Montgomery residents should bag the bag tax Re: “Nickel tax on bags coming to MontCo,” May 4
County Executive Ike Leggett says Montgomery County’s new 5-cent bag tax is easily avoidable and suggests: “If you don’t want to pay the fee, get a reusable bag.”
Here are a few more suggestions. After Jan. 1, as often as you can, combine trips and go to stores in Prince George’s County, Howard County or Frederick County. Consider making purchases in Virginia if you work there, like I do. Pack a cooler or two if buying items you’d like to keep cold.
One might find that prices, including gas prices, are just a wee bit less than in Montgomery County and worth the excursion.
John P. Hughes
Germantown
Region needs even more HOT lanes
Re: “Region needs to plan how to move goods, transportation planners say,” April 28
This article correctly noted the vital importance of a strategic plan to expedite freight movements in the Washington area, but missed the mark when it implied that high-occupancy toll lanes can impede trucking.
In fact, the Virginia Department of Transportation’s 2010 “Statewide Multimodal Freight Study” states that HOT lanes (such as the ones proposed for Interstate 95 from Fredericksburg to D.C.) actually expedite freight movements by reducing the number of passenger vehicles on congested conventional lanes.
At the same time, given that regional truck traffic is projected to quadruple over the next few decades, a major deficiency in the current regional freight plan is the lack of bypasses to separate and divert long-distance trucks (and autos) from local and regional traffic.
Expanded freight rail capacity and efficiency are important, but are not expected to significantly reduce the percentage of goods moved by truck. New HOT lanes and new bypasses are both key elements of a smart regional transportation strategy.
Bob Chase
President,
Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance
Pakistan’s ISI must have known about bin Laden
I served in Pakistan with the Drug Enforcement Agency in the early 1980s as the assistant Justice attache, and can state from my personal experience that nothing of any significance transpires of which the Inter-Service Intelligence agency is not aware. Since ISI has informants at every level of Pakistani society, it is just not logical to assert it was not aware of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, considering the fact that his compound was just yards away from an army base.
ISI continually interfered with DEA by wiretapping phones and conducting physical surveillance of agents and operational activity. In many instances, ISI tried to identify our confidential sources or plant potential recruits to penetrate the agency and collect internal intelligence. It did the same to Pakistani law enforcement, criminal investigative agencies and even its sister agency, the Intelligence Bureau.
Although ISI reports to both the Pakistani president and the chief of the armed forces, its head is always an army general, lately a three-star. So it is possible that although ISI was aware of, or even supported bin Laden’s presence, President Asif Ali Zardari may not have known.
Joseph I. Molyneux
American Military University
Metairie, La.
