March 2015 – Page 2

An open letter to opponents of an elected Board of Education for Wicomico County

It was enlightening to see the main points you brought up in testimony regarding our county’s expressed desire to convert from a fully-appointed Board of Education to a “hybrid” elected and appointed body. In reading the summary presented by Phil Davis in the Daily Times, I seized upon several arguments made against the concept and I’d like to address them here.

The first was the financial argument presented by Senator Montgomery in her line of questioning. Indeed, the county receives a large amount of money from the state for its Board of Education, in part because it’s one of those eight counties (plus Baltimore City) which has “less than 80 percent of the statewide average wealth per pupil” and also has a disproportionate share of those students who must learn English as a second language. Senator Eckardt brought up the difficult economic times the region has seen over the last several years, but that’s not necessarily the correct argument to counter this point.

Rather, one must examine the root of all government money: the taxpayer. Perhaps Senator Montgomery, being from a county chock full of those who work for the federal government, is assuming that everyone has the means and willingness to give government whatever it wants. Instead, we as concerned Wicomico County residents come from that seemingly quaint and disappearing class of people who actually demand accountability for the taxpayer dollars we provide. While the financial books may show that the majority of our school funding comes from the state, it’s worth making the point that we taxpayers are the ones providing the money. Because all state money comes from the labor and toil provided by those who pay taxes at some level, including to the federal government, it follows that we want to keep a relatively close eye on it.

As for the question of community input, it’s worth reminding Mayor Ireton, Mrs. Ashanti, and other opponents that this is not the first time the subject of an elected Board of Education has come up. It’s been a topic of discussion for decades, and the previous edition of County Council resolved to ask Annapolis for a simple straw ballot to determine interest in further legislation only to be thwarted by opponents who charged that the system as proposed did not properly address the concerns of the minority community. To me, that’s a tacit admission that the community interest was there but as proposed an elected Board of Education did not meet with the political desires of the opponents, who generally subscribed to the philosophy of the party holding the governor’s office at the time.

And elections do matter. While the main issues of last fall’s election were the sentiment that the state and local economy was not improving at a satisfactory pace, and that government overall was not being careful with the increasing amount of money they were taking out of our pockets, there was an underlying sentiment that our educational system also needed improvement and accountability. Thus, two key opponents of an elected Board of Education were voted out of office and two proponents were voted in.

Yet the new county government listened to one key demand of the opponents and compromised. Personally, I was not happy that the fully-elected Board of Education was replaced by a version with two appointed members and five elected – our version of a “hybrid” model counties who have recently shifted from a fully appointed board have used – but I understand the politics behind the move, and that time was of the essence to bring the proposal before the current session of the General Assembly. Yet my suspicion is that the opponents know what the public input will be, and that’s a resounding approval of this proposal when placed before the voters.

Next is the interesting point brought up by Mr. Johnson of the WCEA regarding the County Executive’s influence on the board and the school’s budget. It’s interesting because he’s fretting over two members of a seven-member board, members who will have no greater voting power than any other member. If the two members appointed by the County Executive disagree with the position of the other five elected members, their opposition will simply amount to the losing end of a 5-2 vote if they can’t convince the other members to adopt their viewpoint.

But I want to conclude with the sentiment expressed by Mayor Ireton and Mrs. Ashanti that, “it was a select few who made the call for an elected school board.” My argument is that it’s a select few who participate in the process now.

For eight years I was a voting member of the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee. As such, one of our tasks was to assist in the appointment of the three Republican members of the Board of Education (at the time; with the election of Governor Hogan the GOP ranks were allowed to expand to four.) Presumably the Democratic Central Committee does the same with their appointees, although I confess that I have a lack of knowledge about their process as I can speak to ours.

Yet despite our vetting of candidates, more often than not the appointee would be determined by the input of others who had interests that were more political in nature. The final say actually comes down to one person: the state’s Secretary of Appointments, who in turn is appointed by the governor. In the case of the most recent previous governor, he was elected despite our county’s support for his opponent. Where was our public input then?

Over the last two weeks, the Republican Central Committee dutifully interviewed prospective members and submitted names to the Secretary of Appointments to fill two vacancies on the Wicomico County Board of Education. We submitted the names of all those who interviewed, expressing only our order of preference, in a process agreed on by the Central Committee.

But because some members of the body aspired to be on the Board of Education and another was absent from the final meeting, it was a bare quorum of five members who decided the order of preference. Five people submitted names to one person to make this decision, and yet this is considered superior to a process where thousands of people would be able to decide those they would like to place in charge of millions of taxpayer dollars?

In November, we elected a County Council and County Executive who will be charged with an annual operating budget of roughly $130 million. Yet the appointed Board of Education is submitting an overall budget for FY2016 in excess of $190 million, of which they are asking the county for $39 million. Once again, let me reiterate that a small group of perhaps fewer than two dozen people at the local and state level had input on who was chosen to oversee that Board of Education budget, a budget nearly 50 percent larger than the county’s operating budget as a whole.

When it comes to maximizing accountability and local control, the verdict is simple: an elected school board – even in this “hybrid” form – is the proper way to proceed. Opponents who wish to maintain the status quo are hiding behind a series of smokescreens to obscure their real issue: the loss of their political influence over who gets to operate Wicomico County’s school system.

Obama: we need mandatory voting. The state of Oregon is on its way.

I ran across part of this story in the Washington Times today, a piece where Barack Obama suggested that America adopt mandatory voting like Australia and a handful of other counties have adopted. In a somewhat strange coincidence, Paula Bolyard at PJ Media reported yesterday that 300,000 Oregonians were summarily added to the voter rolls. There, residents who are not registered to vote but have interacted with their motor vehicle division will receive a ballot in their mail before the election, a move the state estimates will add up to 300,000 voters to the rolls.

Listen, I think everyone who is legally entitled to vote should do so – but we also should have a choice in the matter. People skip voting for many reasons: unfamiliarity or dissatisfaction with those running, the feeling that their vote doesn’t matter, desire to avoid jury duty by not being registered, or a lack of time to do so seem to be the primary ones.

Obama’s main reason for wanting compulsory voting stems from his dislike of the Citizens United decision, saying “it would counteract (campaign) money more than anything.” Of course, the reason campaign money is being spent is to influence the voters and it’s quite likely those who would be dragged into voting because it’s the law would be the most susceptible to 30-second negative advertisements paid for by those very same PACs and SuperPACs Obama decries. In reality, the money would be more effective because the cost per vote would decrease.

More worrisome, though, is the Oregon initiative. The state already has mail-in balloting, but there are few safeguards against illegal voting practices when ballots are sent out in such a manner. This is how the state describes the process:

Oregon has the most convenient voting system in the country. Since adopting vote by mail, Oregon consistently ranks as one of the national leaders in voter turnout.

Registered voters receive a ballot two to three weeks before an election, giving them ample time to research issues or candidates.

Voters also receive an official ballot to complete and insert into the security envelope which is placed in the ballot return envelope and signed by the voter. The ballot return envelope can be stamped and mailed or simply dropped off at any official drop box across the state. If a voter casts his or her ballot after the Wednesday before an election, the ballot should be left at a drop box site to ensure it’s counted.

Now consider that they would send an extra 300,000 ballots to unregistered voters. Do you think they will check the signatures against the drivers’ license records? (That’s assuming they have a driver’s license.)

In essence, the state has full absentee balloting and that’s fine. But it’s the inclusion of those who preferred not to be in the system – or didn’t belong there based on non-citizenship, felony conviction, or other factors such as a different voter receiving the ballot at an incorrect address – that is troubling. Extend those issues out across the country with the mandatory voting Barack Obama desires and there’s abundant potential for fraud.

I simply find the timing on some of these ideas interesting, given that voter turnout was the lowest since World War II in the 2014 election and Democrats were blown out in most of the country. And while Oregon was one area Democrats did manage to hold serve, their Democratic governor recently resigned due to a criminal probe. Unlike most other states, John Kitzhaber was not succeeded by a lieutenant governor but by his secretary of state, Kate Brown. Brown is interesting in that she ran the electoral process in Oregon before becoming governor and was one of those backed by the Secretary of State Project led by far-left billionaire George Soros.

Apparently what goes around comes around, and Oregon will be a place to watch in 2016.

O’Malley PMT regs pass legislative hurdle

An amended version of the O’Malley Phosphorus Management Tool regulations passed the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee on a 7-4 party line vote, setting it up for review by the full Senate at an unspecified future date.

You may recall that one of Larry Hogan’s first actions as governor was to unceremoniously yank the PMT regulations hours before the deadline for publication in the Maryland Register, only to come back a few weeks later with retooled regulations of his own. However, those regulations weren’t good enough for environmental groups and they’re supporting the original version as it winds its way through the General Assembly.

So while Hogan’s Agriculture Phosphorus Initiative regulations have been proposed (but not yet placed in the Maryland Register), the Democratic counterpart has moved a step closer to passage. It’s worth noting that the Senate is still 33-14 Democrat, so even if the one Democrat representing an agricultural area (Jim Mathias) breaks with his party it’s still likely to pass with a vetoproof Senate majority.

One change from the last election is the wipeout of most of the moderate, centrist Democrats in the General Assembly to be replaced by conservative Republicans. This will be key if the O’Malley PMT regulations make it through the process, as it’s likely Governor Hogan would veto them. With 50 House Republicans, the chances of a veto override in the House are much slimmer as only a handful of Democrats need to back Hogan and the GOP to sustain the veto. With seven more Republicans in that body, presumably they’re more reliable administration supporters than the Democrats they replaced.

Yet this uncertainty places a number of farmers, particularly on the Lower Shore, in a sort of administrative limbo as they can’t predict how the 2015 growing season will shake out as far as the usage of manure on their fields. We’re only a few short weeks away from planting for many farmers who don’t have winter wheat in their fields. Lower Shore farmers are especially affected because about 1 in 5 would face an immediate ban on applying manure to their fields under the Hogan regulations. (Many have already started, though, as the first of March brought the end of the state’s winter prohibition on the practice.)

Of course the agricultural community, forced to pick its poison, would prefer the Agriculture Phosphorus Initiative to the bill going through the General Assembly. (One important caveat, though: SB257 was passed “with amendment” but the amendments weren’t available as I wrote this.) But the General Assembly bill would take precedence over any regulations Hogan writes, so it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that April 14 can’t come quickly enough for that community.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again

One hopes this will be a cruel April Fools’ joke, but for many on the Eastern Shore it may only be a cruel reality.

Delegate Christopher Adams shared the bad news:

United Health Care has decided to dramatically narrow their network of pharmacies on the Eastern Shore effective April 1st. This new decision will cause residents to drive upwards of 30 miles to get a prescription filled and be the end of the local pharmacy.

It appears that this is another one of those “hidden” consequences of OBAMACARE and Gov. O’Malley’s decision to make Maryland first with implementing OBAMACARE.

Nevertheless, driving 30 miles to get a prescription filled by one of the State’s “favored” pharmacists is wholly unacceptable. I am meeting with United Health Care tomorrow in a first step to ultimately reverse or greatly modify this decision.

According to a source in the know, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene sets the criteria for considering a patient to be “covered” and it depends on their location, stating,”as long as pharmacies are within 10 miles in urban, 20 miles in suburban and 30 miles of patients in rural communities the standards for access to care are met.” So if you are in a town like Crisfield, where the nearest “chain” drugstore is the Rite Aid in Princess Anne or Pocomoke City – each about 20 miles away – you are “covered” but it’s not nearly as convenient as a local independent pharmacy. On the Lower Shore stores of the big three chains (CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens) are only found in Berlin, Cambridge, Delmar, Ocean City, Pocomoke City, Princess Anne, and Salisbury. It leaves large coverage gaps in rural areas which may have a pharmacy no longer used for the Medicare programs.

Obviously United Healthcare can choose whoever they want to be in their networks. But the problem with the health care system we are slowly, surely, and not necessarily willingly adopting is that cost is the primary consideration, not patient care. It’s been true ever since we’ve had a third party paying for our medical expenses, but it wasn’t so long ago that we had many more options for our care. Those days are now over as some former providers have left the state, leaving us with fewer from which to choose.

What Adams points out is that Martin O’Malley’s decision to jump right ahead with a fairly restrictive state exchange is now making life more difficult for the people it was supposed to help. Obviously there’s a lot of recovery needed on a national scale just to get back to a system which most were satisfied with, even though some chose not to participate by not purchasing health insurance and some could not afford it. Now while everyone is supposed to have health insurance (or pay a tax penalty) we find that care is even more expensive and difficult to obtain.

Chris isn’t going to get a lot of answers, I’m afraid, because it appears the die has been cast. And as a state legislator his impact on the national argument is small. But even if some of the independent pharmacies in under-served areas are added back in, it would be a step in the right direction. There may be a chain drugstore on every corner in Salisbury, but some of the smaller towns still cling to their local drugstore because it’s a sufficient size to cover the small market of a little village.

Thirty miles is a long way to go to get a prescription. That may be necessary for a need late at night or on a weekend, but for most refills and common items it shouldn’t be a requirement.

Pro-life community shows its support

Last night supporters of the Eastern Shore Pregnancy Center turned out in force to assist the organization with its 2015 goals. The occasion was the first annual spring coffeehouse and benefit concert fundraiser, held at Providence Presbyterian Church.

Youth was the rule for the music at this event, beginning with an a capella group of young children called Rivers of Living Water and also featuring a group of 13-year-old triplets called (naturally enough) Triple Praise. Both sang spirituals and hymns, with Triple Praise employing recorded background music.

Even the adult groups tended to be on the youthful side, with Beauty for Ashes dedicating songs to their young children featured in the slide show that was playing behind them.

The married couple leading this group has a pair of three-year-old twin girls.

Similarly, Steve and Olivia (or Liv and Steve, as they billed themselves) are also recent parents. This shot also gives you an idea of how many were there – my guess is about 150 people.

In their own way, all four groups were entertaining although none of them played more than a handful of songs. The event was only a couple hours long and it also featured testimony from a young parent of three named Danaica Pierrot as well as remarks from ESPC Executive Director Jacquelyn Seldon.

Seldon was pleased about the progress the ESPC has made since acquiring a sonogram unit last year, but outlined a couple of worthy goals for this year: spreading the message on billboards near local university campuses in order to reach college-age prospective parents, and following up on the permission they were granted by the Wicomico County Board of Education to promote their services in the local high schools.

Of course, this event was also serving as a fundraiser. And while there were envelopes and donation slips on each table, the opportunity was also there to bid on a number of interesting, intriguing, and useful items. This was just one of three long tables the group had, with 35 different lots up for bids.

With the silent auction and the table top appeals, I’m pleased to report the event raised over $4,000 for the ESPC. But then that’s not to say they won’t take donations outside the event as well, and they definitely can use them because the need is there. They’re not getting even a tiny fraction of the $528 million Planned Parenthood received from government, in part as PP “fought abortion stigma in popular culture.”

I’m probably injecting far more politics in this report than many would feel comfortable with, for it was truly an apolitical event. Yet I would wager that most of those attending last night’s benefit would not participate in that “stigma” but would instead encourage and counsel those who made that choice. For those who are expecting, though, the range of options is much larger than groups like Planned Parenthood would have you believe, and the worthy goal of the ESPC is to bring that number who choose abortion in the Salisbury region down from its present 300 or so to as few as possible.

Will Maryland join a Convention of States or an Article V Convention?

By Cathy Keim

The push for an Article V Convention is growing nationwide, and it is coming from both sides of the political spectrum. The citizens are aware that they are not being heard and they are looking for ways to correct this.

An Article V Convention or Convention of the States is one of two ways to amend the Constitution of the United States. In case you’ve forgotten, here is Article V:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, (emphasis added) or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate

All previous amendments have been through Congress. However, the Convention of States method has been utilized to put pressure on Congress to act. For example, the states wanted to have direct election of their senators but Congress would not oblige – so the states began the process of calling for a convention of states. Once they got within one state of achieving the two thirds needed, Congress acted rather than losing its prerogative. (This led to the Seventeenth Amendment.)

Maryland has legislation under consideration now which states:

Applying to the U.S. Congress for an amendments convention called under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that affirms every citizen’s freedom to vote and restores free and fair elections in America.

This bill is filed as HJ2 by Delegate Sheila Hixson and is cross-filed with SJ2 by Senator Paul Pinsky. It was introduced last session also, but did not come to the floor for a vote. (Editor’s note: The Senate version from 2014, however, passed committee 9-2 with all three Republicans on the Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee voting yes.)

Reading the bill summary left me perplexed. Who thinks we need an amendment to restore free and fair elections? My mind thought of voter fraud, but who would want to amend the Constitution to fix that issue? After some phone calls to Delegate Hixson and Senator Pinsky’s offices, though, the confusion was cleared up.

This bill is the result of the work of Get Money Out of Maryland (GMOM) and its allies. They claim to be bipartisan, but the groups in the allies list lean distinctly progressive.

The bills have a total of sixty-nine sponsors of which two are Republicans, so I suppose that makes it bipartisan.

GMOM states:

The Citizens United v FEC decision by the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for unlimited campaign expenditures in elections, which corporations and the extremely wealthy have used with devastating impact in the last few elections. This misguided decision reversed decades of campaign finance regulation at the state and federal level, turning our public elections into private auctions. With regard to voting rights, Supreme Court justices in the Bush v Gore decision declared that there is no individual right to vote in the Constitution and in its aftermath, there has been a concerted attack upon the right to vote across the country. These legal travesties require remedy if we are going to preserve representative democracy and create a more perfect union. (Emphasis in original.)

According to Senator Pinsky’s spokesman, the principal point of this amendment is that there is too much money in politics since the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case opened the floodgates. GMOM wants the Citizens United ruling reversed so the only option is to exert pressure on Congress via an Article V Convention to amend the Constitution. Their expectation is that Congress will act if the states approach the two-thirds approval level as happened with the direct election of senators.

GMOM states that Vermont, California, Illinois, and New Jersey have already passed the “Democracy” amendment and several other states, such as Maryland, are considering the bill now.

Working from the opposite side of the political spectrum is the group Citizens for Self-Governance which states:

Citizens concerned for the future of their country, under a federal government that’s increasingly bloated, corrupt, reckless and invasive, have a constitutional option. We can call a Convention of States to return the country to its original vision of a limited federal government that is of, by and for the people.

They also add:

Rather than calling a convention for a specific amendment, Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG) has launched the Convention of the States Project to urge state legislatures to properly use Article V to call a convention for a particular subject—reducing the power of Washington, D.C. It is important to note that a convention for an individual amendment (e.g. a Balanced Budget Amendment) would be limited to that single idea. Requiring a balanced budget is a great idea that CSG fully supports. Congress, however, could comply with a Balanced Budget Amendment by simply raising taxes. We need spending restraints as well. We need restraints on taxation. We need prohibitions against improper federal regulation. We need to stop unfunded mandates.

Both sides of the debate assure their followers that the Article V Convention cannot spiral out of control and rewrite the entire Constitution once they convene. Their main defense against this is that any amendment that comes out of the convention still has to be approved by three quarters of the states, thus giving ample room for rogue amendments to be stopped.

You may want to keep an eye on how Maryland’s effort plays out this legislative session – although from the progressive side, it still illustrates the discontent that is growing as citizens realize that their overlords in DC are not listening to them. It is striking (and terrifying) that the progressives feel that President Obama is not doing enough to reach their goals, while the conservatives feel attacked and denigrated by their weak and ineffective leadership under Speaker Boehner and Senate Leader McConnell.

Perhaps the only people happy with the current system are the politicians that are in power and the wealthy elites and crony capitalists that consort with and fund their campaigns. Outside that narrow group, there is a battle brewing.

monoblogue music: “Damaged” (single) by Liz Graham

As a single release, you would think that Liz Graham’s song Damaged would get a brief review, and it will.

But if you consider it a stepping stone on a long, winding path toward redemption of a musical career it hopefully makes for a more interesting review. And it will.

Liz Graham was once a up-and-coming name to be reckoned with in the musical world. In the mid 1990s she appeared at Lilith Fair, won several local awards in the New York area, and released an album that she says sold over 100,000 copies “with virtually no promotion behind it.” Had this all happened 15 years later, it would be considered a huge success but this was a time before the internet and social media helped define our culture. So with the turn of the millennium, Liz was more or less forgotten.

Yet for some reason this year of reviews has featured a number of performers who have been on the shelf for a long time, even some who released material recorded decades ago. In Liz’s case, though, Damaged is actually the second in a series of singles I’m presuming will be featured on a follow-up to her self-titled album she released last year. This single is actually scheduled for release on April 10, following another single called Charcoal On A Canvas she put out earlier this month. But the Damaged video is already out on YouTube so here’s your shot to listen for yourself.

Indeed, the song is firmly placed in the adult contemporary ranks she’s aiming herself toward. But after listening to some of her other songs on her ReverbNation site and home website, I’m convinced Damaged is just a little bit of a weaker track than the others – in particular, Charcoal On A Canvas and Climb On My Walls (from her first CD) are better songs. Musically it’s fine but I’m just not feeling the lyrical angst from Damaged.

One thing I can say about her prospects, though, is that she has a unique way of promoting herself, even promising online concerts streamed from her kitchen (“coming soon.”) Obviously she has her own way of doing things and that may have led to a self-imposed obscurity.

But as she tries to work her way back she will need a little bit stronger material than this single. To get to the level of success she had, you know she was capable of better so I look forward to seeing if her upcoming songs meet that expectation.

The steep learning curve

Over the last few months I’ve given a little bit of attention to the campaign Ben Carson is running for President. He was one of the earliest informal entrants, in part because of a grassroots campaign that began after he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013.

But his cause has been sidetracked by something he said on CNN the day after he announced his exploratory committee. It was in regard to same-sex marriage, which Carson opposes, but what came out of his mouth had to make all but the most ardent Carson supporters cringe. I wrote about the original comments in the Patriot Post last week. In that article I predicted that Ben’s vow to drop the issue wouldn’t last long; sure enough, he took to social media to again revise and extend his remarks.

Being a political neophyte, he doesn’t know that this will now be his defining issue, and that’s a shame. Odds are, though, that not only will this question dog Carson through the remainder of his campaign – however far it goes – but it will become a hot topic at any and all GOP presidential primary debates. As I point out at the Patriot Post, you won’t catch them asking Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton about the poorly-performing inner-city schools or any of a number of other failures of the present administration, but any time they can set up a social issue “gotcha” question they will take the opportunity. Consider how Maryland Democrats tried to trap Larry Hogan on social issues in the 2014 gubernatorial campaign – Hogan eluded their efforts and won.

What’s funny about all this is that, for the most part, I agree with Carson’s stance on the gay marriage issue. Civil unions are just fine with me, but when you co-opt the term “marriage” that becomes a problem. I still define marriage as between a man and woman, but insofar as the legalities of being “married” I think civil unions can easily be made equal. Yes, it should be a state issue, but the problem is that most states have been browbeaten into accepting gay marriage by the courts and not necessarily a groundswell of support – look how close the General Assembly vote in Maryland was and ask yourself if there was broad, overwhelming support for the issue. It took a politically motivated change of heart from Barack Obama and presidential election turnout to push the issue over the top – had the referendum been on the 2014 ballot it may well have repealed the law.

Yet we went through all that to pass a law which has affected fewer than 30,000 people based on this assumption:

The 23% increase in the number of marriages between 2012 and 2013 (to 40,456) is thought to be largely attributed to the legalization of same-sex marriages that went into effect on January 1, 2013 in Maryland.

Using my public school math, that’s about 8,000 same-sex marriages performed in 2013, with likely a somewhat smaller figure in 2014 as the most dedicated couples probably tied the knot right away. How many would have gone the civil union route if it were available?

Here’s the problem as I see it, with Maryland a significant microcosm of the nation as a whole. It’s been said by John Adams that:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

While it is the Creator’s job to judge and not mine, I think I have a pretty keen sense of the obvious that we are in a society full of “human passions unbridled by morality and religion.” More recently, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined a term for this decline: “defining deviancy down.” In either case, the question about whether we are indeed “a moral and religious people” is getting more and more open by the day when you consider that, at the time Moynihan wrote his piece, the question of gay marriage wouldn’t have come up because it was such a fringe concept. (That was barely two decades ago, by the way.)

But the genie is out of the bottle now, and standing for a Biblical-based morality on many subjects is considered out of step to opinion leaders in the press. Those who appeal to values voters should expect the same sort of trap questions as they continue on with their campaigns.

Further humiliation?

When Barbara Mikulski announced she wouldn’t seek another term the other day, one thing I pointed out was the effect on downticket races for Congress. Sure enough, we already have two members of Maryland’s Congressional delegation signaling their intent to run – Eighth District Congressman Chris Van Hollen and Fourth District Congresswoman Donna Edwards have indicated they are in, although in Edwards’ case she’s looking to expand her reach as a Senator.

Edwards’ gaffe-tastic logo error may be a sign of how things will go in the race to succeed her, particularly as the man who “ran” the weakest statewide Democratic race in recent memory decided he wants in on the race. Yes, Anthony Brown has his sights set on a Congressional seat to replace Edwards.

I will grant that running in a Congressional race in one’s home county is a much easier push than running a statewide race with no real political record to speak of save eight years in the House of Delegates and eight years riding on the coattails of Martin O’Malley. But Brown took a race that was all but conceded to him at the beginning of 2014 (and even after the primary in June) and imploded thanks to a poor campaign and woeful lack of accomplishment. In Democratic circles, though, that’s a resume enhancement so one would have to make Brown an odds-on favorite.

Yet there is also the matter of a $500,000 loan to his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign by the Laborers’ Political League Educational Fund as well as over $30,000 in other unpaid bills Brown owed as of his last financial report. I’m definitely not an expert on campaign finance, but ask yourself: would you give a campaign contribution to a guy who’s racked up so much debt needing to be repaid?

Fortunately for Brown, for all intents and purposes the Democratic primary is the election in that district – Edwards won both general elections in the current Fourth District with over 70 percent of the vote. But he will certainly have to fend off a number of challengers to make it through the primary and job one for the other challengers will be to remind voters how Brown gacked up a shoo-in gubernatorial race by running an incompetent campaign.

It would be a lot harder for Brown to lose the Fourth District race to a Republican, but losing to the GOP is something with which he has familiarity. I would be very surprised if establishment Democrats in that district back Brown.

‘Death with Dignity’: compassion or dispatch?

By Cathy Keim

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The House Judiciary and Health and Government Operations committees held a joint hearing last Friday on HB1021, the Richard E. Israel and Roger “Pip” Moyer Death with Dignity Act. Yesterday the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee held a hearing on the cross-filed SB676.

The arguments that were offered at the House committee hearing on March 6, 2015, were exactly what were expected. The two sides are clearly divided here. The culture of death has no room for the culture of life. The desire to rule one’s own fate does not leave room for compassion or suffering, which are both elements of the human condition.

The siren call of death takes the guise of “fairness.” It is only “fair” that a person that is terminally ill should be able to end his suffering. Without a doubt, we all tremble at the thought of pain, dependency, loss of mental capacity and/or bodily functions. We all desire to be healthy and happy, but to equate the loss of our health with the right to die is a dire step.

Let’s run through some of the arguments that opponents of the bill put forth.

Maryland has outlawed the death penalty for anyone, no matter his or her crime. However, the same drugs that Maryland will not allow to be used to execute murderers are the drugs that will be prescribed for a person to die with dignity.

Physicians are not trained to kill their patients. It will inevitably change the doctor/patient relationship if the doctor is expected to offer death as an option.

People that are given a diagnosis of a terminal illness with six months to live will most likely respond by being depressed. They could kill themselves in a state of depression because there is no provision for a mental health professional to evaluate them in the current bill.

Physicians cannot tell with accuracy who has six months to live. Plenty of people live for years after they are told they have six months to live, but we will never know if they kill themselves out of despair. Amazingly, about 20% of the people that receive hospice care actually leave the hospice instead of dying.

Palliative care is available for patients in pain. We are not condemning our loved ones to endless, unrelenting pain.

Many of the most poignant cases that are presented as deserving a death with dignity are those afflicted with Alzheimer’s, ALS, or Parkinson’s. However, by the time they would want to die, they would not be able to self administer the drugs, so this bill would not “help” them anyway.

Handicapped people already feel pressured because they are using medical resources at a steeper rate than healthy people. This bill would increase the pressure on the handicapped to not use more than their fair share of medical care.

Do you see how the subtle pressure works? Especially once the government is in control of health care, there will be the pressure to manage care from an organizational, cost-effective perspective, not a personal case-by-case perspective.

An effective way to save on costs is to encourage the elderly, the handicapped, and the sickest patients to stop their suffering (and ours) by removing themselves. It does not even have to be said aloud, but the pressure will build on our weakest, most vulnerable citizens.

It is time now to stop and count the cost of this type of public policy. Our country was established with a Judeo-Christian foundation of which the keystone is that each individual is created in the image of God. This is the concept that gave birth to Western Civilization, which resulted in our Declaration of Independence proclaiming, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Already we are seeing breaches in the wall protecting our weaker brothers. Abortion claims the lives of many babies because they are deemed defective (the vast majority of Downs Syndrome babies are aborted). Sex-selection abortions claim many female babies even here in the United States. Abortions are performed for trivial problems that could be surgically corrected like a cleft palate or even more troubling for the convenience of the mother. The absolutely logical next step after abortion on demand is the removal of the handicapped and elderly.

We are seeing the complete inversion of our thinking. Compassion used to mean caring for those that needed help. Now compassion is making sure that you can have a lethal dose of drugs to end your life. We have moved from compassion to dispatch, but in an Orwellian turn of the phrase, we still call it compassion. Then to keep up the farce, this bill would require the doctor to lie on the death certificate and list as the cause of death whatever terminal illness the patient had rather than suicide by overdose.

This Death with Dignity bill is a lie from start to finish. The true dignity would come from all of us rejecting this manipulation of our emotions and comforting our family and friends when they need comfort, not helping to finish them off.

Once again, I am aware of the pain, emotional and physical, that is present as we watch a loved one or ourselves move towards death, but this is part of the human condition. We do not make ourselves more human by rushing life out the door. We cannot create life, so let us not be over eager to take it away.

Local Democrats make big claims to receive handouts

Fresh off a shellacking where their statewide standard-bearer had his doors blown off locally by 30 points and only two of their eleven state race contenders won – one by just 30 votes locally and the other in an ostensibly non-partisan race – the Wicomico County Democratic Party finds itself in somewhat desperate financial straits. So in order to raise a little money, the party is making some claims which have to be seen to be believed – and I’m going to show you.

Let’s go through this a little bit at a time, shall we?

Maryland voters decided to “Change Maryland” last November, with the election of Larry Hogan as Governor. However, with only a month in office, Hogan is already proving himself to be just another Tea party Republican.

Perhaps the idea was to indeed elect a TEA Party Republican, rather than four more years of the O’Malley/Brown debacle? We certainly were due for a change.

And as far as the TEA Party goes, it’s worth recalling that TEA is actually an acronym that stands for “Taxed Enough Already.” We heard for three-plus years about all the tax increases put in place by the O’Malley/Brown administration so people naturally decided enough was enough.

But they continue:

Here are just a few of his first actions:

Slashing education funding – $1.9 Million from Wicomico County alone

Recklessly raiding over $2.5 Billion from our Transportation funding

Eliminating programs that help to keep the Bay clean

Apparently I’m supposed to take their word about these so-called cuts, since there’s no context or backup information provided.

I will not profess to be an expert on the state budget; however, I did look under public education and on all three line items I found for Wicomico County:

“compensatory education funds to local school systems based on Free and Reduced Priced Meal Eligibility counts” goes from $37,322,878 actual in 2014 to $38,615,082 for 2015 estimated – an increase of $1,292,204.
“additional support for students with limited English proficiency” goes from $3,092,879 actual in 2014 to $3,407,287 for 2015 estimated – an increase of $314,408.
the automatic supplement to counties “which have less than 80 percent of the statewide average wealth per pupil” goes from $3,670,117 actual in 2014 to $4,579,323 for 2015 estimated – an increase of $909,206.

By my count that’s an increase of $2,515,818. It appears the Hogan administration is well taking care of those things it needs to, prioritizing at a time when the state had to address a $750 million structural deficit.

I still haven’t figured out where the $2.5 billion “raid” to transportation funding is – the repeal of the automatic gas tax increase would save consumers nearly $1.56 billion over the next five fiscal years. We know Democrats own tax increases, so perhaps they bemoan that “lost” revenue to the state.

As for the elimination of programs for the Bay, I’d like to know precisely what they are referring to. They’re getting the PMT regulations so they should be happy.

Anyway, let’s continue.

And the story is the same in Wicomico County where Larry Hogan’s Tea Party partner, Bob Culver, is becoming the anti-education County Executive by refusing to fund a new building to replace the clearly antiquated West Salisbury Elementary School and scraping (sic) completion of the Bennett High School athletic complex.

Obviously the WCDCC has little concept of debt service. It would be one thing if the county could reach into its pocket and fish out $40 million for a new elementary school but the idea of pulling out the county’s credit card to put yet another multi-million dollar expenditure on it doesn’t appeal to the new County Executive. Just like they did in electing Larry Hogan, county voters wanted a change in direction from the former administration.

Instead, the county will improve the school in the areas where the need is greatest, with the list compiled through a consultation with experts and school officials. It may not be the “new” West Salisbury Elementary, but it will be an improved one. Perhaps that approach would have saved the county a lot of money with the former Bennett High School.

As for the Bennett Middle situation, completion of the athletic fields would not be “scrapped” (as the letter should have said) but simply placed in a different area of the site. The former Bennett Middle would be repurposed for office space, allowing the opportunity for the county to consolidate some of its operations. The change still needs the approval of County Council.

Picking back up, with the sad trumpet appeal for funding:

This isn’t the change I voted for in November, and I know you didn’t vote for this, either. We need your help to fight back. We cannot elect more Democrats in 2018 without your support over the next four years. Every dollar you donate to the Wicomico Democratic Central Committee goes to funding our efforts to recruit and help good local candidates.

Most importantly, your donation goes to helping us communicate our party’s values to the voters… personal responsibility, educating all of our children, cleaning up the Bay, protecting our agricultural community, equality for ALL, supporting local businesses, and protecting the Middle Class… and we need your support!

Actually, I did vote for some of this change. Unfortunately, I couldn’t change enough members of the General Assembly to make the total difference that’s needed – although my personal representation in the House of Delegates got a whole lot better.

But if the WCDCC wants to elect more Democrats in 2018, those Democrats can’t be in the tax-and-spend, socially liberal mode. Not in this county.

And after reading that Democrat screed, I realized it’s really conservatives who advocate for all those things the Democrats claim to stand for. That’s not to say a Democrat can’t be conservative but they are fewer and further between, even in this area.

So how would I, as a conservative, respond to their letter? I’ll go through what they claim to represent.

We believe that personal responsibility begins with keeping more of the money you earn by taking advantage of the opportunities a capitalist system creates.

We believe that money should follow the child so you can choose the best educational opportunity for your children, whether in public or private school or through a homeschooling regimen.

We believe in cleaning up the Bay through a balanced approach, beginning by addressing a proven detriment in Conowingo Dam and not punishing farmers who have been trying their best to address the issue.

We believe in protecting the agricultural community by allowing farmers the option to do as they wish with their land, not arbitrarily shutting off development options to them.

We believe in equality for all, not discriminating for or against anyone. But we also know our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values which have stood the test of time.

We support local businesses by allowing them more freedom to do what’s productive and less time to have to deal with governmental edict and regulation. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and we want to encourage them to grow and prosper for the community’s sake, not as a cash cow.

We want to protect and grow the middle class – not at the expense of the upper classes, but by allowing the conditions where those on lower rungs of the economic ladder can climb their way up through hard work and ingenuity.

The jury is still out on this, but I think all the Democrats have is rhetoric. We will have to keep an eye on the GOP to make sure they deliver the results their philosophy should yield.

So if you are a local Democrat who received this letter, there’s only one thing to do: go to the Board of Elections and request the change of registration form to become a Republican. It may be your best chance to influence election results in the future.

Jeb goes the wrong way on energy

The Washington Times headline said a lot: “Jeb Bush: Federal wind tax credit should be renewed for short period of time.” But there’s more to the story if you read between the lines Seth McLaughlin wrote.

Of course, I noticed this because I’ve written quite a bit about wind energy and its advocates the American Wind Energy Association of late. Fortunately, the weather has finally moderated so I’m not writing in the midst of a cold snap as I’d often done when writing about the AWEA and their single-minded approach to promoting wind energy with the federal Wind Production Tax Credit as a sweetener incentive.

In this instance, though, you need to know the situation: Jeb and others were speaking before the Iowa Agricultural Summit, which as the Times notes is “hosted by Bruce L. Rastetter, a major GOP donor.” And it can be argued that Iowa is to wind power what Texas, North Dakota, or Alaska are to oil: according to the AWEA, in 2013 Iowa ranked first in the nation in the amount of its electricity produced by wind power at 27.4%. It also has the third-most installed capacity in the country behind Texas and California, which are far larger states in both population and geography.

So you might get the idea that telling Rastetter and others that the Wind Production Tax Credit should be renewed is a way to meet with their approval, even though Jeb conceded it should only be a three- to five-year extension because wind is “now competitive.” Wait a minute – if it’s “now competitive” why is the tax incentive needed again?

Naturally, the bad news on energy didn’t stop there. Iowa is also ground zero for the Corn Belt, which means anyone who competes in that state either supports ethanol subsidies or risks the wrath of farmers who don’t care whether their crop goes in your gas tank or your stomach as long as the price stays profitable. And Jeb had good news for them too, noting, “So at some point we will see a reduction of the RFS need because ethanol will be such a valuable part of the energy feedstock for our country. Whether that is in 2022 or sometime in the future, I don’t know.”

Ethanol will be a valuable part of our energy feedstock? We are now the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas, and those who set ethanol policy based on a belief that we were past the point of “peak oil” have been thoroughly discredited. It’s a horrible case of pandering when the news to Rastetter and others should have been that it’s time for farmers to adjust to a post-ethanol world as that failed experiment of making food into fuel is coming to a close.

Fortunately, it’s possible to win the presidency without winning Iowa. But it’s a state with outsized importance in the electoral sweepstakes thanks to its early caucuses, so we have to pay attention to what they want. (To illustrate this point: if Maryland were first, people would be tripping all over themselves to make grandiose promises to clean up Chesapeake Bay whether they benefitted – or bankrupted – the rest of the country or not.)

For all the Left’s wailing about the Bushes being in the pocket of Big Oil, they certainly haven’t done any favors to our energy situation. Father George H.W. Bush increased the gas tax by a nickel a gallon (a healthy 56% increase) to balance the budget back in 1990 – breaking his “read my lips” vow – while George W. Bush signed the bill that put the Renewable Fuel Standard in place in 2005 and expanded it in 2007. It looks to me like Jeb is cut from the same cloth.