Annapolis Capital Punishment

News Roundup
DDT IS GOOD FOR YOU AND THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED
CP has had occasion to meet with and read about State Senator Andrew Harris, an articulate, intelligent, yet woefully conservative lawmaker who also happens to be an anesthesiologist. And he’s in the news again for arguing against a bill introduced by Sen. Brian E. Frosh, D-Montgomery, to set aside each May 27 as Rachel Carson Day in Maryland. The pioneering author of the influential book “Silent Spring” spent most of her life in Maryland and was born on May 27, a spring day, CP should add. Many credit the US Fish and Wildlife Service employee’s book for ushering in the modern environmental movement with its warnings about pesticides and DDT in particular.

According to The Capital, Harris said the banning of DDT had negative consequences and “is a valuable public health tool against malaria, and without it, millions of people have died worldwide.” Uhh yeah…but with it things were pretty bad too Senator. Not only that, while we banned it here for good reason, it is used elsewhere for bad reasons, and we may still end up eating food from those places where it is used. If CP recalls correctly, banning DDT has also helped bring about a resurgence in the once severely threatened populations of Osprey and Bald Eagles.

Harris said, "It's convenient for us in the United States, that does not have a problem with malaria ... to preach to the rest of the world.” CP would like to ask this Senator, who has a bust of Jesus Christ in his Senate office, whether or not he thinks it’s right for the US and the Catholic Church to preach to the rest of the world when it comes to uhh, let’ see, abortion? Family planning? Global warming???

His Earth is Flat view is about as weird as Sen. Janet Greenip (R-Anne Arundel) and Sen. Nancy Jacobs (R-Cecil) who declined to vote when Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George's) introduced John C. Mather, co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics to receive a resolution from the Senate. Mather won the prize for his work at Greenbelt’s Goddard Space Center in in providing the first tangible evidence to prove that the big bang started the universe. CP does not have a problems being a descendant of apes, but having those who are lesser primates sit in the Maryland Senate is something else.

New Head at Chesapeake Bay Program
New Chesapeake Bay Program Director Jeffrey L. Lape has a big, big job ahead to drive the lumbering, bureaucratic and often maligned Chesapeake Bay Program. CP served as the assistant to the former Director for 2.5 years in the 1990's and used to believe it was a worthy and productive organization with a valuable mission. CP now believes it may not even have a valuable mission. Lape has to play bureaucrat, scientist, manager, interpreter, politician and cheerleader to this massive aggregation of agencies, committees, sub committees, workgroups and Neptune knows what else!

According to The Capital, Lape says he passes a stream in his yard in Montgomery County and hasn't been shy about investigating problems in his stream and reporting potential polluters to authorities.

"I feel like the job comes home with us," he said.

Hmm. Well, that’s great that he has reported potential polluters, but CP is in complete agreement that the job does indeed come home with Lape if he drives to and from Annapolis and Montgomery County each day. That’s the problem! Millions of people in our watershed moving around in cars way too much and consuming and polluting way too much. If you’re not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution. Good luck to you Mr. Lape. And CP hopes that in addition to the hours you'll spend sitting in traffic, that you'll also enjoy sitting in meetings…lots and lots of them…and wading through reports, lots and lots of them. CP often asked why the 20 million dollars per year for the Bay Program would not have been better spent if it just shut down and bought forests, wetlands and farms. Needless to say, that was swallowed by the porcine bureaucrats like a poison truffle.


Ferry? Monorail? And still no Commuter bus from Kent Island and Annapolis to Baltimore?
CP has posted about the proposal bubbling up in Annapolis to create a Bay ferry system. CP readers know that while CP is interested in the idea, CP would much rather see a solid bus system first. And after penning the term “ferry tale” to describe this idea, CP is pleased to see that in today’s front page of the Capital it has picked up, er borrowed its term. Read on…
“First came the ferry tales. Now, solutions to Bay Bridge traffic are looking a lot more like Disney World. Grasping at perhaps one of the last straws possible to relieve congestion on the bridge, Del. Michael D. Smigiel, R-Cecil, is proposing that the Maryland Department of Transportation examine the feasibility of creating a monorail to run from Annapolis to Kent Island.”

Please God, make it stop!!!! Every so often somebody comes around with some brilliant and visionary scheme to study or develop some type of waay cool futuristic transit system without actually knowing a darn thing about transportation, except that you turn the key and drive, and suddenly there’s a whole lot of interest in yet a new and revolutionary idea. Well, first off, CP will say again, can we please get some cheap and easily developed buses first? Let’s get real with a real bus transit system and then start talking about the next big thing. But we can’t even get a commuter bus from Kent Island to Annapolis and Baltimore!!! Puuuhlllleeeeze!!
By the way, monorails are not exactly new or revolutionary. CP has been on the system in Seattle which some have been trying to expand for years with limited success, and of course at Disney World and Disney Land, and of the new system in Indianapolis (CP was just there too!) and Las Vegas, which is privately funded by…guess who?
Okay, perhaps we should study a monorail, but maybe, just maybe we should stop sprawling all over the place which makes all these transit expansions so necessary. But a monorail???