Michigan House of Representatives mulls moratorium for roadside Television on a Stick

Update:

OK, so maybe this billboard's not in Michigan. So what?

Legislation to put, effectively, a one-year moratorium on the construction of brightly lit digital billboards in Michigan has cleared a State House of Representatives committee, but is stalled on the House floor as supporters try to rally the 56 votes needed for passage.

In the meantime, the City of Walker – outside of Grand Rapids – has chosen a prudent course. They’ve put their own six month halt on the monstrosities to try and get out from under an avalanche of industry requests for digitals. Industry wants to get the requests in under the wire in case the legislation goes through.

More cities are banning or slowing the spread of the digital distractions.

If I had my way, we’d go the route of Maine, Hawaii and some other state I can’t remember that have banned billboards altogether.

That idea raises the hackles of lobbyists for out-of-state billboard companies who are crawling all over the State Capitol in Lansing as we speak to ensure Michigan’s legislation dies.

It also raises the hackles of well-meaning libertarians and right wingers and others who see a ban as an infringement on the rights of billboard companies and advertisers. I could make some very reasonable, well thought out arguments why our rights to see the landscape should trump their right to clutter it up. But I don’t feel like being reasonable.

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Breaking Good News: Michigan House passes phosphorus fertilizer restrictions

The Michigan House of Representatives this morning passed a bill restricting phosphorus in lawn fertilizer. The legislation, if approved by the Senate and Gov. Granholm, would be a significant step in protecting our lakes and ponds from runaway algae growth and oxygen depletion.

Progress on the fertilizer legislation is encouraging. In terms of reducing nutrient pollution to our waters, it’s a much bigger deal than the ban on phosphorus in dishwasher detergent that took effect in Michigan this summer.

Whacko environmentalists are a much easier target than genetics when it comes to blame for bedbugs

I bite. And I'm a powerful political tool!

Sending this off to one of my local papers today:

The Oakland Press’ Sept. 21 story ”Bedbugs’ Big Comeback”

did an admirable job of alerting the public.

Unfortunately, it repeated the discredited but potent falsehood that the ban on dangerously toxic chemical DDT is a reason for the comeback of the nasty little bugs.

DDT was wildly successful in eliminating bedbugs in the 1940s. A few – those genetically predisposed to be resistant to DDT’s poisoning – survived. They bred, producing even more resistant offspring. By the 1970s DDT was largely ineffective against bedbugs and remains so to this day.

As Newsweek Magazine reported

(Sept. 8, 2010 issue) tests of pesticide effectiveness against bedbugs during the last two years at Cornell University ranked DDT dead last. “You almost have to spray directly on the bug to do anything to him,” it quoted a Virginia Tech entomologist as saying “Or hit him with the can.”

Why is this myth – that if only the environmental wackos had not banned DDT we’d be safe from bedbugs – persisted? It is the product of an ideologically-driven minority that seeks political and public policy victories regardless of the cost to public health, our natural resources or scientific honesty.

Fact checkers – both at newspapers and at their home computers – should not be giving legitimacy to utter falsehoods like this one.

Hugh McDiarmid Jr.

Farmington