Letters to the editor for Sunday, September 30, 2012

Where was maintenance?

I am a retired engineer having worked 30 years for three major pharmaceutical companies. My responsibilities included oversight design, construction and later maintenance of several automated vaccine manufacturing facilities. Each facility was commissioned upon completion of construction. Commissioning required a first performance of a carefully prepared, approved semiannual maintenance program. Afterward, on an annual basis, a thoughtful list of future capital maintenance projects was compiled, approved, budgeted and prioritized. Responsibility did not end at this juncture. Management would assign capable engineers to professionally complete each project within budget. Failure would impact future salaries with the more egregious leading to discipline or dismissal.

Why am I describing this process? Orange County has a unique office building justified for demolition because it has a leaking roof and porous exterior. Where was maintenance and management oversight? Absent from public discussion is a chronological "why" for 40-plus years of negligence. For the public to have confidence in decisions regarding a future new building, a mea-culpa explanation should be forthcoming for the present woeful maintenance program. Otherwise, how are taxpayers to believe the next taxpayer-funded boondoggle building will not likely suffer a similar shameful fate?

Robert Schaper


Shame on the news media

The AP's recent news release detailing, with extreme brevity, the results of a survey in which U.S. chief executives divulged their reluctance to hire, smacks of liberal partisanship by the AP. What is shocking is the absence of one big, obvious question "¦ Why? Why are these elites reluctant to hire. Business owners within my circle of acquaintances express an imposing level of doubt extending from the unpredictable and onerous nature of "Obamacare." Were the true reason anything else, the AP, I'd wager, would have divulged as much. Obviously, this article was designed to cater to the ignorant masses by implying a level of indifference exercised by CEO's towards proletariats. Journalism, it seems, has taken an immense turn for the worst, relegating its skewed information to tabloid status. Absent any ethics or a basic conscience, the AP and similar organizations are serving to further dupe the mass of unwitting voters already too busy fomenting over what these diabolical hacks have forged. The TH-R was complicit when electing to situate the piece with its mere 100 words, clandestinely, between the stock exchange and obituaries. Fortuitous, perhaps? In the end, half a truth is no-less a lie. Shame on the Associated Press and the TH-R.

Steven P Clum


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