Police headquarters looks so much better

I'm all for open lands and that prairie look, but the design of the prairie look around the Police Headquarters at 151st and Ravinia was so disturbing to look at. It just didn't work. Finally, they cut down the waist-high weeds and trimmed the grasses and are making it look like a real presentable property. The architecture of the police building is beautiful and you couldn't see it with the distraction mess that grew all around it.

When the village decided to let the weeds grow "natural,"  lot of residents just thought no one was maintaining the new police property. It really looked like a mess. (Poor PR.) Eventually, the Tribune did a story that helped explain what was happening -- even though there were signs posted explaining everything in small letters that no one could read. (Read my past post from 2008.)

The Tribune wrote that most of the neighbors probably didn't know the purpose was to help the environment by avoiding all those fertilizers. Yet, while this and a few other properties were growing natural without fertilizers, every home around it was drenched in the toxic lawn chemicals. The point was and is still lost on Orland Park residents.

The truth is that the economy is still shaking and those hybrid cars and crossovers have turned out to be not so advantageous. Part of the problem is the greed of the car manufacturers. In making the electric-gas hybrids and the all-electric cars, the auto industry turned towards greed. The cars are too expensive and a recent report on television even shows they are very dangerous to drive. You are putting your family's safety at risk buying one of those overly-priced hybrids. (The New York Times write about the dangers of the hybrid cars back in 2004. (Click here). And there are more and more reports of the dangers of those cars. (Click here). Too bad the auto industry never cared about safety. They only care about their billions in profits.

Now, I'm not saying the uncut grass at the police station was causing us any danger, although a lot of driver's necks were twisting to stare as motorists drove by. But it should didn't do much to make the environment any better.

The real problem with the environment are the politicians who front for their contractors and contributors who pollute the environment or who believe the global warming is a leftist plot. I'll bet millions of people around the country are scratching their heads at the weird weather that has taken so many lives over the past recent years. They can't support the global warming fight without undermining the big industries that line their pockets with contributions. And most homeowners are selfish. The love to recycle because it sounds convenient and fun, but don't ask them to support legislation cracking down on companies that pollute the environment -- the rightwing conservatives won't allow it.

Out little effort in Orland Park is a model for the rest of the nation. But I will say that you still have to win over the hearts and minds of the public before you can convince them to do anything. Letting the weeds grow around the police station didn't do much to help anything.

Fortunately someone else in power agreed.

-- Ray Hanania
www.TheMediaOasis.com