We got a "Great Lakes Czar"!

President Obama, before leaving for the middle east, appointed a 'Great Lakes Czar' to make sure that about a dozen federal agencies can figure out how to coordinate their efforts and play nicely on such things as invasive species, polluted harbors, water usage, etc. The guy is Cameron Davis, the head of some environmental group in Chicago called the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

It sounds like an admirable goal but I would guess that it will require a plush office, numerous staff, and a hefty budget to get done what could likely get done with some inter agency liaison groups. I just hope he is a benevolent and reforming czar like Alexander II and reforms institutions, frees the serfs, and helps us wisely use our natural resources. Of course Alexander II got 'blowed up' when some of the very people who he assisted in removing the boot from their necks pitched a bomb into his carriage; that was no good at all. I also sincerely hope he isn't an autocratic czar like Nicholas I, who sent sword wielding cossacks into Winter Palace Square to squash the Decemberist revolt. Most of all, I fervently hope he isn't a basically well intentioned incompetent like Nicholas II, who left running the government to his spooky wife and a crazy monk from Siberia named Rasputin. We all know how that wound up.

As you can possibly tell, I'm a little sick of the 'czar this', 'czar that' stuff. We can thank our very own vice president, the swine flu phobic Joe Biden, for coining the phrase with his Drug Czar push back in the 80's. Thanks for that Joe, too bad your shoe wasn't in your mouth when that thought zoomed into your brain. I'm a bit skeptical about this whole Great Lakes Czar concept anyway. I think that money given to a solid grass roots group like the Inland Sea Society, sponsors coincidentally enough, of the upcoming kayak symposium, would go about 3 times as far as if we pitched it into the black hole of Great Lakes Czarism and let it trickle down through the unstable soil of a dozen government agencies. I just hope that the new Great Lakes Czar does not have an extensive network of Chekists, secret police, and GRU agents to track me down and send me to the Gulag (I think its somewhere in central Texas) for my dissident views. I can't worry about that right now however, because RonO and I are gearing up for a trip to York Island with stops at the Thirsty Pagan and the deer camp. We will scout out the state of the York/Sand/Raspberry triangle and report back to The Czar with our findings. I hope we are able to make ourselves useful in the overall scheme of things.