We now have news coverage from Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer’s State of the City address. The PowerPoint presentation made available online was rather useless. From Jay Frankel’s reliable coverage in the Mountain Xpress, one gets the impression the “real free lunch” gathering was meant to warm the public toward a tax increase. A person in the same situation would be called spendthrift, profligate, and unwise. Government, however, gets a pass and is said to experience a “structural imbalance.” A graph is displayed to show expenditures are exceeding revenues. The good people, once again, are encouraged to hide their intelligence and ooh and ah at the technical expertise of the scientists and doctors who can make lines and numbers on a computer. (See Slide #4.)