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Written by Ozaukee Press Editorial Board
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Wednesday, 02 June 2010 16:53 |
It was naive to think a company that could find oil miles under the sea would know how to stop a gushing well—and that the U.S. would have made sure they knew how
Call us naive.
Call anyone naive who thought that a petroleum company that could figure out how to drill an oil well a mile under the surface of the sea to a depth many miles beneath the floor of the sea would know how to turn the gusher off if something went wrong.
Call anyone naive who thought that if the technology existed to drill such a well and pump oil by means of a massive floating contrivance looking like an alien space vehicle and kept in place on the sea with thrusters, surely the technology existed to prevent the escape of oil into the sea if something went wrong.
Call anyone naive who thought a risky process that liberated volatile gas and combustible petroleum from millions-of-years-old sources deep in the earth would be so tightly regulated by government that a cataclysmic escape of oil into the environment would be impossible.
We were naive because we applied common sense assumptions to the complicated processes of slaking America’s thirst for oil. Now we know that BP, the company whose well is gushing 21,000 gallons of crude oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico, is clueless about how to stop what has now been declared the worst environmental disaster in American history. If we didn’t know that before, we got the idea when they tried to use old tires and golf balls to plug the gushing pipe.
Now we know that regulators either snoozed or averted their eyes when BP cut corners and used risky procedures in setting up the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded with a human death toll of 11 workers and a catastrophic toll in the destruction of marine life.
In some ways, the government’s failure is more galling than BP’s. BP’s irresponsibility was expected, or should have been—it’s a corporation whose priority is profits. The government’s responsibility is to ensure that priority doesn’t injure the public.
How often do we have to be taught this lesson? Have we already forgotten what we learned from the financial collapse? That disaster, a brush less than two years ago with a repeat of the Depression, is a fitting analogy to the BP environmental disaster.
Wall Street banks, like BP in its oil exploration and production, boldly went where few have gone before and took enormous risks that generated tremendous profits—then it all went wrong and they had no idea how to fix it. This out-of-control reaction that almost brought down an entire economy was facilitated by an absence of government regulation.
Judging from the fact that the loudest political voices in the country are demanding that the federal government do less, rather than more, even as the financial and BP disasters are revealed as consequences of a government doing too little, it seems that lesson didn’t stick.
The Bush administration’s cozy relationship with the oil industry and its see-no-evil approach to regulation were documented. The Obama administration condemned it, but didn’t fix it.
Some of this is explained, though hardly excused, by the fact that America depends on the BPs of the world. The U.S. needs 882,000,000 gallons of oil a day to support its lifestyle. The amount of oil now gushing into the Gulf, while enough to destroy whole ecosystems, is a comparative drop in the bucket representing the daily consumption of oil.
Will the shrill alarm of the BP disaster awaken Americans of all political persuasions to the need for intelligent government regulation of the industries on which the nation depends for its survival?
We’d say yes, but some might call us naive. |
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News
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Written by Ozaukee Press Editorial Board
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Wednesday, 26 May 2010 14:58 |
Don’t blame Port police for the dog crackdown; blame the irresponsible owners whose misbehaving pets invited intervention by the heavy hand of the law
Parents whose children say they want to be police officers when they grow up should probably read them the news story about dogs and cops in last week’s Ozaukee Press—just to give the kids a cautionary heads-up that police are not always regarded as heroes.
The gist of the story was that Port Washington dog owners are irritated that police are enforcing the city’s pet ordinance, especially the part about having unleashed dogs out and about. You might say the cops are in their dog houses, but it’s doubtful these dog lovers would want anyone who’s involved in the police department’s dog crackdown sharing quarters with their beloved pets.
More irritation is sure to come. Police have been handing out only warnings. Imagine the uproar when they start, as the department has promised, issuing real tickets in June—with $208.50 fines.
The crackdown, with ample warning from police in this newspaper, started in early May. As is so often the case with police crackdowns, a lot of good guys were rounded up along with the bad, folks whose dogs are well trained and obedient to their masters with or without leashes and don’t bother anyone and never leave a mess their owners don’t remove.
It’s an axiom that the virtuous are especially put out when they’re treated as lawbreakers. In Port Washington they’re even more put out when the treatment includes warnings for having an unleashed dog on the public beach, which has long been a playground for unfettered canines.
This is all about good dogs and bad dogs, meaning good owners and bad owners. The bad deeds of the bad ones got the attention of police and now good ones are paying the price too.
The police are catching flak, but they don’t deserve it. They got a slew of complaints, and when there’s a law on the books dealing with the subject of the complaints, they’re expected to enforce it.
Plus, the complaints have merit. There has been a bit of really bad bad-dog behavior, as in the case detailed in last week’s dogs-and-cops story about the cyclist who was seriously hurt when he was accosted by one of three dogs an irresponsible owner let run unleashed on the bike trail. But most bad-dog behavior is not serious enough to cause injury; it’s just annoying.
Quite a bit of it occurs on the beach or nearby. The following examples have been documented by the Ozaukee Press editorial board:
The blacktop walkway to the beach has frequently been left as a minefield of dog excrement. You can’t blame the dogs. The walkway passes close to the sewage treatment plant and a certain odor is almost always present. If humans can detect it, imagine how it affects dogs with their hyper keen sense of smell. The dogs no doubt think, well, this must be the place to do it. And some of their owners obviously think this a place to pretend it’s not their dog and walk away fast.
A big dog jumped on a runner on the beach, nearly knocking him down, leaving him with a generous coating of wet sand and dog slobber. Instead of apologizing, the dog’s owner told the runner, “You’re lucky he hasn’t been rolling in dead fish. That’s what he usually does before he jumps on someone.”
A family was starting a picnic on a blanket spread on the beach. A wet dog ran onto the blanket and stuck its nose into a bowl of animal crackers a toddler was eating. The child cried. The dog’s owner did say he was sorry.
These bad-dog stories merely indicate that there is a problem. They don’t change the fact that most dogs are not trouble makers. So what to do?
One good idea that has been mentioned is to declare a few hours of each day, say, early in the morning, when dogs could run free on the beach.
The problem might also just lose steam, as more people comply with the leash law, complaints diminish and police start to discern good dogs from bad dogs.
Let’s hope that happens before police make good on their promise to patrol the beach by buzzing around in an all-terrain vehicle. That could be more annoying on the quiet lakeshore than misbehaving dogs. |
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News
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Written by Ozaukee Press Editorial Board
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Wednesday, 19 May 2010 17:28 |
Thanks to the damaged economy, Walmart will not build one of the state’s biggest big-box stores in Saukville; that’s progess
At last, something positive, a hint of a silver lining in the gray economic clouds, has come out of the nation’s lingering recession: Walmart is dropping its plan to build what would have been one of the state’s biggest big-box stores in Saukville.
The Walmart Supercenter once planned for a 40-acre site on the north side of Highway 33 near the Feith Family YMCA could have been as large as 225,000 square feet, 50% bigger than the enormous Costco store in Grafton.
As a January 2007 Ozaukee Press editorial noted, “The crowds needed to sustain this behemoth would generate suffocating traffic that would tax village streets and make unprecedented demands on its police department, related to not only traffic control, but crime prevention. Everyone who drives on Saukville roadways would pay the price for the overwhelming size of the Supercenter.”
Now the diminished economy has forced Walmart to scale back some of its expansion plans, with the happy result that this megastore will not be built. Instead, the present Walmart store on the south side of Highway 33 in Saukville will be enlarged.
In spite of considerable public outcry against the outsized store proposed by Walmart in 2007, village officials seemed enthused about the possibility of it being built and adding as much as $83 million to the village tax base.
The new plan is getting a warm reception from the village too. The remake of the old store, which had not lived up to the village’s aesthetic expectations, will be welcome.
There is a sense of relief too in the fact that there will be no issues involving what to do with an empty big-box. The Village Board, to its credit, had put the onus for that on Walmart by adopting an ordinance requiring big-box owners to prepare reuse plans when moving to a new building. Still, the door was open to a new use that might not have been in the best interests of the village.
Walmart’s Saukville expansion, nonetheless, is not an unalloyed blessing. Some of the negative ramifications feared from the huge stand-alone Supercenter attach to the new plan, especially its impact on the Port Washington-Saukville area’s small-town retailers.
With 25,050 additional square feet of store space (for a total of 121,000 square feet), the Saukville outlet of the world’s largest retailer will be more formidable competition than ever to every local independent stores selling products and services also offered by Walmart.
Of particular concern is the announcement that the new store, which Walmart is identifying as one of its Supercenters, will include a 20,000 square-foot supermarket, a direct threat to Port-Saukville’s three grocery stores (one of which is next door to Walmart and the other across the street).
Competition often favors consumers, but if it drives other stores out of business, reducing shoppers’ choices, snuffing out commercial diversity, it will be no favor to the families of our communities.
Walmart’s grocery offerings will doubtless be appealing, but we hope shoppers will remember that if they want choices instead of empty stores they will need to support the markets that have been faithfully serving the area through the ups and downs of business.
The enthusiasm expressed for the Walmart expansion at a recent Plan Commission meeting included a signal that village officials might react favorably to a request to permit the new store to be open 24 hours a day.
Village President Barb Dickmann opposed 24-hour operation when it was brought up in connection with for the proposed stand-alone Supercenter three years ago. She had it right the first time. As the village police docket makes clear on almost a weekly basis, the current store and its parking lot, even with more conventional store hours, demand a disproportionate amount of police attention. The problem will only be worse with a bigger store. There is no benefit to the village in having an enlarged store in operation around the clock.
What is a benefit to the village is that it dodged a bullet in getting a less super Supercenter. Thank the recession for that. |
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