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Friday Finishers, 11-14-08
THUMBS UP: The spin of bad economic news seems to seep into every nook and cranny of the country these days.
This week, the tales of woe stretched from a decline in Harvard University’s endowment fund and financial struggles of Las Vegas casinos to the apparent imminent death of a proposed city cart system for recycling materials — a result of the plummeting prices for recycled corrugated cardboard and other materials. On the good news side of the ledger, though, homeowners should get a break on this winter’s heating bills thanks to the decline in demand for oil. Fuel oil costs will still be up from last year, but the projections are now down about $700 for the winter for an average household from what had been forecast just a month ago. Natural gas customers will see just a slight increase over last year. At least we’ll be warm waiting for the economy to heat up. A second silver lining of the downturn comes at the gas pump, where gasoline prices dipped to less than $2 per gallon in some spots in southeastern Wisconsin this week. Long-term projections say the pump prices should average about $2.37 per gallon next year, nowhere near the $4 and up that we saw last summer.
THUMBS DOWN: A chain-link fence around the Dr. Laurel Clark Memorial Fountain? That sounds like one ugly solution to what had been a fine tribute to the late astronaut and Horlick High School graduate, who died in the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003, a spot of sunshine in Racine’s summertime and a great little attraction for kids. They took to the burbling waterspouts like ... well, kids to water ... and claimed it for their own. But then health officials said the water had to be treated — and the treatments corroded some of the equipment and ran up the costs. We would urge the mayor, the council and city departments to come up with a better solution than a fence by the time summer rolls around.
THUMBS DOWN: “The chair recognizes the Secret Senator from Sturgeon Bay ...” That’s a stretch, of course, but so is the proposal to have state lawmakers submit secret lists of emergency successors in the event that some disaster or pandemic someday fells too many lawmakers. State Rep. Joan Ballweg, R-Markesan, said the list should be secret because someone might want to kill the lawmakers-in-waiting to create a power vacuum, while state Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, said the secrecy was needed in order to avoid “an unhealthy political debate” about their identities. As the head of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council said: “We don’t, in fact, live in a world where members of the Legislature are picked off by terrorists.” The Legislature can make an emergency list if it likes, but what they really need to do is dial down their sense of self-importance and not waste too much time on this. They should save their energy to deal with the state’s looming $5 billion budget shortfall.
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