Melanie Rapp gets it right

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Melanie Rapp gets it right				April 14, 2007

Politically speaking, I don’t have a whole lot in common with Melanie Rapp (R-96^th), my gerrymandered delegate to the House of Delegates. She often strikes me as being overly wedded to rightist ideology and rigidly biblical. But she is a jovial sort, and she always answers my e-mails, albeit it in encoded messages that are totally indecipherable. And she is capable of rather outrageous legislative zingers that tickle me no end.

This year she laid an ostrich egg when she decided that we should all drive in the right lane of a highway unless we wanted to pass another vehicle, in which case we could venture out into the left lane.

I have no idea what lane you could drive in if you were cruising along on a three-lane highway, but I do know that if we were all slogging along in the right lane on Interstate 64 there would be colossal traffic jams from here to Norfolk. And can you imagine what a field day the police would have if there was a logjam at the bridge-tunnel and both lanes were stopped dead in their tracks? All the people in the left lane would be getting citations for hanging out there when they weren’t passing.

Or can you visualize everyone leaving Williamsburg piled up in the right lane of Richmond Road in that idiotic 25 m.ph. speed trap that so jollifies the Williamsburg police? Dare to get out into the left lane to pass someone doing the snail-paced speed limit and you’re dead meat.

Amazingly, the demented quahogs in the House went along with this little bomb, but it was killed in the saner chambers of the Senate.

But if the Rappster was thwarted in her misguided foray into the world of traffic control, she did herself proud and showed no little independence when she voted against the gnarly, snake-haired Medusa that was laughingly labeled a transportation bill.

Having taken the no-tax pledge, Rapp and her like-minded cohorts were excoriated in a recent interview by retiring Stafford Republican Senate leader John Chichester. “I don’t give a hoot or a holler,” said Chichester, “about someone who signs a no-tax pledge because they’re shallow and they’ve abdicated their responsibility before they’ve even gotten it.” He also described the transpo bill as a “mess.”

Shallow or not, the Rappster knows well that there isn’t a whit of difference between taxes and the mound of additional fees that attend the latest transportation scheme. Drivers and others will pay through the nose for all sorts of services if localities agree to go along with this Rube Goldberg moneymaking contraption.

On the other hand, I suspect Rapp would also be opposed to the only reasonable and fair solution to our transportation problems, which is to raise the gas tax statewide.

But you have to give her credit for recognizing this bill for the sham that it is and for bucking her Republican leadership, who are congratulating themselves and patting their collective backs for foisting their shrugged responsibilities onto localities in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.

Nor was Rapp amused by Gov. Tim Kaine’s one-size-fits-all, micromanaged attempt to ban smoking in all bars and restaurants.

Noting that she is a non-smoker, Rapp told the Gazette that she was “opposed to the imposition of a universal ban on smoking in public, as would have been mandated under the governor’s amendment. In our area we have already seen market forces at work, as an ever-increasing percentage of restaurants opt for no-smoking policies.”

The problem with universal bans is that once government gets into the business of putting checks on substances considered dangerous to public health, all sorts of special interests worm their way into the equation, and the list of bans proliferates to the point of silliness. Did we learn nothing from the booby-birthed ban on alcohol during the years of Prohibition?

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has banned not only smoking in restaurants and bars, but now has declared that any foods containing trans fats are verboten in the city’s eateries. In addition, he has set up an office to “coordinate the city’s food policies.” Well, pardon me, but I don’t think the city or any other government agency should be telling people that they can’t go to a ritzy restaurant one evening a week and order up some French cuisine that has a smidgeon of trans fats.

Lung disease, obesity and clogged arteries are no joke. But, along with smoking, are we going to ban hamburgers, French fries, cage-raised chicken dishes, pork, alcohol, soft drinks, corn chips, chocolate, cheese doodles, carbohydrates, bleu cheese and a host of other things in restaurants in order to satisfy government health police? If we do, we’ll wind up with victual legislation as out of whack with an individual’s right to choose and as far removed from reality as the crazed transpo bill.

But not to worry as long as the Rappster is on patrol. I may be wrong, but I suspect she would be no more interested in banning pizzas, burgers, fries and Twinkies than she is in banning smoking. And amen to that.