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Op-Ed ; Imperiled Species is Working Crane
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 6:56 PM

[B](Source: Boston Herald)By MICHAEL GRAHAM[M[ Anybody know a good recipe for piping plover?
If you do, please forward it to Mike Winkler, currently stranded along North Beach in Chatham. He needs your help - and so does the entire Massachusetts economy.
Winkler is a crane operator. After an unusually late Nor'easter ravaged Chatham's North Beach area a month ago, he got the call to bring in his big crane and demolish/remove/relocate some of the cottages in danger of washing away.
Two weeks later, around July 9, Winkler was done and ready to move on to his next job. But the town of Orleans and the Patrick administration won't let him, because in the midst of the worst economic downturn in a generation, these bureaucrats are more worried about killing a bird than saving some jobs.
There are four piping plover chicks nesting near the crane's path off the beach. Orleans is terrified that the crane "might run over a bird," Selectman Jon Fuller told the Cape Cod Times. The possible death of one bird - one - is enough to stop Winkler and his crane.
"They are messing with my livelihood," Winkler complained. "We finally have some work and we can't do it."
Which is why it's time for some hearty patriot - or a competent economist - to throw the Weber grill in the trunk and head to North Beach. Nothing says "recovery" like a fresh plover grilled over a beach fire. A little lime juice and as the French say. (And according to several sources, the French do eat plovers. Then again, they're French. They eat anything.)
And who in Massachusetts has time to worry about your livelihood, Mr. Winkler, when there are piping plovers to protect? Certainly not the Patrick administration, whose Division of Fisheries and Wildlife refused to give permission in the first place.
Orleans asked the state to allow an escort of bird lovers to carefully guide the crane past the nesting area and off the beach. That wasn't good enough.
What if the birds were frightened? Traumatized? Do you have any idea how expensive avian psychotherapy is these days?
The town rejected another route floated by the state. And so the work stops. The crane sits idle. Men wait for work while income - and income taxes - are lost. In the middle of a recession, with Bay State unemployment at a 17-year high.
Get used to it. Because this is the Obama/Patrick roadmap for economic (ahem) "recovery."
Winkler told the Cape Cod Times that he doesn't understand "what world" these pols live in when they endanger his livelihood and his business. I'll tell you.
It's a world where governors and legislatures raise taxes by a billion dollars in the middle of a recession to fund goofy programs for weighing kids at school and workplace gym classes.
It's a world where, despite losing 7.2 million jobs since the recession started, the president takes trillions from businesses to fight "global warming" and fund a takeover of health care.
It's a world where punishing the rich with a job-killing surtax is more important than common sense tax cuts that would promote real job growth.
In short, it's a world where protecting piping plovers is still more important that protecting jobs.
I'm with you, Mike. I'd happily roll a bucketful of the birds in 11 herbs and spices and hand them out to the homeless. But this isn't our world. We're just livin' in it.
Michael Graham hosts a talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
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