Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Worst Picture Ever of a Council Member?

So a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Wait until you see this!

Last week, the Examiner excoriated the Montgomery County Executive and the County Council for not taking transit to work. What the article omitted is that most of them live nowhere near a Metro station. Can anyone identify the Metro stations in Burtonsville (where Ike Leggett lives), Potomac (Roger Berliner), Colesville (Nancy Navarro), Germantown (Mike Knapp), Gaithersburg (Phil Andrews) or Sligo Creek (Marc Elrich)? Here are the walking distances from the home addresses of the other Council Members to their nearest Metro stations:

Nancy Floreen to White Flint: 1.3 miles
Duchy Trachtenberg to White Flint: 1.2 miles
Valerie Ervin to Silver Spring: 1.0 miles
George Leventhal to Takoma: 0.5 miles

Don't forget that if Leventhal or Ervin took the Metro to Rockville, they would have to go through Downtown D.C. - a more than hour-long trip. As for using the bus, well... would you wait for a bus from Rockville after a council hearing ends at 11 PM? This article was nothing more than a petty cheap shot with no attempt at fact checking.

But it did have some entertainment value. Check out the photo and caption of one featured Council Member.


And so the primary accomplishment of this piece was to slime Duchy Trachtenberg, a die-hard supporter of a light-rail Purple Line, as someone who is too haughty for transit. Trachtenberg has been Deep Purple for years and this is how she is repaid.

Nice work, guys!