Cheap Shots

Hoyer's Bridge to Nowhere...you've read about U.S. Senator Ted Steven's multi-million dollar bridge to nowhere in Alaska, now we have learned that our own Congressman Steny Hoyer has found some federal bucks, a reported $2 million for Maggie O'Brien's St. Mary's College of Maryland, already being roasted by many in Southern Maryland for ruining the St. Mary's City shoreline with a monster Boathouse, for Maggie's pedestrian bridge over Rt. 5. 
While we have real bridges on the list of those with structural defects, tax money will have to be spent on building a pedestrian bridge over Rt. 5, for what?  So college students, you know those adults over the age of 18, who now cannot be expected to safely look to their left, then look to their right, before stepping out onto the crosswalk over Rt. 5 at the college, can get to the other side.  Can we expect the college students to share their pricey footbridge with our local chickens so that they too can safely cross to the other side? 
Some of the previous plans of the elitists at St. Mary's College have included closing Rt. 5 entirely and building a new state highway bypass around the college, tearing up wetlands in the process. 
 Then former college president Ted "The Weenie" Lewis proposed narrowing Rt. 5, paving it with bricks and slowing traffic to about 10 mph.  That idea went over like a flatulent in church with the residents of the lower end of St. Mary's County who have to use this highway as they go back and forth to work and was opposed by Sen. Roy Dyson, even though then Del. John Slade had already given it his stamp of approval.  The bottom line is that the rarefied air that mixes so well with the whiffs of pot that accumulate in the clouds over St. Mary's City, swirling with the artsy-fartsy personas of important personages and political powerhouses collected by Maggie's college, think they can do any damn thing with tax money that they want to at any time and get away with it.  They are probably right, they likely will do this Bridge to Nowhere, helping brain-challenged college students who are too stoned to be expected to safely cross the highway to get to the Monster Boathouse or, even, egad, classes, have a bridge to carry them over the hustle and bustle. 
 If they truly want this bridge, why not charge a toll to use it to pay back the taxpayers the same way tolls are charged to taxpayers to use their own damn bridges that cross the Bay or the Gov. Harry Nice Bridge over the Potomac River at Morgantown.  If they made the Bridge to Nowhere at St. Mary's College, a toll bridge, and charged the college students $2.50 to use it, the toll collector would likely take in nothing while the college students swarmed back out onto the pavement. 
 In fact, even with a bridge, many students will likely walk out into traffic anyway, as either a direct line is easier than walking up a long slope to the bridge or they are simply stoned and can't find the entrance to the bridge.  And...by the way, we still don't have commuter rail for the members of the public who commute to the metro area to work, Maryland is getting ready to hike the gas tax over the 23.5 cents per gallon you are already paying yet we will have $2 million bucks to spend on this gasbag idea to appease the elite of St. Mary's City. 
Soon safety will be trotted out as the reason for this, but consider this:  Father Andrew White Elementary School has stood at the edge of Rt. 5 in Leonardtown for years and only had a crosswalk with a school crossing guard to get kids across the street.  If safety is the issue, can we not hire some middle aged mom who wants a part-time job to stand guard at the cross walk to help college students across the highway?
 Do we expect too much from our college students at St. Mary's to expect them to remember to look both ways before walking out into a crosswalk?  We already know that the quality of drivers in the area requires any intelligent person to look both ways, but we may have some college students who think that just because there is a state law that requires motorists to stop for persons in the crosswalk  will actually cause those motorists to stop.  That is if they aren't driving drunk or text messaging.
The college is tearing down Anne Arundel Hall and building a new one, which hopefully will still be named after the Maryland County, like all of the other buildings used to be named.  Maryland has 23 counties and didn't run out of county names for buildings, but the egos of the members of the board of trustees switched to naming new buildings at the college after themselves.  It was a good idea to name a sparkling building after William Donald Schaefer, as it was done while he was Governor and its always good to brownnose a sitting Governor and then he became Comptroller and God knows its a good idea to schmooze the guy with the money, but then the college began naming money after local trustees who coughed up some money as donors so we have buildings named after people instead of counties or governors....will they name a building after Walter Slendak, the longtime security officer at the college?  Nope, length of service means nothing, got to be the high and mighty too...now Tommy Waring gets a building named after him and he ain't even dead yet like Gen. Hogaboom.  At least it beats having a sewage pond named after you like happened to Mike Marlay and Francis Taylor at the Pine Hill Run Sewage Treatment Center.