This fall we will have an election to determine who will be our representative in Congress for another two years and who will be the President for four years.

There is no contest that Steny Hoyer should be re-elected. Congressman Hoyer is about as clean-cut a choice for Congress as is possible. That his GOP opponent should step up to the plate to offer voters a choice is commendable but the idea that we should toss out an experienced veteran of Congress to replace him with a local school board member borders on the absurd.

The chance to replace Hoyer with Collins Bailey of Charles County is an opportunity that should be put alongside intentionally getting stomach flu or poison ivy and makes about as much sense as voting for Sen. Obama.

The comparison between the two elections is clear.

Sen. John McCain had the guts to take an unpopular position on the Iraq War, one which even this newspaper said was silly, and supported the surge of troops in Iraq, which at this writing has worked. Obama won’t say it worked and all he can do is try to find a path to defeat when what we need is for there to be victory over the terrorists, wherever they may be. Bush fooled around in Iraq wasting money and lives but finally listened to McCain on how to win and did.

Steny Hoyer and John McCain are more alike than they may realize, and for the voters of the Southern Maryland region, they are the leaders most likely to be able to work towards solutions and put aside the rhetoric of the right or the left.

Steny Hoyer has done a masterful job of representing this area in Congress and he should be given another two-year term.

With a weak Governor in Annapolis, we need the power and pull of a skilled legislative leader more than ever, especially in bringing commuter rail to this region and following up with funding for a new bridge over the Patuxent River.

Steny Hoyer has been bringing home the bacon to the defense installations at Pax River, Indian Head and St. Inigoes with key missions vital to our nation’s defense being developed and tested, providing employment for thousands of area residents.

Hoyer has proven himself and is more likely to be part of solutions to our nation’s economic problems, diverting our use of foreign oil to domestic energy and keeping our enemies in check.

At this point, it is clear that the choice between a Marxist like Obama or an independent thinker like McCain is an easy one to make. McCain is right on far more issues than Obama and, by the way, who ever heard of Obama just two years ago. The last time we hired a dark horse for the job of president we ended up with Jimmy Carter who was the worst president we have ever had.

Obama is a politically correct choice for people who ignore his elitist and arrogant views, bestow great gifts upon his intellect that experience does not reveal is justified and are entranced with his skin color. These are just bad reasons to pick a president.

Our readers are encouraged to support the re-election of Congressman Steny Hoyer and to vote for John McCain for president.

Every four years the voters of St. Mary’s County thoroughly enjoy the process of kicking the tires of the politicians and selecting a set of five to be county commissioners. Some, such as John K. Parlett, think that the county needs a ‘benevolent dictator’ to run the county. Others, such as Parlett’s developer buddies manipulate, arrange and finagle to elect those who will play the games of government in their favor, passing out zoning rules, approving sewer lines in key places to give value to their land and rearrange the number of classrooms in the county to allow development where they want it to be and to hell with the rules.

But each time the voters select the board of commissioners, the good old boys go to work to line up their votes.

It was kind of tough for the powers that be to manipulate the 1994 Board of Republicans as that bunch of yahoos really had no idea how to get to Leonardtown much less how to run the county government. But they were quick learners and the only half-way dependable votes for the good old boys were Babs and Crazy Paul. Even Francie Eagan, with her being appointed to the board of directors of the old 1st National Bank still had enough of the 9-5 working stiff in her to be skeptical of back room dealing.

The 1998 Randall Board was easy prey for the good old boys as Joe Anderson and Shelby Guazzo were happy to cut deals in the back room with the boys and then march out with their goody too shoes gold stars and play the role of public officials. Randall was a curious soul but Mattingly and Raley were and are more than happy to play lets make a deal.

The McKay board was a concoction of Tommy’s soulless sense of adventure as proven by his lies over his faked diploma and trying to blame the whole affair on a county secretary. McKay’s sordid back room deals on the Hackerman site, which would have taken state forest land and turned it into homes without any public purview or legislative review was a load of laughs. McKay’s stewardship of county government seemed to be right out of a Long Hot Summer and anyone that can keep up with the tracks of bedroom jaunting needs a yellow legal pad and a whole pack of pencils in order to keep score. Senator John Edwards could learn a little in Leonardtown. But that’s what most of us like about the land of pleasant living. Its never boring.

The Jackie Russell Board is proving the most ridiculous. When the nation’s economy stalled and people are suffering the most, this board raised taxes. Except for Larry Jarboe, the lone authentic Republican. Kenny Dement, who is about ready to be thrown out of the GOP, only changed his party label in 2002 because he couldn’t win an election as a Democrat. Russell is a clever guy, hiding behind an exterior of a waterman. But anyone who knows a waterman knows that they are anything but dumb. There are no more crafty critters around than a guy who can fish, crab and oyster and make a living at it.

Russell ran for office by being opposed to development and once elected has sold his vote to developers and performed the most suspect votes yet on the St. Andrews Road expansion of the Lexington Park Development District and the St. George’s Peninsula vote which will have the ultimate effect of expanding the Piney Point sewer line to being wide open for anyone along Rt. 249. What a clever guy. He got the anti-growth votes to win election and then sold out to the developers.

This past spring the St. Mary’s Board voted to pass a text amendment to allow those who have older trailers and double wide homes to upgrade their homes. This came about due to the plight of Ms. Marguerite Barnes and others who need to have homes that they can afford. Ms. Barnes went on bended knee to the jerks on the Board of Appeals and she paid $600 to ask for a variance. They told her too bad.

The St. Mary’s Commissioners changed the law to let Ms. Barnes and others be able to upgrade their homes. She asked not for a handout but for government to simply get out of the way. A builder last year put up a half million house across the street from her 1960s single wide trailer and her new home she wanted was just about one room too big to fit the law. Now the law fits her new home, at least the home she wants.

The law was changed last April but in spite of the fact that Ms. Barnes had an application in to be able to upgrade her home, no one in the county’s land use department bothered to call her. One had better believe that Director Denis Canavan has John K. Parlett and Sonny Burch on speed dial. But Marquerite Barnes was never called to tell her to come get her permit.

Commissioners Raley and Jarboe who promoted the change in the law were shocked but sadly, not surprised to learn from this newspaper that the Land Use office never told Ms. Barnes the good news. Now will these arrogant twits who run the county’s land use office let this nice little old lady in her seventies, that still works for a living, know that she can get her dream house? Lets hope so.

This past week the Congress of the United States, by orders of the Democratic majority, of which our own Congressman Steny Hoyer is the leader, went on vacation for five weeks instead of staying in Washington to face a vote on drilling on the continental shelf offshore.

The Chinese are drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and only 40 miles from our shores while the Democrats in Congress refuse to allow American oil companies to drill.

The Members of Congress make you pay for their gas, so does Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. The Democrats just give you the bill while your eyes spin when you fill up your tank.

There are hard-working people skipping lunch in order to put gas in their tanks and their electric bills get higher all the time. God only knows how people are going to pay their heating bills this winter. Last winter had many folks shivering under layers of blankets in an attempt to keep warm and it wasn’t even a typical cold winter.

Where do members of Congress go on summer vacation?

They go to dozens of countries around the world on fact finding trips. Those junkets use even more fuel for government airplanes and government vehicles to drive them around once they land.

Back here in Maryland, local officials stream to the beach each August, at the Maryland Association of Counties convention. These elected and appointed officials will give the taxpayers the bill for their frolicking at the beach. They will attend countless crab feasts, cocktail parties and golf outings and to put on a good front, they will sit around in their beach clothes at about an hour long panel discussion on some new way to run local government. Just ask Tommy Mattingly. He seriously goes to this beach party every year and has been doing so since 1999. He ought to have it memorized. Doesn’t he have any sense of conscience over billing the taxpayers for his vacation? The tab for Tommy Mattingly to go to MACO’s beach bash, to stay in a oceanfront luxury suite and you’d better believe he makes you pay for his gas, usually runs about $1,200 for a four day stay. Commissioner Jackie Russell usually tags along so he can find some new way to say ‘arster’. Raley, Jarboe and Dement usually don’t go and when Jarboe did go one year he camped out in a tent and had his photo taken playing a guitar at the campground while his fellow commissioners stayed at the grand hotel.

Has Governor Martin O’Malley filled up, at his own expense, a gas tank one time since becoming governor? We might guess that he hasn’t, but he did turn down a wind turbine farm on top of a Western Maryland farm in a state forest, perhaps because he didn’t want to disturb any moonshiners or bears.

How about Senators Mikulski and Cardin. Do they pay for their own gas? No, they get an expense account, which they vote for themselves, and you pay the bill. They just don’t know what the hell they are talking about when they say they won’t allow any offshore drilling.

The Republicans are about as inept as the Democrats but at least they want to drill for oil.

This nation needs to drill even if it is in the middle of the National Mall, Penny Beasley says she has oil at Budds Creek and we ought to drill there too. We have a nuclear power plant site on the Chesapeake Bay at the Elms Property and it was bought over 30 years ago for the explicit purpose of avoiding the ‘not in my backyard’ syndrome and is authorized for a nuclear power plant site. We ought to build a nuclear plant at the Elms property and put real restrictions on the emissions from the Chalk Point and Morgantown power plants which are contaminating our rivers and lakes with mercury.

The St. Mary’s County Commissioners can lead the way to energy independence by authorizing a property tax credit of $1,000 for every homeowner to erect a wind turbine on their property, on farms, on piers, on rooftops and they ought to pass such an authorization without ‘studying’ the issue for any longer than 3 months.

The Ragheads overseas sitting on the oil aren’t really the enemy. It is us. And the Democrats are really full of crap.

The Democrats hollow refrain of ‘we can’t drill our way out of this energy crisis’ shows the real danger of continuing to elect Democrats.

The left-wing loonies who have taken over the Democratic Party are about as an elitist bunch of no-nothing snobs as can exist in this land and about the only more dangerous folks to walk on two legs were the old Communists.

Governor Martin O’Malley, who was elected with such promise, has shown himself incapable of keeping his promises to bring commuter rail to Southern Maryland.

His hypocrisy on energy is pathetic.

O’Malley recently refused to approve a turbine wind farm on top of mountains in state forestland in Western Maryland where the only folks around are a bunch of moon-shining hillbillies chasing bears and deer through the woods.

But O’Malley supports wind turbine farms in the ocean off of Delaware. Actually, the wind turbines belong in both places and if anyone is offended by the giant windmills on the horizon, they can damn well turn their blasted heads and look in another direction.

While the idiots in Congress are driveling on about not drilling, the Chinese, the Canadians, the Russians and every other nation is drilling to beat the band.

But the liberal left-wing Democrats are raising taxes on the one hand and on the other are telling folks they have to pay far more for gas and heat this year than they did last year.

The people couldn’t afford their energy bills last year and they can’t afford to pay any more now.

There are people now who cannot afford lunch when they go to work because their lunch money has gone into their gas tanks. People are hurting and hurting bad. Good, productive people are hurting.

The leftwing enviro-whackos say that folks need to conserve, they need to get used to paying more because other countries pay more, and they can get smaller cars.

Who in the hell is going to buy a smaller car for these folks who can’t afford their gas, their groceries which have soared in cost and their utility bills. Who is going to buy their old trucks and SUVs, who is going to finance all this "adjustment" to the new realities of energy?

Obama is nothing but O’Baloney.

That’s the trouble with no-it-all liberals, they always know what to do with other people’s money when what they ought to do is keep their hands in their own pockets. The liberals always say no to nuclear, no to oil drilling, no to wind turbines, no to anything but yes to taxes.

The damned liberals of Maryland have raised the taxes to unprecedented levels and failed to make any significant cuts in the social welfare spending, the wasteful spending and the lavish perks’ spread across the bureaucracy.

They take your tax dollars and spread it out among millionaires in the form of agricultural preservation funds, giving as much as $4 million to Dr. Norton Dodge and $1.9 million to John K. Parlett’s family in Mechanicsville, and to the King of Junk, Walter Meinhart. These guys aren’t real farmers, they are the landed gentry and they were never going to ‘develop’ their land and even if they had, the critical area laws would have put major restrictions on what could have been developed. They didn’t need to bilk the taxpayers for a fortune.

This was just another fraud perpetrated by the wealthy and the left-wing to lay off another boondoggle on the taxpayers and stick the little guy with the bill.

Until this newspaper revealed the story about the ag preservation funds misuse, the St. Mary’s Commissioners were prepared to levy yet another $40 tax on every household to replenish this fund so more millionaires could prosper.

The upper crust always comes out on top because they are smart, have money for big time lawyers and have a lot of time to sit around to conjure up more ways to screw the middle class.

The non-working population provides the votes to the liberals and the productive folks get stuck with the bill for all the rest.

Now the Democrats want to put the screws to the middle class even more, making them pay more for utilities to heat their homes, more for gas to go to work, more taxes too.

The three Democrats and Dement on the St. Mary’s Commissioner board raised your taxes thru the roof, with only Republican Larry Jarboe voting no.

Its about time for all those who work for a living to tell the Democratic Party to go straight to hell, and if they are leaving from a jump-off point in Southern Maryland, they won’t be able to take the train to get there.

Congressman Steny Hoyer said this week that he gets the message loud and clear and he favors drilling and he said he will work hard to put trains on our tracks. Hoyer needs to know we are all running out of time and money. It’s high time he gets the job done.

For many, many years, violent juveniles have been cast back into the community instead of being sent to be incarcerated pending disposition by the juvenile court. This past week, a violent gang of thugs, at least two of them, there is one still at large and his age is unknown, were caught and quickly released.

It is quite understandable for kids who shoplift or commit petty acts to be dealt with leniently by the courts and hopefully given a chance to straighten up and fly right.

But for vicious heathens who attack a couple leaving a movie theatre, rob them and beat them with brass knuckles there can only be one answer: prison.

Bail is set by a judge for adults based on the severity of the crime of the accused and the likelihood that the person will appear for trial.

Maryland’s weird laws for juveniles assures the public of two things: that there is no protection for the public from violent juvenile offenders and that these punks will quickly be set free in order to prey on more victims.

The criminal underclass in this area is hard core, especially the infestation of cockroaches which has set in at the Missouri Ave. townhouses in Lexington Park. The drug dealing, shootings, stabbings and other criminal activity in this cesspool shows that this is the shallow end of the gene pool and there is little that this crew is not capable of, except of course, becoming productive members of society. Terminex appears to be the most viable solution for these varmints.

The St. Mary’s Commissioners and their public policy to approve any proposal for townhouses by developers in the past ten years has led to an explosion of section 8 housing filled by arriving scum from Prince George’s County. These hardened elements have become big problems in the school system and are derived from a very dangerous part of the worst elements of society, very different from the indigenous population.

This past week saw several incidents of gang actions at Missouri Ave., violence between bums in the Hobo City in the woods in Lexington Park, the Movie Theatre Attack in Lexington Park and a fatal outcome to a broad daylight robbery in Leonardtown.

At least when the police capture violent criminals, even if they are juveniles, there should be high standards set for release, not simply setting them loose.

State bureaucrats working in the juvenile services must be identified, be held accountable to the public for their actions and made to feel as uncomfortable as the general public for letting violent offenders free.

With St. Mary’s Circuit Court Judge Karen Abrams recent action in allowing a convicted sex offender to be given work release, where he once again molested a little girl, one has to wonder, what in the world was in the Judge’s mind. This Judge has no children of her own, she never went through the years of nurturing a child and learning how precious they are, perhaps this lack of real world experience causes her to be so goofy.

Maryland has been the playground of liberal Democrats for so long that there is little resemblance of the place this used to be prior to the takeover of these nitwits.

The Maryland General Assembly is rife with corruption, left-wing socialists and morons.

There is little hope for any sanity to ever prevail. Since that group of twits write the laws of the state, there is little hope that laws can be changed to shift protection to the victim.

Roberta Roper worked for at least 15 years to bring about rights for crime victims and had to fight the liberal yahoos every step of the way.

Her daughter was kidnapped in Brandywine and brought to St. Mary’s County by two young thugs who tortured, raped and murdered her in the woods near Sandgates.

Why is it that the liberals never care about the rights of the average citizen, never oppose raising taxes and always want to reduce the civil liberties of the public while giving away the farm to illegal aliens and coddling violent criminals?

Who do the liberals really care about the most? Not you.

Fire companies need greater scrutiny as

day rapidly approaches of paid firefighters

The volunteer service in Southern Maryland has been a proud tradition which is about ready to go the way of raising tobacco. Like tobacco, the days and ways of fighting fires have to adjust to the realities of today.

Young people no longer desire to volunteer in any meaningful way as firefighters while the same skills that they use in fighting fires as a volunteer can earn them a good living by driving to the metro area where career jobs are available.

The old time tradition of volunteering to help your community, which has carried the American Legion, the Optimists and the Lions, along with the volunteer fire departments, is suffering a serious decline due to many factors.

The old stalwarts of the fire companies are dying off and the newer generations have more complicated lives than their parents and grandparents and many of them are simply spoiled and don’t want to give as much as their families have in the past. The newer residents of the area come from other parts of the country where paid departments exist and the new residents don’t bother to lift a finger to help in their communities, they fail to support their fire companies raise money and their lives revolve only around schools and forget that the other aspects of life in Southern Maryland are important too.

Recently St. Mary’s County, for the first time in the history of the Advanced Life Support medic teams, had to hire paid medics in order to fill the needs of the community.

Charles is paying for rescue squad coverage and it won’t be long before a hybrid system of combining paid daytime firefighters and rescue squads are prevalent in all three counties.

Each of the counties are doing good things, some in different ways. But more accountability for how tax money is spent by these volunteer fire departments is called for along with scrutiny of the conduct of fire fighters.

Bay District needs live-in firefighters and as part of the deal the young firefighters don’t have to pay rent, they are given a free place to stay but taxpayers shouldn’t have to pick up the tab to have a maid service come in to clean the dormitory area for the firefighters, they should be able to clean up themselves.

Bel Alton shouldn’t allow firefighters to bring in underage girls to be passed around as party favors as lawsuits filed by parents might end up snagging the taxpayers.

It is expected that spirited activities by the younger members of the fire departments would be challenging from time to time and this is something that many local fire and rescue companies have to deal with.

St. Leonard and Waldorf both wrecked $750,000 heavy squad units on the same day recently. Both toppled due to the drivers going too fast and both were severely damaged. Hot rod drivers should go to Budds Creek on Friday nights and should not be behind the wheel of expensive fire and rescue equipment.

The politicians are shirking their jobs of providing oversight due to not wanting to risk the ire of the firefighters and the firefighters aren’t shy about boasting of their political power.

Some elected officials are shunned due to daring to stand up to boisterous bullies of Bay District and a recent turn down of a fire tax for a St. Mary’s County company came after the failure of the company to have complete plans on how they would spend a requested tax increase.

New buildings are built when they aren’t needed. The Golden Beach firehouse is an example where the Mechanicsville company has a hard time staffing it. Bay District spent the money on a new firehouse only because the money was there and over the years the fire tax should have been lowered, not raised.

But the chief trouble is for rescue where worn out volunteers are tested all the time by ever rising calls for service and fewer folks willing to give of their time.

The public truly understands that the Heroes of the fire and rescue service do a good job and are appreciated but they are not sacred cows. As the day approaches that this area needs to switch over to paid fire and rescue new controls and new self-control needs to be instituted.

St. Mary’s County last week had the Board of Commissioners put its stamp of final approval on the huge tax hike which was set up by last winter’s increase on property assessments. The St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners could have lowered the tax rate to negate the tax hike but the three Democrats on the board, along with Republican in name only, Kenny Dement, said no to keeping the tax rate level and instead boosted taxes by $14.5 million.

The Board lowered the rate of the energy tax, a tax which hits the poor the worst, and just took a small swipe out of it instead of eliminating it altogether.

But the Board kept up spending on dozens of non-essential items such as improvements in areas such as the Three Notch Trail, Chancellors Run Park, Piney Point Lighthouse, Tennis Courts, more spending in the Lexington Park old downtown, Streetscape project on Great Mills Road and building a farmers market area for farmers in the south end of St. Mary’s County.

When the county is facing severe economic downturn is the very time to reexamine the spending of the county government.

What St. Mary’s County did this year was to make a lot of noise, blow a lot of smoke and prop up mirrors all around to make it look like they were doing something. Dan Raley’s bellowing about the bad economy and then his motion to spend more money minutes later was a charade of which P T. Barnum would have been proud as Raley clearly demonstrates that he believes that the citizens are suckers to believe his baloney.

Tommy Mattingly’s statement that the economy in the county is in pretty good shape shows he is simply a fool. He is too smart a guy to think that the public believes the economy is in ‘pretty good shape’, here or nationally.

Kenny Dement’s act as a commissioner last week was an embarrassment. He voted in favor of the new budget and his only objection was that it didn’t spend enough money. It is time for Kenny to retire.

Jackie Russell sat on his hands and voted along with Raley and Mattingly to spend more money than is needed, failing to make significant cuts in a bloated bureaucracy and doled out tax dollars to non-profit, non-government groups. Worse yet, the Three Musketeers banded together with Dement and added new county employees at a time at which we likely will see county employees laid off next year.

This was the year to start making cuts in spending in order to be better prepared for next year and Dan Raley should have stepped up to the plate to provide the leadership but he didn’t. He gave in to the left wing losers of the Democratic Party and ignored all he ever learned about running a business, which is what he always said was what he brought to the Board, his experience. Dan Raley blew it in a big way.

Next year, with a continually eroding and diminishing economy, revenues will be down dramatically and the only way to balance the budget will be to fire county employees.

Those who lose their jobs can think about how Dan Raley passed out tax money to the St. Mary’s River Concert Series, to the Three Oaks Center, to pay for the salary of the Lexington Park development director who can’t manage to accomplish anything in Lexington Park, to Walden Center to bring clients for the county facility from Prince Georges County and the Baltimore area and finance the activities of the agency with the tax dollars of St. Mary’s County taxpayers.

More money comes from the county treasury to pay for the St. Mary’s Airport while the county hands over half the rent taken in from the place to the operator instead of collecting the rent. St. Mary’s County continues to run the airport as a yacht club for the aeronautically inclined and in spite of building a $4 million terminal, still fails to have any scheduled flights.

While gasoline prices go through the roof, the county still allows dozens of non-essential county employees to take vehicles home. In Public Works there are two dozen, when about 4 or 5 should be using tax-payer provided vehicles.

The Sheriff’s Department should immediately start charging for gas for cruisers when filled up when officers are not working. That would be the best way to limit officers sitting for hours while working off duty at private security jobs and leaving their engines running.

Only Commissioner Larry Jarboe took his responsibility seriously and voted to lower the tax rate to make up for the obscene hike in the assessment.

For Dement and the three Democrats, this year’s budget process was a cruel joke on the taxpayers and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

The county employees who will get the axe next year should remember that when this board had a chance to save money and cut spending, only Larry Jarboe was front and center.

Two years ago Governor Martin O’Malley, while campaigning for office, appeared with Congressman Hoyer, Senators Mac Middleton and Roy Dyson, and Delegates John Bohanan and Sally Jameson, and stood in the middle of the CSX railroad tracks in Waldorf to demonstrate his support of bringing commuter rail to Southern Maryland.

Maryland has the MARC train system, its nothing new, and it serves most of the state, in fact, all of the state except the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland.

The clodhoppers O’Malley appointed to run his Department of Transportation now want to run the MARC trains into Virginia, which is likely a good idea and a good use of trains that now end in Washington’s Union Station, another 5 miles and Maryland commuters could go by rail to Alexandria. MARC trains already start each day in Martinsburg, West Virginia and makes several stops in that state before entering Maryland and winding down through the state to D.C. MARC trains should connect to Delaware.

But how about Governor O’Malley keeping his pledge to bring commuter rail to Southern Maryland?

We already have CSX tracks and they are surely strong tracks indeed, as they carry the heavy loads of coal each day to the Morgantown Pepco (Mirant) Generating Plant on the Potomac River.

The railroad wants indemnification and double tracking and Maryland can accomplish these requirements but it takes state transporatation officials who understand railroads, understand $4 a gallon gas (those who have the taxpayers pick up their own tab for gas can’t understand this issue) and are smart enough to realize that the issue isn’t about generating growth for the region, but managing what is already here.

Making the rail link for Charles, St. Mary’s and Calvert via the CSX tracks which lead from Morgantown, up through Newburg, La Plata, White Plains, Waldorf, Pinefield, Brandywine, Croom, Upper Marlboro and connecting at Bowie to the main line of Amtrak and MARC and shuttle buses to Metro would connect thousands of motorists with their destinations and lessen the use of gasoline by having these commuters parking at the stations instead of spending their time on our traffic arteries.

The tracks and rail system is in place, surplus locomotives and passenger cars are available. All it takes is some brainpower in Annapolis. The Republicans couldn’t do it and the Democrats said they could, now its time to put some trains on the track or we will know all we got was yet another lame promise from a politician only concerned with Baltimore.