Month: January 2013

What we may be up against

Because I like to know what’s going on from the other side, I bring you this nauseating e-mail from Jim Messina and Obama For Against America. Links are not active because, if you support this crap you can figure them out yourself. You liberals think you’re so smart!

As the “fiscal cliff” debate raged on, supporters like you were right there with President Obama, making sure your voices were heard from all over the country. When we work together like that, we’re a powerful force.

Issues like immigration, climate change, and gun violence will be debated over these next four years, and President Obama is ready to take them on — but he needs us by his side. Our goal is to help him get things done, but also to help change how things get done in Washington in the first place.

Over inauguration weekend, you’ll have a chance to participate in a discussion about how we’ll work together to support our president and address the issues we all care about. Some volunteers and staff will be gathering in Washington, D.C., and will be joined online by thousands more supporters nationwide for the Obama Campaign Legacy Conference, where we’ll firm up the structure and leadership of the new organization.

Want to be part of the conversation as our next chapter begins?

Say you’re in and we’ll follow up with ways to participate.

The impetus for this conference comes from you. In November, we sent a survey asking you about your campaign experience and where you’d like our movement to go from here.

More than a million people responded. In fact, four out of five survey respondents said they’d like to continue to be involved and volunteer over the next four years.

That’s an advantage that no previous president has enjoyed, and one that has the potential to reshape our politics for years to come.

This is an important opportunity to shape the future of this movement, and I hope you’ll take part:

http://my.barackobama.com/Obama-Campaign-Legacy-Conference

Thanks. Can’t wait to see what we do next. (Emphasis mine.)

Unlike Jim, I can wait, unless resignation is one of the options.

But the reason I bring this up is this: let’s just assume for the sake of argument that the survey indeed received a million responses and 80% said they’d like to volunteer. That’s 800,000 people working for the causes of tyranny and bigger government. So where is our counterforce going to come from?

The one problem we have as a leaderless conservative movement is that it’s much easier to divide us. Granted, it’s also much more difficult to neutralize the movement as a whole because it’s spread so thin, but this also requires each person to motivate his or her self in keeping up the fight. It seems those crowds of ten-, twenty-, or even thirty-thousand at Romney rallies weren’t very good force multipliers. (Either that or perhaps the lack of crowds at corresponding Obama rallies was because they were working the streets and phones.)

I’m still convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the majority of the country holds views which can be described as conservative. They may not necessarily be Republican views, but it seems to me, for example, that people still want an America which holds the highest living standard in the world. Yet they voted against that self-interest in the last election, in part because other issues were held out as red herrings – “War on Women,” anyone?

This group of 800,000 or so may actually have some conservatives in it, too. There were a few who still believed that Obama was a centrist, in part because he continued several foreign and domestic policy initiatives undertaken in the eight years of President Bush. But most of them in this cult of personality are the true believers – if four years of failure wasn’t enough to shake this crowd, they are some committed souls.

Somewhere, somebody has the conservative database to overcome this effort and put out an army of pro-liberty disciples which can match and overcome this otherwise inexorable march toward despotism. If you have it, we need to share!

What happened to the conservative blogosphere?

That’s the title of a recent post by Eric Odom of Liberty News, who’s pondering the question after studying the decline of conservative blogs since he last did a survey in 2009.

Well, in one respect Eric is correct when he notes:

Truthfully, blogging takes a lot of work. Time is required and a lot of it if you want readers. Especially now that an active social media presence is needed to drive growth and personal influence.

He’s exactly right on that one, as I would estimate I spend between 15 and 20 hours a week working on this site. That’s not necessarily just doing the writing, but promotion, attending events I cover, and reading other news sites to pick up ideas and trends. I’ve been blessed with a mind which rarely encounters writer’s block, but as a tradeoff readers may notice I veer onto non-political avenues once in awhile. (The best case in point is my Delmarva Shorebirds coverage, mostly during the summer. Local music also finds its way here.)

Yet if I were to survey the many thousands of bloggers who have left the field since 2009, my wager is that a significant number of them have simply traded in their blogs for other communication venues, particularly Twitter. WordPress is pretty easy for me to work with, but it’s no match for Tweeting to those who used to simply link to another post and perhaps add a line or two of commentary. 140 characters is about the length of a good-sized sentence like the example you’re reading, and for many it’s enough to express a thought. If they need a little more space, there’s always a Facebook page. It’s far easier to be the master of a Facebook page or a Twitter account than the servant of a blog site where new content is demanded regularly.

There’s also the idea of having to build and keep an audience, which is difficult because it requires that same consistent approach. I once read that the key to blogging success is to write 2500 words a day, which is generally more than I put in. My output is usually about half that, although my Ten Question Tuesday segments so far have exceeded that 2500-word figure. Of course, I didn’t have to be creative for those aside from coming up with the questions and tenor of the conversation. To be able to write creatively at such a pace it would also be to have my sole source of income and thus far that’s not been a doable option.

It occurred to me that I had my own (partial) list of blogs from back around that time, as the also now-defunct BlogNetNews used to “rank” conservative websites in Maryland. This was the list I had from 2008 as I compiled my own ranking of these sites – out of those twenty I believe this site, Red Maryland, and The Hedgehog Report are the only ones still posting on a regular basis.

Yet while there are few blogs which have managed to hang around in the last half-decade, it doesn’t mean there aren’t worthy, newer contenders – as well as some which weren’t in the BlogNetNews network but have stood the test of time. For example, Blue Ridge Forum began in 2006 and The Vail Spot in 2007. But even after this artificial point, several good sites have sprung up: according to the archives I could find A Conservative Lesbian, The FreeStater Blog, and Anthropocon were created in 2009, while 2010 brought the Potomac TEA Party Report, Cross Purposes, and Old Line Elephant. Even 2012 brought my friend Jackie Wellfonder’s Raging Against the Rhetoric, which proved some out there still feel blogging is a viable option, especially in the wake of Andrew Breitbart’s death. (All these blogs and more are linked on the sidebar.)

I think there was a time when the blogging craze was just that – a craze. Many people got into it, and most found out it wasn’t as easy to build an audience as they thought. But those who have stuck around and found their own niche have turned the internet into a viable alternative news source, so I think Eric’s fears are somewhat unfounded.

Having said that, though, more eyes and ears wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Ten Question Tuesday: January 8, 2013

Welcome to the debut of my newest feature, Ten Question Tuesday. This interview segment may or may not feature exactly ten questions, but the intent is to learn a little more about those personalities who help shape local and national politics.

Today’s guest needs no introduction to Maryland Republicans. Dan Bongino survived a ten-man Republican primary to easily win the U.S. Senate nomination last April and ran a spirited race against incumbent U.S. Senator Ben Cardin. The entry of independent candidate Rob Sobhani altered the race and blunted Bongino’s momentum; still, as we discuss here there were a lot of lessons to learn and useful information to be gathered for future GOP efforts in Maryland.

**********

monoblogue: The first thing I want to know is: have you even rested since the election?

Bongino: (laughs) For about four hours or so. The day after the election there’s always that feeling of, ah, you lost. There are no silver medals in politics – although there are different degrees of success and failure, of course – there is only one Senate seat and only one person sitting in it. It wasn’t me, and I felt like we worked really hard. But I didn’t take any time off…I had a workout the next day, which was something I wasn’t able to do on a regular schedule during the campaign which kind of cleared my head. My wife begged me at that point to take some time (yet) I don’t think there’s any time to take. This isn’t the time for pity, this is the time to find out what went wrong and fix it. So I haven’t taken any time – I’ve got a number of different things I’m working on right now; it’s a pretty extensive list.

monoblogue: I noticed you have a consulting business; in fact, when I arranged the interview I went through Karla (Graham) and she’s one of your (consulting firm’s) employees.

Bongino: Yeah, I think the consulting business…it was obviously slow, intentionally, during the campaign, because I just didn’t have any time to take it on. So there were things I could do and things I couldn’t do; I immersed myself completely in the campaign. That’s now picked up pretty well for me, we jumped right back in on that.

But we have a PAC we’re starting. Contrary to some rumors spread by some within the party who I think are more aligned with political positioning rather than political philosophy, my campaign didn’t finish anywhere close to in the red. We were actually cash-positive by a significant margin – well over $60,000 and it’s coming in more by the day. You don’t want to finish a campaign cash-positive – or cash-negative – but with us, we were relying on donations. I wasn’t Rob Sobhani, who funded it with my own money, or Ben Cardin, who had a steady stream of donations due to 45 years in politics. I had to rely on the money as it came in, and toward the end, the last four months we were out-raising Sobhani and Cardin combined by really heavy margins. We did not want to run a fiscally irresponsible campaign like our government, so we budgeted our money to be responsible – to ensure we had enough to pay our salaries at the end, to pay off the printing company, the internet management company…it’s like running a business. It came in so heavy in the last week that I think we would up with roughly $70,000 left over, which we’re going to use to fund Republican causes. It’s one of those initiatives now as well.

monoblogue: So basically you’ve become the Bongino PAC.

Bongino: Yeah, you can call it the pro-growth alliance, because it’s going to be a very targeted PAC. Everybody understands I’m a conservative – I don’t think that’s a mystery to anyone – but I want the PAC to focus exclusively on job growth and the economy. I’ve said all along the Republican Party, in my opinion, we don’t have a messaging problem – we have a marketing problem. I could not be clearer on that.

Our message, when you think about it, the President of the United States ran on our message. “I want to cut the deficit and control spending…I’m only going to raise taxes on people who won’t get hurt by it.” These are all messages that the Republican Party uses, that the President stole. Of course, he was disingenuous about it, but it just accentuates my point further that our message won a long time ago. We have a very serious marketing problem, and we have what I perceive in Maryland to be a lack of a short- and long-term plan politically.

When you ask some in the party “what’s the plan going forward?” like you would ask in a business “how will you launch this new product line?”…a business runs on three simple principles: how do you find new products for your markets, new markets for your products, and how do you shut down inefficiencies in your business. You can apply those principles to any business on the planet, including politics. Now we have to find out how we get our message to new markets, because we’re not reaching black voters, we’re not reaching Hispanic voters…I would debate we’re not reaching Montgomery County or Baltimore City voters at all, and we have to do that.

monoblogue: Well, here’s the one thing that I’ve noticed, and this has been true of almost any race statewide since I moved here, and I’ve been here since 2004. We seem to have a barrier of 40% we just can’t break, and the question is: if you have a message that sells, how come we can’t break the 40% barrier? What is the deal where you can’t swing the extra 10 percent plus one over to our side?

Bongino: I see it strategically, there’s a number of problems…it’s a big question. I’ll be talking about this at the MDCAN as well. There is no plan…let me give you an example because it’s easy to say that… Here’s some things we’ve been doing wrong with the swing voters.

The Democratic Party, despite literally a decade with Governor O’Malley – we’re closing in on the end of his term (and) ten years of really consistent monopolized Democratic rule – and I would debate even in the Ehrlich administration as well, and that’s not a knock on Ehrlich; I’ll explain that in a second – that’s nothing to do with him. (Despite the) monopolistic Democratic rule, the Democratic Party in Maryland has managed to out-register voters in contrast to the Republican Party, 400,000 to 100,000. How is that? How is that with BRAC, people moving into the state, frustration with the bag tax in Montgomery County, frustration with the income tax just about all over the state, frustration with the bottle tax in Baltimore City, that we as a Republican Party have had no consolidated effort to register voters at all?

And if you dispute that, I ask you where you saw the plan? Where did you read the blueprint on how to register voters? Now, there are counties out there that are doing a fantastic job, but there is no statewide…St. Mary’s County as an example. Carroll County registered five times as many Republicans than the Democrats have registered Democrats. Harford County, three times. I use St. Mary’s as the blueprint; they doubled the number of registrations compared to Democrats because it was a very consolidated, targeted, guided effort by the Central Committee and the clubs to get a mission done, which they accomplished. So that’s problem number one, registration.

The second problem: we’ve absolutely forfeited the black and Hispanic vote. I’ll give you an example from my campaign: I had actual donors – very few, but some donors – they asked me to not attempt to spend a lot of time in those places, deeming it a “lost cause.” Now they’d been beaten up there before with candidates who’ve gone down there to communities we should be in, and the results just haven’t been there. But that’s not an excuse to give up; because we haven’t found the right formula doesn’t mean we stop searching for the potion. Forfeiting the black and Hispanic vote is political suicide.

monoblogue: I completely agree. And that’s one thing that I know, we’ve paid lip service to that for years and I’ve been in the Republican Party here since 2006. Now there’s one other aspect I wanted to get into, and maybe it kind of goes in with your role as an outsider, but I want to back my readers up to the first time you and I met.

We first met when you came to our Republican club meeting down here in Wicomico County in the summer of 2011, and you brought (2010 gubernatorial candidate) Brian Murphy with you, which immediately piqued my interest because I was a Brian Murphy supporter in that primary.

Bongino: Right.

monoblogue: So given that as a starting point, the other portion of the question is: did that help you…how did it help you raise a national profile? I know Sarah Palin came into Brian Murphy’s campaign at a late date and endorsed him and that probably at least put him on the map – and I noticed she did the same thing with you. There seems to be a linkage between you and Palin because I just happened to hear a little podcast you did on a very Palin-friendly website. Obviously you’ve used Sarah Palin and people like that to build more of a national profile than any other Republican candidate in Maryland…I would say that even Bob Ehrlich doesn’t have nearly the national profile that you do. So how do we leverage that?

Bongino: Money, media, and volunteers are a campaign, so the question is how do you leverage a national profile, which is really just name recognition nationally. How do you leverage that to getting media, to getting extra money into the campaign, into getting volunteers? I think we did that quite well. A lot of…some insiders on both sides took shots at us afterward…saying we’d lost by a good and healthy margin. But I don’t think anybody took into account was the successful operation we’d put together considering we were only funded, really for the last four months, to finish second out of three candidates despite being outspent by a factor of almost 20:1.

Now we did that by using the national profile, and what I think is important and is an operation that has largely been lost on some of us – quite a few Republicans in the state – is a mastery of the media message. I think what our campaign did – and this isn’t me trumpeting my campaign on any kind of pedestal, I’m just speaking to the fact we got a lot of national media – we were very careful to manage the message. We understood the ideas that had punch, and Karla and I had what we called the “hook” – what was an angle to put Maryland on the map, to put this Senate race on the map? In some cases it was my Secret Service experience as a federal agent commenting on “Fast and Furious.” There were other cases, there were scandals, and unfortunately those scandals, I thought, took on a life of their own – Colombia scandal of course – but there was an opportunity there to defend an agency that I loved being a part of. I thought they were getting a bum rap – there were a few bad eggs and I didn’t appreciate that, so we took an opportunity there to defend the Service, that certainly helped.

Here’s a thing a lot of folks forget as well, and it’s one of the most important points here; the most salient that I can take out of this – when you get an opportunity to get in front of a national audience, whether it’s on Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity multiple times – you have to be interesting. Not sensational, not scandalous – interesting. You have to say things that give people a reason to listen, or else you’re just another voice coming out of their car radio. And I was very careful to come in there very prepared about what I wanted to say and what I wanted to speak, so that then led to more media. Media begats more media, it is a virtuous cycle. When we did Hannity, then we went to Beck. When we did Beck, we went to Levin. When we did Levin, we would get on Fox.

monoblogue: It established credibility.

Bongino: Yes, and you get into a cycle, and then the contacts start to see you as a reliable, exciting guest that brings energy to the show and I think we did twelve or thirteen different appearances on Hannity. If you’re interesting, not only does that begat more media but that begats donors. Those donors…the way I would leverage that is if you donated $25 after I did an appearance on Hannity, I’d call you. Sometimes I’d spent half an hour on the phone with people, talking about issues that mattered to them – they weren’t even Maryland citizens. But those $25 donors became $250 donors, who became $1,000 donors, who despite the poll numbers continued to support me. Someone sent me an e-mail, as a matter of fact – I don’t think he wants me to give up his name, but he’s an out-of-state donor – who started very small and wound up donating a substantial amount of money to my campaign. He said, “I’m not investing in the Maryland Senate race, I’m investing in you.” And that’s how we built a database of over 20,000 donors. That’s a substantial list, a very credible list – nationally speaking, not just in Maryland.

And finally, volunteers. When you’re on television and radio it’s an obvious force multiplier. In the case of the Hannity show during drive time you’re speaking to 14 million people. I would always get out the website and we would get people on the mailing list, which grew into 10,000-plus names and 3,000 volunteers. And I would make sure with the volunteers – and I encourage other candidates to do this as well – your volunteers don’t work for you, they work with you. That’s not a soundbite; you have to act that way and portray that on your campaign.

When I would ask volunteers to show up for a sign wave, which a lot of people didn’t like the approach, they have no idea what went on in the back end. We would sign wave, and I had consultants who had never won anything telling me, yeah, that’s a waste of time. What they didn’t understand was, on the back end of our website I could analyze how many people went to our website after we’d go to a neighborhood and sign wave with twenty or thirty people – the exponential growth in volume in donors, volunteers, and traffic to our website was usually singularly located to that area I was the day before sign waving. But the genius consultants didn’t know any of that. I’m glad they don’t because they recommend other people don’t do it.

…I would show up with the volunteers, this was a really hot summer. We had something like a month straight of 90-degree weather; I’d show up there in my suit and I would stand out there an hour and a half, breathing in smog in Montgomery County, waving at cars as they came by with the volunteers who understood that it wasn’t just talk. I would talk, I would ask them about their families and how things were going, and it became a family atmosphere where it wasn’t just banter…that’s how we did that, leverage that whole model into something I think very special.

monoblogue: I think you would be a very good speaker on just getting media attention, and how to be interesting in front of the media. That’s something a lot of our candidates could use because we’re trying to get elected here. We have a message, but we need – that is the missing link. It’s hard to be interesting to people sometimes – it’s not always my strong point either.

Bongino: I’ve been watching a lot of our locals; some are very good and some of them I’ve watched, I think there’s a tendency to speak to a canned soundbite with the fear that, if you get off this script, you’re going to say something you don’t want to say. I would say if that’s the case you shouldn’t do media – you shouldn’t. You can win without it, you can do print interviews, but – not to knock him now – Rob Sobhani was the perfect example. I mean, Rob Sobhani essentially stopped doing serious live interviews at the end because every time he got on the air he would say something ridiculous – you know, the famous “I hit the jackpot” quote…the DREAM Act, he would say four or five different things, sometimes not realizing that obviously these interviews were going to be broadcast and cataloged and people would catch him on it – you have to go out there and be confident you’ve done your homework and you’re ready to go.

monoblogue: Here’s one thing… I’m curious about this, and I know I’ve seen media about this since the election. (Regarding) 2014, and I know – I’ve been in politics long enough to know you don’t want to rule anything out or commit to anything at this point. But is there something that you would not necessarily rule out, but you would favor as far as an office to run for?

Bongino: I’ve got a list together that a couple of trusted confidantes on the campaign and I are going through – best options, worst options, me being a business mind and a rational maximizer like any good economist would be – do a cost/benefit on each and a cost/benefit’s not just for me, but it’s for the party. I’ve said over and over that I don’t want to run for something that I think would be good for me but bad for the party; I think that would be hypocritical. But, yeah, there’s a number of things I’m looking at – I mean, I don’t think it’s any secret that the Governor’s race, the (Anne Arundel) County Executive race, there’s some other options out there as well that I’ve been considering. And there’s also the option of not doing anything electorally but staying involved in the process through the PAC. I’m writing now for Watchdog Wire, and I do pieces on RedState that are getting some really good traction, so there’s that possibility as well.

I really don’t know, but I’m going through the numbers and at the presentation at MDCAN I’m doing I’m going to be very deliberate, too, about what needs to get done numbers-wise because I don’t know if some of the candidates running now for some of these positions understand how difficult a statewide race is going to be. Not unwinnable – I ain’t never believed in that, and I believe in fighting the fight – but a statewide race in Maryland right now is going to be very, very tough, and it’s going to require a lot of money, a significant media profile that can bypass our local media, and a number of volunteers that is just going to be absolutely unprecedented.

monoblogue: Well, that makes sense because there is not a big, broad base of experience in the Maryland Republican Party on how to win a statewide race. The only person that’s done it in the last 40 years is Bob Ehrlich, and he lost two of them after he won one. So he’s not exactly got a great track record, either.

Bongino: Right. And one of the more disturbing aspects – and I’m not talking to the candidates we have now for governor, I’m talking about some others…you look at the Rumsfeld book, the “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns” – the unknown unknowns are always the most dangerous thing because you don’t even know what you don’t know. I was very aware of that when I ran, I had no political resume and was very careful to start slowly. That’s why I got in so early, because I knew there were intra-county dynamics, there were party dynamics, and I wanted to be careful to avoid any significant controversies that would derail a campaign.

I’ve spoken to some who just don’t seem to understand that there are things going on in the state that they’re just completely not aware of…I’ll give you an example: I was at an event, one of them, it was in Montgomery County, and a woman walked in who was a very prominent, active Montgomery County Republican – donor, hosts events, is a terrific person – and he looked at me and said, “who’s that?” And I thought to myself, “wow, that’s not a good sign.” (laughs) It was one person, and I’m certainly not going to extrapolate too much from it, but that’s not the first time that happened.

I’ll bring up some specific county dynamics – the compressor in Myersville, that was a big deal. Water contamination on the Eastern Shore; I didn’t know about that, (it’s a) big deal. SB236 hurting the farmers: (another) big deal. The fact (some candidates aren’t aware) that there are farms in southern Maryland: a big deal…The fact in Calvert County, we have some struggles getting votes in Waldorf. These are things that a statewide candidate – you’re not going to have time anymore to learn this. I mean, I was two years out and I didn’t have a primary. These are things I’m more than happy – even if I decide to run, it’s not in my interest for any of my primary opponents to do poorly at all. I would be more than happy to share this information, and I mean that. I’m looking to do what’s best…if I did decide to run I know I can win on my merits and I don’t need to win by hoarding information. There’s just so much going on around the state and it’s not like Oklahoma (where) there’s just really a breadbasket of issues and that’s about it. Maryland is not like that; there are very regional problems; natural gas in western Maryland. These are all very important things and they need to know it all.

monoblogue: It’s not exactly “one Maryland” like our governor likes to claim.

Bongino: No, it’s not.

monoblogue: That’s a good place to wrap this up. I appreciate the time!

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Honestly, I could have spent another hour on the phone and there were other items I didn’t check off my list. But this lengthy read will have to do for now. Perhaps when Dan makes up his mind about 2014, I can arrange a return visit.

Next week’s guest will be Jonathan Bydlak, who heads the Coalition to Reduce Spending. It’s a recent addition to the advocacy groups which inhabit Washington, but professes a more unique angle and focus on their pet issue. Look for it next Tuesday.

Removing ‘Citizens United’?

I was actually looking for something else, but sometimes that’s how one stumbles across interesting tales from the other side of the political spectrum. So it is with a group, recently formed in Salisbury, called Move to Amend – Salisbury.

To give you a taste of their political views, this is from their Facebook page:

We are starting a local affiliate of Move to Amend, which is an organization that since 2009 has been challenging the corporate takeover of our democracy (via unlimited campaign contributions or “buying” of candidates) via ballot initiatives, citizens referendums, and the like. The ultimate goal is an Amendment to our Constitution which overturns the Supreme Court decision Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. In case you are unfamiliar with that case, the long and short of it is that since 2010, there are no protections keeping corporate money out of politics. For this reason politicians will increasingly pander to the will of corporations, who are driven by profit motive, and will not weigh the concerns of actual People as heavily. The Amendment we are proposing will define “We the People” as Human Beings only.

This issue is a cornerstone for many issues that affect our democracy. We know that the debate on climate change is limited because both Republican and Democratic candidates receive millions in funding from fossil fuel companies such as the Koch Brothers. We know that the debate on healthcare is limited because both parties are financed by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The parameters for the debate about sustainable farming are determined by chemical fertilizer companies and genetical (sic) modification companies like Monsanto. The interests of the People for healthy, sustainable, just futures cannot be served alongside the short term money interests of these gigantic amoral entities. Our political leaders must be accountable to Human people, and individual votes, not to boards of directors and multi-million dollar bribes.

Did you know the Koch Brothers are a fossil fuel company and Monsanto is a genetical modifier? Me neither. I thought they said corporations weren’t people. But there’s one thing I’d be curious about, and that’s whether they feel the same way about unions extracting dues from their members for political use.

The Move to Amend movement is one of those national organizations which has a series of local affiliates, of which Salisbury’s is new enough to not be listed yet. Of course, they’d like to see corporate money eliminated from politics and don’t equate money with free speech, so my question to them is: what is free speech then?

Their local goals are a bit more modest, though:

The idea is that with a handful of supporters we will attend a City Council meeting and make a presentation about passing a municipal resolution, similar to those already passed in 137 other cities nationwide. These resolutions all add to the critical mass needed to put a new Constitutional Amendment before the American People for a vote… on whether or not to overturn Citizens United and once more return democracy to the People, not Corporations.

I’m sorely tempted to attend their meeting on Thursday night just to see how far they get with their goals, and also remind them the American people don’t vote on Constitutional amendments. We are still a republic, not a democracy or tyranny by Executive Order – at least not quite yet:

The second meeting of Move to Amend’s agenda will include: (1) hearing from the study group members who committed to learning about Constitutional issues relating to the passing of an amendment, and also from the study group members who committed to researching ways to “blunt” the impact of Citizens United (short of the proposed Amendment itself). (2) We will vote on the exact language of our proposed ballot initiative. (3) We will mobilize to get the ballot initiative on the ballot!

Of course, given the makeup of our City Council I wouldn’t be surprised to see this on the ballot and the half-asleep Salisbury electorate which bothers to show up might be dumb enough to pass it – that is, unless they do their homework.

But let’s go back to why Citizens United went to court in the first place:

At issue are sections of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) that imposed a blackout period before elections on television advertisements that mentioned the name of a federal candidate — electioneering communications…the United States Supreme Court, in Federal Election Commission vs. Wisconsin Right to Life, ruled that groups could not be prohibited from running genuine issue ads, during the blackout period, but the FEC has insisted that such groups must still put disclaimers on the ads and file reports about the ads, including naming their contributors. Citizens United is challenging these disclosure requirements, arguing the ads for the film, Hillary: The Movie, is a commercial ad, exempted in recent FEC rulemaking, and that disclosure requirements cannot be applied to such ads consistent with the First Amendment.

It was not because of the whole “corporations are people” red herring, but to contest the ill-advised McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws which turned out to benefit the very entrenched power brokers Move to Amend claims to be against. Moreover, it matters not who contributes to an election because the people have the final say.

Yet having the freedom to contribute to a political campaign is, to me, an expression of free speech. It’s the same typical leftwing cadre in Salisbury which has its panties in a wad about this subject, and Move to Amend is just another effort at corporation-bashing and stifling speech they don’t agree with on their part.

MDGOP to Democrats: return “dirty contributions”

Well, this is an interesting case indeed.

It seems that a Catonsville developer flouted campaign contribution laws by soliciting associates of his to make “straw donations” on his behalf to a Democratic Baltimore County Council member. Multiple reports relate that Stephen Whalen is on the hook for over $50,000 in fines for these transgressions.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe in campaign contribution limits so the Whalen conviction was a witch hunt of sorts. Yet there is a side to the story which should be exposed and that’s the sheer number of candidates and slates that Whalen and his companies made nearly $200,000 in contributions to over the last several years. Most of us who follow the law know that the limit for a state election cycle is $4,000 in donations to a particular candidate and $10,000 in total for the cycle.

David Ferguson of the MDGOP sent me a list of those who benefited from the largess, and it reads like a who’s who of Baltimore-area Democratic politics (with a couple exceptions.) Let’s start from the top, shall we?

  • Democratic National Committee
  • National Association Industrial & Office Parks PAC
  • President Barack Obama
  • Former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • Congressman Elijah Cummings (7th District)
  • Former Congressman Frank Kratovil (1st District)
  • Governor Martin O’Malley
  • Comptroller Peter Franchot
  • State Senator Delores Kelly
  • State Senator Edward Kasemeyer
  • House Speaker Delegate Michael Busch
  • Delegate Emmitt Burns
  • Delegate Adrienne Jones
  • Delegate Stephen DeBoy
  • Delegate James Malone
  • Delegate Stephen Lafferty
  • Delegate Peter Hammen
  • 23rd District Slate
  • District 12A Slate
  • Howard County Executive Ken Ulman
  • Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz
  • Former Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith
  • Baltimore County Council member Vicki Almond
  • Baltimore County Council member Kenneth Oliver
  • Baltimore County Council member Cathy Bevins

It’s not the whole list, as there were a few primary losers in the bunch. There were also five Republicans named, with Bob Ehrlich and Baltimore County Council members David Marks and Todd Huff the three winners among the group. (Marks has returned his contributions from Whalen.)

Ferguson condemned the Democrats who have been recipients of over 95% of Whalen’s generosity. In a statement, the MDGOP’s Executive Director says:

Those who have received contributions from Stephen Whalen should follow the lead of Baltimore County Councilman David Marks and return his dirty contributions. Whalen gave over 96% of his contributions to Democrats and it is unacceptable for nearly $200,000 to be floating through the Democrat Party’s coffers from an individual convicted of political corruption.

Stephen Whalen’s conviction is another consequence of Maryland being a political monopoly for Democrats and their cronies. Unfortunately, this culture of corruption is standard operating procedure for crooked politicians and donors like Stephen Whalen looking to pay-for-play. For six years, Martin O’Malley and his allies have willfully embraced the lack of ethics in their government.

There’s no doubt that money may have been the lubricant for Whalen to grease the skids on getting his developments built: his company’s website states they specialize in medical office space around the outskirts of Baltimore.

(I find it somewhat ironic, then, that he supports many of the same Democrats who have voted to curtail growth in rural and suburban areas. Perhaps there’s more infrastructure in areas Whalen is interested in.)

So once again the state’s majority party is caught with its hand in the cookie jar, but do they condemn this violation of the law? No, they’d rather take potshots at Andy Harris for voting against a pork-laden hurricane relief bill. Their silence on the transgression is deafening and speaks volumes about the corruption they’re happy to put up with for political gain.

Odds and ends number 67

It’s very funny that I had a slowdown in newsworthy items around the holidays, so much so that I didn’t figure on doing an O&E post until perhaps mid-month. But over the last two days – bang! And here you are: bloggy snippets of goodness I felt were worth covering but not to the extent of a full post, just for a paragraph to three.

I’m going to start by promoting an event I plan on attending. Here’s what the Wicomico Society of Patriots has to say about their upcoming meeting January 15. The speaker will be Carroll County Commissioner and leading liberty advocate Richard Rothschild:

Who should attend?  Anyone who intends to continue to live and work on the Eastern Shore.  Elected officials will be in attendance.  This legislation impacts all of us, regardless of political orientation or affiliation, and all are invited to attend, listen, and question.  Two short videos will precede Commissioner Rothschild’s presentation to be followed by a question and answer session.  Mark your calendars now; you do not want to miss this meeting.  Alert your family, friends and neighbors. (Emphasis in original.)

Well, I’m alerting my neighbors and anyone else who stops by here. This will be a joint meeting of both the Worcester and Wicomico Society of Patriots, and will be held Tuesday, January 15 at 6 p.m. at Mister Paul’s Legacy Restaurant (1801 N. Salisbury Boulevard in Salisbury), a very nice facility familiar to those who follow liberty locally.

The SB236 law is perhaps the most heinous assault on property rights the state has ever produced in the name of Chesapeake Bay. In return for addressing a tiny percentage of the nitrogen problem in the Chesapeake, thousands of rural landowners could have their properties rendered worthless. So far Wicomico County has not submitted a map to the state, which in theory prevents certain subdivisions from being built at the present time.

A more damning check on progress is the national economy, but that’s a different subject. One potentially negative effect was discussed by Herman Cain in a recent commentary and it bears repeating, See if we haven’t heard this refrain in Maryland a time or two:

Democrats do not understand business very well. They don’t understand that when you pass a law that imposes new costs on businesses, those businesses will do what they can to mitigate the effects of those costs. When you make it more costly to hire people, there will not be as many people hired.

The fact that these real-world impacts are now being announced, as if no one anticipated them, is both entertaining and highly disturbing. We are being governed by people who don’t understand the impacts of their policies, people who think they can simply mandate anything and it will happen with no unintended consequences. I hope their ignorance doesn’t cost you your job.

You can say what you will about his support for the FairTax and the (unsubstantiated) allegations which derailed his run for President, but Herman Cain has common sense a-plenty about the effects of government regulation on the economy. The language of “mitigating costs” has real-world effects: cuts in hours and smaller paychecks for many millions of families whose breadwinners labor in a number of service industries, particularly food service. They may need to take a second (or third) job to make ends meet, and who knows how many out there are hiring?

And don’t dare rush from second job to third job either, at least in Maryland. A recent appeal from the Maryland Liberty PAC has these memorable lines:

Every speed camera in Maryland is an ATM machine for Martin O’Malley and his cronies in Annapolis.

Instead of cutting out wasteful spending to make ends meet like our families do, O’Malley invents new schemes to rob us of every penny we earn.

If you don’t think that’s true, consider that I personally witnessed the mobile speed cameras in operation during schools’ winter break on at least two occasions. I thought the idea was to make schools safer during the school year. (Yet they balk at allowing teachers to have guns.)

Of course, a couple years ago I told you how one local municipality was bending the rules, so those of you who read here know that speed cameras are truly a scam to fatten both county coffers and those of the operators who expect this to be a big business going forward. Rather than “reform and revisiting the speed camera law,” the Maryland Liberty PAC has the grand idea of having the speed camera law repealed. I fully support that effort.

I’m not as passionate, though, about one blogger’s call on Delegate Don Dwyer to resign now after being charged in the wake of a boating accident last summer. Certainly Dwyer has serious charges against him, but I would rather wait until his day in court has come and his fate is determined. Perhaps this was a “‘one-time occurrence’ which will not affect his performance in Annapolis.” (Oh wait, that was when Delegate Kumar Barve was arrested for DWI in 2007.)

The hypocrisy angle has been played up gleefully on the left, and if Dwyer is convicted I may change my mind. But the facts in the case seem to suggest the other boater was perhaps more at fault for the accident which left five children and Dwyer injured, so I think caution is in order.

Less cautious is the group Accuracy in Media, which released a statement that sees the acquisition of Al Gore’s little-watched Current TV by Al Jazeera as “an unacceptable danger to American citizens by further adding to the potential for home-grown Jihadists inspired by Al Jazeera’s inflammatory programming.” They also note that Time Warner Cable is dropping the channel.

While the punch line has generally involved Al Gore, the fact that he’s walking away with $100 million in what can be termed oil money has no lack of irony. And to think, he could have taken Glenn Beck’s money instead.

Yet there’s another side of the Al Jazeera issue not being mentioned:

The hearings, (Accuracy in Media head Cliff) Kincaid said, should also examine the fact that 30 public television stations around the U.S. are already airing Al Jazeera in violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules.

Florida broadcaster Jerry Kenney uncovered this aspect of the scandal and filed an FCC complaint over it. He discovered that Al Jazeera and other foreign propaganda channels are being provided to public television stations through the MHz Networks division of the Virginia-based Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation.

This is a list of stations affiliated with the MHz Networks – notice many of them are in large cities with a significant Islamic population.

But the government’s lack of oversight doesn’t stop there. In a new study, the Center for Immigration Studies criticized the federal government for not enforcing visa laws:

Report author David North, a CIS fellow and respected immigration policy researcher, comments, “It is incredible that after the would-be Wall Street bomber, the Times Square bomber, and the two 9/11 pilots were all found to have student visas, the Department of Homeland Security makes so little effort to pursue corrupt visa mills, flight schools not authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration, and needless language schools. National security requires the enforcement of our immigration laws.”

Interesting tidbit: very little taxpayer money goes to this agency, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP.) They make most of their money on a $200 fee would-be students pay. But the SEVP apparently doesn’t care whether the student is going to an elite university or diploma mill set up to give foreign students a reason to come to the country – as long as they collect the fees it seems like they’re happy campers. Sounds like a typical governmental agency.

Another typical government move was pointed out by a group you’re going to be hearing more about in a couple weeks. The Coalition to Reduce Spending called the recent fiscal cliff agreement the product of a “can-kicking Congress.” CRS head Jonathan Bydlak also noted:

The longer Congress continues to act fiscally irresponsible, the longer the American people will have to wait for the return of a healthy and prosperous economy.

He’s precisely right on that assertion. And the reason you’ll hear more from the group: Bydlak is also the January 15 “Ten Question Tuesday” guest, and that plug is a good point to bring this post to a close.

Harris votes to keep Boehner as Speaker. Not exactly conservative or gutsy.

Since I was away all day working and stopped listening to talk radio after the election, I came home to find out that John Boehner had been re-elected the Speaker of the House. So much for those bated-breath rumors that:

  • Boehner was going to resign, or
  • There were anywhere from 20 to 30 Republicans ready and willing to vote against Boehner on the first ballot, denying him victory, and/or
  • Boehner would step aside in favor of another if he didn’t win the first ballot. Eric Cantor was one choice, Jim Jordan was another.

Instead, only 12 Republicans put their careers on the line and decided to support either a more presumably conservative alternative or no one at all (h/t Becca Lower – Lowering the Boom):

Becca has the list of nine, plus the “present” vote. The other two didn’t cast a vote, and Andy Harris was not among those either.

So the guy who was bold enough to vote against the “fiscal cliff” and wouldn’t support “Plan B” didn’t follow through on eliminating from power the person who negotiated these deals. I don’t know about you, but I’m shaking my head as well. What happened to the guy who was unafraid to be the lone voice of opposition to bad bills burning their way through the Maryland Senate? Was there a threat made regarding his committee position?

(I suppose the question could – and should – be asked by constituents of Representatives Trent Franks and Jim Jordan, who exhibited a similar voting pattern, but I’ll leave that to Arizona and Ohio bloggers, respectively. Jordan represents an area of my home state not far from where I grew up but lives in the southern part of the district. Still, it’s a rock-ribbed conservative region.)

Frankly, I’m disappointed that Harris gave in to the majority, even if no candidate was running against Boehner. He could have simply voted “present” or selected another person more qualified than the current Speaker.

It’s getting tiresome to see our side continually give ground yet continue to elect the same failed leadership. Do I believe we could have more effective Congressional leadership? Yes. Do I believe we can and should have Republican Party leadership that’s more assertive? You betcha. Otherwise, why should we even bother to be the opposition?

Some are going to tell me, “look at the election results.” All I see is that our President barely squeaked out a majority against a candidate who was apparently going through the motions. Barack Obama fooled enough of the people enough of the time to win, although he did so by masterful usage of data and willing dupes volunteers, I will grudgingly admit. He also had just enough of a coattail to pull through two additional Senators, but only a handful of Democratic House members. It was hardly a wave election like 2010 was.

We need stronger leadership, someone to take the bull by the horns, project a clear choice (like something along these lines), and seize the narrative. (It’s almost unfortunate, for example, that Tim Scott was elevated to the Senate – imagine liberal heads exploding had he been selected as Speaker of the House.) Unfortunately, too many people like that have no interest in the political rough-and-tumble.

So color me disappointed by this vote. Someone asked me, though, whether we should primary Andy Harris because he voted against Grover Norquist the other night. (It’s a comment to this post.) Well, first of all, Grover Norquist was wrong because there was really no question the Bush tax rates would be extended – the argument was over just how many would benefit. I think voting against the fiscal cliff deal isn’t a vote for higher taxes but instead the higher principle of a flatter tax system which doesn’t punish producers.

I look at it this way: I don’t mind contested primaries. We didn’t happen to have one on the GOP side in 2012, but that doesn’t mean we won’t in 2014. Let those chips fall where they may and the Republican voters decide. Hopefully they make a smarter choice than Andy did in this instance – besides, he has two years to mend fences and explain his curious choice.

Timely advice, but will it be useful?

Thanks to my friend Muir Boda, I came across an interesting snippet on the Maryland Libertarians’ Facebook page:

Fellow Freedom Fighters,

The mainstream media loves to ignore pro-freedom candidates. Their refusal to acknowledge Ron Paul, for example, became so blatant that it was featured on the Daily Show.

The same is almost always true for Libertarian candidates for Senate, Congress, Governor, State Representative…any candidate that threatens the two party statist oligarchy gets ignored.

Today, we begin a new program to systematically break into the media, and make sure that America starts to get complete, honest, and accurate reporting. If you are interested in getting involved in online journalism, please contact Shane Wittig at wittig.shane@gmail.com, or on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/shane.wittig.

Shane currently writes articles for the examiner.com, where he can provide accurate and unbiased political coverage. He can help you learn more about the process of writing for sites like examiner.com, which are becoming increasingly important in today’s media. Even if you write just one accurate article a week, you can help advance the joint causes of liberty and honesty.

Of course, having written for the Examiner website on two different occasions, I have some familiarity with them. My experience with them has been mixed at best, although perhaps my aims were a little bit different than those sought by the national Libertarian Party (the original source of this information.) While Examiners don’t make a whole lot of money from having the space there (I think my best month was around $40 and the payout formula has gotten worse since) they do have some readership. Unfortunately that readership tends to cluster in the lifestyle and celebrity portions of the Examiner site. Politics tends to be one of the many redheaded stepchildren in the Examiner‘s overall scheme. (If my memory serves – and it generally does – Muir Boda is the Maryland Libertarian Examiner, so he also should know.)

But any exposure is good exposure, which leads to the second part of my criticism. Truly this goes for anyone who wants to write commentary.

Almost anyone can write a blog post, but not everyone can write newsworthy articles or insightful opinion pieces. It’s somewhat of an acquired skill, although having a little natural talent at selecting just the right word to convey a thought doesn’t hurt. But in order to write one good, accurate article a week from an amateur’s perspective, the subject is probably not going to be something that’s up-to-the-minute news. What this market needs, then, is news brought from a different perspective, a fresh angle none of the others think of.

Let’s look at the Libertarians’ complaint: their candidates don’t get enough ink. We on the conservative side can relate to that, although in our case we get barrels of ink – it’s just that the media coverage shown to us tends to attempt to portray our side in the worst light possible. For example, the coverage of the “fiscal cliff” seemed to focus most on whether the Republican House would choose to continue tax cuts for the wealthy, not that the whole prospect could have been avoided had the Democratic-controlled Senate either a) passed a budget, which it has not for the last three years and counting, or b) taken up the House-passed plan sooner than a few days before the self-imposed D-day. (It was passed by the House several months ago.) Yet that word didn’t get out because the majority of people in this nation receive their news from mainstream media outlets (if they listen to them at all) and don’t do their homework.

Perhaps the secret isn’t just being featured on websites like the Examiner one, but using other avenues to announce to the people there is an alternative viewpoint. Examiners have the option to trumpet their work on Facebook and Twitter, which is good but not enough. As for me, I’ve done Facebook for quite awhile but I was slow to catch on to the marketing potential of Twitter, and am trying to catch up. (I can be followed there: @ttownjotes.)

Still, in many cases you’ll be preaching to the choir. The key with any writing is not just being a reporter or a commentator, but doing so in an interesting fashion which makes people want to read it and achieves the perception of a coherent and sound argument. In most cases misspelled words, poor sentence structure, and obtuse phrasing do as much to destroy an argument as misstating the facts will. This is why I almost obsessively proofread, even after I hit “publish.” In my case, WordPress does a nice job of pointing out my misspelled words but if it’s a misplaced word spelled correctly (like “truck” for “trunk”) the spell checker lets it slide. Sadly, I see this on many mainstream websites, let alone venues where untrained amateur cub reporters roam – Examiner is but one example.

I don’t say this to try to embarrass anyone who’s considering this business or to state that I’m the be-all and end-all of journalism. I know I have a steep learning curve in a lot of areas and I’ve been doing this as a hobby-turned-avocation for the last seven-plus years. If I’d started as a high-school graduate and received a degree in journalism as a substitute for the first four years I did this I’d probably be at the level where maybe I was trusted to write the obituaries at a medium-market paper by now. Yet in my situation I write this (apparently) well-regarded website. It took a lot of practice to get where I am, over 3,300 posts, perhaps a couple million words, and countless lessons which I continue to learn about marketing my work later.

So, my Libertarian friends and any other pro-liberty advocates who may happen across this post, don’t expect to be the second coming of John Stossel overnight. It will take a lot – and I mean a LOT – of writing to gain the credibility necessary to become a trusted pro-liberty voice. If you’re willing to work at it, though, why not give it a crack?

Besides, as poorly-run as the public school system is, the old-line journalists who knew how to write well aren’t being replaced on the liberal side. Here’s the opportunity to begin seizing the narrative.

A chance to meet our next governor?

The question mark above is solely based on the fact his election is by no means certain, but I received word last night that Republican gubernatorial candidate Blaine Young will be in Dorchester County tonight (Thursday, January 3) for a dessert and drinks reception at the Hyatt Regency resort in Cambridge. As he did in Ocean City over the summer, Blaine is holding this in conjunction with the Maryland Association of Counties winter meeting there.

Since I’ve already met Blaine on a couple of occasions, I won’t be attending this particular gathering – although I would encourage Republicans local to Cambridge and nearby Talbot County to take the opportunity. I’ve found Blaine to be approachable and friendly, his events tend to be well-run, and if you leave in want of food and drink it’s your own fault. While this is a meet-and-greet event, I doubt he’d refuse a contribution check if you’re inclined to give one.

One other observation I have about the soiree is that Young is shrewdly leveraging his appropriate attendance at MACo, since he’s the head of the Frederick County Commissioners. (The same would be true for fellow candidate David Craig as he’s the Harford County Executive.) Naturally, MACo will draw a number of other state political figures from both parties since most of them are interested in what the counties have to say. (I daresay there’s a cadre in Annapolis who would rather just run roughshod over them, though.)

The convenience for us locally of having Blaine campaign on the Eastern Shore helps to play up the importance of our region of the state for Republicans. While we have just 7.5% of state voters overall, 1 out of 9 Republicans live in the nine counties which make up the Eastern Shore, and in a primary which promises at least four contenders we can’t be totally ignored in favor of larger counties. Collectively the Eastern Shore is close to the size of several individual counties on the GOP side: Anne Arundel, Baltimore County, and Montgomery. We’ve nearly twice as many GOP voters as Young’s home base of Frederick County.

TTT2013For those who would like to hear Blaine speak more at length in a lecture setting, though, there’s still time to get registered for the Turning the Tides 2013 conference on January 12 in Annapolis. Blaine will be a panelist at the day-long event, with his segment of the day’s proceedings focusing on the “War on the Suburbs: Regional Equity.” (He appears with moderator Marta Mossburg, writer and commentator Stanley Kurtz and Carroll County Commissioner Richard Rothschild to address this topic.)

It’s interesting that those who put together TTT2013 chose that as Young’s topic, though, since he could have also spoken on state government from a small business owner’s perspective as well as spoken on media presence as a radio host. In any case, he’s a welcome addition to the cast.

It’s obvious that Blaine is working hard to get his campaign moving at an early date, which could accrue to his benefit later on. While others are putting together draft campaigns or statements rife with poor writing, Young is out connecting with those who can help him down the road.

The new year

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am not a big fan of the holidays. Perhaps it’s because of other tasks I have to do in my life, but nearly seven weeks out of the year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is a lot of festivity to deal with all at once. (It seems to me more like about three solid months, what with some store getting out their Christmas stuff in early October.) Meanwhile, we sometimes lose sight of other important things when we let our guard down during that period.

I thought about calling this post “back to normalcy” but then I pondered: what is normal anymore? While the holiday season masked a lot of what was going on, the fact that a lot of bad law took effect at the stroke of midnight last night wasn’t lost on me. For example, the Obamacare taxes, by and large, weren’t on the fiscal cliff table.

And about that fiscal cliff: what kind of compromise is it when one side gets practically all of what it wants while the other gets hollow promises of something happening in the future? Let’s try it this way: make $1 trillion of annual spending cuts now and eliminate Obamacare, and we’ll discuss raising taxes later. How far do you think that would fly? They’re asking conservatives to sell out and why should we? Democrats lied to both Reagan and Bush 41 about making spending cuts (remember, they were in the House majority then and generally held sway in the Senate.)

Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to come into a year not fearing the end result but confident things will get better? I sort of sense the same feeling those Baby Boomers among us who were struggling through the Carter era had among a lot of people today who weren’t yet in the workforce back then. (You can count me in among that group, since I was only 12 when Carter was elected.) We really didn’t come out of the Carter recession until about 1984 where I lived; fortunately that was just in time for Ronald Reagan to be re-elected easily. (He even carried Lucas County, my birthplace and home of union-heavy Toledo, by a slim margin. The county in which I was living at the time, GOP stronghold Fulton County, went 73% for Reagan. By comparison, it was only 55% for Romney this time.)

Yet look at what we now think is “normal.” Is 8 percent unemployment acceptable when we had under 5 percent a half-decade ago? Economic growth at 2 percent or less? Seems like the only governmental figure growing at over 5 percent annually is the national debt, as we tack another trillion dollars annually onto a toll now exceeding fifteen trillion dollars. By my public school math, then, that’s increasing at around 6 to 7 percent every year. Is that the new norm as well?

We can – and should – do better.

On Thursday we induct the 113th Congress, which will inherit the still-warm seats of the 112th Congress which seemed to be in no rush to get out of town. Next Wednesday legislators in Maryland will begin their annual session, one which promises higher taxes on working Marylanders who have to fill up their gas tanks, make a certain amount of money, or use tobacco products. It also promises more restrictions on counties and localities who already have their hands firmly tied by Annapolis.

Freedom lovers will also face an increasing headwind in the area of Second Amendment rights as “assault weapons” have become the scapegoat of choice for other societal factors leading up to the Sandy Hook massacre. It’s nothing for certain members of Congress and other lawmakers to wish to violate the Second Amendment in the best of times, but emotions are still running high in the aftermath of the Connecticut incident. Those who are more sane tend to point out that Connecticut was already one of the more restrictive states for gun control, but law didn’t save those murdered. (Isn’t murder against the law? Didn’t seem to stop the assailant, did it?)

So call my glass half-empty right now. I’ll do what I can to restore the country to greatness, but I can’t do it alone.

Harris among ‘no’ votes on fiscal cliff

Good for him. Too bad more Republicans didn’t have a spine.

It also looks like Roscoe Bartlett’s last vote is also against the deal, while all six Maryland Democrats obviously believe in hosing job creators. What do they care? Most of them have districts with overly proportionate numbers of government employees or government wards. Meanwhile, the Democrats are whining that there’s no vote on Hurricane Sandy relief, a bill stuffed with non-essential spending. So John Boehner may cave on that too.

And to think…the 113th Congress will have even fewer Republicans. Maybe next time we’ll show up at the polls enough to overcome the fraudulent press and other factors which led to the 2012 results. Regrets? You’ll have a few.

A new beginning for an old project

If you’ve been around since the beginning of this website, you may recall I have done posts off-and-on in a category called “Ten Questions.” It began as a method of getting interview-style answers out of candidates in the 2006 election, a segment which comprises most of the 49 entries in the category. I then used the format occasionally from 2007-2009 to interview local and national people of renown, with the last “Ten Questions” post being an interview of then-Senate candidate Robert Broadus in 2011.

Well, my intent this time is to have “Ten Question Tuesday” as a regular feature each Tuesday. While most of the interview subjects will be political, the focus won’t strictly be on Maryland politics. Going forward in 2013, I’m going to eventually try and bring a little more of a national profile to this site just as my first subject did to his political race: I thought I would begin with perhaps the most popular Republican currently living in Maryland, recent U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino.

I’m not sure just where this effort will take me, since it will be quite a bit of work securing interviews and putting them together. But in order to improve this website and provide a service to readers, hard work is often necessary.

So look for this to debut at noon next Tuesday. Due to its length – Dan and I (well, mostly Dan) spoke for over 20 minutes – I haven’t decided whether to make it a two-part interview or distill it down to one part. (I look at it this way: you’re not coming here in that instance to read what I have to say!) But I can tell you that Dan should have a dynamic presentation at the MDCAN Turning the Tides 2013 conference on January 12 in Annapolis. I’ll be there, and if you’re trying to bring conservatism to its rightful place atop the Maryland political ladder, you should be too!

But ultimately the ball is in the court of you, the readers. I’m well aware of my readership trends over the years so if I see Tuesday readership is surging I’ll know I have a hit on my hands. As Dan told me in the interview, “media leads to more media,” so I’m going to find out if readership of this feature leads to more readership overall.