Maryland Motorcycle Helmet Choice

There is a bill before the Maryland State Senate to make the wearing of motorcycle safety helmets optional for riders and passengers. Senate Bill 776 has many reasonable and science-based provisions, like requiring state health officials to scrape fallen cyclists off Maryland roads, see if they were wearing helmets or not, make two separate piles, and compare their heights.

The bill fails to explain who is going to pay the resulting additional ambulance, emergency room, medical, and highway cleanup costs. On the other hand, It will set riders free to feel the diesel exhaust blow through their hair.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Holiday Housecleaning at Eastern Market

Washington residents got a holiday gift from the DC Government today. DC’s Office of Property Management is finally rousting the rascals who have mismanaged Eastern Market and is taking direct administrative control on January First.

Management of historic Eastern Market has been contracted out to a phantom DC nonprofit called Eastern Market Ventures (or Venture – documents differ). Who is EMV? Primarily Maryland’s Site Realty Group, with apparent participation by principals of  MilleniuM Real Estate Advisors (which provides the notional DC address — at the Watergate) and New York’s Capital Properties .

Save the Kids and Horsies!

Only one thing can save Maryland’s education system and the futures of innocent children. Remarkably, the very same thing will save the state’s strategic Equine Industry — you know, racing, the track, the ponies, Sport of Kings And Guys Named Lefty.

The solution: License corporations to take money from Maryland’s poor, one quarter at a time, rake off half and give the rest to the state government. Slot machines are the only salvation for education and the impoverished owners of Thoroughbred horses.

Eastern Market, Annapolis, and Site Realty

What’s worse than having an historic building burn down on your watch? Setting up business on quicksand.

That’s just what Site Realty, d/b/a Market House Ventures LLC (MHV), did in Maryland’s capital, at the city’s historic Market House. That’s the same crew that the DC government pays to manage Eastern Market, only they call themselves Eastern Market Ventures (EMV) for that purpose. I guess negotiating the Annapolis deal and the resulting fiasco explains why Eastern Market’s “managers” were never around, even when Eastern Market was on fire.