list.
N. Rodgers: Right, the episodes for this year. I love it. Although, legit, let's talk briefly historically for just a moment about poop. Historians can learn an enormous amount about a civilization by looking at the excrement of both animals and humans that lived in that area. That's how we know when agriculture got started. We don't know it because it's leftover agriculture. We know it because it's left in the poop. Oh, this is a grain that somebody clearly intentionally grew, and therefore there is now agriculture, that kind of thing. One of my most fascinating [inaudible] about me, but I'm going to share this with the rest of the podcast, is someday I will get to Pompeii. I'm fascinated by Pompeii and Herculaneum and the whole destruction. But there's been a lot of work done there archaeology-wise, and now they know pretty much what the daily diet of the people in Pompeii was, which I think is fascinating.
J. Aughenbaugh: Fascinating, yes.
N. Rodgers: That's how we know that they eat a lot of fish. Like the Mediterranean diet literally goes back in time to that period, and you can see it in their waste. There's some valuable things about waste. There's also some bad things about waste, like algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico come from human and animal waste that ends up in the Mississippi River that then dumps into the Gulf. It causes algae blooms. It causes fish to die because they're not supposed to consume that thing. We know that lettuce in this country right now is a gamble about whether you're going to end up with something that gives you excess poop.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, explosive diarrhea.
N. Rodgers: There is value in understanding the human waste systems. We're not suggesting that that's not valuable.
J. Aughenbaugh: However, in June of this year, the New York Times published a story about how cities and schools are testing wastewater for illegal drug usage.
N. Rodgers: Which is terrifying.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The article begins with a story from Tempe, Arizona, where local government officials have been monitoring wastewater to determine drug use, so it could direct public health efforts to combat the effects of drug overdoses.
N. Rodgers: Now I say when Aggie mentioned that to me, I was like, oh, that's a good thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a good thing.
N. Rodgers: Public policy. Then my immediate thought, because I am Gen X and because I am a friend of Aughies I went immediately to the dark place of, oh, no, that means that they're monitoring you. Can they do that down to the house level? Because if they can.
J. Aughenbaugh: Ooh. Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's scary. I don't know if Aughie takes any drugs, but I take heart medications. The idea that they could know from my personal waste habits what medications I take is terrifying to me. That's 1984 Big Brother.
J. Aughenbaugh: As we read further into the article, what really set off our warning bells was that increasingly local governments and some public school systems are doing the same. This is not just an isolated local government trying out something. This is being replicated across the country. The efforts by these local governments and school systems are being supported by the Trump administration, which has had its National Drug Control Policy office contract out with a private firm to set protocols for more local governments and schools to do the same.
N. Rodgers: You who thought Flock cameras were bad? We introduce you to poop monitoring.
J. Aughenbaugh: Poop monitoring.
N. Rodgers: One of the things that I love about Aughie is that he's like, every time I say, this is the worst it can get, Aughie goes, hey, could you hold my beer for a second? I go, no, I will not hold your beer because you're about to tell me something even worse, and he's like, yes, I am.
J. Aughenbaugh: Almost immediately, we thought, we need to do a podcast episode about this, in part because the article in the New York Times had us thinking about the legal and policy implications of the government at all levels engaging in this testing of wastewater. For me, as somebody who teaches public policy and constitutional law, this is a really good example of the tension between the government wanting to achieve a particular public good. The listeners, as Nia just pointed out, reducing the effects of drug usage in American society is a good thing.
N. Rodgers: You know where to locate clinics that help people with fentanyl use and other kinds. If you know how to do that, you can improve people's overall health and well-being.
J. Aughenbaugh: With scarce resources, would it not be far better for a local government to be able to target certain neighborhoods that have suffered from drug abuse more than other neighborhoods? But the downside, and here's the conflict, the privacy interests of individuals not having their waste tested without probable cause.
N. Rodgers: That was the first thing I asked Aughie was, do they have to get a warrant to test your poop? It seems like a warrantless search, to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it led to a fascinating discussion where I think one of us, I can't remember which, went ahead and said, how do you go to a judge and say, this is my probable cause, so I can go ahead and test some poop. How do you not get laughed out of court with that search warrant request?
N. Rodgers: Yeah, it was you that brought that up. It's true. What do you say to a judge, I think this person might be on drugs, so I want to test the waste from their home? What judge is going to say yes to that? Because there are judges in the United States who would say yes to that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then there are judges who would say, get out of my court before I slap you with this gavel.
J. Aughenbaugh: If the effort is for a neighborhood, what would be the standard?
N. Rodgers: How many homes would have to test?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and what would be the probable cause? We've had this number of drug overdoses. We've had this number of drug deaths.
N. Rodgers: I've had this number of drug arrests. Where's the standard?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That becomes extremely arbitrary. As we've noted on this podcast, courts don't like arbitrary government behavior. They want to know that there is a standard that can be replicated and applied across communities, across neighborhoods, across individual homes.
N. Rodgers: Well, the law is based in predictability. If Aughie gets in his jeep, and he goes out to 295, and he says, time to put the pedal to the metal. He slams down the gas pedal, and he goes as fast as his jeep will go, which I don't know how fast it is, so I'm going to make up a number: 160 miles an hour. He's flying down through there just to see what it feels like one time before the cops catch him. Like, he's going to do this thing. That behavior, he knows that if he gets caught, not only are they going to take his driver's license, they're going to take his jeep. He may end up with jail time because he's endangered the populace, whatever, yada, yada, yada. If those rules apply to everybody, it keeps everybody from going out on 295 and going 160 miles an hour. Because it's a predictable outcome. If the outcome is, well, it was pretty funny to see you driving like that, Aughie, so we're going to just let you go. Well, then the next time I'm going to get a Maserati and go 300 miles an hour. Well, I know they don't go that fast.
J. Aughenbaugh: But also one of the purposes of law is to create behavioral norms. So people should know if I move into this neighborhood, will my poop be tested?
N. Rodgers: Be tested. Is that going to become a class issue or race issue where they're like, oh, well, we always test this neighborhood?
J. Aughenbaugh: Why some communities or some towns or some schools, but not others?
N. Rodgers: You get into stigma, and you get into the whole idea, and then you're going to get redlining. If that starts being a thing, insurance companies will raise the prices to sell insurance to certain areas. The interest rates for homes in those areas will go up. Like there'll be a lot of complexity involved in that. Also, it seems like it would be unconstitutional. Is it constitutional to do that, Aughie, to test people's?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, we'll get to that in just a moment, but I want to go back to a point that you made earlier when you went ahead and mentioned Pompeii. For our listeners who are unaware, the government testing the wastewater of its citizens is not new.
N. Rodgers: You mean in real time, it's not new.
J. Aughenbaugh: For instance, I didn't know this. Listeners, I know you're probably tired of hearing me and I say this.
N. Rodgers: We always learn something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Every time we do research for a podcast, we learn something new.
N. Rodgers: That's the point of research. You're just reiterating what you already know. Why would you do that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you get confirmation bias. Then after a while, it becomes boring. I'm not that smart. But the thing that I did not know was in London, when they had a deadly outbreak of cholera, London government officials were testing poop to see the extent that the cholera outbreak would manifest.
N. Rodgers: Cholera in London? Was this recent?
J. Aughenbaugh: In the 19th century.
N. Rodgers: In the 1800s, they were doing this. But they were doing it in real time to try to develop.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because they were trying to figure out the extent?
N. Rodgers: A response?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because they didn't know how many Londoners actually had contracted cholera. Because the symptoms do not appear immediately. Somebody could be a carrier for cholera for
N. Rodgers: Three or four days before you.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were trying to go ahead and figure out how to go ahead and quarantine so that the spread.
N. Rodgers: Containment.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, containment purposes, which for public health is one of the first things you want to do.
N. Rodgers: Who have you talked to today that you might have given Hantavirus to because we're going to need to find them and isolate them. That's contact tracing is what that's called. It's a whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's far easier and more effective to do that contact tracing if you know who are silently carrying a transferable, if you will, condition. But we saw this most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic. Government at all levels were actually testing wastewater to figure out where the virus had already spread so that they again, could what's the word I'm looking for, divert the resources for what would likely be a whole bunch of people going to the hospital with the virus.
N. Rodgers: I didn't realize they were testing wastewater for that.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was one of those things to where many hospitals, were like, it would have been really nice if we had known.
N. Rodgers: How many were coming in?
J. Aughenbaugh: How many were coming in?
J. Aughenbaugh: It also helps determine how many vaccines you need, et cetera.
N. Rodgers: How many doctors and nurses you need. Staffing and all kinds of stuff like that. I'm still not a fan.
J. Aughenbaugh: The intervening variable that really makes this even more complex. Of course, our long term listeners, you know this. I always like to weird things up. But the intervening variable in all of this is with drugs, you have two different, if you will, public policy concerns. One's a Public Health concern. The cost of drug addiction, overdoses, related deaths, versus law enforcement.
N. Rodgers: Criminal behavior.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which we have laws that say, if you use certain drugs, you are violating community standards and you will be punished.
N. Rodgers: Because drugs are on a scale. There's?
J. Aughenbaugh: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, classes. If you're taking certain class drugs, then it's an automatic. That's illegal. You can't have heroin. You can't have cocaine. You can't have fentanyl. Those things are Class 1, is the most illegal?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the most illegal. Testing wastewater may not identify specific drug users. Because the way wastewater is collected, it's tested at the collection site.
N. Rodgers: Not at the house level?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Not yet. But it does.
N. Rodgers: It could be coming.
J. Aughenbaugh: It does identify where illegal drugs are being consumed. Which then would allow law enforcement to target their patrols. This is where you get to profiling, stigmas, targeting.
N. Rodgers: That feels unconstitutional to me. Actually, it also feels Minority Report-ish to me. The whole idea of free precognition. We're going to figure out you're a criminal before you figure out you're a criminal thing. I don't know. I'm not a fan.
J. Aughenbaugh: What you would end up seeing then is entire neighborhoods being targeted for increased patrols or certain schools. But then you start looking at other characteristics. Well, what are the characteristics of the people who are living in these neighborhoods? Are they the lower class? Economically, socio-economically?
N. Rodgers: Are they ethnically diverse? Are they culturally diverse?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Are they immigrant populations? Particular religious groups who use drugs as part of religious ceremonies?
N. Rodgers: We know that more police presence in most instances leads to more arrests.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Maybe not necessarily good arrests. Because if the only weapon you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
J. Aughenbaugh: From a bureaucratic perspective, you justify your budgets-
N. Rodgers: By arrest.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, by producing certain outputs. One of the outputs we measure police departments by is, how many people have they arrested, and did those arrests lead to convictions?
N. Rodgers: Cops care about arrests and the lawyers care about conviction rates. The DAs.
J. Aughenbaugh: This leads to perverse incentives, and I teach this in my Bureaucratic Politics class. When we measure bureaucratic activity on outputs, then it provides incentives for you to achieve them because that's how you justify the budget. For instance, at VCU, Nia, you and I both get measured on particular outputs, and it's a way they justify the salaries they pay us. For you, it's how many classes have you gone in and taught in regards to doing research for those classes, and how many students have you helped find research for their various assignments? For me, it's the number of students I teach, which doesn't measure how good I taught them. For you, it doesn't necessarily measure how good of advice and counsel you provided on their research efforts. It's just the number. The more students I can get into my classes, all of a sudden, the university is like, "Well, Aughie's doing a bang up job". Well, not necessarily.
N. Rodgers: He does a bang up job, but that's because he personally wants to do a bang up job. But he could be an incredibly mediocre or crappy teacher and he just manages to get 300 people to take his class. You're right. That's why we talk about when near the end of the month, you're more likely to get at a speeding ticket because they're trying to make quota. Cops will tell you we don't have quotas, and that is totally not true. Off the record, cops will tell you, "Of course, we have quotas. I'm supposed to hit a certain number". The cop who told me that said, "I'm not making people speed. It's just that at some times of the month, I'm more likely to give them a ticket than other times of the month".
J. Aughenbaugh: When they go out on their shifts, they are told by their sergeants, by their superiors, "These are things we want you to emphasize today". Because law enforcement does have discretion, and they could arrest us for all kinds of things because we have so many criminal laws.
N. Rodgers: I jaywalked on my way to the deck yesterday. They could arrest me for that. They're not going to. Generally. But they they'll say, "Today we're looking out for, we think a lot of people are going to be driving inebriated cause it's 4 July, so we want you to be watching more for inebriated driving", which is, on the third, the fourth, and 5 July, they tend to be much more interested in doing the when they stop all the cars and check, what they're doing, they're not really checking for your license. They're leaning in to smell your breath. Are you driving while impaired?
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like New Year's Eve. Many big cities will have police patrols really heavy in areas where there are bars. They are having New Year's Eve celebrations. Now, do people drink at bars every single night of the year? Yes. But if you are told, "We need to reduce traffic fatalities as a result of drinking on New Year's Eve", well, then that's where you're going to put your patrols, and that's how you go ahead and justify your budgets.
N. Rodgers: One could argue that is good Public Health policy. It's better to stop people from driving while they are inebriated, so they don't hurt themselves or other people. But it's again, that tension, do you get punished for doing what you might have done on a random Thursday?
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, a few moments ago, Nia, you asked Is it constitutional? I know I'm going to upset you when I answer. More than likely, yes.
N. Rodgers: No. I do not accept your answer. Go back and try again. Is that your magic 8-ball?
J. Aughenbaugh: I got to be honest, I knew the answer even before I read the New York Times article. Because it was a case decided by the Supreme Court where the majority opinion was written by the subject of my dissertation, Byron White. The name of the case is California versus Greenwood. It arose in 1988. The court in a 62 decision held that individuals leaving their trash out for pickup at the curb had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Thus, the trash, could be examined by the public or by government officials.
N. Rodgers: That's in movies all the time, is the cops go through your garbage. Because once your garbage is out at the road, it's no longer yours. It's now basically public property.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is known as the reasonable expectation of privacy.
N. Rodgers: I don't like that, but I understand. I would be one of the two.
J. Aughenbaugh: The reasonable expectation of privacy standard in regards to Fourth Amendment searches and whether or not a government search is reasonable or unreasonable. Listeners, the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable government searches. If you want to do it.
N. Rodgers: They're saying you're giving them your waste by flushing it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Therefore, they have every right to look through it. If you did not flush your waste, but you did something else with it, you buried it in your backyard, then they couldn't come into your backyard and dig it up and test it without a warrant? What you're telling me, Aughie, is that I need to develop a different system for waste removal in my home. If I want to avoid constitutional questions here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I'm just imagining you going into Home Depot or Los and saying, "Okay. I need help in figuring out how I can store my wastewater to where".
N. Rodgers: Well, no. Actually, it brings me to an interesting question, which I'm now going to ask you. If, for instance, you live out in the county, you don't live in the city. You're not on a septic system, but if you were on a septic system, that would mean they'd have to get a warrant to test your waste because it would be contained on your property. Unless a guy comes and cleans out your septic system, and then they could test it from him because you at that point, have let go of your.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. That's the key point. The reasonable expectation of privacy standard says, As long as you are in possession of your garbage, etc.
N. Rodgers: As long as it's in your house?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But the instant you take it out to the curb?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or in the case of your wastewater, even with a septic system. Once you have somebody else come and collect it, who then takes it someplace else for disposal, at that point, more than likely you have given up a reasonable expectation of your waste privacy.
N. Rodgers: Right. Because the guy who works for the waste company is now a third party individual removing the waste.
J. Aughenbaugh: Once they go ahead and dispose it.
N. Rodgers: Man, if the cops were tracking you at that level, you are an arch criminal. Like, you are the most arch of arch criminals, if they are.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, we're talking about wastewater that you produce at your home. I think it's even less of an invasion of privacy at a school because school officials are specifically tasked with ensuring the school system is free of any, if you will, variable that may impact learning and education.
N. Rodgers: I consider school to be a public place. The library is a public place, and many stores are a public place. If you used their restrooms, I'm not sure you would have an expectation of privacy once you step out of the restroom or of the container that you're in in the restroom, the stall. You have an expectation of privacy in stalls, and we do know that because people aren't allowed to take pictures of you from underneath the stall. That's illegal. We know you have an expectation of privacy there, but once you step out to wash your hands, which you should be doing, and if you're not, don't tell me. But once you step out to wash your hands, you lose that expectation of privacy. Because now you've stepped out into a larger space. I see. It makes sense to me that school and kids don't have the same rights that adults have anyway, like anybody K-12.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the worst one I wanted to make. Public school K-12 environments. The Supreme Court has traditionally held, "Though you don't necessarily give up your civil liberties because you're a school kid, your civil liberties don't get as much protection because the purpose of the school is education and learning. If you engage in behavior that negatively impacts that, the school has the authority to go ahead and restrict or in some cases, violate your civil liberty".
N. Rodgers: For instance, if you come to school wearing certain clothing that is offensive to others, either through slogan or through image or through whatever, the school can say to you, "Turn that inside out or go home and change. You cannot be here because you are disruptive to the educational environment".
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. If I'm making a prediction, I just don't see the strict constructionists that populate a majority of the current Supreme Court being willing to overturn the Greenwood Decision. I think for them, it's an easy application. You have flushed your waste away.
N. Rodgers: It no longer has an expectation of privacy.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think even moreover, on the current Supreme Court, we have easily a majority of the justices who are huge federalism supporters. If local governments and schools want to do this, this easily falls within the police power of state and local governments per the Tenth Amendment. Because all their attorneys would have to do is say, "Yes, arrests may arise. But really, our focus here, justice is?"
N. Rodgers: It's Public Health.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is Public Health.
N. Rodgers: Public Health and Safety.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That easily falls within, okay, our powers per the Tenth Amendment. I know that upsets.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, but the thing is, can I just say, though, Aughie, that the problem with this, it's as creepy as heck. It is just creepy to think, Okay, wait, let me back up and say, for me and my brain, this works like flock cameras. I don't want to be watched at this level. I get that there's a line there with security versus safety and part of the reason that we want flock cameras is because if your kid gets snatched and kidnapped, you want to be able to figure out where the heck that person is so you can go get your kid. That's a reasonable use of that, and I understand that intellectually, but there's something terrifying about collecting mass data. To what purpose? Like, what?
N. Rodgers: You know what I mean? It's just creepy.
J. Aughenbaugh: For me, the practice may be constitutional, but this is something that I always come back to, and it's a point that my mentor, John Rolie, used to make. Just because something is constitutional doesn't mean that bureaucracy should not take steps to alleviate fears and distrust that the public may have in a particular government practice.
N. Rodgers: You creepy weirdos, why are you looking at my poop? What's wrong with you?
J. Aughenbaugh: What's wrong with you? What weird kink do you have that you want to be looking at my poop?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. You know what? If that's your fetish, that's fine as an adult. As long as you consent.
J. Aughenbaugh: But if you're using the power of the government, and people have no choice.
N. Rodgers: You're not getting my consent. You're just taking it.
N. Rodgers: Which is where I think, first of all, the article actually mentions this; they consulted with a number of experts, and I looked this up, and I think the experts' advice is spot on. First of all, don't just pick and choose certain, if you will, communities or neighborhoods. Sample wastewater in all communities. This will demonstrate that the government is not just testing for discriminatory legal punishment purposes. They're actually concerned about the.
N. Rodgers: Public health in broad.
J. Aughenbaugh: The entirety of the public's health.
N. Rodgers: You could track that over time, if what changes? That's a thing where we need to change resources.
J. Aughenbaugh: The second thing is publicly disclosed testing results. Again, you're testing for a particular school. You can't identify whose poop it is. But if you publicly disclose, you might actually get more of the public to go ahead and say this is.
N. Rodgers: That makes sense. That's reasonable.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is what the government is doing. This is what the government is finding.
N. Rodgers: One instead of you creepy weirdos, which is the immediate response.
J. Aughenbaugh: Many of us. Nia, you and I have talked about this on the podcast, particularly during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, where many government officials, run into problems is when they stopped trusting the public, they did not disclose what they knew and what they didn't know, and then all of a sudden, we stopped trusting the government. One of our favorite.
N. Rodgers: They didn't tell us what they didn't know. They acted like they knew, and then the next week, you'd get a different piece of information. You don't know what you're doing. You're building this plane as we're flying it. Why don't you just admit that? But instead, it eroded faith in the CDC, eroded faith in the system.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, you and I are big fans of The West Wing. I still recall the West Wing episode where they're debating whether or not the president should go to Oregon and reassure green bean farmers that there's nothing wrong with green beans, even though the president doesn't like the taste of them and he doesn't like to eat them. Finally, CJ goes, "Why?" He's not saying that green bean farmers are bad. He just doesn't like to eat them. When you start losing faith in the public, the public begins to lose faith in their government. You can easily go ahead and say, we've been testing wastewater for the last 18 months; this is what we found.
N. Rodgers: This is what we think it means. We welcome other experts to look at the data as well. Well, see what we've missed. See if there's anything out there that we should be doing differently.
J. Aughenbaugh: At that point, and here's a third recommendation. The government should be clear with the purpose of the testing. Don't go ahead and try to tell us we're doing this for public health purposes, but really, you're using it for law enforcement.
N. Rodgers: Come show me on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Tell us what you want to do and why you want to do it so we can debate it. This is where Nia, you and I, off-recording, have discussed where a lot of states and communities are running into problems because of data centers. One of the reasons why they're having problems with all of these data centers that have been built is that they were never clear with the public when they were trying to recruit data centers and offering them tax breaks and prime property, etc.
N. Rodgers: They've not been honest about the downside. Then the community discovers the downside. Then it wants to set the government on fire. It feels like it's been lied to, because it has been lied to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even if you weren't lying, you weren't being completely truthful. It's a sin of omission. You didn't lie to us. You just didn't go ahead and tell us you were one, doing it; two, why you were doing it; or three, what the foreseeable costs were. Many of us in public are like, "What did you take into consideration when you made the decision?" I may disagree with the decision, but it seemed like it was an informed decision.
N. Rodgers: At least I know you reasoned through the decision. If I just think that you got paid to make a decision. Now, I could pick you up and throw you further than I trust you.
J. Aughenbaugh: The other thing that should be noted, and it's funny I just mentioned the data center costs as an example. Testing wastewater is expensive. It's not a solution to all drug public health problems.
N. Rodgers: It's expensive, and it also has to be done carefully. Because I just listened to somebody's podcast. I wish I could give them credit, who said that they for all we know, COVID walked out of the lab in Wuhan on somebody's jacket. Like that, it was totally unintentional. But because you're there messing with something. The rest of the world pays for it.
J. Aughenbaugh: We assume nefarious reasons.
N. Rodgers: We should never assume nefarious when stupid will do. You should never, that should be your mantra in life. Never assume people are evil when "dumb" will work. Because most of the time it's dumb. Not even.
J. Aughenbaugh: People are frequently dumb. We're not casting; we took all people.
N. Rodgers: I've been up now for three or four hours, and I've been dumb several times in this time, so don't assume that this can't also be expensive not only financially but in other ways that we can't predict.
J. Aughenbaugh: Here's the thing. Right now the testing can only identify because wastewater is too general.
N. Rodgers: They're not testing at your house level. Yes. As far as we know, as we know, I don't know whether, but I doubt they're doing that. My guess is that they're doing it at the community level. Because there are great big pipes that come out of your neighborhood. Where all of the waste in your neighborhood comes into one big pipe that then goes into other big pipes.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's where they're usually doing the testing.
N. Rodgers: I'd be a whole different thing if they were testing at your house level. That might be unconstitutional. No, probably not because you're saying once it leaves your home.
J. Aughenbaugh: Home. Yes. The bottom line is this may be constitutional, but I think communities and schools need to have open, frank conversations with their publics as to what they want to do and why they want to do it. Because let's face it. Most of us don't give all that much thought when we go ahead and dispose of our waste; we just want to get rid of our waste.
N. Rodgers: Just to side note, human as a human, I'm incredibly grateful for the toilet system.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure, no doubt about it.
N. Rodgers: Because in previous iterations of humanity, death has not been available to humanity, and I like it, but.
J. Aughenbaugh: Every Tuesday morning when the garbage truck comes by and picks up my garbage. I am thankful. I know that sounds really silly and stupid.
N. Rodgers: I'm grateful for garbage guys. I'm especially grateful for garbage guys on a day when I miss them. When they don't come, and then I'm like, "I'm way more grateful for you when you come," than I need to keep that in mind. It's a thing that the French do really well when their people go on strike. The first thing they do is it's the waste removal people because they're like, "You live in Paris without us taking away the waste and see what happens." Grateful for the system. Grateful for the system that wastewater deals with. Because I would not want to have to deal with human waste, mine or anyone else's. But, man, in a world where we don't trust the government? To be in our best interests pretty much ever at this point? I'm suspicious when the government says, "Here's a free thing," and they try to give it to me. I'm like, "What's it going to cost me?" What is this thing that you're doing to me, they've gotten me Pavlovian afraid of everything. I'm like, "Really?" What are you really going to do with waste? There's a part of me that's like, What are you actually testing for? Are you just testing for drugs? Are you testing for other things? Then I said to Aggie, because this is me and I'm dystopian. I'm like, can they sell that information to insurance companies so that your insurance rates go up, your health insurance rates go up because they can see that communities use, like I said, my heart medications or others? I'm fortunate that I work for the state, and the state when they hired me, I was not on heart medication. But there are places that won't hire you if you are on those medications because they don't want to cover it. That becomes a fear to me is like, can the insurance companies get a hold of it? Or can other companies, companies that sell you things, like there's stuff in your waist that tells people whether you have maybe you need medication, over-the-counter medications that they can target towards you for diarrhea or for laxatives or whatever. Do you really want a third party being able to acquire that data and say, "Wow, we're going to start sending this neighborhood our advertisements for our service?" I don't know. It's all creepy. It's very creepy to me, Aughe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, when you went ahead and mentioned insurance companies and banks, it just took me back down into the despicable history in the United States of, redlining. Where communities were off-limits to people of certain races who had particular religious faith, or you do want to buy a house, but you are a person of color or you're a recent Catholic immigrant. We're going to charge you more money.
N. Rodgers: Or make you stay in this part of the city.
J. Aughenbaugh: We can segregate you all in one area.
N. Rodgers: That's the horror of it is the segregation aspect of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Those of you who exhibit in your waste.
N. Rodgers: Steroid.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, certain drug usage. Therefore, either we won't allow you into other communities or we'll charge you more money. I immediately went there and in part.
N. Rodgers: Or more dystopian than that, in your waist, we find birth control. We don't want you to have access to birth control because we want more babies. We are now going to target terrifying. Terrifying.
N. Rodgers: Listeners, let us be very clear. We're government bureaucrats; we work the government.
N. Rodgers: We generally like government , generally.
J. Aughenbaugh: We on the regular extol the good stuff that the government does. But at times, the government runs into problems when they aren't clear with their public. As to what they're doing and why they want to do it. And yes?
N. Rodgers: A little bit of honesty goes a long way.
J. Aughenbaugh: It makes the decision-making process longer and messier, and the public doesn't always make sense. But if you want the public to go ahead and trust what you do, just be honest; just go ahead and say, "Hey, there are pros and cons. We're emphasizing the pros of doing this."
N. Rodgers: We recognize the cons. Recognize them, but we think that the benefit outweighs the risk. Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is cost-benefit analysis 101. If nothing else, let's go ahead and try this out. We think we got a problem here with this school with drug overdoses. We verified it by testing the wastewater. Can we focus on perhaps minimum get more counselors?
N. Rodgers: Can we get more intervention? Can we? Because we want to save lives, and we want to.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you all have a problem with us using it for law enforcement purposes, we agree to minimize using it for police patrols, etc. Until we get a handle on the public health aspect?
N. Rodgers: But when you're sneaking around, taking my poop? I just think you're a weirdo, and I think you're creepy. Don't do that. That's rude. That's just rude.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then immediately we go to.
N. Rodgers: Suspicious.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who are you going to use this against? I'm in one of the groups you want to use this against.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. If you're utterly straightforward, then you take suspicion out of the equation, and when you don't double it.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, and you don't even have to be a skeptic like me and I are.
N. Rodgers: You don't have to be Gen X, who doesn't believe in anything. You could be one of the other generations that believes in stuff, and you still are going to get suspicion. It's an interesting question, and it'll be interesting to see the first lawsuit, I'm assuming the ACLU will bring something that says, "Hey, you can't just do this without if nothing else, without announcing you're doing it. You have to tell people that you're doing it. But yeah, Thanks, Aughe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, thank you, Nia.
N. Rodgers: It's another one of those weird topics. We're doing a weird fall, aren't we? We're just having a lot of interesting topics come up. Some of that is the government, and some of that is just the times we're living in. We are living in interesting times.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you throw in the fact that Nia and I are innately curious about all kinds of things, and we're off to the races.
N. Rodgers: It just turns into a big mess. Thank you so much.
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