THE GAZETTE
Wednesday, January 29, 2014 r
Maryland’s Best/Worst 2013, Part II Pests of the year The IRS The NSA Federal government shut-downs The Redskins name debate Lyme disease Dennis Rodman Concussions Surveillance drones Gov. Rick Perry Cellphones during air flights Traffic lane “cutters” Miley Cyrus Copper thieves Athletes on steroids Target credit card hackers Cruise ship norovirus Bullying Obamacare’s religious mandate Toilet-clogging “flushable” baby wipes
Most bizarre moments • A Baltimore jury awards $1.42 million to a patient, Nadege Neim, whose doctor, Maureen Muoneke, mistakenly removed her right ovary instead of her left one. When Neim returned for a checkup a month after the surgery, Dr. Muoneke realized her mistake but did not tell Neim. • Howard County police bust an “inhome” licensed child day care center that had a hydroponic marijuana growing operation in the basement. • Public health officials warn of rabid raccoons attacking people and pets in Ocean City. • When a Bethesda couple, watching TV, see a black bear walk by their window they call police, who, after a chase through the neighborhood, tranquilize it. • Donald Pray, after getting drunk and arguing with his passenger, gets out of his car, lies down on Suitland Road and is struck and killed by a car. • A Maryland Lottery employee pleads guilty to stealing 7,500 scratch-off tickets worth $90,000 and redeeming them for $67,000. • When Baltimore scrap metal thieves steal numerous 54-pound backup traffic light batteries costing $428 a piece, the city padlocks and alarms traffic light facilities. • A woman dressed in pink with a pink cellphone robs two P.G. County banks in December. • A man wearing a fake Santa beard holds up a Laurel bank in December. • Frederick police, investigating a possible break-in, are surprised when two burglars fall through the dry wall ceiling. • A portable speed camera stationed outside Glenelg High School is set on fire
by unknown vandals. • After leading police on a 100 mph chase through Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, Dock Workman is arrested after ramming a state trooper’s car four times. He was seen lighting a cigarette between his strikes against the police cruiser. • Ocean City police witness a man hijacking a taxi and pursue him up Coastal Highway, where the hijacker abandons the taxi and runs into the surf, where he’s arrested. • Montgomery County pays Bethel World Church $1.25 million not to build a church on its environmentally sensitive 119-acre Germantown property. • On New Year’s Eve, a Silver Spring mother has twins born three minutes apart but in two different years, one in 2013 and the other in 2014. • Golfers atMY MARYLAND tending Baltimore’s Scunny BLAIR LEE McCousker Memorial Elvis Invitation Golf Dinner are asked to “dress like Elvis or an actress from any Elvis movie.” • Ralph Jaffe (D) files for governor with Freda Jaffe, his sister, as his running mate. • Baseball star Cal Ripken Jr.’s mother Vi Ripken, who was kidnapped in 2012, is the victim of an attempted carjacking in October 2013. • Bethesda resident Lois Lerner, who resigned after becoming the central figure in the IRS-Tea Party scandal, volunteers for a Montgomery County panel that screens applications for tax-exempt status. • Police suspect a possible suicide when a College Park man locks himself in a portable toilet and sets it on fire. • An Anne Arundel jury awards $800,000 to a woman who suffered hundreds of bites when she moved into a bedbug-infested Annapolis apartment. Her attorney, Daniel Whitney, specializes in bed bug lawsuits. • A Virginia woman, represented by Daniel Whitney, sues for bed bug bites she suffered at a National Harbor hotel. • A lactose-intolerant federal employee suffering from frequent flatulence is reprimanded by Baltimore Social Security Administration officials for “creating a hostile work environment.” • A woman with a Cheshire cat tattoo on her neck slips a $1,200 Maltese puppy into
her purse and flees a Rockville pet store. • When Baltimore police arrest a prostitute at a BWI hotel they discover that her pimp, waiting outside in his car, is a Baltimore city policeman. • After a 22-year-old woman driving across the Bay Bridge is rammed by a tractor-trailer, sending her car 40 feet into the water, she frees herself and swims ashore. • When three of Frederick’s five county commissioners participate in a local callin radio show, a political opponent complains to a state board, which rules it an “open meeting law” violation because, as a quorum, they discussed county business at a “meeting” without prior public notice. • Montgomery County public employee unions boycott the county Democratic Party’s annual spring fundraiser because, they say, the county party has grown too conservative. • Instead of endorsing either gubernatorial candidate Heather Mizeur, a lesbian, or Doug Gansler, the first state official to advocate same-sex marriage, Equality Maryland (the gay lobby group) endorses Anthony Brown. • When a Silver Spring real estate agent turns her house into an extravagant Halloween display and invites hundreds of clients to view it, county officials take her to court for operating a business in a residential neighborhood. The judge, after three hours of testimony, permits the display for two nights. • After being sworn in as Glenarden’s new mayor, Dennis Smith discovers IRS fines for $150,000 accrued by the outgoing administration for failing to file tax records. • Diamonde Grant (aka Dimez) sues the Oasis club, where she’s an exotic dancer, for taking a portion of her tips and private dance money in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. • The St. Mary’s County school board bans hugs between children and any adult who is not their parent. • Attorney General Doug Gansler says prison inmates should be issued free tablet computers to help further their education. • A National Guard A-10 Warthog fighter jet inadvertently ejects an inert 500-pound bomb, which lands in a Queen Anne’s County tavern parking lot, leaving a 3-footdeep hole and some shaken patrons. Blair Lee is chairman of the board of Lee Development Group in Silver Spring and a regular commentator for WBAL radio. His column appears Fridays in the Business Gazette. His past columns are available at www.gazette.net/blairlee. His email address is blairleeiv@gmail.com.
1905854
Still can’t find the car you were looking for? 1906334
Page A-15
LETTERS TOT HE EDITOR
Questions for candidates If I were to be asked to vote for a candidate, here would be the five concerns I would want them to address. I am looking for a visionary, someone who won’t take office just to keep things going, but would be willing to shake up things and look for solutions that are different and may even require a leap of faith. 1. Maryland is listed by most of the Internet sites where seniors seek retirement information as one of the top-five most expensive states to live in. Income taxes are higher here, we still have inheritance taxes, home values are static but property taxes are not. We need to see where we can lower the cost of living in Maryland. I’d like to be at the bottom of the list, will settle for the middle, but I am definitely not happy with being in the top five of 50 states in the union. 2. Employment for youth. Could Maryland pave the way for an innovative education model that would put more students into employment when they finish school? Instead of putting more funds into helping only the brightest kids with magnet schools, could we set up vocational tech schools similar to those in Germany that would support other bright students in professions that require hands-on work that can’t easily be outsourced to foreign countries. Our nurses, plumbers, electricians, biotechnologists, and electronic specialists are all vital professionals and all make good money, but we push the myth that everyone needs to go to college. We could reduce unemployment considerably if we had an alternative technical educational model and promoted it as equally good as college education. 3. Higher education. Let’s reduce the price of going to university and instead make it free. My quid pro quo for allowing any organized gambling in Maryland would only be if the funds gained went to state college systems, and they in turn used it to offer scholarships, not loans. The incredibly high debts that students now face going to university, even in-state,
are simply unsustainable. Getting more loans at ever higher interest rates negatively impacts every student and down the line every profession and every business in Maryland. Pay for it with the tobacco fund, pay with lottery money, pay with gambling and casino money, but at some point the state should fully take over the cost of running the universities. 4. Maryland could be the first state to have state-mandated health insurance. If our federal government is too chicken to vote for a national health, single-payer system, then Maryland should do so. If individuals want to opt out and pay for private insurance that’s fine, but a single payer will ensure more fairness in what doctors and hospitals charge, what labs charge and will force the insurance companies to do the same. We could reduce administrative costs enormously by reducing the number of people checking insurance, filling forms, filing reports, checking different rules and regulations. We could innovate by getting health records electronically onto a credit card sized chip that would be portable as consumers move from one doctor to another. 5. Internet access should be treated as if it were a utility — an essential service for the consumer that is regulated by the state, both for quality of service and for price. It is unconscionable that consumers whose every daily action from banking to education, from medicine to communication, should be dependent on private sector companies who can set prices, and raise prices at will. The U.S. consumer has the most expensive Internet service of all the developed world. Internet connectivity should be free for every Maryland resident and the State should make sure it is regulated and monitored in the same way that other utilities are monitored. I have more, but will stop at these five and wait for some visionary candidate to respond.
Mona Grieser, Silver Spring