MONDAY MUSINGS

This and that on a Monday ...

[1] The Pistons are in the NBA championship series.  That's certainly front-page news -- in the sports section!  However, in its relentless quest to make the news marshmallow soft, the Grand Rapids Press has taken to reporting each blow-by-blow of the Pistons tussle with the Spurs on Page One.  Let's consider this for a moment.  What must the Press think of us when it headlines huggable news instead of hard news on its front page?

[2] Guv Jen, statehouse Republicans, the Grand Rapids Press, Dr. Luis Tomatis, Peter Secchia, and all the players downtown have drilled into us that bio-tech is our future.  Who can argue?  Bio-tech is hardcore science and technology, and there the path to progress always lies.  (Yes, that's a none-too-subtle pun.)  Leading the bandwagon is River City's premier hi-tech organization, the Van Andel Institute.  A curious thing about that.  This paean to science was the late Amway-founder Jay Van Andel's favorite project.  But how soon we forget Jay's second favorite fancy -- a creationism center in Arizona.  To think the foundation for River City's bright and shiny bio-tech hi-tech future was laid by a fella who wanted to prove the Earth was created in 4004 B.C. and men walked with dinosaurs.

[3] Conflict of interest alert:  The other Amway founder, Rich DeVos, has partnered up with old friends to build a series of medical towers across the street from Spectrum Health's main campus.  Spectrum will be an anchor tenant in these new buildings, yet Spectrum CEO Richard Breon told us a couple of weeks ago that the hospital needs to jack up rates by 8% next month to help purchase new buildings.  So if we all have to pay more because Spectrum needs to buy buildings, why does Spectrum also need to plan on renting buildings from DeVos?  No doubt Spectrum's board has approved all of this with good reason.  After all, the board is fortunate enough to have DeVos as a member who can give them all the good reasons they need to rubberstamp these plans.

[4] The City Attorney's office is batting for the Boardwalk polluters again.  Last week Assistant City Attorneys Daniel Ophoff and Catherine Mish filed an appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court asking it to dismiss the Toxic Towers hazardous waste complaint against the City and the Boardwalk developers.  It's a "Hail Mary" pass that none of the other defendants in the case could justify spending any money to make.  However, the City Attorney's office has you the taxpayers to cover the cost, so Ophoff and Mish are making this snowball's-chance-in-hell appeal, which, if on the slight chance it succeeds, benefits all of the defendants.  Shamelessly the City continues to use your tax dollars to help protect these polluters.