Month: November 2011

A Salisbury makeover

I must have missed this item in the local newspaper, but I was alerted to a proposed redistricting plan put out by Salisbury Mayor Jim Ireton – a proposal that actually three plans.

Plan 1 and Plan 2 both split the city into five separate districts, with two of them being majority-minority districts which Ireton claims more fairly represents the minority population in Salisbury. The major difference between the two is that Plan 2 adds two at-large seats to City Council, making the city of Salisbury reflective of Wicomico County insofar as its legislative branch is concerned.

Conversely, Plan 3 simply tweaks the current system and makes District 1 geographically larger so it continues to represent about 20 percent of the city’s population. That area includes most of the minority-populated portions of the city.

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Local GOP selects four for District Four

Last night, the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee interviewed six candidates before selecting four local Republicans to advance to an upcoming Wicomico County Council vote to fill the seat now vacant due to the passing of Bob Caldwell. Selected were former County Council member Bill Carey, local businessman John Hall, Robert Huntington, an airline pilot, and political activist Cathy Keim. A seventh applicant withdrew from consideration just before the interview process began.

These half-dozen candidates were peppered with questions from the Central Committee, which was charged by the county charter to select four qualified citizens for County Council’s consideration. As a body, we agreed that all six candidates interviewed would have been fine additions to County Council, but only four could move on and all four who advanced received a majority of votes from the eight eligible members voting, with one receiving support from all eight present.

Truthfully, I was somewhat surprised at the outcome but had one vote flipped I would’ve had the result I expected – it was that close. I voted for three of the four winners, so I wasn’t dismayed at all. It’s my impression as well that the person selected will probably be a reliably conservative vote.

So it’s now up to County Council to decide the final winner, and they will vote on the matter in an upcoming meeting.

Herman Cain should be the new Bill Clinton. Right?

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

I have to admit, though, it’s sort of fun to watch it blow up in the faces of liberals who gloated for a decade about how all the allegations about Bill Clinton and the cover-ups of his sordid affairs weren’t as important as how he ran the country – to them, it was all a sideshow from Republicans who were angry they couldn’t beat him at the ballot box. (Never mind there was perjury enough for Clinton to be disbarred.)

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Occupying the basement?

You know, there was supposed to be a protest in Salisbury yesterday. But I’m pretty convinced the Occupy movement doesn’t have much traction, or, for that matter, a fawning press, within these local confines. I had better things to do than to cover these whiners, but one local blog and one local news station delivered short new items on the protests.

Perhaps a tactic change is in order? Well, we’re not exactly a major metropolitan area but I suspect we have a few people around who are as nuts as these people photojournalist ‘El Marco’ detailed in Denver.

It’s more than that, though. One has to ask what possible grievance these committed liberals really have? I suppose it’s because they don’t have absolute control of all the levers of power? Maybe they would like to institute a dose of fascism, allowing the businesses they choose to survive while others are crushed under the bootheel of regulations written in tandem by these chosen businesses and government bureaucrats? It’s the way we are headed under this regime.

By no means am I a fan of crony capitalism, as I think the rules should be simple and fair for everyone who wants to play. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re ExxonMobil, Walmart, or the corner store – everyone should compete on as level of a playing field as possible. It’s why America was enough of a land of opportunity for ExxonMobil and Walmart to get to their level, but apparently somebody wants to close the door now that they’re safely inside.

There’s something to like about the idea of protest, as the Occupy movement is billed as the flip side of the TEA Party protests – well, TEA Party protesters tend not to get arrested, deal drugs, copulate (willingly or not) in sleeping bags, or trash their surroundings, yet the idea is sort of the same – but there’s the question of identity.

People may not have agreed with every facet of the TEA Party’s demands and their use of our Constitutional right to peaceably assemble, but the TEA Party’s theory of restoring power to the people resonated with a large number of voters. On the other hand, the narcissistic entitlement mentality of the Occupy movement abuses that right of assembly by trashing its surroundings and committing violence in the name of exerting their rights. Anyone walking by Zuccotti Park may wonder what they are getting into, although by many accounts pedestrian traffic is being driven away thanks to the garbage and smell.

Fortunately, the Salisbury protest was of much shorter duration and peaceful – perhaps thanks to the watchful eye of the law. But for how much longer?

A chance of improvement

Obviously the political landscape is much different here than it is in my native state of Ohio, but there are times I still get missives from the Buckeye State because I’m still on a number of mailing lists.

One such case was today, and although I deleted the actual message the gist of it was a local chief of police calling out the opponents of Issue 2 – a measure that would roll back gains made against the overly powerful unions in the state – for misleading the public into thinking they’d be less safe if it passed. On the contrary, passage of Issue 2 would allow him more funding for hiring police officers since his other overhead costs would be reduced.

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More land off limits to development: a sign of things to come under PlanMaryland?

It was just another item on the agenda Tuesday evening at the County Council meeting, and since I don’t have the record of what happened yet I have to presume it passed without a peep of opposition. (I’d be happy to stand corrected, but I know the resolution passed. Whether it was 4-2 or 6-0, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference in the end.)

With that passage the county was authorized to spend nearly $2 million in state money to purchase easements on 710 acres of land along Nanticoke and Royal Oak Roads known as the Tracey Property – that’s a little over one square mile of territory.

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Two fewer for Senate

For William Capps, it was an uphill battle and one he decided to no longer keep fighting. Over the weekend he withdrew from the race for Maryland’s U.S. Senate seat and endorsed Dan Bongino.

But there’s something he alluded to in his statement that I haven’t received official word on. Capps notes that Pat McDonough has already entered the Senate race, but as for now he’s still on the fence between running for the U.S. Senate and running for Congress. Earlier this summer he had announced he was considering a Senate run based on how redistricting went, but nothing is official yet. If I were a betting man, though, I think Capps is correct and McDonough will take his statewide shot.

Another name candidate who hadn’t finalized his plans is Eric Wargotz, the 2010 GOP nominee. Back in September he put out a fundraising appeal which was to help him make a decision, and I had it on pretty good authority that choice would be made around the first of November.

Well, consider Eric a couple days late but this literally just came as I was writing the post:

As many of you know, our team has been carefully considering a run for US Senate in 2012. After extensive research, I was humbled to learn that I remain popular among Republican primary voters and remain well positioned to win the Republican nomination for US Senate in Maryland once again.

Unfortunately, support for the incumbent Senator (and the President) remains strong in Maryland, despite the national political environment. In this political reality, we find ourselves in the position of being able to win the Republican nomination but falling short in the general election.

Therefore, regrettably, I have decided to forgo entering the 2012 US Senate race.

My family and I are grateful for your continued support and well-wishes over the past several years in this endeavor. I was honored to serve as your 2010 Republican U.S. Senate nominee and I will continue to work diligently to bring Maryland closer to a true, two-party state.

May God Bless you, the State of Maryland and our great Country.

So that’s the news, hot off the press. We’ll see now what move McDonough makes.

Is Ohio’s recovery on the line?

It’s been seven years since I left the state of my birth, and it doesn’t seem like politics has changed all that much.

Even the ray of hope provided when a solid conservative governor was elected may be snuffed out next week if voters in the Buckeye State are fooled into voting against Issue 2. A no vote would wipe out a series of common-sense measures designed to hold the power of the state’s labor unions in check along with making them contribute a little more to their benefit package (but still less than the average private-sector worker does.)

It’s telling that opponents of the measure, essentially Big Labor and its allies, are outspending those who want a yes vote by a significant margin. The unions didn’t want Governor John Kasich to be elected anyway, as one of his first priorities was to whip them into line. If they can’t beat him until 2014, they can do their level best to thwart his efforts. It’s nothing new from a state which is heavily unionized along the Ohio Turnpike corridor from Toledo through Lorain and Cleveland to Youngstown. The rest of the state is relatively conservative.

I’m hoping against hope that the smart voters aren’t fooled by the lies and obfuscation of Big Labor’s campaign and hand them a stinging rebuke. If they don’t, you can well see why I left the state – not that Maryland is a whole lot better, but the weather and vibe is what keeps me here. It would be nice to have a governor with the cajones to take on Big Labor, so let’s hope he’s rewarded next week.

Extension of remarks

Just as a quick follow up to something I discussed yesterday, Richard Falknor has a solid wrapup of yesterday’s meeting of rural lawmakers and interested parties regarding PlanMaryland. And the article from Ken Timmerman he cites almost makes it sound like we really are going to war.

Maybe the time is ripe for telling O’Malley to pound sand. If a county feels threatened by a regulation passed without benefit of a vote of the General Assembly, perhaps it should be ignored. What else can the state do to hurt us?