The episode where Frank Beckmann assures us the Kalamazoo oil spill is no big deal, and that we shouldn't be mean to Enbridge Energy because they have people helping clean it up.

Oil trapped against a boom on the Kalamazoo River Friday

So by now you probably know that Enbridge Energy Partners had a little malfunction with one of their oil pipelines, one that federal regulators repeatedly warned the company about. Something like 1 million gallons of crude was dumped into the Kalamazoo River system where it has coated banks, choked off wetlands and disrupted the lives and economies in numerous local communities.

I was down there Friday checking it out, and it’s a God awful disaster. Yes, disaster. Even though WJR’s Frank Beckmann has declared it much ado about nothing primarily because no one has died. Frank says we shouldn’t condemn Enbridge because they have workers cleaning it up, and that government red tape is to blame for the problem. Frank, on his radio show, also beat up on the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment because they didn’t have enough respirators to go around to their people doing sampling. Of course, it was the right wing cavalry in the legislature that has stripped the agency of nearly 75 percent of its general fund money in the past decade, vilified it as a job-killing band of regulatory thugs and even tried to eliminate the division within the agency that responded to the oil spill! And we wonder why they don’t have an adequate equipment budget?

(There was a time when Frank had a mind of his own and wasn’t afraid to use it, but he’s increasingly is content to only parrot Rush Limbaugh these days.)

Since the whole media world is covering the spill, I’m content point out that there is a plethora of excellent coverage happening, most notably at my alma mater the Detroit Free Press where Todd Spangler and Jennifer Dixon did an excellent job Sunday of explaining the regulatory environment that lets the Enbridges of the world take calculated risks with the world’s greatest freshwater ecosystem. (An exception is the Freep’s web headline last night, cheerily pointing out that half the 1 million gallons has been collected, but failing to note that each remaining gallon gets tougher as it settles into wetlands, smothering bacteria and plankton and choking off the entire bottom of the food chain).

The Environmental Protection Agency is taking the lead on the response to the spill.
(EPA, another band of job-killing thugs except when, well….when it become apparent maybe polluters shouldn't actually be allowed to regulate themselves)

Meanwhile, the National Wildlife Federation has released a report noting that Michigan ranks 9th highest in oil spills in recent years.

The next time Frank Beckmann decides to declare a disaster zone a non-disaster, I suggest he do a show from the region where can talk to the people I did -- the lifelong hunter and fisherman near tears at the despoiling of his cherished river valley; the campground owner forced to simply shut down her business at the peak of summer season; or the golf course superintendent told not to use his sprinkler system that draws directly from the river lest the fairways get coated with oil.

These are the people who will still be dealing with this spill in six weeks, six months and six year -- long after the TV cameras and most of the politicians have moved on. 
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The National Park system: A grand idea that almost didn't happen, and why it matters today

It would be suicidal for a politician today to advocate selling off Yosemite National Park,  the Grand Canyon or our own Isle Royale Island (pictured). But little more than 100 years ago the whole concept of national parks – managed and preserved for all the people of the nation – was a radical and most controversial idea. Lots of people were scornful.

Free-market proponents led by the timber, railroad and mining barons of the time pounded away at the heresy of making tracts of land off-limits to profit-making ventures.  The scoffed at President Theodore Roosevelt’s idea that land should be set aside for the people’s enjoyment.  Or that the beauty or restorative nature of wild landscapes had a public value.

Roosevelt’s creation of the national parks system – and the establishment of the US Forest Service to protect it – was such a close victory that might just as easily have been lost to political opponents doing the bidding of private industry.

It’s impossible to imagine to what degree our great nation would be diminished had President Roosevelt lost that fight. Our national parks would surely have been stripped of their iconic sequoias and all the rest the old growth timber; poisoned by mining wastes washing through creeks and rivers; and carved up and sold off piecemeal for resorts, amusement parks, private preserves, Chuck E. Cheeses, Hooters, miniature golf and God knows what else.

It was a visionary thing, this National Parks idea, documented in Ken Burns’ recent PBS series: http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/
 
The national parks saga is worth keeping in mind today, as we struggle to maintain the public’s access to natural resources. Make no mistake, those rights are constantly under assault:

-- In Benton Harbor, prime Lake Michigan sand dunes were taken from a public park for a private golf course: http://bit.ly/9ju9Yf

--In 2007, the Michigan Supreme Court severely limited citizens’ rights to take legal action to protect the state’s publicly held natural resources: http://bit.ly/bQUnun

--There regular proposals to sell Michigan state parks: http://www.mackinac.org/7399

--And as we speak, a well orchestrated campaign is under way to crush proposed legislation from Rep. Dan Scripps that would affirm something that seems self-evident: Michigan’s groundwater belongs to the people of Michigan and we’re all entitled to use it. Property rights groups have convinced lots of folks the bill involves government owning the water, fees to use your own well water, or charges for farmers who irrigate fields. All bullshit.  The bill is all of three paragraphs, and doesn’t say anything like that: http://bit.ly/d1cKAM

Our publicly-held resources aren’t socialist plots to hamstring corporate America. They are tremendous, inspiring valuable assets that are equally available to waitresses and millionaires. They are owned every bit as much by you and I as they are by Bill Gates or Donald Trump. And I don’t know about you, but I’m fighting to keep my share.
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