Sandy Rosenberg Coffee Tomorrow

Sandy has asked me to spread the word about a coffee being held for him at the Hettleman residence at 5504 Wexford on Wednesday at 7pm.

I cannot stress how important Sandy is to our neighborhood. And did you know that he only won last time by a few hundred votes? Get out there and support Mt. Washington's best friend in Annapolis.

Thanks!

Washinton Post Endorses Franchot

The Post sums things up nicely in their ENDORSEMENT of Del. Peter Franchot for Comptroller.

Ozone Testing Resumes in Baltimore

You may recall that the Sun reported that the Ehrlich administration had abrubtly stopped testing city ozone levels. They did this without even bothering to inform then City Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson. He found out about it when he read it in the paper.

Mt. Washington resident and current Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein pressured the state to resume testing and the Sun reported TODAY that they finally did so.

I can't really understand what Ehrlich and fiends were thinking when they killed the testing in the first place. Baltimore has a huge problem with asthma and other respiratory diseases. It really illustrates how this administration feels about city residents. Time for a change in November.

Letter to the editor...Slots again.

The Sun ran my LTE today:

Ehrlich's petty ploy to revive slots plan

I find it astounding that Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is now arguing that we must have slot machine gambling to cover the costs of the population growth that will be caused by the base realignment process ("Ehrlich sees slots in '07," Aug. 20).

Wasn't it Mr. Ehrlich who boasted that the process would be good for Maryland, bringing both jobs and tax revenues?

Yet he now appears to be arguing that this influx will be so costly for Maryland that we will need to resort to scamming quarters from our seniors and sucking dollars out of our poorest neighborhoods.

Clearly this is just another desperate attempt by the governor to justify his discredited slots scheme.I

It's time our governor gave up on gambling and moved on to the state's important business.

Aaron Meisner
Baltimore

Sandy Rosenberg Lawn Signs

I have a stack of 41st District Unity Ticket lawn signs. Please let me know if you want one and I will drop it by your house. Email me HERE.

Baltimore County is Ready...Are We?

Baltimore County is preparing for more traffic coming off the Beltway and onto Greenspring Avenue Southbound. The ramp from Eastbound 695 onto Greenspring has been widened to add a second lane for traffic turning South. It's as if they realize that traffic is becoming a problem on Greenspring! No kidding!!

But their problem ends at the City line. And that's where OUR problem starts. The County still refuses to build a ramp onto Southbound 83 at Old Pimlico Road to relieve the traffic pressure on Greenspring within the City. Maybe this is a good time to remind Jim Smith that we aren't happy with the County dumping their traffic problem onto our neighborhood streets.

Why not give Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith a call?

County Executive James T. Smith Jr.
400 Washington AvenueOld Courthouse
Mezzanine
Towson, Maryland 21204
410-887-2450
E-mail Address: jimsmith@co.ba.md.us

Lu Pierson Letter to the Editor

Did you know that the President of the Maryland League of Women Voters lives in Mt. Washington? Lu Pierson is also a seemingly perpetual fixture at MWIA events. Today she has a letter to the editor on the topic of early voting. Read HERE.

One of the great things about the neighborhood is the amazing amount of volunteer hours that seem to be invested every week. This is a photo of Jeff Call doing his gardening thing at the corner of Cross Country and Kelly. Jeff is always looking for more help. You can contact him through the website of the Mt. Washington Arboretum.

University System Divests from Sudan

A big part of my work is working with clients who want to invest with a concscience. When the Maryland General Assembly was looking into divesting the entire state pension fund from Sudan, I went down and testified. If you'd like a copy of my testimony email me and I will send it over.

Yesterday, the Sun reported that the UM Foundation has decided to divest from the four most obvious companies doing business with the government of Sudan and enabling their genocide in Darfur. While I think this is a very small step, it is a step in the right direction. The truth is that these companies they are targeting are not that widely owned. So this new policy doesn't really have that much impact.

One company that we all know that has a Sudan footprint is Royal Dutch Shell. This company is widely owned and is probably lurking in your very own 401(k) or IRA. Ironically, Shell was also a major divestiture target during the days of controversy regarding South Africa. Some things never seem to change...

Western Run Erosion

I noticed that another large tree has fallen into the Western Run just west of the five-way intersection at Pimlico and Cross-Country. As development continues we are going to see more of this kind of thing. The development of the Bonnie View golf course has made this worse yet. Land that was able to soak up rainfall is now covered with road surfaces and rooftops. All of this means more rainwater flowing into tributaries like the Western Run. This leads to accelerated erosion of the banks.

The Sun ran an EDITORIAL on the reconstruction of Stony Run that is meant to address similar problems over there. As we look at the Greenway project, it makes sense that we should be thinking about what it will mean when the city finally gets around to dealing with the erosion problem in the Western Run. Expect a lot of trees to have to come down. And expect a bunch of meetings and controversy. The bad news is that this has to be addressed or more and more of the trees along the stream are going to fall anyway. The good news is that maybe we can end up with a more stable, cleaner, and more functional urban stream.

Baltimore Jewish Times on the Pimlico Festival

The Baltimore Jewish Times called me during lunch last week to get a quote about the rock festival taking place on Rosh Hashanah holiday. The article ran this week, and you can read it here. I have a very annoyed quote. The promoter is saying that noise control is up to the city. And the city is telling us that the promotor has done "sound studies" to make sure that their systems are set up to cause the least amount of disruption. Someone doesn't have their story straight.

At this point I think we are all resigned to a loud day. I am personally planning to make the best of it. The MWIA is supposed to meet with the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods and the concert promotors. We'll see what (if anything) comes of that.

Slot Fighters for O'Malley

If you have walked by my house, you may have seen my O'Malley for Governor sign. And while at the Howard County Fair today with my son Gus, I grabbed an O'Malley sticker for my car. I admit it. I have turned into what I once scorned: A Little Green Man.

So how does a dyed-in-the-wool Duncan guy come around to the Green side? As a brilliant reader of this blog (yeah, my wife) put it, if the choices are chocolate, vanilla, and liver, and they run out of chocolate, those with great wisdom go with vanilla. So that's me. Green and vanilla.

Now I need to square my hard-line opposition to slots with my new-found support for a candidate who supports "limited slots at the racetracks." So how do I do this? Here's how:

Why does O'Malley hold this position? My thinking is that by being at least nominally in favor of slots, Martin O'Malley takes the issue off the table during the election. Ehrlich cannot attack him on slots if they both agree. Note that most politicians support the Inter-County Connector for what I suspect are similar reasons. While slots have waned in popularity as voters have become more educated about the negative impact, they still poll at around 48%. O'Malley clearly sees no reason to risk such a large number of votes.

So what does he really think? I have heard him say that he thinks slots are not great policy. A friend told me today that he attended a recent O'Malley fundraiser where O'Malley said that if House Speaker Busch and Senate President Miller came up with what they felt was a good slots package, he would consider it. He further intimated that he hoped this would not happen. He directed that comment to a gentleman present in the room--Speaker Busch himself. Based on this exchange and other things I have heard, I don't see slots coming up too quickly on O'Malley's watch.

But with Democrats in control of the House, the Senate, and the Governor's office, wouldn't slots pass easily? In theory, Annapolis Dems could give Ehrlich one final kick in the teeth by passing his signature legislative piece after Ehrlich leaves office. But I doubt it. First, why would O'Malley want to pick up Ehrlich's failed agenda? The last thing he wants to do is follow Ehrlich's lead. O'Malley will also want to have a great first session. Remember, the legislative session starts almost immediately after he takes office. He will want a series of positive agenda items that will not cause massive controversy among Democrats.

O'Malley's running mate, Anthony Brown, currently serves in the house as Majority Whip for Mike Busch. For those sleeping in civics class, the Whip is responsible for knowing the vote count on bills so that the Speaker knows when it is a good time to bring his favored bills to a floor vote. Busch has mentored Brown, and Brown has been a front and center champion in the fight against slots. Brown will likely act as a sort of legislative director for O'Malley, helping him navigate his agenda through the House. I cannot imagine Brown bringing Mike Busch a slots bill and asking him to get it passed.

Lastly, House Speaker Mike Busch has held back a tsunami tide of slots lobbying for the past four years. For him, it's beyond politics. It's personal. He passionately believes that gambling expansion is bad for Maryland. Democrats are not going to forget that. And they are not going to disrespect him over this issue. He stood tall against Ehrlich. They can't ask him to set aside his position now.

So that's how I see it, and why I feel that despite the weird signals from O'Malley on this issue I am going to strongly support him. There are too many other important aspects to governing our state to allow Ehrlich to screw it up any more than he already has.

New Links

MWIA President Mac Nachlas has changed the address for his blog-and added a bunch of new posts. You can read Mac's thoughts HERE.

Also, Marie Fortuno-Shifflett posted THIS great link to the Mt. Washington Listserv. You can key in any city address and see the locations and nature of recently reported crimes. This is a great way to stay informed. As a side note, the MWIA is always looking for help with the public safety effort. If you have a little time you could spare, please get in touch with Mac.

Both of these links are on the links section to the right, along with other useful things I have found. The Baltimore City iMaps is a really cool link that I never see people use. Check it out.

Ehrlich and the Environment

Sometimes I'm not sure that everyone fully grasps the stakes in the upcoming Gubanatorial Election in November. There was an article in the Post today that I thought made a very good point about how Governor Ehrlich has managed environmental issues:

A new report being released today says more than 40 Maryland beaches, including several on the bay, violated public health standards at least a quarter of the times they were tested. The report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council -- which documented more than 20,000 days of ocean, bay and Great Lakes beach closures and advisories nationwide last year -- placed three of Maryland's bay beaches among its worst offenders. All three are on the Eastern Shore.


and

The information that does reach the public often provokes objections from fishing and tourism interests. "Every story that gets written about the health of the bay hurts my industry," said Susan Zellers, director of the Marine Trades Association of Maryland, an industry lobbying group.

This seems to be yet another set of policies where the governor takes the side of business and special interests over those of the people of the state. If it is good for business, it's Ehrlich policy--regardless of the downside for the poeple. And you can see it everywhere. Look at slots--my personal favorite--and you will see a policy proposal that benefits the governor's financial backers at the direct expense of middle and lower income families.

A little know event that is so illustrative of Ehrlich's approach is what he did with the city's ozone sensors. You probably have never heard of this, but the Sun covered in on February 22 of this year. Email me and I will send you the whole article. Here is an excerpt:

Ozone checks in city stopped
State has turned off pollution monitors

The Ehrlich administration stopped monitoring ozone pollution in Baltimore
almost three years ago, despite the city's chronically bad air and the
presence of the state's largest concentration of people with asthma.


The Maryland Department of the Environment decided that keeping the
monitors in the city is a waste of money because the state maintains six
others in the surrounding suburbs, according to the agency.


"You don't need to have a monitor on every corner to know that the air in
one place isn't as clean as in another place," said Richard McIntire, an MDE
spokesman.


The Baltimore area has a long history of failing to meet federal air
quality standards. Many metropolitan areas with similar problems - including
Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Houston and Chicago - have ozone
monitors both in the cities and in the surrounding suburban areas, according
to officials in those areas.


Baltimore's health commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, and some
environmentalists say that ozone in the city requires continued monitoring
because pollution is sometimes worse in urban areas than in the suburbs, and
failing to measure in the city could distort the state's air quality
reporting.

So here you have the administration reducing monitoring that will save lives in Baltimore--but at the expense of making the state's big polluters look bad. So who wins with Ehrlich? Not those of us who live in the city. Not those of us who want to swim in clean water at the beach, or paddle in a safe river. The big winners are the largest of businesses and the most influential Ehrlich donors.

Music Day at Luckman Park

Maggie Kunz emailed to let me know about the

Second Annual Music Day at Luckman Park
Sunday, September 17, 2-5 pm

This should be neat. A Mt. Washington take on the "open mike night."


Showcasing local musicians!

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Please let me know if you are interested in performing. Any kind of family-friendly music is fine (doesn't have to be kid-specific, though that would probably go over well). If you have another performance talent (juggling, magic, clowning, etc) that you'd like to share, that would be great too! I also need to borrow music equipment (mic, amps, etc) and could use help on the day of the event. Contact me at 410-664-9466 or maggiekunz@gmail.com.