OLEAN -- Yes, yes, I know, Christmas has come and gone.
But it's still the holiday season, and we at this august weekly are gathering between Christmas and New Year's for our annual get-together -- at which we intend to celebrate the festive period with a couple of special Niagara-area Current Events Christmas Carols.
Some diligent readers, obviously hard-up for a laugh, remembered last year's songs and requested a few updated Yuletide tunes off the news to be sung by the assembled voices of the Niagara Falls Reporter Oratorio Choir and the New John's Flaming Hearth Combined and Quasi-Sober Christmas Ensemble. So, here they are:
WE TWO KINGS
(To the tune of "We Three Kings," with apologies to John H. Hopkins Jr.)
We two kings of local jobs are
Bearing news we traverse afar.
Falls and frontier, much to ree-vere,
Following Somerset's star.
Ohhhhhh, jobs of wonder, jobs of light,
Jobs with lasting beauty bright,
Northward leading, still proceeding,
Niagara jobs are now in sight.
Clean, coal-powered generation,
Picking sites is tons of fun.
Could be Erie, or Niagara
But not two, only one.
Ohhhhh, BNP and BNE
We have joined to set you free
Partnership, economy,
Fifteen hundred jobs, you see.
I'm Kucharski, he's Rudnick;
Both of us are pretty slick.
Fifty-thousand, hill and mountain,
Here's the short end of the stick.
Ohhhhh, jobs which promise and surpass,
Erie gets them, Somerset's last,
Niagarans weep, lobbyists sleep.
Shove your jobs right up your ass.
REST YE MERRY, TAXPAYERS
(Sung to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen")
God rest ye merry, taxpayers,
Let nothing you forego
Remember the new budget
Was born two weeks ago
To save us from Anello's plan
And make our demise slow.
Ohhh, tidings of poorhouse and pain,
Poorhouse and pain.
Ohhh, tidings of poorhouse and pain.
His Honor wanted eighty-six mil;
It was cut to eighty-five.
To cut one lousy million
Is just a bunch of jive.
The Council took great pity on
Homeowners yet alive.
Ohhh, tidings of ruin now delayed,
Now delayed.
Ohhh, tidings of ruin new delayed.
God save ye bizness taxpayers,
Let much ye now despair,
For if you are in business,
Your chances are unfair.
Your taxes just rose three-point-three,
Surviving is a bear.
Ohhhh, tidings of ruin now confront,
Now confront.
Ohhhh, tidings of ruin now confront.
Because this is the year's last issue of this newspaper, a brief update on a couple of topics covered in this space during 2006 is in order.
Earlier in the year, the Niagara Falls Reporter and this columnist were among the first to warn there were serious plans afoot to build a large casino in Gettysburg, Pa., on the edge of the hallowed Civil War battlefield where important cavalry action was started on the last day of that pivotal clash.
The harebrained idea seemed so historically blasphemous many readers accused me of creating a spoof. It was real, all right.
Instead of picturing the ghosts of George Custer and Jeb Stuart unleashing their sabres at full gallop, Gettysburg National Military Park and National Cemetery visitors would be watching busloads of retirees by the thousand debark to fritter away Social Security checks at more than 3,000 slot machines.
Our point was: Nothing wrong with gambling per se -- just don't slap up a casino on the same sacred ground where the most important battle on this continent took place, where 7,100 Southerners and Northerners alike perished outright amid incredible bravery, where another 33,000 were wounded (many mortally), where 10,800 are still unaccounted for, where the nation was preserved, where our modern social nature was forged, and where our current culture was assured.
A massive Stop the Casino campaign was mounted nationally by the Civil War Preservation Trust and other battlefield-conservation groups, and about a week before Christmas the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board thumbed down the stupid idea.
The Keystone State gambling czars granted five licenses for new casinos to open in 2008 in Pennsylvania -- two in Philadelphia along the Delaware River, one in Pittsburgh, one in Bethlehem and one amidst the pretty Pocono Mountain resorts. Of course, such matters are never really resolved.
Pennsylvanians are starved for legal wagering (they arrive daily like lemmings to the Seneca Allegany Casino in Salamanca, N.Y., just across their northern state border), and the Gaming Control Board was authorized to grant as many as nine more licenses. The pro-casino forces for Gettysburg will be back. Under state law, our neighbor state to the south grants a percentage of casino revenue to offset local property taxes where the new gambling parlors are located. Pro-casino groups in Gettysburg are already whining about lost jobs and tax relief.
Too bad. You screw up the steady tourism from Civil War buffs and military vets in that small town and the casino cash will never be able to replace it. Besides, some things -- like honor, dedication and respect -- are worth far more than all the wagering money in the world.
Another frequent 2006 complaint listed in this space was the Interior Department's obvious inability or willing failure to collect royalties due American taxpayers for oil and gas produced on federal property.
You will recall this involves no mere chump change. The Big Oil companies pump $60 billion-plus worth of oil and gas annually from lands and coastal waters owned by the public. The feds -- through Interior's Minerals Management Service -- are supposed to collect royalties on this oil and gas production on our behalf. Federal auditors claim they don't, at least in adequate amounts under regulation formulas.
Or -- equally onerous -- the jerks running Interior sign sweetheart leases (1,100 at last count) with Big Oil firms, obviously crooked deals that allowed these huge, rich firms over the last half decade to avoid $10 billion in royalties that should have softened our tax burden. Much of the amount owed us is paid in actual "in kind" amounts -- that is real oil and natural gas from the big producers. Much of that oil goes to the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve caves in Louisiana; the natural gas is sold at market prices, and the cash put into the Treasury. Last year, the Interior bumblers collected only $3 billion worth of oil and gas royalties in that fashion, only a third of what was owed us.
Two weeks ago, talented New York Times reporter Edmund L. Andrews -- who continually has been at the forefront of all newsmen trying to keep track of this complicated subject -- discovered the Justice Department has begun two separate criminal investigations of the Minerals Management Service. Note the word criminal. The FBI probes were triggered when the Interior Department's internal bulldog inspector general, Earl Devaney, referred what he had found in the incredibly broken agency in two years of digging.
The regulators and Big Oil execs alike know they are in fresh trouble. Under pressure from the stepped-up scrutiny and public attention, five of the Big Oil companies -- representing 17 percent of the flawed deals -- renegotiated their sweetheart drilling leases for public lands and waters with Interior.
Those firms were British Petroleum, Marathon Oil, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and Walter Oil and Gas. But there are another 50 or so such firms dragging their feet on correcting the lease language -- and still enjoying billion-dollar, federally arranged incentives to keep cheating us.
Look for the Democrat-controlled Congress being sworn in next month to focus hearings on this subject almost immediately. You'll be hearing lots more outrageous stuff about Big Oil cheating on royalties due us, conflicts of interest among federal regulators, and Big Oil collusion and price-rigging at the pump before it's all over.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 27 2006 |