Delmarva items – Page 284

Shorebird of the week 4-13-2006

Arturo Rivas loosens up during a 2005 contest.

This week’s Shorebird of the week is last night’s hero, Arturo Rivas, pictured here from a game last July. Last night he came on to pinch-hit in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded in a tie game – a situation every kid dreams about. While it wasn’t the seventh game of the World Series, Rivas did deliver the game-winning base hit through the middle and lifted the Shorebirds to a 5-4 comeback win over Lake County.

The 22 year old Venezuelan native was among the top Shorebirds in most offensive categories in 2005 as he spent the entire season here, hitting .251 in 125 games. His 9 home runs and 62 RBI were good for second place behind Jason Fransz.

So far in 2006 Rivas is off to a decent start, hitting .273 (6 for 22) in 7 games played, with a home run and 3 RBI to his credit. He figures to be an important part of the Shorebirds’ plans as long as he remains with the team this season.

Grading the campaign blogs

This year’s campaigns are beginning to shape up and get their websites together. One thing that I like about a number of the websites I link to is the blog portion of the website. A growing number of these sites feature a blog, many times by the candidate him/herself, and some that are also open to a number of folks who contribute to the campaign (such as volunteers.)

As such, I’ve linked specifically to the candidate’s blog in cases where I’ve found that they have a related one linked from their overall site. Today I’m going to take a pass through the ones I’m aware of. All of these are linked from monoblogue, so I’m not going to bother with hyperlinks on this post.

Before I begin, I do owe hat tips to the “Big Three” local bloggers who have pointed me at various times to local candidate sites as I try to secure a database of links to them, letting the people decide for themselves – assuming they would like to spend a few minutes perusing the campaign site and getting to know their positions on issues rather than depend on the 30-second TV ad that’s usually more about tearing the opponent down than stating where they stand positionwise. Most folks who take the time to read monoblogue and the other sites likely don’t fall in that latter category.

The grading here will be subjective, based on the number, character, and variety of posts. I’ll not go into the nuts and bolts of positions stated within each post; even if somebody is completely opposite my point of view, they’ll still be graded highly if the blog and its posts are well-written.

Let us begin with Maryland Senate candidate (and current Lieutenant Governor) Michael Steele’s blog. First I need to apologize for having a dead link to his blog, this has been fixed.

I probably could have kept it as a dead link and gotten the same effect though, there’s been no posts within the last month. Other than a spate around Civil Rights Day (aka MLK Day) there’s not been much placed here. It’s almost like Michael Steele is afraid to say a whole lot after his stem cell gaffe. The last post was basically a shill for contributions.

On that basis, I would have to give Michael Steele’s blog a D. If he’s not going to pay much attention to it, the blog is really not worth having on the site. If someone from the Steele campaign reads this, perhaps they can take pointers from other blogs I’m familiar with and will grade as I go.

Another GOP candidate is Daniel Muffoletto. His campaign website links to a blog but there’s nothing in it except what seems like a test post, thus I didn’t link it separately. He gets a big fat F.

Continuing on the GOP side, Daniel “Wig Man” Vovak blogs on almost a daily basis, generally very short entries about how the campaign is going and the curse he has had placed on Michael Steele. Of late he also notes about how many campaign cards he has handed out (gaining on 9,000.) The blog is extensive and goes back all the way to December for the 2006 campaign.

This is an interesting one to grade out. It’s a little bit like blogging in sound bites, which to me is a minus, but he’s a pretty regular blogger as well and reading on the evolution of his shoe leather campaign is intriguing. So I’m going to give it a B-, which could be improved with longer posts. I’d love to see his psychic/campaign manager toss in a few posts as well.

Now I’ll turn to the Democrat side, starting with Kweisi Mfume. His blog’s also been active awhile, nearly a year. It only had a few posts over the first few months, but lately has been updated on a fairly regular basis.

The site has had an interesting change over the course of 11 months. At the start, Mfume actually did take a few turns blogging and the posts were more of a personal character. In the past few months, though, most of the entries are used simply to link to other resources or news stories about the campaign or relevant issues. This coincided with “Dan” becoming the sole blogger. While many blogs that I read on a daily basis use this approach to highlight news stories they find interesting, I’m not so sure it’s the best format for a political blog. I actually liked the early entries better than the last ones.

The blog does have one plus though as they allow comments. I didn’t take a lot of time to read the comments, but the ability to provide feedback is a plus. In this instance, I’ll grade the blog a C+.

Allan Lichtman is another Democrat hopeful. His blog has a lot to recommend it as far as enjoyability. He and several other folks contribute to the blog, and the posts run the gamut from Lichtman’s accounting of his recent trip to New Orleans to birthday wishes for him and his son. They have even gone to archives of his posts in other places which runs entries back to January of 2005.

It has a good mix of commentary, postings on campaign events and appearances, and shows something about his character and the devotion of those people truly behind his campaign. While I’m most likely 180 degrees removed from him on the issues, I would recommend it as a good reading experience. He gets a very solid A.

Thus far, that is the extent of campaign site blogging on the Maryland Senate race. Next, I’ll turn to a Delaware Senate hopeful, Republican Dennis Protack.

Currently his blog nearly fits on one page, I barely had to scroll down to see it in its entirety. With one post in March on the ports issue (and 5 total since its inception in January), it seems to me another case where, if the candidate is not going to put his (or his campaign’s) full effort into the blog, why have it? The entries themselves are short and fairly well-written, but the interesting thing to me is that each entry ends with a question. It appears Protack is using the blog to solicit comments from the public. That’s noble in and of itself, but the lack of comments show that approach is not working. In his case, I give the blog a D+.

Moving down the Eastern Shore to Virginia, one U.S. Senate hopeful has a blog. Democrat challenger Harris Miller has the site, which is somewhat new – just starting up in February. It holds a lot of promise, in that the few entries (by various contributors, including Miller himself) speak to the variety of issues the challenger holds dear and points out differences between he and incumbent Sen. George Allen. Comments are allowed, and the site mixes news and commentary quite well. With some more diligence, Miller could have an excellent blogsite. As it is, I’ll rate it a C.

Shifting my focus to the various state Congressional races, the only blog that exists for the Delmarva district races (MD-1, VA-2, DE-at large) is a brand new blog by Delaware Democrat Dennis Spivack. The first entry was placed this past Wednesday. The two posts (an introduction post and one on health care) are nicely written.

There’s a few points taken off for not allowing comments, and several marks deducted for placing the blog on Blogspot. With the recent problems there (ask “Hadley V. Baxendale” about that!), the campaign would be much better off simply placing it as part of their overall site. I suppose there’s a “stealth” factor in this as normally leafing through Blogspot you wouldn’t find a campaign blog and several blogs I link to for political commentary reside on Blogspot. And, of course, it’s free.

As it stands, I will give this new blog a B+. Spivack’s team has a great opportunity to turn this blog into a solid campaign aid.

Coming back to the Free State, both Democrat challengers feature a blog on their site. I’ll work in alphabetical order and comment on Doug Duncan’s first.

This is another site that has all the plusses as far as these blogs go. The blog is updated regularly, almost daily. There are a number of contributors, including Duncan himself and members of his family. Comments are allowed, although there’s not a whole lot of them. Most of the posts are commentary on the campaign and issues, rather than just a link to something else. But they also get the word out about appearances and campaign events in a timely fashion. Plus the Duncan political quiz (posted April 6th) is pretty funny. I’ve lived here 18 months and I almost aced it…sad in a way.

Many of the bloggers who I comment on in this post could learn a lot about how to put together a blog in reading the Duncan campaign’s edition. All in all, another excellent blog, certainly the best of the whole lot. A+.

Martin O’Malley also has a campaign blog which has well-written entries and allows comments. A nice variety of contributors add their thoughts, including LG candidate Anthony Brown. The largest problem with O’Malleys blog is the dearth of posts. There’s only about 10 posts covering the time since November of last year. That alone hurts the grade. If the O’Malley campaign really wanted to reach out to the blogosphere, they have potential to do so if they placed more emphasis on posting in their blog once in awhile. I’m giving the site a B-.

The final blog I’ll review is one that links to incumbent Delaware treasurer Jack Markell’s campaign site. The odd thing about the “Blog for Delaware” is that it’s not truly a campaign blog. I would categorize it as more of a political blog that Markell happens to contribute to on a semi-regular basis.

So the grading is difficult to do. Yes, it is pretty well-written as far as arguments go, but there’s not the updating that’s necessary to make this a great campaign blog. It lies betwixt and between, and is most useful as background info rather than a source of campaign news and thoughts. On that basis I have to grade it as a C.

As a review, by political race:

Maryland U.S. Senate:

Lichtman – A
Vovak – B minus
Mfume – C plus
Steele – D
Muffoletto – F

Delaware U.S. Senate:

Protack – D plus

Virginia U.S. Senate:

Miller – C

Delaware U.S. House (at large):

Spivack – B plus

Maryland Governor:

Duncan – A plus (best of show)
O’Malley – B minus

Delaware statewide:

Markell – C

I’ll update the links continually as I find out about them and grade the blogs again every so often as the political season continues. With the filing deadline here and in Delaware not until over the summer, there’s still time for races to shift and new websites to be brought online.

A lot of people have some improving to do, others just need to keep up their good work.

Shorebird of the week 4-6-2006

Josh Potter, pictured at left as Juan Gutierrez looks on.

This will be a regular Thursday feature as I briefly profile one of our local hometown ballplayers. Tonight’s first SotW is pitcher Josh Potter, pictured here last May 15th. Potter is one of a handful of holdovers from the 2005 Shorebirds, and had a relatively decent season here, wrapping up the campaign with a 4-3 record, a 4.63 ERA, and a solid 67-25 ratio of strikeouts to walks.

Potter was drafted in the 23rd round out of Phillipsburg High School in Osceola, PA back in 2001. As with many pitchers who come right out of high school, he’s slowly moved up the system and this will be his fifth season in the Orioles organization. However, he still has some time to develop and move ahead in the system, as Saturday will be his 23rd birthday.

Although last year’s photo has him wearing #28, the roster this season shows him with #27.

The impact of impacts?

I’ve heard the buzzphrase “growth pays for growth” quite a lot since I’ve been down here. It took the Wicomico County Council to make it happen. I imagine the lineup for building permits is going to be quite long around Memorial Day (the fees take effect in 60 days hence), so any projects inhouse for us that are situated here just got on the fast track – I know enough about developers to know that they aren’t going to want to spend $1,524 per condo unit unnecessarily. To give you an example of a project I’m working on, that fee would cost the owner/developer an extra $62,000. (It’s hypothetical since the building will be in Accomack County, VA.)

I’ll grant you that the going price of $700,000 per in that example isn’t going to be affected much. However, there’s two directions that this can go in since the precedent is set now, and both of them worry me. One scenario I see playing out is that we’re going to see a never-ending call for hikes in impact fees or the expansion in scope to when a school building needs some sort of renovation but the fees aren’t enough to cover it. I realize the “return” provision was placed into the law where fees unused for six years are returned to the developers but, honestly, once government gets its greedy little hands on the money, it’s not going anywhere. There’s always SOMETHING that needs to be fixed on a school. Look at the example of the poor students having to suffer in the late spring and early fall because there’s no air conditioning in their building.

The second downfall I can sense is where the fee structure expands to certain home renovations. As I understand it, the fee only is charged to new housing units being built. I may as well be the first to point this out. What if a landlord changes a single-family home to a duplex or triplex? Would that not impact schools? Could the County Council, strapped for money because of the constant cry for better school facilities, decide in its wisdom that adding a bedroom onto your existing house is a sure sign another future Wicomico student is on the way, and thus merits an “impact fee”?

I listened to “Cato” this morning on Bill Reddish’s show. He did make a refutation to one of my earlier arguments that has merit. It’s true that, whether there’s a fee or not, the market will be the final arbiter of housing prices and the extra $5,000 would likely end up mostly out of the developer’s pocket rather than from the end user. But I’m not sure that’s a good way to encourage the capital infusion necessary for Wicomico County to prosper. It may help out the surrounding counties a little though.

There’s things that bother me about the whole school situation in general, and the impact fee passage is an ideal time to bring it up. It’s my understanding that Bennett High School has 400 more students than what it was designed for. But where do they come up with that number?

In my schooling days, back in the 1970’s, it was commonplace to have 30 kids in a classroom. It was also not a big deal that one school I attended was first built in 1909 as a small-town high school, and even with its later conversion to a middle school, hadn’t been renovated in a major way since the 1950’s.

I’m most familiar with Ohio’s regulations on school buildings. A few years ago, they did a comprehensive study on all the schools in the state and the majority of them had physical plants that weren’t deemed to be up to snuff. So the state went ahead and mandated either renovating existing schools or building new – generally any school over 30 years old was targeted for replacement. To date, this has cost the state almost $5 billion over ten years, and the job is about halfway done. They’ve already completed the work in the district I graduated from. Where there were once 3 public elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and a high school spread among the several small communities that make up the district, now there are 3 schools based on one campus in the rural area where the original high school was built (it’s now the middle school.) And my old school building? Still standing, and ~~soon to become~~ is now a satellite campus for the local community college. Obviously what wasn’t good enough to the state of Ohio for students in grades 5-8 is just fine for adult students. Hmmmm.

It’s surprising that Maryland hasn’t tried something like this. But at the time Ohio started this, they were flush with cash. Now they’re sort of stuck with this program at the expense of higher taxes for state residents.

That aside, new school buildings are nice. They certainly can create a lot of jobs in the architectural field; at one time I had a job at a firm that almost exclusively did schools. But to me, it’s not necessarily the building that makes the school, it’s the teaching that goes on inside. There I have the biggest problem, and you can build a Taj Mahal school without solving it.

But back to the subject at hand. To me, the jury is definitely still out on this impact fee concept. It’s going to be interesting to see which direction this goes in once the 2006 election is past and a new County Council faces the same old problems with the schools, as well as with the roads and the services. My fear is that growth isn’t just going to pay for growth, but eventually for unnecessary largesse as well.

Baseball tonight!

I’m ready for the 2006 season to start as tonight an AL Central battle is slated for the lidlifter, the White Sox host the Indians. (Unfortunately, there’s an 80% change of strong thunderstorms in the Chicago area tonight.) Went up to Perdue Stadium yesterday and fought off the mob of Easter egg-hunting kids to pick out some seats for the home opener next Monday. (I’ll save the office tix for someone else, heaven knows I’ll get enough of them once things get underway.)

So this morning I’ve been perusing the sports pages trying to get a fix on how things look in 2006. I’ll start with the local major league teams, Nats and Orioles.

The Nationals were a last place team in 2005 despite also being a .500 team at 81-81. The good news for Nats fans is that they’re not picked to be a last place team this year by 8 of 9 predictions I saw, including all of the “national” (no pun intended) predictors. The bad news is that they’re likely to finish a few games short of the .500 mark this season and probably a dozen-and-a-half games out of the division title. Most experts are picking the Braves for a fifteenth straight division crown, but the Mets have gotten some respect (2 of the 9 pick the Mets to break the Atlanta streak.) What saves the Nats from the basement is the dismantling of the Florida Marlins and their continuing rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches-to rags again story. Go ahead and contract that sorry franchise, and put a restraining order on Jeffrey Lurie ever owning another ballteam.

Speaking of restraining orders, perhaps the same should be done for Peter Angelos and the Orioles. I’m only going to make two actual predictions in this post, and here they are: in the Orioles’ next-to-last homestand, September 8-14 against Boston and New York, the attendance by people wearing Red Sox or Yankees colors will be higher than those supporting the hometown team, and you’ll hear more cheering for Big Papi or Derek Jeter than for Miguel Tejada. For the last home series against Minnesota, the total attendance won’t break 60,000. You guessed it, a second-division finish is in the cards for the O’s if the experts are correct. Most have them trailing the D-Rays and inhabiting the AL East cellar, while a few pick them just ahead of Tampa Bay. The very first series for Baltimore is home against the Devil Rays so they’ll be stacked up right off the bat.

So the AL East dynasty of the Yankees winning the division and the Red Sox finishing second is expected again, for the most part (a few see Toronto as the #2 team.) It’s in the 2007-2008 seasons that the change of the AL East guard is expected to occur with the rapid ascension of Tampa Bay and their great young talent. The Orioles don’t even get placed on the radar.

Now I can talk about the important division, the AL Central. Just like the Eastern divisions of both leagues, it’s been a dynastic division where one team generally runs a string of division titles (Cleveland ’95-’99 and ’01, Minnesota ’02-’04). That’s good news for White Sox fans who hope to make their success in 2005 into their own dynasty. The bad news is that Chicago was the odd team who won in 2000 and pretty much became the placeholder between the Cleveland and Minnesota runs. Some are predicting that same placeholder scenario for the Sox and returning the dynasty label back to Cleveland. The experts are almost evenly split on this year’s winner, with a bare majority picking the White Sox.

Of course, to me all other AL Central teams are the “enemy” since I’m a Tigers fan. This spring, they’ve been making some noise and it’s possible this accursed streak of losing seasons could finally end before it hits 13. They did suffer a blow in their final spring training game as free agent signee and annointed closer Todd Jones got hurt, but that could mean highly-regarded prospect Joel Zumaya gets an opportunity to apprentice as a setup man for interim closer Fernando Rodney. One thing I think the Tigers did well in working Zumaya through the minors is that he’s been a starter so he’s had to develop several good pitches. If he’s destined for the closer’s spot, it will serve him very well.

So who do the experts think will be standing at the end? It’s a wide-open race, with eight experts I got six possibilities. The White Sox and Cardinals were picked by two each, others mentioned the Braves, A’s, Yankees, and Blue Jays. St. Louis is a very popular NL pick (7 of 8, the other being Atlanta), but few thought they could handle the AL winner. I’d love to see my Tigers upset that apple cart though. Restore the roar and place the Olde English D back into the prominence it deserves. My Mud Hens washed away a 38-year title drought last year, maybe this year the Tigers can end a 22 year hex.

Faster than the speed of light

With apologies to Larry the Cable Guy, when the Democrats in the General Assembly want to “get ‘er done” they waste no time or worry about niceties such as rules. Hence, you get Senate Bill 1102. In the Maryland GOP‘s “Weekly Update” they have a synopsis of how the bill was ramrodded through:

Last Friday, the Senate suspends the rules to introduce the bill late and at the same time the rules are suspended to refer the bill to the Senate Finance Committee.

At this point the bill is scheduled for public hearing at 1:00pm,Tuesday, March 27th.

Monday afternoon at 4:30 the on-line hearing schedule is changed announcing the hearing will now occur at 6:00pm THAT SAME EVEING (sic) (1 1/2 hours notice of the hearing change.)

6:00 pm The bill has a hearing in Finance.

6:30 pm The bill is voted out of Committee (a mere half hour debate).

8:00 pm The bill is placed on the second reading calendar on the Senate Floor. The bill is then laid over for one day. (Editor’s note: I believe our Senator Stoltzfus got that layover. Too bad he couldn’t get another week – see below.)

Tuesday the bill passes 2nd reading.

Wednesday the bill passes 3rd reading in the Senate morning session.

Thursday the bill is placed on the House agenda for their afternoon session on the floor.

Current Maryland law dictates the Public Service Commission has 5 members, all appointed by the Governor “with the advice and consent of the Senate.” SB1102 changes the commission to be appointed as follows:

Two commissioners would be appointed by the President of the Senate. That would be Mike Miller.

Two commissioners would be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, one Michael Busch.

One commissioner would be appointed by Governor Ehrlich.

The real kicker of this measure is that all the commission terms – regardless of appointment date – will come to an end on April 9th, or the day before the General Assembly winds up its yearly term. Once again, the commissioners will have staggered terms, and I really love how they figured this one out.

The governor’s appointee will have his or her term end in 2007, basically just long enough to see if he wins re-election. The Speaker’s two appointees serve through 2008 and 2010. The Senate President’s appointees have terms through 2009 and 2011.

To boil it down: the General Assembly is pissed because they share a LOT of the blame for the electric rate hikes that are soon to take effect. And, of course, Democrats have a strangehold on Annapolis save for the invasive Republican who happens to sit in the governor’s chair and gets to make these PSC appointments. When Parris Glendenning and his Democrat predecessors were picking the commissioners, that was just fine with the General Assembly.

But now that all this rate increase fiasco comes into being just months before the 2006 election, it’s suddenly incumbent upon the Democrats in Annapolis to place “their” people in charge of the situation. And it’s my wager that they will bully BG&E, et.al. into rescinding or reducing their rate hike (never mind the market forces that dictate they need to raise rates, which have been frozen since 2000.)

In addition, timing is everything. Passing the bill by Friday gives the General Assembly Democrats time to override a certain Ehrlich veto on this and other related bills. And they will, because then they can claim that they gave Maryland consumers a break in their utility bills while big bad Governor Ehrlich and the utility companies wanted to stick it to the consumer – never mind that deregulation was passed in the first place by that same Democrat majority in the General Assembly and signed by a Democrat governor. The voters sure won’t get that tidbit in the O’Malley or Duncan campaign commercials certain to come this summer.

While it’s painful, there’s something that needs to be remembered about this electric price increase. Imagine you were stuck on the same hourly wage for the last six years while the price of everything went up. The only way to make more money in that case is to work more hours, and in the utility companies’ case, only so many new customers are moving into Maryland. Basically the majority of what the utilities want would be a retroactive pay raise to the year 2000 – they’ll just get it in one lump sum.

I’m not happy that my Delmarva Power rates may jump by 1/3 or more, particularly since both my cooling AND heating needs are served by electricity. But I’m less happy at the General Assembly for making yet another end run around the Maryland Constitution and usurping more power properly placed in the executive branch. While I can adjust my budget for changing electric rates, I can’t as easily control the machinations of a party in Annapolis whose sole purpose is maintaining and exercising their own power, rights be damned.

This is America…speak English!

You know, this illegal immigration thing has a lot of people fired up…here’s some just on my personal bloglist.

Conservababes: Right from New Fallujah has a particularly nasty rant.

Justice for All? links to an article by economist Thomas Sowell.

Michelle Malkin always has a lot to say, illegal immigration is one of her pet issues to begin with.

NewsBusters blogger Matthew Sheffield looks at the influence Spanish-language media carried.

Timmer at Righting America is looking for the backhoe to start building the fence.

The American Princess weighs in with her take.

The Goldwater is back in town and he must have picked up a good strain of attitude while he was away. Now, THIS is a “new tone.”

Bobby Eberle at The Loft critiques the Congressional responses to the issue.

Now it’s my turn.

The key word to me is “illegal.” Yes, I realize that practically all of us were descended from immigrants at one time or another, even native Americans who supposedly came over from Asia when there was a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia. And I’m sure not everyone who we count as our ancestors went through Ellis Island, some were likely stowaways who managed to elude detection. Of course, many who live in the area are generations removed from people who had no choice in the matter as they were brought over as property to be sold in the slave trade. Regardless, we’re living in the here and now and I’m at least a third-generation American. I speak and write passable English, and I’m proud in a stubborn sort of way that I made it through 13 years of public school and four years of college never having learned a foreign language.

So imagine my surprise when I moved here, over a thousand miles from the Mexican border, and see bilingual signage in the stores and find there’s a Spanish-language radio station on the dial. It turns out we have a large Spanish-speaking population here, mostly from Mexico. They came here to “take the jobs Americans won’t do” in the chicken plants. But they also mow the lawns, hang the drywall, and do other manual labor work in the area. Now those jobs I have seen Americans do where I come from.

I don’t want to be one who denies a person who wants to come to America the opportunity to do so. BUT, the huge difference between the immigrants who protested in Los Angeles and elsewhere the last several days, and the immigrants from Germany and Poland who happen to be my forefathers is that my ancestors tried to assimilate themselves as best they could and become American citizens. Both then and now, newcomers to America worked hard at low-echelon jobs to create a better life for their families – but my ancestors most likely came over legally, and the last thought on their minds was trying to recreate the conditions of their native lands. They wanted to be American first, last, and always.

The time has long since come to start taking care of this problem. Unfortunately, most of the solutions being proposed have the appearance of condoning the criminal activity that brought many immigrants here in the first place. I have seen some commentary about how those on the Mayflower and other colonists didn’t have a visa or green card to enter the country either, but I’d venture to guess that the statute of limitations on harassing their method of entry is well past.

The protests of the last few days have proven one thing: the Balkanization of our country has taken root. It was seeded by bilingual education in the schools, watered by a lack of caring by politicians of all stripes who sought the immigrant vote (whether they were citizens or not), and fertilized by the advent of multiculturalism where American is just the back end of the hyphenated phrase and certainly not the important or worthy end. Now, like that last dandelion in the field, the one where you just can’t pull the root out of the ground and the Roundup just isn’t working, we’re stuck with that stubborn weed.

I’m not alone in my view. The polls suggest that a majority of Americans want immigration reform. But as usual, the politicians inside the Beltway don’t seem to hear the voice of the common folks. The only thing that may make then listen is a shakeup come November. To finish my analogy, it may take a shovel and a little bit of sweat, but a change in November might just get the rooted weed of Balkanization out from among our amber waves of grain.

WCRC meeting – March 2006

It was double-barrel speaker action at the meeting this month. Our scheduled speaker Jack Lord, candidate for Delegate in District 38B, was joined by county executive hopeful Ron Alessi. Each table had a few flyers advertising Alessi’s campaign kickoff, and I received one afterward (more on that later.)

The business portion of the meeting was pretty brief. We have $10,000 more in the treasury this year than we did at the comparable time in 2005. Signup sheets were passed out for our booth at the Salisbury Festival next month (the club will be along Market Street). I didn’t sign up yet because I think there’s something else I have planned that day, needed to check my calendar.

Also, the date for our Lincoln Day dinner (in cooperation with Worcester and Somerset counties) is Friday, June 9, at Salisbury University. I thought they mentioned a speaker but I’ll be damned if I caught the name of the person. Yeah, poor reporting on my part. We’ll see how this blog post compares with what the Daily Times says because James Fisher, one of their staff writers, was also present at the meeting to catch the remarks of Lord and Alessi. But one theme of the dinner speakers will be the anti-business climate that Maryland currently is saddled with (read: Fair Share.)

Jack Lord was the first speaker. A brief biography: he is an Eastern Shore native, but has lived in several places. Married for the second time, his wife was also present at the meeting. After graduating high school 40 years ago, he briefly worked for DuPont before being laid off. At that time, he got involved in law enforcement, first as a cadet, then as a State Trooper for 25 years before retiring in the early 1990’s. Now he has a small farm in Worcester County.

He’s termed himself as a “stealth candidate”. This isn’t the first time he’s ran for office, he also ran for the same seat in 2002. What got him involved in politics was the negative attitude toward farmers and agriculture in general of our former governor, Parris Glendening. Glendening blamed agricultural runoff as a major source of bay pollution, and one measure passed under his administration was the “nutrient management plan.” Basically it’s red tape for farmers to deal with. Since both of his delegates, Bennett Bozman and Norm Conway, voted in favor of the bill mandating the plan, Jack decided to make a bid to replace one of them in the House of Delegates. That bid got him through the primary (second of three GOP candidates) but fourth of the four in the general election with just under 10,000 votes, or 19 percent.

In his view, our current delegates “are not representing the area”, basically they’re “voting for whatever (House of Delegates Speaker Michael) Busch wants.” Jack also mentioned the veto overrides that Bozman and Conway voted for (such as the Wal-Mart bill), lack of a solution for the medical malpractice problem, and cited their support of the now ill-fated electrical deregulation, all items he wanted to change if he was sent to Annapolis. Jack made special mention about being able to work with Governor Ehrlich and possibly having the region benefit more with having a representative friendly to the governor’s interests.

Basically, his question that he encouraged people to ask Bozman/Conway voters from 2002 was “what have they done for you the last four years?”

A few questions were raised from the meeting attendees. Key among those had to do with crime (‘there’s not much a state delegate can do” with local crime issues); social issues (unlike the questioner, Lord doesn’t think the incumbents are vulnerable on social issues); and education. While acknowledging education is a problem, Jack also conceded he’s not likely to get much support from them through their union, “I don’t even mess with the teachers.”

One final point he made was that, despite being chair of the Appropriations Committee, Norman Conway has not brought home much in the way of bacon, or in Jack’s term, the Eastern Shore “gets the crumbs.” However, some of the money we do get through our current Delegates is for dubious purposes that can be described as “feel-good, pork projects.” The hopeful stated that it was a question of “pork vs. priorities” for the “common good.”

Ron Alessi then took to the podium for some brief remarks, mostly touching on issues he felt were most important to the county: schools, growth, and jobs.

He stressed that some of the problems with our schools stemmed from a lack of local control, and another root cause of their troubles was a lack of safety within. More community involvement was one part of the solution.

In Ron’s opinion, you “can’t cut growth off.” But you can place it in areas with the proper infrastructure for it. He did note that one advantage to the growth in retirees moving here was that they use fewer services than the average family would. But one other item he pointed out was a need to bring some sort of job creation to the area. Part of that would be saving our economic backbone, the poultry industry, insofar as possible, but the other piece of the puzzle would have to be enticing some sort of business or industry that could keep our college graduates here. A commenter noted that many students come here from the western shore, like the Eastern Shore area, but can’t find a decent job here so they go back to the Baltimore/DC metroplex where good jobs await at high salaries.

Another item Alessi pointed out was Wicomico County’s revenue cap. In his view, we need to work within the money that we have. It’s been pointed out elsewhere that one of his opponents wants to do a “phantom” budget which would be the budget if the revenue cap didn’t exist.

That was pretty much the extent of Alessi’s remarks and the meeting. I did get a chance to speak with Ron Alessi briefly afterward and I did ask him about more concrete job-producing steps, since that’s my pet issue in the November elections. Ron did note something about trying to get more research grants, since I pointed out that technology jobs are not as dependent on transportation issues we have here on the Eastern Shore.

While he may feel we have a pretty good transportation network, I beg to differ. Part of it was my experience living in a city that sits at the junction of major north-south (I-75) and east-west (I-80/90) interstates, lying along the main rail line between New York and Chicago, and right by one of the Great Lakes, where oceangoing ships are commonplace at the port. Toledo has all that convenient transportation yet is still in an economic slump. They still have the same problem with local college graduates leaving town for other opportunities.

But, since I got the flyer, I assume it’s public information that Ron Alessi is having a campaign kickoff on Friday, April 7th at 5:15 p.m. at the City Center Atrium in the City Bistro. I can’t attend myself since I have a prior commitment to my bowling team. But if you have a question for him, go on out and ask him yourself – that’s what I did.

Update: Actually, the DT article wasn’t too bad, although they messed up the district number in the online headline.

Odd and ends #4

Just a bunch of little stuff, not necessarily enough in each part to make a full post. So hopefully the total is greater than the sum of its parts.

First of all, I noticed a week or so ago that the Justice For All? blog was having some issues with Google. It appears Hadley has the blog back up and going but without everything previous to this month. That’s unfortunate because one thing I feature on my blog is what I consider the best of my comments elsewhere (“My Feedback”) and JFA has a bunch of them, which are now dead links.

But Hadley is certainly not alone in his complaint, as Michelle Malkin attests.

If you are familiar with the story of monoblogue, you’ll recall that I once had a Blogger account. But I decided to leave Blogger shortly after a post I did in July of last year, and it was for economic reasons. I really didn’t want to consciously support a company whose employees gave over 95% of their campaign contributions to liberals and their causes. (To that end, you’ll notice I have no Google ads.)

It was through some of the other local blogs that I saw the rechristened “Son of Wal-Mart” (aka House Bill 1510) was defeated in committee. Interestingly enough, the vote was 13-9 to kill the bill. Since I’m all but certain that Democrats are a majority on the committee (as they are in the House of Delegates overall) it has to mean that they were feeling heat from someplace. The $64,000 question is whether it was:

a) the negative press on it, including articles in the Wall Street Journal and mentions on Rush Limbaugh’s show

b) the fact that 2006 is an election year for each and every one of the 188 Senators and Delegates in the General Assembly, not to mention two key statewide races

c) the power of the blogosphere, including myself.

While I’d love to think the answer was c) I think the reality staring Democrats in the face made b) the answer. Even though the vast majority of Democrat seats are likely “safe” because of voting demographics, it’s not totally out of the question for enough seats to flip over to the GOP to enable a re-elected Governor Ehrlich to have his vetoes sustained. It’s bad enough for the Democrats that the gay marriage issue was thrown in their lap by a judge; thus, passing “Son of Wal-Mart” this year would truly energize another conservative base of voters.

Speaking of voting bases, it’s starting to look like the long wait for county offices to attract candidates is over. We now have four candidates for Sheriff and three for county executive. The remaining question is how many people will flock to county council seats, especially with the recent turnaround on annexation.

I think Monday’s WCRC meeting will be an interesting one because of this and other issues.

Once again, if you read this blog on a regular basis you’ll find that I’m very pro-growth. One main reason is that my paycheck depends on people wanting to invest in development, whether of a business or residential nature. And it’s not just Wicomico County, but all over the Eastern Shore and beyond.

In our business, we have a lot of regulations to deal with, mostly of a restrictive nature. Honestly, 95% of them are common sense – one example is having fire-rated tenant separation walls so a fire in one unit is less likely to spread to another. The amount of exemption from certain fire code items you gain by installing sprinklers is another sensible restriction.

But in the case of Wicomico County and the whole growth controversy, I’m a little befuddled. Part of the reason is because I’m a “come here” so I have a short point of reference. In my readings of the local blogs, though, I’ve gathered two important nuggets. One is that somewhere, probably locked away in the most secure vault on the Eastern Shore, is Wicomico County’s master plan. Well, it must be locked away, because to hear the local blogosphere, it’s being ignored!

The other item is the subject of “pipestem” annexations. I was under the impression that Salisbury was attempting to streamline and square off their boundaries. But instead they run their boundaries several miles farther out, extending pipestems like so many tentacles and latching themselves further toward Delaware and other county borders.

It seems to me that it’s much easier to annex land in Maryland than in Ohio, mainly because Ohio has a township form of government for unincorporated areas. So when a city or village expands, there’s automatically a government entity that gets smaller and the township trustees generally fight annexations tooth and nail because it shrinks their tax base. Several times in my home area annexation battles have ended up in court. In one case, the battle was over city sewer and water being extended to unincorporated areas in exchange for not fighting annexation – but the township residents wanted no part of the higher city tax rates and sued the city.

Here in Maryland, it’s almost like Wicomico County has a “whatever…” attitude toward annexation, less area to take care of. Since it seems all the state money to run government comes from the same pot, there’s not a net loss to the county by losing territory, but it’s fewer miles of road to fix or less snow to plow.

Growth is an issue I can see both sides of. To me, it’s not growth that’s the problem, since it’s going to happen if an area is reasonably attractive. We happen to be in an area that has a nice climate and a rural feel that many seek. And it’s my opinion that even doubling the population wouldn’t change that.

County executive candidate Ron Alessi alluded to my concern when he spoke of getting good jobs here. But how can that get done? In a perfect world, each house that’s constructed also gets some place for the homeowner to work, as well as the public facilities necessary to maintain the house’s safety, utilities, accessibility to the job through improved roads, etc., etc. But it sounds like we have shortages of most of the other facets that go into a good community.

Delmarva has some assets to a company looking for a good location to place a factory or other facility. It has a nice location for “quality of life” issues and at least Delaware is somewhat business-friendly. The minuses are transportation needs, since it’s difficult to access a lot of places from here with Chesapeake Bay. But if there’s a company who doesn’t have a lot of time-sensitive issues, we’re as good a place as any to locate, maybe better than most.

Rather than kowtow to every residential developer in the region, what are we doing to get more jobs to the area? I’m not saying we need a Kia plant but someone ought to sell the region better to job providers. (Having a more business-friendly General Assembly would help too.) White-collar corporations could be lured to our area’s proximity to DC and the Northeast – close enough for easy access, far enough away so you don’t smell it.

I’m going to end this overall rant with one close to my heart. I sent and received e-mail from Brian Cleary, who’s the Operations Manager for Clear Channel of Delmarva (they run, among others, 96 Rock.) The subject was this year’s “Thirsty Thursday” band lineup at the Shorebirds games. It pissed me off royally when I read:

Sadly, the Thirsty Thursdays with the Shorebirds this year will not feature live bands … last year, we were able to secure the bands for the Shorebirds. However, for a number of reasons, we backed off playing the local music (ratings the biggest factor – the lack of cooperation and enthusiasm from the local acts one of the others), so those bands aren’t really working with us any more…(i)nstead for this year’s Thirsty Thursdays, we will have Whiskey & Cowboy broadcasting their show at the stadium.

Come on, what could’ve been better than beer, ball, and bands? Leave it to somebody to mess up a good thing.

It’s a very sad state of affairs when this is all the better we can do. One thing I got to love quickly about the area when I moved here was the support the local radio stations gave to regional bands. Instead of playing Nickelback for the 300th time, 96 Rock would play a local band’s song in a semi-regular rotation, plus every week they did “Local Lixx” which was an hour of local music. Now, I know some of the local bands dropped the ball (there’s a larger audience on the Internet, particularly myspace.com) but free airplay is free airplay, people. Do you think I wouldn’t like a plug for this blog on Bill Reddish’s show?

It really sucks because last year’s “Thirsty Thursdays” introduced me to some great groups like Control Freaks, Not Alone, Chowderfoot, and 7 Days Torn, among a host of others. There’s just so many good groups out there in our area that deserve support and another outlet for supporting them has vanished. Instead, we’ll be “entertained” by a wannabe morning crew that happens to be on in the afternoons.

Hopefully I’ll still get to see some good bands at “Beast of the East” this year, but since I think 96 Rock brought those bands in last year, it remains to be seen. No one’s announced yet at the site. The band list for “Pork in the Park” is up already though, they have an interesting assortment of groups.

It’s less than three weeks to the real beginning of spring. When the Shorebirds play and we get the twin weekend events of Pork in the Park and Beast of the East, it’s time to get ready for another fun Delmarva summer!

Ongoing 2006 election feature

Since we’re now inside 6 months to the primaries in both Maryland and Delaware, I think it’s time to do a public service and begin to link to various campaign websites of all the candidates I can. Tonight I started with the Maryland U.S. Senate race and linked to the three main contenders – Ben Cardin, Kweisi Mfume, and Michael Steele. If you look to the right at the Bloglist, it’s under the category “Let the people decide.”

I’ll start checking into who has actually filed for what races. My intention is to link with as many of this area’s campaigns as possible. So here’s a list of what I consider “area” campaigns:

Maryland:

United States Senate (what I started tonight)
U.S. Congress – Maryland District 1
All statewide campaigns (Governor/Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller, Attorney General)
State Senator and House of Delegates – Districts 37 and 38
County offices in Wicomico, Worcester, Somerset, and Dorchester counties, particularly County Executive and County Council as applicable to the jurisdiction.

Delaware:

United States Senate
U.S. Congress – at-large
State Senate – District 20 (District 21 is not up this year as I understand it)
State Representatives – Districts 38, 39, 40, 41
County offices in Sussex County.

Virginia:

United States Senate
U.S. Congress – Virginia District 2 (covers the Eastern Shore of Virginia).
Most of their races in 2006 appear to be local mayor/council races, they run on an opposite calendar of local/state elections than does Maryland.

If you come across a link I don’t know about (or if you’re a candidate) let me know at my e-mail address here: michael@monoblogue.us. You may recall earlier I linked to a press release from House of Delegates candidate Sonny Bloxom – I’m open to that as well (with certain restrictions.) And it’s a good thing I linked to the press release because otherwise I’d have misspelled his name!

Seriously, it would be great to have all the sites here and make this a “one-stop shop” for election info, so that’s my goal for the campaign season.

Update: I found a batch of new links (added tonight) on a site called politics1.com so a hat tip goes to Ron Gunzberger, who runs the site.

It’s a crime!

Thanks to Delmarva Dealings for pointing out the Daily Times printed my letter to the editor yesterday. Now, normally they call me to verify but I guess they must read the blogs and found I “crossposted” it anyway. Thus, I never heard a thing, and I don’t get the print edition here (we do get it where I work.)

What I’d love to know is why the DT editor chopped it up so bad?!? I write a certain way on purpose. Sure it may be wordy, but as Rush Limbaugh would say, “words mean things.” I take plenty of time to write, because I want to type out my thoughts and opinions in a manner that expresses them completely.

However, if you followed the link and you’re discovering monoblogue for the first time, welcome! Glad you’re here. But I’m betting that if you saw that online link to my site on the DT website, you’ve likely already read my blog from being linked in other places. Of course, the more readers I get, the more likely I can get actual paying advertisers to come to my site…that would be cool. At least then I could make my server fee back.

Actually, the real reason I was getting ready to write a post was something I saw on Justice For All? almost a month ago, but it was almost immediately buried in the avalanche of MDE/zoo/Salisbury Water Treatment plant news. It was a 5 part pictorial called “No Gangs in Salisbury.” To refresh your memory:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Despite the fact that the news is old blogwise, it doesn’t mean we are any less likely to see gang trouble this year. No one wants a repeat of last year’s random homicide incident, only this time involving, say, MS-13 or ABM.

As I see it, the main cause of gang problems in Salisbury is not quite what one may think. I recall seeing a news item last year about several incidents where alien workers were robbed but couldn’t or didn’t report these incidents to the police. The reason most theorized is that these workers were here illegally and didn’t want to draw attention to themselves and their crime by reporting a crime perpetrated on them. So they just bore the loss of hundreds of dollars in cash silently.

Many of these laborers speak little or no English, and don’t have bank accounts. Either they are paid in cash or use a secondary vendor to get their checks cashed (Wal-Mart will cash a payroll check for a modest fee.) It’s not been uncommon for me to complete my shopping at Wal-Mart (particularly the one in Fruitland) and find myself behind a group of Mexican laborers who pull out a large wad of cash to pay for their groceries. Obviously this fact isn’t lost on the criminal element, who see these people as an easy target. Knowing that the foreign population generally carries a large amount of cash and is hesitant to report being relieved of it by threat of force, it almost becomes a sport to see who can get the largest amount of ill-gotten gains.

Then the question becomes: what happens to all that loose untraceable cash? A lot of it ends up in the pockets of those who ply the narcotics trade. And where there’s a thriving drug market, there’s generally gang formation. So you begin to see various garages and other buildings “tagged” with gang graffiti marking their turf and sending hidden messages to competing gangs.

One thing I was curious about and I finally looked into tonight was how one can get in touch with the local police and sheriff’s office. In Toledo, there’s an anonymous tip line one can call if they have information on a crime committed (obviously, if one’s in progress, 9-1-1 should be dialed.) But there’s no such thing here. It’s particularly important that one can call in tips anonymously, since dealing with a gang like MS-13 can be dicey.

Now it could be that the criminal investigation sections of the Salisbury PD and Wicomico Sheriff’s Department do handle anonymous tips, but they don’t advertise that kind of service, nor is it known if they’re bilingual. Let’s face it, until some sort of meaningful immigration reform and enforcement is passed on a federal level, Salisbury’s going to be a bilingual city.

The other thing is something that struck me driving along on Saturday. I was driving down Church Street to work and I saw a group of people fixing up a porch. Since they were mostly Caucasian, I didn’t figure they were native to that mostly minority neighborhood. I’m guessing it was a church group who was doing their part to help a less fortunate member of the community.

So why couldn’t a group adopt a block on a Saturday and paint over some of the gang tagging? Have Home Depot or Lowe’s pitch in and donate a few gallons of paint. It could even be the community service element for those who are sentenced to complete community service, still better if they were unruly juveniles who were quite possibly the ones to deface the building in the first place.

It will have to be an ongoing effort, because the gangs will come back a few times. But they eventually lose interest, or more likely, hit another block where their colors will last for a longer time.

I look at it this way. There’s probably as many if not more gang-bangers and wannabes on the streets than there are cops. Generally cops are better armed, but they can’t be everywhere at all times. So the deciding factor in taking care of the gang problem is the citizens. But the citizens generally want to just get along in life and stay out of the way of the gangs – a healthy fear. That creates a condition which perpetuates the problem.

The suggestions I posted here are just a tip of the iceberg. Much needs to be done at all levels of society (notice I didn’t say government) to eradicate the gangs from all sides. The most effective tool to me would be drying up their money supply, but that’s going to take pressure on all levels of the drug trade.

We’re going to have a new sheriff in town come November. First and foremost on his/her agenda is going to be the gang problem, and the remedies prescribed during the campaign will be tested soon after the oath of office is sworn. Let’s hope they work.

Outstanding comment

I just moderated a comment to a previous post that’s likely better than the post itself, so I’ll link back to that post. It was a comment that does a great job of what I like to see comments do: move the conversation forward.

I didn’t want the comment buried in a post that’s several back in the pipeline. That would be a shame because not everyone reads past the first post or two. So here you go.