Joe the Plumber – my kind of guy

Even better, he’s put my birthplace on the map for something good.

Cartoon by William Warren, hat tip to ALG News - Americans for Limited Government.

Yes, Joe Wurzelbacher (now much more famous as “Joe the Plumber” – can an endorsement deal be far behind?) lives in Holland, Ohio, a suburb directly west of Toledo and the next town easterly on the Conrail tracks from the one I spent my teenage years in, the rural area of Swanton, Ohio. (My early years were spent in south Toledo, most of that time I went to the former Heatherdowns School.) I probably went close by his house a few times working on the schools in and around Holland for my first architectural employer.

So Joe has made a name for himself and the city he calls home. But in truth, all he really did was make a statement and ask a question, just like thousands of bloggers have. His just happened to make it to national television, and Barack Obama finally told the truth about his agenda when he famously expressed the desire to “spread the wealth.”

While he may only be a plumber by avocation and not official title, Joe has that same common sense as millions of other Americans do, millions who are skeptical of politicians making pie-in-the-sky promises that only seem to have one effect: make government larger and make it take more from your pocket (as the cartoon suggests.)

With Barack Obama caught on tape revealing his true agenda, it was time for the media and other Obama allies to employ the only tactic they seem to know when confronted with this sort of crisis – kill the messenger. Suddenly we found out that Joe wasn’t a licensed plumber, is behind on his property taxes, and isn’t even a Joe – his given name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. Also dug up was the fact that Joe is related (by marriage) to Charles Keating, he of the Keating Five scandal nearly 20 years ago (h/t on that to Bob McCarty.)

But when given an opportunity to say his piece, Joe showed that he’s a lot like many other Americans who toil in obscurity – even Joe called himself a “flash in the pan” and seems uncomfortable still with his fifteen minutes of fame. I wanted to make mention of a few statements attributed to him that I heard Thursday on Rush – being a 24/7 member I could track down the transcript and thus I have. Here’s some of what Joe said, thoughts that are on the minds of more Americans than the mainstream media would like to admit:

I want (my son) to live in an America that he’s proud of.  I’m tired of people downing America, saying that we’re this bad country.  I mean, that upsets me and my friends greatly.  You know, we are the greatest country in the world.  Stop apologizing for it! I mean, really. It just… (sigh) I get real mad about that.  I’m not sorry for being an American, I’m not sorry for having the things I have.  I’m not sorry for any of those things.  I’m not sorry that we’re in Iraq.  Has it kept us safe?  Absolutely! I believe in that 100%.  WMDs or not, I don’t care. You know, we took the fight to them. We’ve done a pretty good job there.  Could we have done better?  Yeah, sure.  But, you know, it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback. You know, and hindsight they say is 20/20.  I call it X-ray vision.

Exactly. Apparenly Joe believes in capitalism and in his country right or wrong, I guess the elites would classify that as drinking the Bush Kool-Aid. Nor does he suffer from class envy:

Well, to be honest with you, I mean (the idea of redistributing wealth) infuriates me.  I like, you know, Bill Gates, I don’t care who you are. If you worked for it, if it was your idea and you implemented it, it’s not right for someone to decide you made too much, you’ve done too good and now we’re going to tie some of it back.  That’s just completely wrong.

Joe also commits the cardinal sin of supporting our troops as well as their mission:

You know, my friends in the military that come back and tell me the thanks that they receive for us being there, it doesn’t get enough play.  I mean we’ve liberated another country.  I mean, you know, freedom, things that every one of you guys take for granted, everything that Americans take for granted, I mean these guys haven’t had it; now they got it?  I mean that’s an incredible thing.  You know, our guys here that are poverty stricken have cell phones.  Those old people over there, you know, they have one pair of pants and a shirt.  You know, so what we’ve done over there is an incredible, incredible thing.

When the elites and liberals think of what our military has done overseas, they think of Abu Gharib and the prison at Guantanamo, not of the humanitarian accomplishments. Joe is just echoing the sentiments of those of us who truly are the majority of Americans; a man who got the opportunity to break the silence of the silent majority.

Being from Toledo and spending most of my first forty years there, there is a part of Joe which is representative of the people there and part which is not.

Toledo is a gritty, rust bucket city that’s caught in a transition not entirely of its own making. For the most part it’s a blue-collar city which means Joe fits in perfectly as a guy who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty and can do the physical work that’s sometimes demanded of his profession. There’s thousands who do similar sorts of tasks, whether it’s on the assembly line at the Jeep plant or what I still call the Hydramatic plant (I think it’s under a different name now but they assemble the transmissions for GM products), work for the major contractors in town, or toil at one of the dozens of factories large and small that supply the auto industry.

On the other hand, many of those workers differ from Joe because they believe in much of what the union and local media tell them, particularly when it comes to the salaries of CEO’s against the salary they make on the line at Jeep or driving the stone out of the local quarries. Loyal to Democrats beyond a fault, they elect the same old people to political office and wonder why nothing changes for the better – Marcy Kaptur has been Toledo’s Congresswoman since 1982 and, except for a one-term Republican she replaced, her and “Lud” Ashley, another Democrat, have been the only representatives of the Ninth District since the mid-1950’s. The City Council in Toledo has generally been a 10-2 or 11-1 Democrat majority from the time the city adopted a split district/at-large system in the early nineties. If Big Labor says they should support the Obama agenda, Toledo and Lucas County will likely vote at a better than 2-1 ratio for Obama.

But the city is not all bad, and there’s a lot of good people I left behind when I decided to move here. Included among them was a guy I don’t think I ever met but has been the beneficiary of fifteen minutes of fame simply for asking a question and getting a truthful answer. So here’s to you, Joe, and thanks for reminding me that I’m not the only person hailing from the “Glass City” who only asks for Americans the opportunity to pursue a dream.

Late addition: Adam Bitely at NetRight Nation shares a similar sentiment.

I have egg on my face, and it ain’t cooked as I like it…

Okay, you got Andy Harris and I me on this commercial (thanks for the grammar lesson). Trust me, I’m not pleased about it because, despite the fact the sentiments are true, reusing the footage from earlier this year is a little misleading and doesn’t quite pass the smell test. In the Daily Times story by Greg Latshaw, Harris campaign manager Chris Meekins explains:

Chris Meekins, Harris’ campaign manager, confirmed that the people in the ad were the same, but declined to say if the footage was new or shot before the February primary.

“The core issue is that Frank Kratovil is a liberal,” he said. “That’s the message, that he and Gilchrest are two tax-and-spend liberals.”

Well, Meekins is correct in his message but much as I like Chris and he seems like a nice enough guy in the few times I’ve spoken to him, in this case I have to call this faux pas sheer laziness on the part of him and whoever else created the commercial. If you needed a few more seconds of fresh footage, you could have called me up. I’d have looked square into the camera and uttered the truthful words:

Frank Kratovil will go to Washington and be a lap dog for Nancy Pelosi.

It just pisses me off because there was no shortage of people who would have said essentially the same thing about Frank Kratovil that they would have said about Wayne Gilchrest. This leaves me in sort of a moral dilemma because I definitely don’t condone the tactic, but voting for the Libertarian would be throwing my vote away and I’m not going to vote for a Pelosi lapdog, nor will I stay home or skip the race. But this story (of course, the Daily Times is all over anything to make Kratovil look good, even on their supposed misquotes as the Latshaw piece later notes) might well be the difference in a close election and the last thing the First District needs is someone who would be in lockstep with Barack Obama if he’s elected.

Certainly the commercial needs to be pulled although the damage is done. While it’s arguable that a further statement regretting the error should also be put out, perhaps the better statement would be to contact the two whose original footage was reused and see if they agree with the sentiments about Kratovil, too. I’m actually surprised the Daily Times didn’t try to track these two down, then again the pair may have stood by their earlier statements in the belief that they relate correctly to Kratovil as well.

As I noted earlier, the Daily Times “misquoted” Frank Kratovil then turned around and blamed Andy Harris for using the misquote in a commercial. This is the spot in question:

Truthfully, the commercial would have worked better if it tied Kratovil to the people (among them are several contributors to Kratovil’s campaign) who helped create this mess: Nancy Peosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Christopher Dodd, and Barack Obama. Say what you want about “Wall Street greed”, these were the people who “encouraged” (at times under threat of legal action) banks to make these unwise mortgages. And don’t forget ACORN’s part, such as this example. (I like the “non-traditional income” euphemism myself.)

Unfortunately, campaigns don’t always go as one would prefer they do. Given the current economic climate, the party that has the most to do with it may yet be rewarded on Election Day with enhanced majorities in both houses of Congress and their Presidential candidate being handed the keys to the White House. For the sake of my adopted district and despite my misgivings about this particular campaign tactic, I’m still pushing the screen next to Andy Harris’s name in order to fight the potential damage to our nation.

The tour begins

A few weeks back I interviewed Blue Star Mom Deborah Johns, who took it upon herself to spend two weeks traveling the nation because she believes Barack Obama isn’t fit to be President. Today is the day her bus tour begins in Sacramento, California and for the next 14 days she and others will make a 35-city whistle stop tour to spread the message. (As this post comes online, the bus should be gassed up and ready to roll!) While a few of the venues have changed, Deborah and friends will still end up in Washington, DC on October 29th.

One thing I questioned Deborah about was how she thought the national media would react. Mark Halperin of Time magazine answered that question in part yesterday by posting one of the group’s more strident commercial spots:

Yeah, that one’s a little over the top and a bit too shrill in my estimation – perhaps that’s the impression Halperin is trying to impart in his readers. I’d rather the focus of this tour be on both the anti-military aspect of Barack Obama that Deborah is most passionate about and the anti-business, high-tax economic policies likely to occur in an Obama administration; plus a dose of their strong support for fellow Blue Star Mom Sarah Palin tossed in for good measure. Happily, in part they do shift somewhat into that economic mode as part of this tour and use a humorous tactic to question Obama’s ability to lead:

As part of this tour we’ll be highlighting Barack Obama’s lack of executive experience, and we’re inviting you to participate.  Here’s how:

Bring a copy of your resume to the rallies!  That’s right, we’ll be collecting resumes from people at stops all across the nation, so if you have any executive experience — either as someone who ran or started your own small business, or a housemom who raised a family, or a senior-level executive who had high-level responsibilities, etc… be sure to bring your resume with you to the rally in your community.

We’ll display the giant stack of resumes for the national media at the end of our tour in Washington, D.C.  And not only that, but we’ll also select 3 of the resumes and fly out those individuals, on our dime, to our Washington, D.C. news conference on Wednesday, October 29th as we highlight the fact that all those Americans who submitted resumes at our tour stops had more executive experience than Barack Obama, who now wants to be president and Commander in Chief of the United States!  We’ll also make you available for media appearances/interviews if you’re up to it!

Don’t worry, you can always come out to our rallies even if you don’t bring a resume – but please be sure to bring your American flags either way!

Gee, if I’d have known that earlier I’d have sent a copy of my resume since the tour doesn’t quite make it here. I guess monoblogue IS a small – very small! – business because I do make a few pennies on ad revenue. They wouldn’t even have to fly me, just pay for my gas. (Then again, a private jet from here to DC might be a great way to get around that Beltway bottleneck.)

In any case, having now dealt with Deborah Johns and others in the OCDB group, I wish them nothing but the best on their tour and hope they take my advice – I suspect it’ll be worth at least a little more than what they paid for it. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on their progress and see how well her prediction of “some” press coverage for the tour pans out.

Hey, drive-by media, here’s a sex scandal!

And it’s even in the very same district that Mark Foley resigned from two years ago, the 16th District of Florida. In this case his Democrat successor, Tim Mahoney, reportedly paid his former mistress $121,000 in hush money – not only that, he also got her a job at a political consulting firm. Nice work if you can get it.

For those of you who have forgotten, the Foley case revolved around inappropriate e-mails to some of the pages who worked around the Capitol and the cover-up by GOP leaders. Between that and “macaca”, the drive-by media had a field day assisting the Democrats who were running on a platform of cleaning up Washington.

Well, guess again. Even more damning are the allegations of a cover-up on the Democrat side:

Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign, the Mahoney staffers said.

A spokesperson for Emanuel denies that account, but said Emanuel did confront Mahoney “upon hearing a rumor” about an affair in 2007 and “told him he was in public life and had a responsibility to act accordingly.” The spokesperson added that it was a “private conversation” that had nothing to do with Mahoney’s re-election prospects.

Right, because they knew if this came out at the wrong time Mahoney wouldn’t have any re-election prospects. Then again, how long did it take for someone to get John Edwards to ‘fess up about his “love child?” That came out in the National Enquirer for gosh sakes.

What makes this different and more serious than anything Foley did was the money involved. Definitely, the woman in question also has a lot of court time in store for her but you have to wonder where the investigation will be on this compared to the supposed abuse of power Sarah Palin exercised as Governor – a case hurried by a Democrat State Senator to arrive prior to Election Day and extended past its original scope. As originally brought up, Palin was cleared of any wrongdoing in sacking her Public Safety Commissioner because he was an at-will employee.

(If you want to read all 263 pages of the Palin report, you can do so here. It’s noteworthy that the report assumes Palin wasn’t worried about her ex-brother-in-law because she let go part of her security detail. I think the woman can handle firearms herself!)

And I’m not even going to go into the controversy about whether Barack Obama was actually born in America. We know John McCain wasn’t born in the United States but in the Panama Canal Zone (when we still held the Panama Canal,) however Obama’s been less forthcoming. My blogger friend Bob McCarty has been all over this one, beginning with this post of his and culminating with yesterday’s video link.

In any of these cases, if the situation were reversed don’t you think the evening news would be wall-to-wall with it? The answer is blatantly obvious and reveals part of the reason we in the pajamas media are more popular than ever.

‘Carol’ing is a little earlier this year

Something which has been much-hyped in conservative circles over the past couple months is a new movie called An American Carol. Essentially the movie is a spoof of Michael Moore and some of his films, and the marketing angle that is being played is that it’s “almost criminal” in Hollywood to be conservative.

A couple months back, I introduced a short video that was created by the Zucker brothers, who made themselves famous with movies like Airplane! and the Naked Gun series. David Zucker is the brains behind American Carol and obviously he and the movie’s investors are playing to what some may consider a niche market. I’ll let Washington Times (and other outlets) writer Frank Gaffney pick up the story:

It’s election season, so it is appropriate that an important vote will be cast this weekend. No, I am not talking about early balloting in Ohio or Oregon for the November presidential race. Rather, this vote is a national one- and it will be taking place at a theater near you.

This weekend, the returns will be tallied on box-office sales of the opening weekend of An American Carol – a marvelously politically incorrect take-off on the timeless Dickensian morality tale. Set around the Fourth of July in contemporary America rather than a Victorian Yuletide, it has been created and directed by my friend, the zany and wildly successful David Zucker.

This Carol’s Scrooge character, played by Kevin Farley, is a dead-ringer for radical leftist filmmaker Michael Moore. The ghosts who visit him – including John F. Kennedy, George S. Patton, and George Washington – labor to teach their subject about the greatness of this country, the absurdity of the “Blame-America-First” Left’s toxic hatred for it and the opening the latter provides for Islamists bent on our destruction. Punctuated by trademark Zucker slapstick humor (his other credits include Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Scary Movie 3, and assorted sequels), the movie makes a deadly serious point: Everything is on the line in this War for the Free World and those of us who prize our freedoms will lose them if we fail to protect them against enemies foreign and domestic.

In a sense the pilgrimage Zucker chronicles is an autobiographical one. He had his own epiphany after 9/11, prompting him to break with Hollywood’s dominant left-wing politics and reflexive contempt for our government, military, and people (even, amazingly, the movie-going ones). With the passion of a convert, he uses his skills to poke fun at his industry, academia, political and media elites and such mainstays of the radical Left as the ACLU, MoveOn.org, Rosie O’Donnell and, of course, Michael Moore.

Zucker and Farley are joined in this apostasy by other accomplished stars, including Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, James Woods, and Robert Davi. Their courage in goring so many of Hollywood’s sacred cows is palpable given that community’s notorious practice of ensuring that those who are shunned never “eat lunch” (read, work) in that town again.

Amidst the sight-gags, the slapstick (often literally), the absurd moments and hilarious quips, there is a scene that is transcendently important and deeply affecting. After the protagonist has proven infuriatingly resistant to mentoring from JFK and Patton, he is given a tour of St. Paul’s Chapel near Wall Street by its most famous parishioner, President Washington. Jon Voight does not act this part; he channels the father of our country. Moore-as-Scrooge comes face to face with the carnage of 9/11 and confronts at last the necessity of taking responsibility for his own destructive actions. It is one of the most powerful pieces of cinematic artistry I have ever seen.

An American Carol is more than a wonderfully entertaining film. It is more even than a forceful political statement on behalf of the values and institutions that have made America, as the bumper sticker has it, thanks to the brave, the land of the free.

David Zucker’s new film is also an opportunity – a chance to show Hollywood in the only way it understands that the people of this country admire those prepared unashamedly to stand up for us and the country we hold dear.

For the film industry, opening weekend box office returns determine whether a film is deemed to be a success or not. A big turn-out demonstrates an appeal that will result in more movie theaters showing the film and for longer runs than will otherwise be the case.

Consequently, we have a chance to do something more than properly reward David Zucker and his gutsy team by turning out this weekend to see their movie. In the process, we can demonstrate in a most tangible and impactful way to others in their industry that there is a market not only for this film but for others who revere this country, rather than demean it.

In short, I urge you to take not just your family and friends to see An American Carol. Ask everyone you know to do the same. If possible, do it this weekend and thereby vote in a contest that may prove to be nearly as far-reaching as that whose balloting will take place a month later.

Perhaps I gave away half the plot by using all of Gaffney’s piece, but we will indeed see if the marketing works in the case of An American Carol; especially since it’s opening on the same weekend as Bill Maher’s Religulous, which questions the role of religion in life and is more of an “establishment” movie with a typcial Hollywood viewpoint. While it may well be a box office smash, my bet is that the success of An American Carol will be dismissed in much the same way as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ box office revenues were. It’s par for the course for conservatism, so we’ll just have to enjoy yet another well-kept secret from the elites who think they know it all.

Now we know a bit more about Barack

For this afternoon, the controversial video from the American Issue Project (h/t Michelle Malkin):

When I went to Youtube to embed the video, it had well over 100,000 views already. The Obamanation tried earlier to flood television stations who were airing the spot with thousands of e-mails demanding it be taken off. (My e-mail is up top, let’s see how they do. It won’t work for me either.)

Is this a little over the top? I believe it is, but the spot is definitely effective. (I think it would be better for 30 seconds, perhaps that is too little to make the point though.) Certainly it calls the character issue into play, and Obama has known his share of seedy characters over the years (Tony Rezko, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and probably most of the bit players in the Chicago political machine, for starters). It’s certainly put the heretofore unknown to me American Issues Project on the map – so if that was an aim of theirs they did well.

I know that a number of my readers on the left are going to call me out as a shill to the vast right-wing conspiracy, but this is a legitimate issue in the campaign that’s not being raised. (Yes, I can hear you asking again how many houses John McCain has and screaming “Keating Five!” from here. That will surely come out from the Obama side before all is said and done.) More telling is that Obama hasn’t thrown Ayers under the bus yet because it only took him a few days to shove Jeremiah Wright there. (Maybe Obama is in Baltimore, since the buses there are apparently having problems staying on time.)

Without knowing just how many markets actually showed the ad and the timing involved (whether it aired during prime time or was buried at 3 in the morning), it’s arguable that just taking the number of Youtube views and adding the number of readers Michelle Malkin gets in a day (about 1 – 1.5 million a week, you can check her Site Meter) that the ad got many times more free exposure for the American Issues Project than they have gotten in paying for them to air on television. It was their Holy Grail and definitely scored a bullseye with their target audience.

That, my friends, is the beauty of the internet and why I keep plugging away at this sort of stuff.

Frank Kratovil responds on the airwaves

Last week Andy Harris moved his Congressional campaign back to the airwaves with his first commercial and yesterday opponent Frank Kratovil responded in kind:

Of course, the Harris side didn’t waste any time coming up with a pithy reply, billing it as the Extreme Makeover: Kratovil Edition.

In his first television ad, Frank Kratovil has had an extreme makeover showing he will do or say anything to get elected.

“Either Kratovil has a short-term memory, or he is intentionally misleading the voters in the first district.” said Campaign Manager Chris Meekins.  “The reason Kratovil is trying to have an extreme makeover in his first ad is because he knows voters in the first district won’t embrace his radical liberal Washington agenda.”

Kratovil makes numerous misleading statements in his first campaign ad. See examples below:

Wasteful Spending

Claim: “decrease wasteful spending”

Fact: In an interview with WYPR, Kratovil stated he supports earmarks.  Earmarks lead to billions of dollars in wasteful spending like the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, and to corruption in government.  (Source: Transcript of Kratovil Interview on WYPR in Salisbury on 6/13/2008)

Illegal Immigration

Claim: “Crack down on illegal immigration”

Fact: At a debate in January, Kratovil stated he would have supported the “Amnesty” bill before Congress last year. Supporting Amnesty is not cracking down on illegal immigration. (Source: Star Democrat 1/13/2008

Energy

Claim: “Decrease our dependence on Middle East Oil”

Fact: By refusing to support off-shore drilling, the United States economy will not be able to stop buying oil from the Middle East. Expanding domestic oil production is necessary to decreasing our dependence on foreign oil.  (Source: Transcript of Kratovil Interview on WYPR in Salisbury on 6/13/2008)

Representation

Claim: “Independent. On Our Side”

Fact: Frank Kratovil has registered as a Democrat for Congress not as an independent. He has stated, “I want to be an ally of the Governor (Martin O’Malley) in Washington.” Being an ally does not mean you are independent, it means Kratovil wants to go to Washington to be on Martin O’Malley’s side, not ours.  (Source: Maryland State Board of Elections and the Star Democrat 6/5/2007)

The theme of Kratovil’s ad is “Protect”. My question is, protect us from what? Is Frank assuming that we need protection from someone or something, and that only he can provide it? That seems like a very nanny-like attitude to me.

As far as I can tell, the external threat that we need protection from the most is Islamofascism, yet Frank wants to pull our troops out of Iraq – one of the very places we’ve been engaging that threat. Moreover, by not wanting to drill for our own domestic supplies of oil, Kratovil is encouraging us to give some part of our gasoline dollar to those very same Islamofascists.

Perhaps it’s an internal threat that Frank is referring to. At the moment, what threatens us most in an economic sense is the high cost of energy (see above) with second place being the huge tax bite being taken out of our wallets by Frank’s buddy Martin O’Malley. Andy Harris has stood foursquare against those tax increases, but what my instinct guided by experience tells me is that Frank Kratovil would gleefully allow the Bush tax cuts to expire (in the name of balancing the budget, which wouldn’t happen) and thus proceed to take even more money out of the wallets of working Maryland families.

Maybe Frank is referring to protecting Chesapeake Bay, which is an admirable goal. But with so many restrictions already in place, we have no idea if all of the barriers to enjoying one’s private property and freedom are having any effect – impatient environmentalists seem to think that decades’ worth of what they consider damage can be reversed overnight. If anything, the rights of those who have property in the Chesapeake watershed are what need more protection.

Ultimately, the best person to protect one’s self is him- or herself. Part of that is embodied in our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. While I can’t say for sure that Frank Kratovil would be a gun-grabber, the fact that Andy Harris has the endorsements of both the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America leads me to believe he would be better at upholding this right, and less likely to be seduced by the anti-gun siren song of Nancy Pelosi and company.

The slippery slope has a solar panel on it

While this isn’t the newest story, the New York Times and writer Nicholas Kulish recently told the tale of the small German city of Marburg and their efforts at greening the town through government regulation. I read it and thought to myself, “gee, this is something like Maryland would do” – definitely the story piqued my interest.

Probably the most intriguing parallel between the city of 80,000 and our state is that people tend to be in favor of the principles behind the ordinance, but think it goes too far because this is a dictate on what people can and cannot do with their private property. Witness the example of the homeowner who already has a small solar panel on his roof but would be forced to place a newer and larger one there as part of reinsulating his home. His point is that the regulation may discourage him from redoing his insulation (and it is a valid argument) but then again he could go ahead and pay the 1,000 euro fine, factoring it into the payback cost of the insulation. (However, at that point the city may amend the law as Maryland has with its new Critical Areas laws, making each day a nonconforming situation exists a separate offense.)

While the object in question isn’t solar panels the Marburg regulation reminds me of an idea, some form of which has been attempted in at least the last two General Assembly sessions, of charging homeowners who wish to improve their sites an impervious surface fee. (As I’ve blogged about several times before, the state of Maryland already subsidizes solar panel installation with grants and a sales tax waiver.) Not only does it satisfy the fringe environmentalists’ ideas about limiting development, it also satiates the liberal thirst for more dollars to redistribute because at one point the idea was floated as an annual fee on homeowners. Look for it to rear its ugly head once again in 2009.

As is generally the case with legislation which breaks new ground into usurping personal rights, there’s unintended consequences that I like to bring into the light. In the Marburg case, the regulations would prevent one homeowner from making the investment in reinsulating his house (and having a fairly short payback period on his investment) because he’d also have to pay for a solar panel which would be of dubious benefit to him because he already has similar technology in a smaller panel. Akin to this, all of the Critical Areas legislation and money invested in cleaning up Chesapeake Bay hasn’t shown itself in results which would satisfy the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other similar environmental groups because they’re not going to be happy until the Bay is restored to its pristine state circa 1600, when the only pollution in the Bay was from natural causes (read: poo from the few people and plentiful wild animals which were here then.) Those of us in Maryland are still paying plenty for the near-impossibility of trying to get the Bay back to that state in both money and personal freedom.

Fortunately for Marburg residents, it appears that the next level of government (equivalent to our state) will turn thumbs-down on the solar panel proposal, citing that it’s poorly written. In our case, I happen to think a self-imposed moratorium on new environmental regulations (and revenue generation) in Maryland is in order, this to give those regulations in force right now an opportunity to be studied to gauge their effectiveness. If Chesapeake Bay isn’t getting cleaner in five years’ time under the maze of regulations we already have in effect, then perhaps it’s time to see what can be done at that time in concert with the other states in its watershed. But we all need a breather – it took decades to place the Bay in its state, so how can we expect instant results?

Crossposted on Red Maryland.

The 30 second war begins

Striking the airwaves first, First District Congressional hopeful Andy Harris went for the obvious issue on everyone’s minds: energy independence.

While I wholeheartedly support the idea of more domestic oil production, I’m slightly more hesitant about the alternative energy angle. As Harris puts it in his “Prescription for the Pain at the Pump”:

Provide incentives for technological innovations in alternative forms of energy like nuclear, cellulosic ethanol, solar, geothermal, and hydrogen cell.

I guess I think the opportunity to come up with an ingenious solution to the problem and make a fortune isn’t incentive enough? To me, it’s not the federal government’s place to reward or retard a particular solution, it’s the free market’s job. The reason that ethanol, solar, geothermal, and hydrogen cell aren’t already ingrained in the energy market is the expense necessary to use them, at least compared to oil. That’s not to say the situation will last forever, but I don’t believe the solution lies inside the Beltway. If anything, get them out of the way!

Opponent Frank Kratovil was certainly licking his chops and something tells me that his first commercial out of the gate is going to slam Harris on his General Assembly energy record – that is, if he continues with the script already laid out in his campaign’s response to the Harris TV spot. Personally, I happen to think Andy was correct in voting against most, if not all, of these market-bending, job-killing, expense-increasing garbage bills that eminated from Annapolis over the last four years. Descriptions of several of these and how I would have voted myself can be found on my General Assembly voting record pages. (Remember, Frank Kratovil has no voting record, so we’re led to assume he would have voted the opposite way on the measures.)

And while Frank Kratovil may suggest that Andy Harris is for dirty water, the water’s not bad enough in Chesapeake Bay to keep Andy’s supporters from hosting a Chesapeake Bay Cruise fundraiser on Friday, September 26th, a cruise that will originate in Crisfield. Dustin Mills is the guy with the full details on the cruise, and he can be reached via e-mail – dustin@andyharris08.com. (Bummer, I have a conflict that evening. Too bad it’s not that Saturday evening instead.) There’s not a lot of tickets available as I found out last night, so time is of the essence.

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.

Disclosure problem number 835,428

Yeah, I made up the number, but after reporting on State Senator Ulysses Currie’s issues the other day it seems like one could do a national blog solely on all the violations of ethics issues and failures to fill out disclosure forms properly. Another longtime Maryland politician was snared by the disclosure trap last week, according to this AP story recounted in the Hagerstown Herald-Mail newspaper (h/t: PolitickerMD).

At issue is Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (MD-6) and his failing to report over $1 million in property sales since 2004. Of course Bartlett, a Republican in the process for running for his ninth term, blamed the discrepencies on a combination of reasons, including his own inattentiveness. However, there is no indication that Bartlett failed to pay any taxes due on the capital gains, which would be a more serious no-no than the possible fine and five years’ imprisonment that falsifying a disclosure report could carry. Bartlett promised to amend the disclosure reports to reflect the correct information, a typical response when caught by the press.

While I’m not excusing the Bartlett omissions, the biggest difference between this failure to accurately report home sales and State Senator Currie’s allegedly not reporting his Shoppers Food Warehouse income is that Currie was in a position to do favors for the company he worked for, whereas Bartlett was nailed on issues derived from the acquisition and sale of his own private property. (And the fact that the “drive-by” media is digging up this issue, which dates all the way back to 2004, close to election time makes me wonder if someone in that newsroom isn’t a Jennifer Dougherty supporter.) Insofar as I know, Bartlett didn’t use his position to catch a discount on the purchase or enhance the sale price on these properties – as opposed to Barack Obama cutting a bargain with the help of convicted criminal Tony Rezko or the two Senators, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, who had a sweetheart deal with Countrywide Mortgage to finance their home purchases. (Conrad’s property in question is not far from here, over in Bethany Beach, DE.)

While there’s now an effort to add mortgages to the myriad of items required on these ethics reports, again I have to question the purpose behind portions of the reports in the first place. After all, most of those in Congress had already made their fortune prior to getting into office so it’s not necessarily enriching them improperly if they have a home or investment suddenly increase in value. While it’s good to know about some items that are owned by public officials, such as stock in a company who could benefit from legislation before Congress (or the General Assembly), I’m not that fond of other ethics laws on the books, like restrictions on gifts that can be accepted, as long as the gift-giver is disclosed.

I’m brought back to the overarching argument I began in the Currie piece, the contention that these issues would abate if there were less in the governmental pot to distribute to certain friends, enriching all of them from the public trough. Bartlett’s case doesn’t enhance the argument as much as Currie’s, but the fact that these sorts of things make headlines continually add to the perception that those in public office are someplace south of honest in their dealings.

Pictures of Andy

On Friday night I was one of about 6,000 folks who got the opportunity to shake hands with and maybe briefly discuss an issue with Congressional candidate Andy Harris. Here’s just one example.

Congressional candidate Andy Harris (center, in yellow) talks issues with interested voters at the Delmarva Shorebirds game, July 25, 2008.

I’ve been around politics long enough that these gatherings aren’t totally foreign to me, but as a peripheral member of the media it still intrigues me how much attention is drawn when the campaign comes to town. It’s an especially telling part of media coverage that there’s strength in numbers – we have a very hard time trying to get coverage for WCRC events but something on the order of the Tawes Crab Bake or Friday night’s Shorebirds game drew media like flies, as you can see in my pictures below.

Prior to an interview, Congressional candidate Andy Harris engages in some joviality with the FOX 21 reporter and crew.

It’s also worth mentioning that Andy had a special guest in former (and maybe future?) Governor Bob Ehrlich. One of the two Harris palm cards available at the game showed Harris and Ehrlich side by side, and you can look for more of the same in future literature.

A small army of media was present to picture Congressional candidate Andy Harris and former Governor Bob Ehrlich together.

From what I gathered, during the day a film crew had followed Andy around in his travels, and one of the tasks they were trying to accomplish was a new campaign commercial, part of which featured a number of supporters in the background. This shot was taken while they were filming the spot so there will be a number of familiar faces to me in the commercial whenever I see it. (Maybe someone will send it to me so I can embed it in a post, assuming I can get that to work! That’s called dropping a hint.)

Andy Harris and a few of his friends taping a commercial during the Shorebirds game.

Finally, I have to ask the question: can Shorebirds vote, and is Sherman old enough to do so? I know a dog ages 7 human years for each year in its lifespan, so what about big orange birds? At least he has a voting residence in the district since the Bird Pen is up beyond the third base-side bleachers.

Even Sherman the Shorebird got into the Harris spirit. Can Shorebirds vote though?

I have no idea what Andy spent on the evening’s fireworks and festivities but he did have a pretty good attendance Friday night of just over 6,700 folks. They got to see a well-done and on-point 90 second commercial just before the fireworks show, so it was definitely a captive audience. The only thing I didn’t enjoy about it was the Shorebirds laying goose eggs offensively and losing to Lexington 5-0. With only 20 home games remaining, it’s doubtful Frank Kratovil can put together a similar event but we’ll see.

This is also the debut of another new category called “mainstream media.” It’ll cover posts which pertain to the “dead tree” or “drive-by” media coverage of a person or event. I suspect it will be a frequently-used category as Campaign 2008 continues into its last 3 months.