Bloggers and blogging – Page 29

Using plastic to pay for plastic

Or you can write a check, too. But I ran across a post on an engineering magazine blog (of all places) that has found perhaps the most mundane of problems (at least when compared to warfare, starvation, and the like) while advocating the same old left-wing solution to assist in solving it.

The blog is called Critical Path and the writer in this case is William Angelo. I’ll reprise the phrase that pays:

You can always appeal to people’s sense of outrage – and many people take environmental degradation seriously. But the people that do aren’t the problem and they have many other fights. And you know the old saying, out of sight, out of mind. We’ll worry about it tomorrow. So how about the best incentive of all – economic? We can use a carrot and stick approach. We could make plastic substitutes socially responsible by rewarding firms that do not produce or use plastic products. Perhaps tax or regulatory breaks that help the corporate bottom-line. Then we could also mandate a user tax on all plastic products at every transaction point – starting with the manufacturer to the merchant to the consumer – and use the proceeds to pay for a global cleanup. Money is the universal language – make users pay and perhaps give a refund for recycling. Even some dolt litterbug can understand that. (Emphasis mine.)

I probably should have left this slide just in case Martin O’Malley or one of his minions is reading monoblogue, but they’ve probably already thought about this tax themselves. Angelo’s complaint is about the tons of plastic which finds its way to our oceans and is harmful to marine life. Yes, it is shameful but for centuries mankind has used waterways as a conveyance to get rid of waste products, so this is nothing new.

However, Angelo’s approach is already law in a number of states where, in an effort to cut down on litter, deposits are required to purchase various products which are packaged in disposable bottles or cans, with the deposit ranging anywhere from a couple pennies to a dime. But there’s still plenty of litter strewn across the landscape despite the fines states could collect from scofflaws if they’re caught. And while the heaps of trash we Americans toss out has created a cottage industry for some who endeavor to pick up the recyclable portions in order to make a few dollars at the recycling center, a lot of garbage eventually finds its way to storm drains, ditches, and other waterways. Thus you have Angelo’s complaint, where he compares parts of the Pacific Ocean to a “giant non-flushing toilet bowl.”

On a personal level, I’ve probably tossed out a fortune’s worth of aluminum cans in my life but I otherwise tend to take advantage of the county’s recycling center just down the road from me. I’m sure that some portion of my tax bill goes to subsidize the effort since most of what they collect isn’t worth a whole lot unless you measure the waste in tons. What’s sort of sad is the amount of trash I walk by to take my recycling items there, much of which isn’t in a category the county will take. This is where we all can improve our efforts and be a little more conscious of what we use and use up.

Leaving aside another argument retailers have about the bottle and can collection areas which some states require for return of items being a draw for bugs and rodents to their stores, the case I make against a tax such as Angelo suggests is to ask who collects it? He envisions a “global clean-up” but to me the only group with such worldwide governmental scope is the United Nations, and the last thing we Americans need is to enact a tax for their benefit given the black hole the billions we already donate to the UN seems to end up in.

Once again, I think common sense should prevail. Just don’t litter – take a little pride in your surroundings, people. Simply being a little more sensitive to what you toss out where will go a great distance in solving the problem. Obviously one can’t eliminate the problem in full (accidents do happen, like the plastic cup at the lakeside picnic being blown into the water by a gust of wind) but using common sense is a lot cheaper than yet another tax that government can raise at will.

Fan mail with a twist

I’m beginning to sense that I’m building a theme with my midday posts this week, that of the blogosphere’s influence on political discourse in America 2008. It wasn’t intentional but I’ll let it ride for awhile and see where it goes.

The e-mail in question almost seemed like one of those which went to hundreds of bloggers, but it was personalized enough that I thought maybe it was legit. Just in case, and since I didn’t necessarily get permission to share the full contents, I’ll omit the name of the person and the organization. Let’s just say it’s one I agree with to a large extent and I appreciated the information the writer forwarded to me (which is commonly available in this case, maybe the info won’t be so common in the future.) I’m sure I’ll use this particular citation somewhere in a future post.

I’m writing to you today because I recently discovered your work on Maryland Voice and Monoblogue and I found the commentary very interesting. Since energy has emerged as a key issue in this election cycle, I thought I should introduce myself and make myself available to you as a resource.

I’m (withheld) and I work with (an energy-related organization.) I noticed you often focus on policy issues, I thought you might be interested in (a) document that addresses some of the political comments made about the industry recently. (Indeed, I was sent a nice link – stuff I suspected but didn’t have the numbers for.)

Although most members of Congress are in their home states on recess this month, the energy debate is still going strong. Therefore, please let me know if you ever have any questions about energy issues. I’m happy to provide statistics or put you in touch with one of our industry experts.

I look forward to continuing to read your blog and hope we can stay in touch.

When I looked into this further, I found out that Maryland Voice is a republishing blog, which is why I hadn’t heard of it. It’s sort of like one of those enterprises that exists solely as a place for someone to place advertising hoping to make big money. However, my blog is real and I’m glad the person in question agrees with me. I look forward to having him (or her) as a source.

It got me to thinking about the number of new organizations which have sprung up in even the last year or two as the internet becomes more and more pervasive as an information source. Before, someone who wanted to begin a new advocacy group had to somehow scratch up the funding to advertise in the mainstream media and let themselves become known. Now they can do the same thing for essentially free on Youtube. Even better for them, there’s a happy marriage brewing between bloggers who are always looking for new and interesting content and those outfits which can provide it. In my case, I’m happy to give a hand when my aims and the group’s goals are congruent.

With all that clutter, though, there is a danger of dilution. Too many groups with the same message become competitors rather than allies and the infighting can be damaging to the cause as a whole. The organization in question for this post probably isn’t going to go away soon, but other startups in energy-related fields could go from low-budget to no-budget rather quickly if the issue is solved. It’s something we all need to keep in the back of our minds.

In the meantime, I appreciate the fan mail and am glad this person reads my thoughts on a regular basis.

It wasn’t a townhall, but it was McCain vs. Obama

Earlier in the campaign, GOP Presidential hopeful Senator John McCain challenged Democrat standardbearer Senator Barack Obama to a series of townhall meetings as a way for Americans to compare and contrast their approach to issues. In doing that, two things were obvious: John McCain felt that he could clean Barack Obama’s clock in that style of debate, and his campaign probably felt as if they were the underdog going forward. This is particularly true given the “drive-by” media’s fawning coverage of the Obama campaign – playing up the highlights and glossing over the gaffes and misstatements.

While the pair were not on stage together, fellow blogger Bob McCarty recounted his observations on a candidate forum held at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. Dubbed the Saddleback Civil Forum, moderator and church pastor Rick Warren questioned both candidates for an hour apiece. It was an opportunity to compare and contrast each candidate’s approach without the full time constraints of a formal debate.

Obviously it could be argued that the natural advantage went to John McCain because he went last, but Barack Obama also had a crack at making a good first impression. But I really brought this into the light because here was a newsworthy item that didn’t get a lot of play since it wasn’t held under the auspices of a television network or newspaper – rather, it was held in a religious setting. And had it not been for a blogger, I wouldn’t have become aware of the forum being held in the first place; still, millions will not have this piece of information known to them when they cast their ballots in November.

I’ve always operated under an assumption, that being when a voter is as well-informed as possible he or she will tap the touchscreen next to the candidate who is more conservative. It’s why I despise campaigning thirty seconds at a time on television – of course, I know that this method reaches the most people in the most efficient manner but 30 seconds is far too little to make more than one or two points and in most cases these points are simply negative ones toward the candidate’s opponent. (Yes, I make a lot of negative points toward liberals too but given the team that’s in charge, it’s necessary to point out their shortcomings. Where I do sometimes fall short is not providing sound alternatives, but once you have a pretty good understanding of how I write you should be able to figure out the overriding themes of limited government and enhanced personal freedom relatively well.)

The one issue I do have with the internet is that there’s almost too much information on a lot of things which aren’t necessarily important to how a candidate will perform once elected. On the other hand, it’s much better than the vacuum created by the thirty-second commercials, and I encourage everyone who’s interested to take an hour or two and do the research.

However, the first step in this process is internal. About this time last year I selected a Presidential candidate I liked, but first I had to decide the issues which were most important to me. There’s still time to complete that process before November and if monoblogue can be a help in making a decision, I’m happy to oblige.

Blowing the whistle

In my recent post, Referee in a catfight, commenter Joe Albero smugly brags that Salisbury News has “always” been in the top 10 since becoming involved with the Blognetnews website. Unfortunately, Joe’s a little bit incorrect in that rash assertion because I have tracked the numbers since the Influence Ranking’s inception in June 2007. And the numbers don’t lie – there was a period of several weeks last fall when Joe’s site was outside the top 10 and one week it wasn’t even ranked. (On the other hand, I can correctly note that only two sites have been ranked in the top 20 each week since the ratings were introduced – mine and Brian Griffiths’.)

The other factoid I think is worth pointing out was following up on ShoreThings’ note about the conservative and liberal blog rankings. Joe can only dream about the streak of #1 ratings my readers and commentors have allowed me and my humble little monoblogue to compile in the conservative blog rankings – how about 14 times in 16 weeks?

While I hesitate to cast myself anywhere close to William F. Buckley, the comparison of National Review vs. National Enquirer comes to mind when I compare my site to Joe’s. Two different styles for two different audiences. (And we both read each other’s sites for different reasons too.) I just didn’t want to leave the loose end too long since I took my short vacation so soon after the catfight post came out.

So I ask the indulgence of my readership in setting this straight and thank them again for helping me to achieve the solid record I’ve compiled thus far. Because I did this post so late, you may get three today as it’s SotW night as well.

No backup for a fellow blogger

As you can see by a run of recent comments to this website, the blogger known as “ShoreThings” and I have had a running battle of words over the solution to our domestic energy issue. (Okay, maybe “battle” is a strong word – how about disagreement?) Anyway, I got this interesting e-mail from Dave Ryan at American Solutions and I thought I’d share part of it with you.

As you know, poll after poll shows that we are winning the argument about how to lower gas and diesel prices and develop more American energy now.

But the even bigger news is that the anti-energy elites are desperately worried. They are not only criticizing us, but they are admitting that they are losing the argument.

And friends, that’s big. In fact, considering the source, that’s huge.

Recently, liberal group MoveOn.org in an email to their supporters sounded dejected. They wrote “Here’s the truth: Right now, progressives are losing this argument.”

That can mean only one thing – WE ARE WINNING THIS ARGUMENT!

In the energy debate, common sense is winning and it’s got the anti-energy elites rattled because they offer no solutions to lowering gas and diesel prices.

American Solutions, on the other hand, has taken a bold stand and has been leading the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” movement that has energized millions of Americans around a positive solution. Because of your help and the help of more than a million others, today an overwhelming majority of Americans support opening up new areas for exploration and drilling of American oil and gas, including offshore.

Even though MoveOn.org admits we are winning, they won’t quit, and there is still more work to be done.

Congress has left for a 5-week vacation without doing anything to address the soaring cost of gas and diesel. This inaction is unacceptable to the American people, many of whom can’t afford a vacation this year. (All emphasis in original.)

Dave goes on to talk about a press conference held this morning with Newt Gingrich (the founder of American Solutions) taking time to join some of his former colleagues still occupying the Capitol despite Congress being in recess. I have that short video too.

By the way, while he’s not on a short list as far as I know, Congressman Putnam is a rising young star in the Republican Party and it’s not surprising they’ve put him out front on this issue. (Jindal/Putnam 2016?) But I digress. The ten or so holdovers who have remained in Washington during the recess deserve our support for standing up for what’s right.

And I don’t think these Republicans are against renewable energy, because those who truly think about the situation know that someday these alternatives will have their place, like coal supplanted wood in the mid-19th century and a few decades later oil and its derivitives supplanted coal. (A lot of old houses in my former neck of the woods still have the coal bins in their cellars, mine was one. But when we lived there we had a natural gas furnace heating the place.) Even John McCain has ideas on how to supplant the internal combustion engine (from his campaign website):

John McCain Will Propose A $300 Million Prize To Improve Battery Technology For Full Commercial Development Of Plug-In Hybrid And Fully Electric Automobiles. A $300 million prize should be awarded for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. That battery should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs. At $300 million, the prize is one dollar for every man, woman and child in this country – and a small price to pay for breaking our dependence on oil. (Emphasis in orginal.)

While I dislike the premise of the federal government being involved, it’s not a bad idea at all. If 3,000 of America’s best and brightest contributed $100,000 each to the cause, you could achieve the same goal.

My objection is against Democrats who, first of all, simply dismiss the oil industry out of hand and do as much as they can to limit what these companies do best – bring the energy that’s needed for a prosperous economy to those who use it. The other objection is their gaming the free market by overregulation, thus denying consumers all the choices which could be available to them.

A lot of political arguments come down not to philosophy, but to the means of achieving a common goal. I’m of the belief that ShoreThings wants to increase domestic energy production as I do, but we have a different manner of thinking about how to accomplish this goal. Right now, it appears the American people fall more in line with the solutions I favor than with his. And since we’ve tended to do things the liberal way more often than not over the last 70 years, perhaps it’s time for common sense to reign again.

Response to comment #94662

Nope, it’s not what you think, I already took care of that one.

Yesterday’s post “Overtime inside the Beltway” brought two comments from my fellow blogger ShoreThings. Since the first one was number 94662 and it gets confusing if I overuse the title “comment that deserves a post” you get this title.

As for the first comment, I couldn’t do that right off the top of my head because I believe some of those leases are offshore. But the query misses the key point – whether oil companies already hold leases on a particular amount of explorable land is irrelevant when other areas with proven reserves are off-limits. Like the old adage goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And if oil companies have the choice between rolling the dice on an area that may hold some promise but could very well end up a dry hole against an area where it’s extremely likely that oil can be extracted and transported away profitably, chances are they’d go with the latter. While the drive-by media and the leftists (yes, I repeat myself) castigate oil companies for making obscene profits, it bears reminding them that indeed that is why they’re in business. Exxon/Mobil isn’t a non-profit corporation and it better not become one as long as I have a few shares of their stock. They still have to play in the market though and if Shell is selling gasoline cheaper, customers will go there and Shell will increase their profits.

To address the second comment, these House members make a compelling argument for their cause. However, to me the solution is not to place oil companies under the same restriction as coal companies have but instead loosen those shackles on the coal companies. Let’s look at this logically.

In both cases, the businesses are dependent on a supply of some sort to stay in business. Coal companies wish to mine coal as cheaply as possible and charge the highest price the market will allow. The same goes for oil companies. Therefore, for either entity to lease land but not use it would happen for two reasons: one, to prevent another competing company from gaining access to a particular site, and two, because to build the infrastructure necessary and transport the product to end-users isn’t currently estimated to be at a price point which is economically feasible. An example of this is oil shale, which I seem to recall becomes profitable to produce when the per-barrel price of oil is $75 or above. If oil companies are allowed to begin the process in an unfettered fashion, they can get to work on doing this as the per-barrel price is well over that figure – but methinks the environmental lobby will put the oil companies through a series of hoops before this ever happens.

So in the oil companies’ case they’re holding on to reserve areas because even at $120 a barrel it’s not currently profitable to start oil exploration and extraction there. (While I haven’t checked this out in some time, I used to frequently drive by some small oil wells in northern Ohio that weren’t being used – either the field is tapped out or the cost to extract became too high. The same principles apply, but I’ll have to check next time I go that way and see if they’re back in production given the higher prices.) But eventually as other areas begin to fall off in production oil companies are going to have to begin working these reserve areas, or else diversify their business away from oil. I’m quite aware that there is only a finite supply of petroleum; however, the supply isn’t going to run out anytime soon. In the meantime, oil companies should be allowed to lease more lands – after all, those lease payments do make someone a tidy profit for little time and investment on their part. (As I say, I’d be happy to lease my backyard to an oil company as long as I can use it too. Those little oil wells don’t take up a lot of space.)

While ShoreThings doesn’t mention this, I’ll also bet that the reason oil companies import so much foreign oil is quite simple – it’s cheaper to go to some other country, deal with their government-controlled oil monopoly there, and transport crude across an ocean or two than it is to produce here because our government discourages production through restrictions and regulation. And to address another argument he advances in his first comment, perhaps it is easier to transport ANWR oil to Japan but if the Japanese are willing to pay market price for oil, it’s not like we can’t use the money to buy that same amount of oil from a place easier to transport from than ANWR. (And you have heard that they built a pipeline across Alaska? With some help from Canada we could build another to the lower 48.) As readers may have gathered by now, oil’s a pretty damn valuable commodity to sell, too, so why not sell ours?

The other advantage to enhancing the areas available to domestic production is the additional opportunity to create good-paying jobs in America. This is a topic I’ve harped on a lot and it provides a great way to use those oil company profits – let’s create jobs which actually do work rather than a windfall profits tax creating jobs to push paper from one side of the desk to the other, as the government is famous for doing.

Finally, by loosening restrictions on where oil companies can go it allows property owners to possibly have more valuable land. While much of the land in question is already under the control of the federal government, there are many who could see their land become more valuable and in some cases those areas happen to be fairly depressed right now. As I stated in the last paragraph, let’s allow more of those oil company profits to be reinvested in the communities across America and not be sucked into the black hole inside the Beltway, lost in the maw that is Fedzilla.

All I am saying is give capitalism a chance.

A retitled and slightly shorter piece is crossposted at Red Maryland.

Referee in a catfight

While some say I don’t get a lot of comments, normally I don’t mind that as long as the comments advance the post in some way, shape, manner, or form. I have to tell you though that once in awhile it’s amusing to be the referee in a catfight, and the comments on my weekend post about Red Maryland being tagged as a spam blog have reached that point.

There was a point that was missed to some extent amdist the comments back and forth, and it came to mind after reading this:

I see your Blog Rankings are more where they should be, #14 in Maryland and # 14 on Delmarva. You must have slacked this week in cross postings?

You know we love ya Michael but this is a reality and IMHO where you should be. With all due respect.

Pardon me, I happen to think top 5 is a little more realistic. But those I’d be behind would be sites like Red Maryland, O’Malley Watch, Hedgehog Report, or even a site from the left like Free State Politics, not a site that barely dabbles in serious political thought but has no problem “borrowing” some when it needs to. (With all due respect.) It is a political influence rating, is it not? Maybe “news” blogs need their own category.

I’ve not met Brian Griffiths yet, but by reputation he seems like a reasonable person with some writing talent. I think his readership numbers suffer somewhat because he’s actually posting on Red Maryland quite a bit – why go to his site when you can read his stuff there?

And I seem to recall a few months back at the start of the year, when Brian was pretty much king of the hill, that there were accusations of him “gaming the system” and how poor the BNN ratings were because of the number of crossposts Brian did. With the shoe on the other foot, suddenly there’s no complaints but the comment insinuated that I was a similar beneficiary who fell sharply in the rankings because I didn’t have any crossposts last week – as if that were holding me up. Perhaps it was, but the incestuous relationship between the top 3 Delmarva blogs (who are 1, 3, and 6 in Maryland as well) might make one ponder who’s gaming who. (Both Pocomoke Tattler and Delmarva Dealings crosspost to Salisbury News, Delmarva Dealings also crossposts to Red Maryland as I do.)

I don’t know what the answer is to this issue, but I do know that I have a reader base who likes what I have to say and doesn’t really worry about my BNN ranking. I mean, if crossposting is what I have to do to achieve a higher ranking I certainly have places where I’ve been invited to do so (and did last night.) But it’s more important to me to write well for whatever number of eyes read through what I have to say.

On a related note, I do have to give kudos to G.A. Harrison for increasing the participation on the Delmarva BNN network; I’ve noticed a lot of new sites on the ratings over the last couple weeks. He’s also managed to put Delmarva Dealings on four different state/region rankings this week so hats off to him.

Finally, a bit of fair warning: I’m taking a few days off over the weekend. I’m planning to have fresh (to you) content each day but comment moderation will be much more sporadic. I’ll bring things back up to speed by next Wednesday.

Overtime inside the Beltway

While the majority Democrats decided it was time to pack up and head home for the usual August Congressional recess, a small renegade group of Republicans stayed behind to press the issue of energy independence. You know, I’ve heard a lot of folks say that it’s about time the Republicans showed they had cajones.

Unfortunately, all this bluster sort of escaped notice by the “drive-by” media, which isn’t surprising given who they’re in the tank for in this election. It’s one time the new media has taken the lead in coverage and ignored the B-list celebrity aspect of the Obama campaign – the mainstreamers have perfected ignoring to an art form as far as the McCain side goes. (Well, unless McCain does a campaign commercial they dislike.)

It appears that my blogging cohort The Waterman has gotten a front-row seat to the action, my guess is that he’s spending his summer as an intern for some Congressman or group. Regardless, he did jot down a few thoughts on Friday about the experience of having Nancy Pelosi turn out the lights and tell the GOP the party was over. (No, Nancy, it’s only just begun.) As well, The Waterman points out another first-hand report on the Americans for Tax Reform blog (perhaps that’s where he’s working.)

Is this all symbolism? Of course, because the GOP is a minority they can’t put together a quorum for business, and despite the Republicans’ most strenuous objections to the procedural call indeed the House is out of business until after Labor Day. Maybe the Democrats are hoping that oil prices continue to fall and along with that prices at the pump decrease too. We’ll still likely be looking at $3.50 per gallon by Labor Day though, and while that price is below the $4 a gallon tipping point which seems to the the highest price Americans will tolerate without complete outrage, it’s still over $1 a gallon higher than the price in force when Democrats seized back control of Congress after the 2006 elections.

I’ll come back to this point shortly, but one thing I received in my e-mail today was an update from the Harris campaign which featured an AP story by Kristen Wyatt. (She must be the Eastern Shore beat reporter because she has a lot of items in the Daily Times as well.) My jaw about hit the floor when Wyatt’s story claimed that Democratic opponent Frank Kratovil supported expanding domestic oil production like Harris did. Kratovil only wants to use the land already leased by oil companies which may or may not have marketable oil reserves on it, but not explore in other areas which are much more likely to pan out, like ANWR or on the Outer Continental Shelf. In many other areas of the Kratovil plan he advocates market-bending federal involvement and a reliance on “alternative” sources of energy that may be decades away from being practical unless heavily subsidized by our tax dollars.

In nearly two years of Democrat control, about all that Congress has accomplished is placing more restrictions on energy usage, for one example all but wiping out the incadescent light bulb in favor of the more efficient but more dangerous and harder to dispose of compact fluorescent bulbs. (Of course, President Bush didn’t veto the proposal either, to his discredit.) They haven’t created one volt of electricity or gallon of gasoline by doing common-sense items that would encourage oil and natural gas exploration, in particular loosening environmental restrictions. The permitting process for new power plants or oil refineries is way too long and arduous.

As I noted earlier, the GOP stalwarts can’t actually accomplish anything in terms of crafting and passing legislation by staying behind in Washington while their cohorts head home for some R and R. What they can do is show that they’re willing to work and solve these problems while the majority hems and haws about shifting to alternative fuels.

But perhaps the time spent would be more useful if the GOP got together and drafted up a list of legislative measures they’ll work on when Congress returns and make it public, sort of like 1994’s Contract With America. In this case, it would be all about energy independence through obtaining our own supplies of oil, coal, natural gas, and, hey, if T. Boone Pickens wants to front the cash, we can add wind power to the mix as well. I have no objection to that if the price is right. (In a side note, Maryland officials may be buying up the offshore wind power that Delmarva Power doesn’t buy from the Bluewater Wind project. Naturally it costs more to produce this electricity than it would to produce through more conventional sources, but Governor O’Malley isn’t one to be too worried about costs, is he?)

On the whole I’m very pleased (for once) that someone in Washington is willing to work to get legislation done, although I’m hoping that they pay as much mind to eliminating laws and regulations as they do to creating them.

Crossposted on Red Maryland and That’s Elbert With An E.

Red Maryland a spam blog?

Editor’s note – apparently there was an issue accessing this site since last night. I had to disable the Site Meter on a temporary basis to fix the problem; hopefully the folks there are working on it. Thanks to Joe Albero for the heads-up. (Wonder if that problem and the post subject are related?)

I became aware yesterday afternoon that the Red Maryland blog I contribute to was temporarily locked as a “spam” blog. As a part of Blogspot, this and thousands of other blogs fall under the auspices of Google, which can be a problem. Today was one of those days, as this quote from the Blogger Buzz blog attests:

While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.

We’ve noticed that a few users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can’t post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.

We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks.

Many who picked up readership of monoblogue in recent months may not know that my blogging history includes a fairly short-lived Blogspot blog I called ttown’s right-wing conspiracy. But after looking into Google for a post I did there, I decided it would soon be time to get my own domain name and not be held hostage by the folks at Google.

The post I did actually turned out to be my first real splash in the blogging world, and as a guy who was lucky to get 10 readers a day at the time, that week I had nearly 200 and I found out a lot about blogging as a business. It was called “For a few dollars more…” and I posted it on July 28, 2005. I suppose I’ll see just how successful this link turns out to be because I still get the SiteMeter reports for that site and I still have a couple people a week who stumble onto my old place almost 3 years after I stopped posting there.

As I depicted in the 2005 post, Google employees were astoundingly liberal in their political giving and at the time were not very friendly to conservative sites like Red Maryland would eventually become. It’s not out of the realm of probability that someone on the left with an axe to grind may have reported a number of right-leaning sites as spammers in order to do a little Blogspot censoring and the folks at Google were only too happy to play along. As one of the e-mail commentors I received noted, “what if this happened right before the election?”

It’s the reason I decided to get my own site where I can pretty much say what I want, and even though I do pay for the server the cost is well worth the peace of mind. And while one drawback to that approach for Red Maryland would be having to recoordinate all the contributors to a new site (and making sure everyone repoints their browsers) perhaps another alternative would be to look into a WordPress blog (also a free service). But that has drawbacks too as my blogging friend Elbert can attest to.

In any case, hopefully the issue will be resolved soon if it hasn’t already been – but it’s a wake-up call to many on the right side of the blogosphere that free speech isn’t always free when someone else provides the platform. Perhaps we need to take a page from one of our heroes, Ronald Reagan, and actually pay for our microphone.

And now for something completely different…

On a number of occasions I’ve written about being a contributor to the Patriot Post internet newsletter and was asked to make a mention of times I’d actually submitted an article. Well, over the last three Fridays I’ve been fortunate enough to be included – two by their request and last week’s unsolicited.

Yesterday they placed my piece on the state of California banning transfats (page 9), last week’s item was on Beltway Gas Pains (page 5), and the earlier article discussed Big Labor’s effect on the Big Three (page 7). Of the three, the gasoline article was probably the most heavily edited (I think another contributor may have added his or her two cents in an article and portions of both were used) while the other two had a little light pruning and additions here and there. I could recognize them right away as mine though.

Sometime I may have to go through my e-mail and paper archives and see just how many times I’ve had something included over the years – my time with the Patriot Post dates back to my days in Ohio. There are times I wish there were bylines and such to recognize the writers but as I understand it a few may not benefit from having their names known. Thus we toil in obscurity but on the whole I’ve enjoyed the experience and hope to continue contributing many times in the future.

The resolution of nothing

Today was the day the local court case Webster v. Albero was supposed to be heard, but it was not. In short, the allegations by Salisbury’s police chief against a local blogger were settled in a “non-monetary” fashion instead of having its day in court.

The main issue I wanted to have resolved in this case was just where the line is drawn between news and opinion on the internet. While Albero’s website is dubbed Salisbury News, it’s prominently noted at the site that it’s “opinionated only.” Other contradictions of this sort occur when Albero covers local events as a news reporter would and is even given press privileges by some local organizations and newsmakers. (You can see for yourself, I link to the site under “Delmarva Bloggers”.)

In general, his site has a number of contributors who vary in quality of writing and usefulness of information. And while he’s done some top-notch investigative reporting over the lifespan of his site, Joe is also just as likely to place articles on Salisbury News which don’t pass the Snopes smell test. He also has a regular routine of placing up the area law enforcement blotters and other local news releases as a local newspaper would.

A recurring theme, though, is his dissatisfaction with the mayor of the city of Salisbury, Barrie Parsons Tilghman, and her administration. (Ironically, Albero is not a resident of Salisbury but does own property within the city.) Over time, this has turned to a vendetta against all things Barrie Tilghman and led to both the Webster v. Albero civil suit settled today and an upcoming Tilghman v. Albero suit slated for hearing later this summer. Unrelated to these is another court date Albero faces for a perjury charge, as the resident of Delaware is alleged to have falsely claimed Maryland residency in a real-estate deal.

The problem for me isn’t with Albero; that just adds a local flavor to the case. A precedent would have been helpful in this brave new world of the blogosphere, and I would have preferred an Albero victory because had Webster’s side prevailed it would provide a chilling effect to bloggers who wish to be critical of public figures but aren’t anonymous, either by choice or by being outed in the process of running their website. Of course, I also fall into the group of non-anonymous bloggers as opposed to the still-unknown “Martin Watcher” who does O’Malley Watch, a popular blog aimed at broken promises from the Maryland governor.

It should be known though that Albero isn’t an angel in this case, as he’s made his own threats against those who spoke out against him and his website, including this writer. As a rule I don’t go into personal attacks because this site is much more issue-oriented; however, there’s been some people I’ve been critical of in the past and the threat of larger, more powerful entities squelching the freedom of speech rights of smaller ones through threat of personal or financial ruin isn’t completely out of the question for any of us. Settling the case leaves a void that anyone can fill insofar as what rights bloggers have to freely speak out.

One thing that has to be admired though is the marketing genius and buzz that’s been created for the Salisbury News site, which was prominently featured in the news stories regarding the suit. Albero has also created, by hook or by crook, a cottage industry of sites dedicated to taking him down a notch because of his bombastic style. (Full disclosure: I occasionally crosspost to one such site, called Pro-Maryland Gazette. This post will become an “occasionally” later on today or tomorrow.) On the other hand, there’s also a number of “Joeys” who swear by his site as the real news source in town, not the Daily Times newspaper or two local television stations. (The numbers I’ve found show, though, that Salisbury News only reaches a fraction of the audience either the Daily Times or local television news does – however, that’s not uncommon as only about 6% of Americans regularly read blogs. Much larger percentages watch TV news or read newspapers.)

What I truly wanted was a little guidance in defining our media role. The tagline of this site is “news and views from Maryland’s Eastern Shore” but my proportions of each are vastly different than what Salisbury News puts up. Unfortunately, having this case settled as it was leaves more questions than answers so I guess I’ll keep on doing what I do, attempting to provide insightful commentary on political issues of the day.

Seven reasons to vote for McCain

One of my fellow dittohead bloggers is the “ultimate blogging machine”, Bob McCarty. He has a humorous take on an Obama supporter’s blog post with what the original blogger termed seven reasons to vote for Barack Obama. Those seven reasons in original order are:

The Obama campaign has spent significantly more on staff salaries than John McCain’s.
Because of point number 1 above, McCain’s “ground game” is seriously lacking.
Obama has made his a 50 state campaign.
The opportunity to make Democrats a “true governing majority.”
Campaigning in traditionally “red” states will make Obama a more effective leader.
A situation like 2008 doesn’t come along too often.
The time is now for a change of leadership that can last a generation.

Like Bob says about the last point, that’s a scary thought.

I pointed this out about a month ago, but several of the original blogger’s (David Mauro and a site called Burnt Orange Report) reasons are based on the fact that Barack Obama decided not to accept public financing of his campaign. It also allowed me to argue that this election will really come down to a handful of states, and if Obama campaigns in states like Utah (where McCain should win handily) or here in Maryland that’s probably a waste of his resources, or, in our case, a sign that Obama is desperate. Back when Hillary Clinton was the presumptive nominee, it was noted by one of the speakers at our state GOP convention that if Hillary was campaigning in Maryland after Labor Day, it was a sign of trouble. The same goes for Obama.

With the caveat that we’re still three months away from the election (and with both candidates probably getting a polling bump from their convention, Obama moreso than McCain), the fact that polling is essentially even nationwide shows that a lot of people still have doubts about the “messiah” Obama. To hear the drive-by media talk about the campaign, Obama is being treated as if he’s up by 30 points. Maybe in Prince George’s County Obama is (in truth, the margin there is probably more like 60 points), but there’s a lot of folks still smarting about Hillary Clinton not getting the Democrat nomination and who just don’t trust the neophyte Obama.

While millions of people look at this election as yet another “lesser of two evils” one, the Obama campaign approach of vowing change while painting McCain as a third term of President Bush had some appeal, but Obama’s stances on particular issues have wasted the advantage he built up with this approach. Neither Mauro or McCarty looked at the most important reasons to vote for McCain: a better approach to energy independence and a vastly superior foreign policy. While McCain was far from my first choice, the more we find out about the alternative, the less palatable Barack Obama becomes.

Red herring from a Red Marylander

Earlier today I was one of many local and regional bloggers who received encouraging polling results from Andy Harris’s campaign. I’ll come back to this in a little bit, but first I need to talk about one reaction to this news.

Bud the Blogger is likely the one contributor to the Red Maryland website who is firmly in the Kratovil camp. (However, to his credit he doesn’t crosspost items that have to do with his opinion the First District race to the RM blog.) With receipt of this news, Bud opted instead to note that Harris’s pollster, Arthur Finkelstein, is openly gay:

Of course, I bet Harris would be horrified if his conservative base knew a little about the man to whom he paid $12,000 back on May 15th. In fact, I would love to know what Harris himself thinks about Arthur Finkelstein. After all, back in December 2004, Finkelstein acknowledged that he “married” his long time gay partner…Gee, I wonder how duped Dr. James Dotson (sic) feels now.

Clearly, Harris is not the man he portrays to voters. He talks as if he’s the poster child for modern day conservatism, but a closer look reveals something totally different. Whether it’s gay rights, or his votes for amendments to give illegals in-state tuition, Harris talks one way and votes another. And, let’s not forget, he remains Progressive Maryland’s highest rated republican state senator.

I suppose that if you can’t refute the message, you take your pot shots at the messenger. I already did a tag-team slice and dice of the last claim with another local blogger, Nick Loffer. So let’s look at the Finkelstein angle.

It’s obvious that Finkelstein is good at what he does, or at least has a reputation such that Harris has hired his firm to do polling, as have a number of Republican politicians over the last couple decades. Thus, one would be led to believe that the fact Finkelstein has “married” another man is overshadowed in the eyes of those who hire him by the effective results his company provides. In short, Harris and other Republicans who purchase the polling services Finkelstein provides may hate the sin but don’t dislike the sinner. Meanwhile, one would have to gather that Arthur has to be aware that many of those he works for wouldn’t favor the issues he advocates relating to LGBT rights but the money talks louder than his principles in these cases. At least he agrees to disagree with them on that point.

Frankly (pun not intended), I think that this issue is a non-issue because here’s evidence to me that Harris looks beyond items like race, gender, sexual preference, and the like; I don’t see this as an effort to fill some sort of “quota” of homosexuals working to get him elected. It’s likely not going to change the pro-family voting record that has allowed Harris to earn the endorsement of the Eagle Forum, a devout pro-family group.

Unfortunately, in his effort to paint Harris supporters as those who would cheer as Matthew Shepard lay dying, Bud resorts to the tactic of building that straw man argument about a pollster used by many GOP politicians from all over the big tent. Being against granting rights for particular behavior or believing that marriage is truly between one man and one woman does not make one a gay-basher, and honestly Bud I thought you were better than that; instead you’re resorting to the politics of division.

Bud closes:

The only question remains is how much longer can Harris hold onto his 40% republican primary base? Without them, he doesn’t stand a chancve (sic) in November.

With that, let’s take a gander at the poll numbers. Based on a total sample of 300 voters and with a margin of error of 5.6%, the raw numbers were like this:

Andy Harris had 120 solid supporters (40.0%) and 13 leaners (4.3%) for a total of 133 (44.3%).
Frank Kratovil had 77 solid supporters (25.7%) and 8 leaners (2.7%) for a total of 85 (28.3%).
There were 82 undecided voters, or 27.3 percent. In our mythical election, Kratovil would have to convince 80.5% of them (66 of 82) to vote for him in order to win with 151 votes. That’s a tall order.

Even if we were to assume the worst-case margin of error, subtracting 7 from the Harris column and adding 5 to Kratovil’s, that still leaves Kratovil needing 61 out of 84 voters to win, or 72.6 percent of undecideds.

As far as favorability goes:

While the plurality (114 voters, or 38%) have no opinion either way of Andy Harris, 112 view him favorably (37.3%) while only 35 (11.7%) regard him unfavorably. That actually loses to the 39 who claim to have never heard of him (13%).
Frank Kratovil, on the other hand, is only regarded favorably by 41 voters (13.7%) but 2 more voters (43, or 14.3%) see him unfavorably. Meanwhile, nearly half (144, or 48%) have no opinion on Frank while 72 (24%) have never heard of him.

What strikes me is that, with only 1/3 of the favorability rating that Andy Harris has, Frank Kratovil still has a higher unfavorable rating.

I’m certain that some of my readers on the left are screaming at their computer, “of course Harris is leading the poll, he’s the one who paid that gay pollster for it!!” So I asked the question regarding items like whether the sample was selected with proper proportion on items like party affiliation, geography, and race/gender and I was told that it was. Given the idea that when paying for a poll you’re demanding accuracy, I would have to believe that Finkelstein’s company has indeed done its homework.

The one item I would have loved to get but didn’t was the percentages in two areas: Republicans for Kratovil and Democrats for Harris. Obviously we’ve heard quite a bit about those renegade Republicans (mostly disgruntled supporters of the moderate Rep. Wayne Gilchrest) jumping on board the Kratovil camp, but we don’t hear about the Democrats and independents who have reliably backed the GOP candidate in recent years and how many of them support the conservative Andy Harris.

So instead I tried a different tactic and did a little digging into the Maryland Board of Elections website. What I checked were three things:

The top-ticket (President or Governor) race results from 2000 through 2006 for the twelve 1st CD counties;
The Congressional race results (2000-2006) of those same areas, and;
Voter registration numbers for those twelve counties during the month of October preceding those elections (e.g. October 2000, October 2002, etc.)

What I found is that, with few exceptions, the twelve counties that currently make up the First Congressional district voted Republican in these top-drawer races. The only exceptions were Baltimore County going for Kerry in 2004 and Gore in 2000, along with Gore winning Somerset County in 2000. (Bear in mind that the First District doesn’t cover all of Baltimore County, making those results dubious at best as a predictor of this race.) There was also the anomaly of neither Baltimore County nor Harford County being part of CD-1 in the 2000 election.

However, voter registration is a far different story. With the exception of Talbot County for this entire period and Queen Anne’s County since 2002, these counties have a varying plurality of voters who are registered Democrats. While the Kratovil supporters can claim rightly that this is proof the Democrat can win in majority-GOP areas, the same holds true for the conservative Republican Harris winning in majority-Democrat ones. Overall, however, the trend is for independents and Democrats (to a somewhat lesser extent) to touch the screen next to the Republican hopeful and apparently these poll results are reflecting this trend.

After a promising start to the campaign for Frank Kratovil, he’s begun a slow decline in both fundraising prowess (aside from getting money from the usual special interest suspects) and polling numbers. Perhaps it’s because it’s as recently as last month he was still calling the portion of the Long War still going in Iraq the main issue and talking about using switchgrass to fill the gas tank instead of drilling for more domestic oil. Neither of these two positions is playing out among voters on either side of Chesapeake Bay, particularly the latter.

And when the weapon of choice in this campaign comes down to the sexual preference of a pollster, you have to believe that, even with all the help Frank Kratovil is getting from his liberal D.C. buddies Chris Van Hollen and Steny Hoyer, that sixteen point margin is somewhat comfortable. But we know that the kitchen sink isn’t out of the question when it comes to politics inside the Beltway so this is no time for Harris supporters to rest on their laurels or go wobbly. Tomorrow afternoon’s post describes one opportunity to show support.