Crews work to spread around some delicious sand along Presque Isle. | Photo via Christopher Millette, Erie Times-News.
Without further ado, your Idiotville feel-good story of the week:
Have you ever been so excited about sand that you totally forgot about Canada? No? Mike Kelly has. Get a load of this:
“We have an asset in America that no other country in the world has, and that is our Great Lakes system.”
-Mike Kelly (R-PA 16th)
Kelly held a press conference on Beach 6 to discuss the beginning of Presque Isle’s sand replenishment project – 68,000 cubic yards’ worth, to be exact – when he let rip the above quote. Now, you might think this was just a simple error from someone speaking extemporaneously and move on with your day. Who among us hasn’t forgotten about Canada. This was no big deal, right? Wrong!
What if Mike Kelly really has a secret plan to annex the other half of the Great Lakes from our neighbor to the north, and he accidentally unveiled it live in Idiotville?
You think this is crazy? Let me explain. First, we put sand on the beach. Our beach, in America. Then, a bunch of it was gone, allegedly due to natural forces such as “erosion” and “lack of ice cover due to a warmer than usual winter,” and some of that stuff probably washed away somewhere onto Canada’s side. Well isn’t that convenient. No – Canada took our damn sand and now I want everywhere that sand ever touched to be part of the U. S. of A.
Oh relax, I’m kidding. I’m just having a little fun with Rep. Kelly because he talks about this sand like it’s the greatest Erie accomplishment since the War of 1812. This is $1.5 million worth of sand we’re talking about, which is a lot of money but a rounding error to the federal budget.
So I didn’t think Presque Isle as we know it would be allowed to simply float away into the lake. Did you? That place is a state park, but a national treasure. Procuring this sand is the bare minimum we should expect of our elected officials. However, in 2019 the bare minimum is a bar that too often goes uncleared.
So let’s have that sand and let’s celebrate it. The federal appropriations process didn’t make an inexplicably bad decision – at least not this decision – so Presque Isle will still be there when you drive on down. Sometimes the lack of something inexplicably bad is something good.
Meanwhile, we’ll be on the lookout for signs we’re about to wrest the rest of the Great Lakes from those greedy Canadians. If we do, we’ll have another something good coming and Mike Kelly can tell us all he told us so.
Idiotville 