I wanted to start out with a rather comprehensive look by Accuracy in Media at voter fraud. In truth, this is less of an expose than a confirmation because we on the Right had been thinking about this for years, and some of these accounts have filtered down to a local level.

Now I’ve heard people claim that voting should be a privilege reserved to property owners or to those who pay taxes rather than receive goodies from the government. I don’t agree with that approach, but I think that perhaps if local election boards are running into a problem with last-minute registrations scant weeks before an election, the simple solution would be to simply move back the deadline. Honestly, if people wish to register to vote they’re going to do it well in advance of the election. This would also do away with the open invitation to fraud known as same-day registration.

But I also agree we should do away with motor voter laws and eliminate early voting. If people are serious enough to vote they already have the right to get an absentee ballot. To me it’s a waste of taxpayer money to spend thousands on multi-day elections when just 2% of voters participate.

And don’t even go there and tell me I want to suppress turnout, because I don’t. I want prospective voters to take their responsibility more seriously. The left always screams “voter suppression” whenever some common-sense idea like photo voter ID or those others above are introduced, but they are all in favor of oppressive campaign finance laws. Isn’t that monetary suppression? Hypocrites.

The report is well worth a read.

Along that same line, writers Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer ask why certain corporate interests can go scot-free under the Obama regime while others are hounded by the Justice Department. That’s not to say that Wall Street is a batch of crooks by any means, but in politics perception is reality and the fact that Wall Street gave far more to Barack Obama than John McCain leads to the thoughts of pay-for-play and cronyism.

Speaking of entities which give Democrats a lot of money, Matt Patterson and Trey Kovacs of the Competitive Enterprise Institute asked in the Washington Times why unions just won’t let go if a bargaining unit doesn’t want to stay with them. Well, the answer seems pretty simple to me – as they write:

There is a reason why unions are fighting to hold workers against their will and challenging laws that bring greater freedom to the workplace. Union leaders need a monopoly on labor in order to bankrupt governments and corporations, and they require unfree markets to maintain their own power and wealth.

That goes in the category of “duh,” workers be damned.

And this is a video worth sharing, even if I don’t necessarily agree with the point.

Personally I would prefer Medicare eventually be phased out or devolved to the states, but I realize that’s a decades-long process. Having said that, though, it’s obvious that Obamacare is the wrong direction to go despite the fact it cuts Medicare. Paul Ryan’s not pushing seniors off the cliff.

Finally, I wanted to bring up the attention being paid to a national issue by our own Congressman, Andy Harris. In a recent release, he decried the abuse of taxpayer dollars by those here illegally:

Illegal aliens are filing false tax returns claiming numerous fake child tax credits.  Once our tax dollars are in the hands of illegal aliens, it’s impossible to get the money back.  Once I learned about this outrageous loophole that allows billions of dollars per year to be stolen from US taxpayers, I knew I had to act.

In November of 2011, I joined Rep Sam Johnson in introducing H.R. 1956, Refundable Child Tax Credit Eligibility Verification Reform Act, to close this loophole.   The bill is necessary because the IRS claims that they are simply following the law.  We had hoped that the IRS would act without legislation.

One would think that the White House would instruct the IRS to stop giving away tax dollars to illegal aliens scamming our tax system.  This is an urgent and immediate problem, especially as we’ve passed the tax filing deadline of April 15th.

The child care tax credits have grown from $924 million in 2005 to $4.2 billion last year.  H.R. 1956 will curb the fraud in this program by requiring the IRS to only allow this tax credit for children with a social security number.  H.R. 1956 was assigned to the House Ways and Means Committee and I am waiting for the hearing to be scheduled any time. (Emphasis in original.)

So my question is why there’s been no hurry to move this bill? I guess one would have to ask Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) because it’s his committee. Perhaps his contributors would like the waiver to stand?

In truth, though, I think this is another in the series of ill-advised cautions by the Republican establishment to not risk alienating the Latino vote. Never mind that they turn off millions of voters who are concerned about the illegal alien problem – I’ll grant it’s less of a concern now that migration by illegals is now a net outflow due to a poor economy, but once conditions improve we may become a magnet once again.

Well, that cleans out my mailbox for the most part. Glad you stopped by for some original monoblogue content – I can’t put all my good stuff on Examiner because in all honesty I’m not sure their format would lend itself to such a post. That’s why I maintain this independent, conservative site!

But by all means you should subscribe to my Examiner page to get notice of when I do post there. I’m having fun juggling  all these writing plates! Haven’t broken one yet.

And a happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. I wrote this yesterday so I could devote a little time to the moms in my life today, so enjoy.

Of course, this little slideshow has been unmercifully (and rightfully) parodied by Lee Stranahan into the Life of Rover, given a conservative rebuttal by the Heritage Foundation, put under a libertarian remix, and become fodder for endless Twitter shots using the #Julia hashtag, some of which are featured at the tail end of this article by Meredith Jessup in The Blaze. It seems like every time Obama tries to go viral with a hashtag, conservatives have a ton of fun with it.

My question, though, is why Obama’s so worried about the female vote. One thing the President has going for him is a fair amount of personal likability, as the First Family has been carefully scripted to appeal to women as a happy nuclear family. Granted, the Obama children are far younger than President George W. Bush’s twin daughters, but it seemed like every time one of the Bush twins misbehaved it was made into news – on the other hand, a recent Mexican trip for Obama’s older daughter Malia had its accounts scrubbed and sanitized after word got out about the 13 year old’s journey south of the border.

But women have been hard hit by the poor economy, and oftentimes the female handles the bills in the family. Whether they’re a single mom or part of the rapidly disappearing nuclear family of Mom, Dad, and two kids, women have found that over the last three years it’s been getting harder to make ends meet.

And there’s also intention behind making ‘Julia’ a single mom – you may notice that there’s no husband in the picture when she has ‘Zachary.’ (Does that sound like a focus-grouped name or what?) Of all the women who voted in 2008, it was single women who came in most heavily for Obama – a 70-29 margin. If he loses even 10 percentage points on that total, Barack Obama has to know that his re-election bid is toast. But single women haven’t been exempt from the stagnant economy, either.

In reviewing the ‘Julia’ slides, there’s also no question that the Obama campaign is playing the class envy card to the hilt, even in this example. At 17 Julia could lose her public education funding to “pay for tax cuts to millionaires,” for example. And Julia’s life is doomed if we even cut one penny from these bloated federal programs or dispense of Obamacare, as several slides warn.

But would it? What if Julia’s parents didn’t send her to Head Start but took the time to read to the child – or better yet, made the investment of time and effort to homeschool her – even as they sacrifice the tax burden of helping to support the public education they aren’t using? Chances are Julia would still be able to enroll in that college. (I’m also curious: if Julia’s going into web design, is a four-year degree even required? It seems like she could acquire those skills in a two-year associate program at a community college.)

And perhaps her parents, if they raised her right, would instill in Julia the work ethic to get her to avoid taking out thousands of dollars of student loans because she would have learned to be responsible for the results of her own education while working her way through college, along with the moral compass to wait until the right stage of life to marry Zachary’s father before they have the little rugrat. Until that point she would pay for her own contraception, thank you. (Needless to say, abstinence is free.)

That work ethic would come in handy when Julia opens her own business because she will have to work twice as hard to overcome the roadblocks in her way – not because she is a woman, but because of all the red tape an overbearing bunch of pencil pushers throw in her path. She would also have the pride to not accept work simply from the set-asides given to a female-owned business, but because she does a damn good job of it. It’s the only way she would know.

And Julia would retire comfortably because she lived a reasonable but frugal lifestyle, investing wisely in her future despite government’s best efforts to confiscate every dollar she made. Julia and her husband of over 40 years would enjoy the sunset of their lives despite never receiving a Social Security check from a bankrupt system.

But perhaps my favorite parody of Julia came from the Facebook site AttackWatch:

The Gaps of Julia

At 1 year old: Under President Obama, Julia’s posts “I hate Obama!” on her Facebook page. She is investigated by the Secret Service for threats against the President. (That’s one precocious child!)

At 16 years old: Under President Obama, Julia goes goth and changes her religious affiliation to “Wicca.”

At 18: Under President Obama, Julia realizes she’s learned more on her own than she ever has at public school and registers as a Republican voter.

At 19: Under President Obama, she realizes her Pell grants don’t cover anything but a small tuition, so she takes out student loans to supplement her income.

At 23: Under President Obama, Julia begins her career as a web designer. Despite what Obama said all those years ago, she’s still paying hundreds a month on her student loans. She makes her payments on time, but rising taxes have made it difficult to eat much more than rice, beans, and ramen. She’s happy to know she can sue for wage discrimination, except that she’s making more than her male coworker who regularly attends Occupy Wall Street meetings. Since he’s known to go into work stoned, she’s inclined to believe the pay difference is because of her performance.

At 25: Under President Obama, Julia has worked as a web designer for the past four years. She’s chosen to be responsible with her health and family planning, and doesn’t want to drain the system by using other peoples’ money for her sex life.

At 31: Under President Obama, Julia and her husband decide they’re financally secure enough to have a child. Julia wishes she could be a stay-at-home mom, but she can’t because men’s wages have been stagnant for 50 years now and they can’t live solely on her husband’s income. She slips and lets the tax payers pick up the tab for her maternity leave. Both her and her husband’s taxes go up the following year. They consider selling their house to move into a condo half the size.

At 37: Under President Obama, Julia’s son Zachary starts kindergarten. She’s there to see him off at the bus stop because she quit her job, deciding the slight bit of extra pay wasn’t worth it since taxes and highly-regulated child care costs were so high. She and her husband fight more than they’d like, but remain close. Zachary eats better than they do, they make sure of that.

At 42: Under President Obama, Julia decides to start her own at-home business to try and bring in at least a meager extra income. She finds that Obama’s tax cuts for small businesses help, but his extra excise taxes on manufacturers and healthcare and income do not. It’s not a zero-sum game; she’s losing money. She wants to help people, so she hires another worker, but has to lay him off after a year because she can’t afford the healthcare costs.

At 65: Under President Obama, Julia submits an application for Medicare. She’s eagerly granted acceptance.

At 66: Under President Obama, Julia develops a brain tumor. She submits an application to Medicare, which is denied. “Due to age,” and “See Quality of Life (QoL) Regulations” stick out through her watered eyes. She chokes and sobs. She hugs her 70 year old husband when he returns from work. They cry together, in bed, just holding each other. “We tried,” Julia whispers to her husband.

At 67: Under President Obama, Julia passes in her husband’s arms. Full of anger that his ailing wife was denied care from the Obamacare Government because of costs, he takes his wrath to Facebook. He writes, “President Obama, I can’t stand everything you’ve done!”

At 71: Under President Obama, Julia’s husband is investigated by the Secret Service for threats against the President.

President Obama has now been president for at least 67 years.

You might laugh, but the sad fact is that millions of gullible voters will lap up the Obama Kool-Aid and believe he’s only trying to help the middle class. He’s helping them, all right – helping them become poor and dependent on government handouts of some sort.

The news that Rick Santorum has opted to suspend his campaign just two weeks before a multistate primary where opponent Mitt Romney would be expected to do well in all the states – except possibly Santorum’s home state of  Pennsylvania – coupled with the withdrawal in all but name by Newt Gingrich over the weekend (“he had more things to hit with than I did”), means that Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee come September. Sure, Ron Paul is still in the race but he hasn’t won a primary yet.

Obviously that’s frustrating news to Santorum backers (like The Other McCain) as well as residents of the five states (including Delaware) who were expectantly awaiting their turn in the national spotlight, but it also brings up a couple interesting questions.

1. Who will be the second banana on the ticket? We saw a rejuvenated Republican Party for a brief time in 2008 when Sarah Palin was selected, so one would hope Romney assuages conservatives with a strong pick.
2. Will the electorate in the remaining states which have not conducted primary elections embrace Mitt as the nominee?

I don’t know what the rules are for ballot withdrawal in the remaining states, but it’s quite likely that the last four standing (Romney, Paul, Gingrich, and Santorum) are on the ballot in 17 of the 19 remaining states (Nebraska and Montana are caucus states.) And we can look back at Virginia for a case study in just how much anti-Romney sentiment was out there – in a contest limited to Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, Romney couldn’t even carry 60 percent of the vote. Had it been Santorum or Gingrich on the ballot straight up against Romney, Rick or Newt may have carried the state.

It would be quite surprising now if Romney didn’t get a clear majority of the votes, but the depth of anti-Romney sentiment may be most expressed in states where Santorum or Gingrich were thought to be strongest (most likely Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Indiana, and South Dakota among remaining primary states.) But this ceding of the Presidential field could also have a detrimental effect on conservatives in downticket races as well – one example being the U.S. Senate primary in Indiana where moderate Senator Richard Lugar faces a primary opponent in Richard Mourdock.

But all the talk of a possible brokered convention and a white knight coming in to save the GOP will now be replaced by emotions from anger at the establishment to outright despair from the Right that Romney can’t win and we’re doomed to another four long years of Barack Obama. Yet if every conservative in the country came out and voted, we would win because Democratic turnout tends to lag behind Republican regardless of whatever tricks the Democrats try to pull. It’s simple math – around 40 percent of the country self-identifies as conservative while only 20 percent or so self-identify as liberal. Even if the squishy middle splits evenly, we win.

And it’s not like the incumbent has much of a record to run on, unless you define record deficits, record number of adults out of the work force, and record high gas prices as records to brag about. Obama has those.

So here we are: Obama vs. Romney. It wasn’t my personal choice (since I voted for Santorum after all my other good choices split the scene) but that’s the way it’s going to be.

And now for something (almost) completely different:

I have it on very good authority that someone familiar to local voters is going to jump into the First District Congressional race. That’s all I’m going to say for now, but watch this space for more details.

The Republican Study Committee came up with a budget that’s supposedly going to balance by 2017. Now I know this brings back memories of President Clinton telling us that the budget would be balanced in four, five, six, seven, or ten years (take your pick; he pretty much promised all of them) and of course, the Congress we have in five years could be completely different than the one we have now. So there’s no safe prediction in Washington, just as it was a surprise that Clinton adopted budgets which were at least nominally balanced thanks to Newt Gingrich and House Republicans.

And while readers can partake in several analyses of the RSC budget (like these by the Heritage Foundation and Veronique de Rugy) I want to focus on the actions of our local Congressman, Andy Harris.

Yesterday evening he released a short statement on the passage of the House budget, which was the Ryan plan widely described by Democrats and in the media (but I repeat myself) as draconian because it balances the budget at some far-off point by changing entitlement programs – the bulk of our spending. But given the propensity of Congressional change, the farther away we place the goalposts the less chance we have of reaching them. Imagine where we would be if we had maintained the fiscal discipline we had fifteen years ago. (I know, I know, this is where the liberals blame the Bush tax cuts and fighting two wars for deficit spending. So what’s Obama’s excuse for blowing an even bigger hole in the budget?)

Here’s what Harris had to say:

Today, House Republicans passed a budget that takes the first step in restoring the American dream by placing America on a path to prosperity and opportunity. The House budget will put America on a sustainable trajectory to end trillion-dollar deficits and help secure the retirement and health care programs, like Medicare, for our nation’s future. Last night, President Obama’s budget was unanimously rejected 414-0. It’s clear that even House Democrats agree that the President’s plan only leads us on a path to bankruptcy by adding another $11 trillion in additional debt and by imposing $1.9 trillion in new taxes on hard-working families. I hope that the Senate will finally take action on a budget after not passing one in over 1,000 days. It’s time for the Senate and the President to work with the House to place America on a path to fiscal stability.

Yes, Obama’s budget failed to have a single House member stand in support of it (seventeen did not vote.)

Now what I wonder is whether Harris was going to release this news item whether we passed the Ryan budget or the RSC budget; in truth the boilerplate rhetoric could apply to both. But Harris voted for the RSC budget, joining 135 other Republicans in doing so. Unfortunately, 104 Republicans were too scared to face the problem head on and that’s what’s so frustrating. Instead, all but 10 Republicans (of which seven voted for neither alternative, for various reasons) can write the same boilerplate and claim they’re doing something about the budget.

Obviously if we wanted some short-term political pain for long-term gain we could balance the budget tomorrow. But we have too many people who depend on the government for their sustenance to make that a realistic possibility. Seniors would march in the streets if someone took away their Social Security check or if the doctor told them they had to pay fee-for-service. “We paid into the system and we were promised it would be there!” they would scream. Unfortunately, while we on the conservative side believe that liberals are stupid, they are not. It was a tangled web of dependence on entitlement programs they weaved over the last 75 years, and extricating ourselves from it won’t happen overnight.

So the RSC proposal was probably as good as we were going to get for the short-term. In the long term it would take a herculean effort of trimming down spending and, more importantly, making sure those in charge of government had that mindset – that’s the difficult part.

Let’s use Harris as an example. When we campaigned in 2008 and 2010, he said he would only serve 12 years at the most. I’ll take him at his word there, although we’ve had politicians say this and serve two decades or more. Not only do you have to make sure to re-elect him every two years, you also have to cultivate a conservative to replace him and keep a watchful eye to make sure he’s staying on the correct path.

On the other hand, it’s very easy to win re-election term after term by promising the voters all sorts of goodies if they are elected and blaming others when they don’t appear. That’s why the Democrats promote class envy and divisions by race and ethnicity – they’re whipping boys to deflect blame away from their failure to deliver on the promises they made. The involvement of Barack Obama in the Trayvon Martin killing is a prime example, along with the Democrats’ promotion of the Occupy movement – generally tacit, but they’re not condemning the lawlessness and excess of the Occupiers like they did in their contrived charges against the TEA Party.

It’s quite telling that the period which saw the entrenchement of the welfare state that seniors now depend on coincides mainly with the decades where Democrats controlled Congress, particularly the House. There’s nothing new about machine politics as it’s been perpetrated by both parties on a local and state level but the federal government is where the real game is played because, like Willie Sutton supposedly said when asked why he robbed banks, that’s where the money is. (He didn’t actually utter the words, but the point remains.)

I feel really bad for the next generation because they’re going to have a huge mess to clean up, and a nation at serious risk of failure for the first time in many decades. While the Germans and Japanese couldn’t take us out militarily and the Soviets wouldn’t play chicken with mutually assured nuclear destruction, there’s a real possibility our nation as we knew it could fall without a shot fired from an invading power.

For generations we’ve paid lip service to the fact that we spend much more than we take in, but the bill never seemed to come due. Well, guess what – we’ve had our seven-course meal featuring the most expensive items on the menu and the finest wines, and the waiter is approaching with the bill. We can’t duck out of the restaurant now.

The Ryan plan is a baby step, and I’m giving the golf clap to Harris for backing it. But the RSC measure was far superior and I wish he had explained that to his constituents instead of just putting out his tepid release.

In the category of acting locally, thinking globally I’ll pass along the annual dog and pony show against the Wicomico County revenue cap called the Public Hearing for the county’s FY2013 operating budget, which will be held in the Flanders Room of the Wicomico County Youth and Civic Center this coming Thursday, March 22nd at 7 p.m.

Since the deadline for county departments to submit their budget requests only passed this week, we probably won’t see the county’s FY2013 budget proposal until it’s distributed at the meeting. The obvious sword of Damocles hanging over our fiscal head is the prospect of a shifting of teacher pensions to the county, and that hasn’t been resolved at the state level yet.

So there’s a lot of uncertainty in the Government Office Building these days.

One thing that Marylanders can be certain about regarding state government is that they LOVE to spend money. As another example, the Maryland Senate Republican Slate makes this point:

The planned relocation of Maryland’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) from Crownsville to New Carrollton will cost millions of dollars when it’s a mystery why the move is necessary. O’Malley’s administration is guarding the project’s feasibility study, even after repeat attempts by legislators to have it released.

The move takes the agency from its state-owned headquarters, with an annual operating budget of $1.7 million, to a rented space that costs $3.6 million a year. And then there is the cost of the actual move – about $1 million.

The stated reasons for the prospective move is that Prince George’s County has no state agencies headquartered there, to which I say: so? Should every county get its very own state agency then, and if so why have a capital city as seat of government? Let that corrupt cesspool get its own industry if it can – maybe some changes in the approach of county government are in order beforehand.

In the meantime, Maryland is a state which is among the leaders nationally in the number of boats registered, simply because it was such a vast amount of coastline. And that’s yet another cash cow in the eyes of the O’Malley administration, which is proposing to raise the fee from the current $24 biannually to a range between $50 and $350, depending on boat length.

Admittedly, $24 is not a whole lot to pay for a boat (when renewing my license plates for 2 years costs me $128) but the reason for the increase is to make up for $40 million pilfered from the Waterway Improvement Fund over the years to help Martin O’Malley balance the budget. Nor is it just recreational boaters who will pay, but those watermen who depend on their boats for their livelihood will see yet another dent in their bottom line.

With early voting for the April 3 primary just days away, campaign news is easy to come by.

On Friday I spent a post detailing what’s going on with the Dan Bongino campaign for Senate, and there are some similar themes coming from primary opponent Richard Douglas. Both are attacking the correct target, though: incumbent Senator Ben Cardin.

For example, the opening to this radio ad from Douglas:

Man: (shocked)  Honey, did you see where gas prices could go to $6?
Woman:  Shhhhhhhh…you’ll wake Ben Cardin. (snoring man sfx)
Man:  (in a barely whispered tone)  With our jobs going to Virginia, how are we going to afford that?
Woman: (in a hushed tone):  Please!  You know how Ben Cardin gets when he hasn’t had a full term of sleep! (snoring man sfx)
Man: (barely containing himself through gritted teeth)  Well I am SORRY that Rip Van Cardin might actually wake up and have to do something….
Woman:  Brian!!!  We have had Ben Cardin long enough to know that he needs a full 6 years of rest before we can ask anything of him!!!  Now let Ben Cardin sleep. (stirring and then more snoring sfx)

A very populist approach. Douglas wasn’t through on the gas price issue, though:

Governor O’Malley is addicted to tax increases, including those on gasoline, and Senator Ben Cardin, through his silence, is one of his chief enablers. Ben Cardin’s failure to speak up on the regressive gasoline tax is an endorsement of out-of-control spending which comes out of the pockets of hard-working Maryland families.  Our system of federalism is an important governing principle, but it is not an excuse for a senator to remain silent and abdicate leadership at this critical time when our state is headed in the wrong direction.

And both have acknowledged the attempted softening of Cardin’s image with a media buy. Douglas in particular noted:

With record spending, record debt, jobs going to Virginia, and gas prices we have never seen before, Ben Cardin is talking about the benefits of brushing your teeth.  It’s no surprise that the incumbent Senator would rather distract voters with commercials about dental hygiene than work on fixing Maryland’s problems.

It seems like Douglas’s campaign has found its stride, and it’s apparent he’s shifted his focus from an earlier one which spoke more about the foreign policy aspect of the Senate and other inside baseball that the striped-pants crowd would understand but regular lunchpail voters wouldn’t relate to. Gas taxes and entrenched, out-of-touch politicians – yes, it’s coming dangerously close to the politics of class envy but these are points to be made.

On the other hand, this “win lunch” contest from Douglas may be somewhat of a misstep because it reminds me of an Obama fundraising approach that has been roundly panned and skillfully skewed by this observer.

Speaking of skillfully skewed, I just had to pass along this line from the spokesman of Sixth District Congressional candidate David Brinkley, Don Murphy:

“Roscoe Bartlett’s support for fiscal discipline rings as hollow as a Charlie Sheen ad for sobriety,” stated campaign spokesman Don Murphy. “If the 20-year veteran fights for a balanced budget amendment and energy independence like he fights for term limits, they’ll never get accomplished,” he said. “He’s had his chance.”

Turning to the national scene, it’s likely we’re not going to see any of the national candidates come to this part of Maryland in advance of the April 3 primary. But we have their surrogates duking it out this coming Friday as part of a candidate forum hosted by the Worcester County Campaign for Liberty and featuring libertarian radio talk show host Adam Kokesh. Playing the parts (respectively) of Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum will be Mark McIver, Mark Novak, Audrey Scott, and Hank Piasecki – all are running to be delegates to the Republican National Convention in September and will be on the April 3 ballot. All except Novak are on the slates of delegates approved by their respective campaigns, but he is a Ron Paul supporter.

Kathryn Danner-Smith is the contact person for the event, which will be held at the American Legion Hall at 2308 Philadelphia Avenue in Ocean City – her e-mail is caleb0504 (at) hotmail (dot) com.

And lastly among my items I wanted to comment on an item I ran across in the Baltimore Sun, a poll which attempts to restate the stereotype that Republicans are “old, white, and in trouble.” Author David Lauter points out that Latinos view the GOP unfavorably by a 60-30 margin while they favorably view Democrats 56-31. By the same token, the under-30 crowd likes Democrats by a 54-35 margin and dislikes Republicans 53-34.

This has been the case for many years, though. A quote falsely attributed to Winston Churchill notes, “if you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart.  If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” But the point is correct – young idealists tend to fall for the whole liberal line but are snapped back to reality when they mature and begin collecting paychecks.

But what the Pew Center for the People and the Press (which did the poll) didn’t note is that younger people (and Latinos) don’t tend to vote as often as those who are older and white do. There’s no need to refine our message, which is the implicit “concern” of Lauter. All we need to do is relate it better and call bullshit when the mainstream media gets it out of line as Lauter does.

My new links over the last couple weeks: The Lonely Conservative (who’s really not all that lonely based on readership and comments), the Twitter aggregate site Twitchy, and a Maryland-based blogger who appears to qualify as one of those idealists who hasn’t yet been smacked upside the head by reality, Sarah Says. (Really, she seems to be only an average amount of left for Maryland.)

They’re all good reads, though, and now my e-mail box is nice and tidy.

I’ll cut to the chase: here is the percentage score and rank among Maryland’s House delegation, by district. Bear in mind there are 435 House members:

1. Andy Harris, 95% (22)
2. Dutch Ruppersberger, 1% (419)
3. John Sarbanes, 8% (365)
4. Donna Edwards, 11% (335)
5. Steny Hoyer, 8% (372)
6. Roscoe Bartlett, 89% (42)
7. Elijah Cummings, 9% (353)
8. Chris Van Hollen, 12% (315)

On the Senate side, Barbara Mikulski scored 11% and ranked 72nd, while Ben Cardin attained a miserable 3% rating and finished 94th.

It’s obvious that Maryland can do its part to help enact pro-growth policies by helping to get rid of the anti-growth president we have now, but more importantly in this election ousting Ben Cardin and some of the low-performing House members we have. That’s not to say one of Bartlett’s GOP primary opponents wouldn’t have a similar score, though, so don’t consider this an endorsement of Roscoe Bartlett. (Harris is unopposed in the GOP primary.)

Is eliminating Ben Cardin a long shot? Yes, a prudent observer would have to admit it is. Cardin is a likable guy who reminds people of a kindly grandfather, and it’s obvious he has plenty of political instinct since he’s made a long career out of being elected every two to four years. (By my count, he’s won in 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. That’s sixteen elections, folks.)

But it can be done, and we have to state our case to Maryland voters. The same goes for several House seats where I think we have a fighting chance: the Second, Fifth, and Eighth districts are probably the most in play. Imagine holding our two we have now and winning those three – Democrats would be self-immolating themselves if their heads didn’t explode first.

There’s no question conservatives have the right ideas, it’s just that we have to get together and put them into practice. Of course, the Club for Growth isn’t perfect but I would argue it’s pretty damn conservative and this is a useful gauge on who needs to go in our current Congressional setup.

Tomorrow I have a sort of companion piece on one Senate candidate, although I could have probably written it regarding several others as well. He points out a truism about Maryland politics that I expand on.

Considering that the story took a couple weeks to play out, there’s no doubt that Sandra Fluke’s biggest career move to date has been to be called a ‘slut’ by none other than Rush Limbaugh. If not for that, it’s doubtful anyone outside the world of far-leftist hyper-pro-choice and LGBTQ politics would have heard of her, and Barack Obama wouldn’t have picked up the phone to give her a ring.

In fact, so few knew who she was that it didn’t originally send up red flags to most when Democrats tried to sign her up to testify at a House hearing, portrayed as a 23-year-old Georgetown Law School student. When her original attempt to testify before a House committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa was rebuffed because, in Issa’s judgment, she couldn’t be properly vetted, Fluke became the star witness in a Democratic show hearing put together by Rep. Nancy Pelosi – a star witness because she was the only witness. Nice effort to hear from all sides there, guys – at least the Republicans asked for your input. It was at that hearing she made the claim that contraception had cost her and others she surveyed a total of $3,000 over the three years she had been at Georgetown Law School, which didn’t cover the expense in their health insurance plan.

Later, however, it was revealed that she entered Georgetown Law in part to challenge the rule regarding contraception coverage. It was also learned that nearby pharmacies sell the most commonly available birth-control pill for as little as $9 per month, putting the lie to the $1,000 per year figure.

Still, the story didn’t get legs until Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” on his nationally syndicated radio show. While Limbaugh later apologized for his “choice of words” and that he “acted too much like the leftists who despise me (and) descended to their level,” the damage was done. A number of sponsors have pulled their advertising from his show in the wake of the controversy.

But let’s back up to the original pretense of Fluke’s testimony. According to this story by Byron York in the Washington Examiner, Fluke was a last-minute substitution by Democrats who wanted her to speak instead of Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Of course, when she was refused by Issa that provided the opportunity for Democrats to both demagogue the Republicans for having an all-male hearing and allow her to be the sole witness at their ‘hearing.’ They controlled the narrative of her just being a poor, struggling law student (at a school where tuition is nearly $50,000 a year) who can’t get the contraception she needs unless the rest of us pay for it.

Unlike Limbaugh jokingly said, I have no interest in seeing any sex tapes with her in them, nor do I really care who she chooses to sleep with. Frankly, I don’t think all that many men would be interested in her and maybe she’s not interested in them, either. It doesn’t matter.

What matters to me is that we on the Right have ceded control of an issue which should resonate with the American people because Democrats have once again played the victim card. Yes, it is true that those on the left don’t often pass up the chance to call conservative women “sluts“, “cunts“, “whores“, and the like, but they’re generally given a wink by the media. “Oh, they didn’t REALLY mean that,” they’ll sneer, or they’ll tell our side that we deserve it because you do it too – Limbaugh being example numero uno, to use a little Spanish lingo (as he would say.)

But what is the real truth? Two things come to mind:

• The Democrats were only interested in promoting the false choice between contraceptives being free or being unavailable. As we have since learned, a woman can be as “safe” as pharmaceuticals can make her for about the cost of two cups of latte at Starbucks a month. It’s really not that much.
• Sandra Fluke was a willing participant in the charade and has become what Democrats hope becomes yet another poster child for Obamacare. Who cares about those nasty, misogynistic Catholics and their conscience and teachings? And why is it important that Fluke has been an activist for extreme positions, particularly in the area of gender reassignment?

Of course, another aspect of this is the effect on Limbaugh. Needless to say, no one on the Left would shed any tears if he were run off the air over this incident and, of course, there’s a group out there putting pressure on remaining advertisers. But in all honesty, this will only serve to galvanize a portion of the listening community which already feels that Rush is one of the few bulwarks against the partisan media and, after a brief lull, other advertisers will appear to fill the void. They won’t pass up the audience made available and, quite honestly, people have short memories about this sort of thing. A boycott of advertisers isn’t generally effective because it doesn’t affect the number of listeners tuning in; in fact I daresay this may boost Rush’s ratings on a short-term basis as casual listeners may tune in more often to follow his side of the story.

Yet many of those on my side are critical because they fret those damn social issues are interfering in this chance to oust Barack Obama, and no one is going to vote for a candidate who fits into the (media-created) perception that a conservative President will take away the Pill, force everyone to go to church on Sunday, and establish a theocracy right here in River City.

Well, you might be surprised who votes for us if we can seize control of the narrative. I’ll start, in bold letters: health care is NOT a right, so it should NOT be ‘free’ courtesy of the government. Start arguing with me on that if you want to lose.

In a country which was being run correctly, we would laugh at Sandra Fluke for her ideas. Those of us who had health insurance would have it to insure that we’re not fiscally wiped out by a catastrophic event, like an accident or long-term illness. Those things which are routine would be paid for out of our pocket, but we would be able to afford them in part because health insurance premiums weren’t made sky-high by having to cover every sniffle, breast implant, or gender reassignment surgery - as Fluke wants. If you wanted to be a gender bender then it would be up to you to pay for it.

In the end, I sort of agree with something Robert Stacy McCain said:

Couldn’t some GOP committee chairman subpoena Sandra Fluke, put her under oath, and force her to answer some hard questions under penalty of perjury?

I’d sure as hell like to see that hearing, wouldn’t you? And if the House Republicans don’t give us that hearing, I’m prepared to denounce John Boehner as a gutless sissy-boy. (Emphasis in original.)

Now that we know who Sandra Flake is and know that she’s willing to be a poster child for sex without consequences – as expressed by the desire for free contraceptives – why not subpoena her to appear before a Congressional hearing under oath? I do believe we now could come up with a good line of questioning for her.

Either we have cajones or we don’t. Call their bluff and give Sandra Fluke the spotlight she wanted.

It was last year that LightSquared, a new startup company which wanted to get into the broadband business, persuaded the FCC to give it the green light to conditionally develop a broadband network which would compete with AT&T and Verizon. But there was one big problem – the frequencies LightSquared wished to use were adjacent to those used by GPS systems, and LightSquared’s broadband would be far more powerful than the GPS signal. It’s a situation not unlike that of radio, where a weaker station signal can be drowned out by a more powerful one on an adjacent frequency. That’s why stations in the same market are set some distance apart on the dial; in the case of FM radio the spacing is generally 0.8 megahertz (i.e. 97.3, 98.1, 98.9, etc.)

Yet the LightSquared saga is also intriguing for its connection to President Obama and charges of crony capitalism.

Back in 2005, LightSquared’s predecessor SkyTerra received permission to begin work on setting up a satellite-based broadband system; however, the work was aided greatly in January of last year when the FCC allowed the company to use its broadband license for “exclusive terrestrial purposes” as part of Obama’s push to expand rural broadband services. That enabled the fledgling company to value this asset in the same manner as other terrestrial service providers, allowing them to quickly raise $586 million from a variety of sources. Estimates of the value of this spectrum ranged up to $12 billion, based on the value of other (failed) companies which possessed smaller frequency segments. LightSquared had no plans on being a broadband retailer, though; instead they would have been a wholesaler to a number of different companies, including Cricket and Best Buy.

The Obama connection is interesting. Back in 2005 he purchased around $90,000 of stock in SkyTerra, the company which originally received the FCC waiver. Considering Obama was reportedly a fairly cautious and conservative investor, the fact he invested such a large sum in a thinly traded startup probably raised eyebrows, particularly as he had barely warmed his seat in the U.S. Senate at the time.  Several years later, SkyTerra was purchased by Harbinger Capital Partners, which folded the company into a new entity called LightSquared. While Obama claimed he sold the SkyTerra stock for a loss months after purchasing it, several of his key financial backers were also heavily invested in that company; meanwhile, Harbinger founder Phil Falcone has recently become a huge Democratic donor and Obama supporter. Interesting timing, since Harbinger’s portfolio had gone south until the 2011 FCC decision.

So to recap: a company which originally was allocated radio frequencies intended for low-power satellite-to-ground usage wanted to instead use a high-powered terrestrial system. Instead of having to bid on broadband frequency space like its competitors did, they essentially received the frequencies for free. Of course, the problem was that existing satellite-based GPS would be overwhelmed by ground-based broadband signals, putting pilots and drivers at risk.

The LightSquared scandal, though, didn’t receive much national attention until it was revealed that the White House may have pressured a four-star Air Force general to change his testimony in a House briefing to be more favorable to LightSquared and its bid to corner a section of the wireless market. That set the ongoing House investigation into motion.

But what got me to spend my afternoon delving a little bit into this whole issue was an e-mail I received the other day from Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), the group headed by Grover Norquist.

Once again, the Obama administration is holding jobs and private investment hostage with regulatory uncertainty. You’ve already heard about the Keystone Pipeline. This time, they’re stalling almost every attempt to expand mobile broadband in America.

The Obama administration has failed to put more spectrum for mobile broadband onto the market, which will help prevent dropped calls and improve service. They’ve stalled phone companies from purchasing more spectrum and demanded more regulatory power to handpick the companies that get it. Now, they’re using the regulatory process to stop a start-up company from building a brand new wireless network.

LightSquared has committed $14 billion in private investment to bring more broadband to America, create tens of thousands of jobs, and unleash new competition in the market. They’ve played by the federal government’s rules and were granted spectrum under the Bush administration. But now government agencies are working to kill this new network, and the Obama administration is sitting on the sidelines instead of allowing this spectrum to be put to use.

This sort of floored me, for I recalled the LightSquared scandal and the reason they were being restricted in a broad sense; the research I did today helped me understand a little bit more why this was such an issue on the fronts of both GPS interference and crony capitalism.

But it doesn’t sound like LightSquared has played by the federal government’s rules, as ATR seems to think – remember, the frequency spectrum was allotted for low-power satellite usage when the Bush administration gave LightSquared’s predecessor the go-ahead. If they could build a satellite-based 4G broadband system all would likely be hunky-dory. Nor does it sound like the Obama administration was “sitting on the sidelines” when they were trying to influence the testimony of a four-star general.

And it’s more interesting when you consider this Facebook entry from Digital Liberty, the ATR subsidiary for whom the e-mail was sent. This is from January 26:

In his State of the Union, President Obama acknowledged the spectrum crunch. One way to end this looming crisis is to have the government auction unused spectrum to private companies, thus freeing up more available spectrum and generating a new revenue stream that can go toward paying down the nation’s deficit.

But, again, LightSquared got its key asset for free, and a Wall Street Journal report (link, subscription required) speculated they may try to swap frequencies with the Department of Defense to rectify their situation. (Given Obama’s plans to cut back on the military, the DOD may not need them anytime soon.) That’s not making the government any money either.

The missing link I haven’t been able to track is why ATR is so interested in a company which has been accused of being a prime example of crony capitalism. Could it be their leadership or key donors have a financial stake in the company? Because ATR doesn’t have to disclose its contributors we can’t know for sure.

But it sure seems to me like ATR and LightSquared would be the strangest of political bedfellows, and this case bolsters the ‘ruling class’ vs. ‘country class’ narrative.  Regardless of what side some of these advocacy groups may present themselves to be on, in most instances they prefer the status quo inside the Beltway. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

As is always the case, this is the potpourri of items I find interesting, but not worthy enough of a full-blown post. Today I may even simply link to the items without much further comment because I have quite a bit to get to.

For example, Baltimore County Republican Examiner Ann Miller recently penned a post with timeless advice on how conservatives should treat media encounters. While it’s sad that media sometimes seems more interested in presenting a politically correct agenda than getting the truth, these are the rules we’re saddled with for now. It’s worth reading.

Another item worth reading that’s too long for me to excerpt is “A Day in the Life of O’Malley’s Maryland,” written by Senator J.B. Jennings. We can always talk about what tax and fee (but I repeat myself, for “a fee is a tax” according to MOM) increases do in the abstract, but the Jennings piece looks at how all these add up over the course of an average day.

Turning to state political races, U.S. Senate candidate Richard Douglas announced yesterday he was going to pen a series of commentaries on the role of the U.S. Senate:

In the series, Douglas will explain how the U.S. Senate must return to its Consitutional (sic) role. Its four key duties are treaties, nominations, legislation, and constituent service. In his first series, issued today, Douglas explains the legislative role of the Senate. ‘To represent Maryland aggressively and well,’ said Douglas, ‘Maryland’s U.S. Senators must master these core areas.’

‘Congress is one of the few institutions in America where massive failure does not get you fired,’ said Douglas. ‘A competent Senator knows when new law is needed and when new law is potentially harmful. Congress is legislating America to death,’ said Douglas.

Not to pick on Douglas, but oops. Spellcheck is your friend. Anyway, he makes some good points in his first piece on legislation:

An experienced candidate knows when new law is needed and when new law will be unhelpful. Many members of Congress use the legislative process like a bullhorn: they introduce bills which they know will not pass to try to persuade voters that they are ‘fighting’ for them; (Mr. Cardin says this often).

But this creates a problem: using the legislative process for self-promotion (a strong symptom of the incumbency disease) slows work and creates distractions. This is why the Senate can’t finish its work on time. An experienced candidate knows how to stop such practices and force Congress to keep its eye on the ball: the debt crisis and job growth.

Answering the question, ‘Do we need a new law?’ — is a matter of judgment informed by experience.

Of course, Douglas plays up his experience as a staffer for former Senator Jesse Helms as part of his political resume. But the next two sentences are the money sentences to me, and I’m glad Richard has an awareness of this:

An experienced candidate understands that Senators should be known not only for the new bills they introduce, but also for the unhelpful laws which they succeed in repealing or stopping.

An experienced candidate will work hard in the Senate to change a dangerous attitude in Congress:   namely, that it is necessary to fill up every last corner of American life with federal law.

Simply put, we have too many laws on the books now. It’s time to shrink the size of the U.S. Code.

Douglas also made a good statement on religious freedom in an earlier release:

I am pro-life. I support the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits government interference with the free exercise of religion. In contrast, the Administration’s order tells us that in the Oval Office and the Cardin Senate suite, the First Amendment is subordinate to Roe v. Wade.

This episode demonstrates that Mr. Cardin is a docile follower in the U.S. Senate – even at the expense of liberties explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

I like how he didn’t attack his primary opponents, but went right to the problem. In fact, the GOP Senate primary in Maryland has been a pretty good example of how a campaign on our side should be conducted because they’ve focused more on Ben Cardin, the Democratic opponent, than each other. If all of the SuperPACs which seem to be dictating our Presidential campaign would train their fire on the real problem instead of fellow GOP candidates, maybe Obama wouldn’t seem so invulnerable despite a poor economy.

And since Obama can’t beat the SuperPACs (or the Citizens United decision, which he opposed) he decided to join them. From campaign manager Jim Messina, who, after whining about the SuperPACs supporting Republicans, writes:

With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

Therefore, the campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support (the SuperPAC) Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PACs. We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.

What this change means practically: Senior campaign officials as well as some White House and Cabinet officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events. While campaign officials may be appearing at events to amplify our message, these folks won’t be soliciting contributions for Priorities USA.

And there won’t be coordination between the two? Yeah, right.

The problem with campaign finance laws is that too many people work harder on trying to get around them than attempt to figure out what’s really best for our country. I say scrap all the laws and limits except for disclosure, make that a continual process where candidates for federal office disclose donations/expenditures within 72 hours, and call it a day. If George Soros or Big Labor wants to give $10 million to Barack Obama, we have a right to know that instead of hiding it through a phony front group (although they likely will still do that.)

Obviously the Obama campaign wants to control the narrative, too – the same people who begat Fight The Smears and AttackWatch are now putting together the Truth Team. “Every time a baseless attack comes to light, we’ll arm you with the truth so you can spread the word,” they say – but what about attacks based in truth? Undoubtedly any attack to them is “baseless,” so it will be fun to watch them spin aimlessly.

Obama may be doing something about the economy (or sufficiently propping up the welfare state) though: according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, the illegal alien population has stopped its decline under Obama’s regime.

There’s also a group who wants Obama to pick a new running mate. What matters is that they tried.

There are a couple upcoming events which I should point out as well. Next Tuesday, February 21, Election Integrity Maryland is holding a poll watcher training session in Salisbury, with the signup form here. There is a $25 charge, but that’s for training materials (which participants will get to keep) and other expenses incurred by the group. I’ve talked about the group before, and their work is already bearing fruit: on Wednesday they announced they’ve found 5,000 irregularities in just one county.

Election Integrity Maryland today is submitting more than 5,000 challenges to the Maryland State Board of Elections over irregularities in the voter rolls, including duplicate registrations, invalid addresses, and deceased voters who remain on the rolls.

Despite assertions by the Maryland Board of Elections that voter registration records are kept up-to-date, the non-partisan watchdog group has uncovered names of deceased voters in the state who remain on the voter rolls either in “active” or “inactive” status, as well as the names of voters who have moved or who have duplicate registrations.

According to Cathy Kelleher, President of Election Integrity Maryland, “Our organization is just beginning to research the Maryland voter rolls, and we’ve already identified over 5,000 names with irregularities  in one county alone. Our team is working diligently to ensure that Maryland’s voter registration records are accurate and in compliance with federal and state regulations.”

Well, I would certainly hope that deceased voters are on the inactive list! And even if we’re talking about having gone through the entirety of Montgomery County’s voter list (over 573,000 are registered there) to get this figure of 5,000 – which I doubt – if you carry out those numbers we’re still looking at 30,000 voters in Maryland. (Unfortunately, I have no context of what’s been done, but I presume we’re not talking about Kent County and its 12,133 voters, either. If we were that would be a REAL problem.)

Also on the docket is a townhall meeting scheduled by Congressman Andy Harris next Thursday, February 23. It will be held in Fruitland at Adam’s Ribs (site of the chicken suit protest) from 2-3 p.m. (Adams Ribs is located at 219 S. Fruitland Boulevard, for those who need to punch it into their GPS.) It’s one of two townhalls he has slated that day, with the other being in Elkton.

On the blog front, there is one new Maryland link called A Republican Out Of The Blue. From what I can gather, the author is a student so it’s good to see another young conservative out there.

I’ll probably have another odds and ends post next week the way things are going.

I’ll grant that my political convention experience is limited to those involving the Young Republicans or Republican Party, and only on a state level at that. Something like CPAC could quite well overwhelm the senses, sort of like a local TEA Party rally (even one with chicken-suited protesters) was in no way a match for the 9/12 rally I attended a couple years ago. Definitely a difference in scale there.

It’s also a reminder that political necessity has allowed a cottage industry of sorts to spring up. With well over 100 sponsors, co-sponsors, and exhibitors there’s no shortage of marketing being perpetrated at the confab.

But on the other hand it’s obvious CPAC would be quite the place for networking, and certainly many of those bloggers who are more well-known than I thus far are represented there on ‘blogger’s row’. (Who knows, maybe I can work my way into CPAC ’13 with a little tip jar rattling, or better yet more advertising revenue. And you can help by spreading the word!) McCain’s video reminds us that there are a large number of like-minded people working on our behalf, too. It’s a comfort to know this.

Up in the Second Congressional District, GOP candidate Larry Smith is challenging his four rivals to eight hour-long debates on various issues. But considering he has more to gain than two of his rivals (who serve in the Maryland General Assembly) that’s probably a pipe dream – not to mention they would likely be in session several nights a week.

But the key complaint Smith has is simpler: “This election should not be decided on who has the most insider endorsements, but rather who would be the best representative of the voters of the district.” All that is true, but if these debates were to come to pass I would hope that a conservative runs them, rather than the debacles we have seen with the GOP Presidential debates and their “gotcha” questions.

I wish Mr. Smith the best of luck in going to Washington.

Another Congressman wanted to make sure that there are no excuses to halt the exploration for natural gas in Maryland.

Last week Andy Harris held a hearing regarding the EPA’s findings in groundwater research in an area where fracking (hydraulic fracturing) is being performed. The EPA study is being questioned by experts who contend the study is being biased to show groundwater contamination which isn’t there.

“This hearing exposes how the EPA is willing to use junk science to promote unnecessary fear about the safety of hydraulic fracturing in an attempt to carry out the President’s climate change agenda,” said Harris. “The testimony was clear that this study is not applicable to Marcellus Shale, so hopefully Governor O’Malley won’t use this flawed study as an excuse to advance his own climate change agenda.”

Both Harris’s opening statement and the webcast are available for inspection. You may recall this was the hearing where a documentary filmmaker (not friendly to the oil and gas industry) was ejected for not seeking the proper credentials beforehand.

Speaking of oil and gas, the prospect of a gasoline tax strikes fear into Maryland drivers. I’ve already covered this at some length, but I wanted to point out a quote from a release I received from Maryland Business for Responsive Government concerning the Purple Line, a proposed light-rail system between New Carrollton and Bethesda. MBRG states:

The governor claims the increase is necessary to fund transportation projects, including the Purple Line, a $2 billion light-rail boondoggle meant to run between Bethesda and New Carrollton. This unpopular scheme could result in more than 300 families being tossed out of their homes through eminent domain.

This project is typical of leftist transportation policies that seek to redistribute wealth from automobile commuters – the vast majority – to the handful who prefer a government-subsidized ride. According to the latest Census Bureau data, only 5.2 percent of Marylanders take public transit. The absurdly optimistic forecast that 60,000 will use the purple trolley means the subsidy will be $33,000 per daily rider. It would be cheaper just to hand each of them a free car. (Emphasis mine.)

Isn’t that what liberals want to do anyway? Traffic will be just as bad, and the subsidy worse because the train will go from suburb to suburb. Unless someone has done the traffic study to prove this is a popular route not directly served by highways, I suspect this will indeed be a colossal waste of money. On the other hand, at $5 million per lane mile we could build a 4-lane expressway from Salisbury to Dover to connect to the existing improved section of Delaware Route 1 and have money left over for building a few needed interchanges at major highways. That would do a lot more good for Delmarva’s economy.

Instead, Martin O’Malley wants to build a slew of wind turbines around the state and off Ocean City. Maybe he should go watch this before he spends our tax dollars tilting at windmills:

I would imagine that a number of people who live out in Western Maryland and can’t cash in on the Marcellus Shale natural gas underneath their property have fallen for this racket – and I mean that in a literal sense. Just wait until they build these offshore and another Hurricane Irene lumbers by just off the coast. You don’t need to worry about that with fracking.

Last week I pointed out some of the GOP reaction to Martin O’Malley’s State of the State address. But I missed this one, and it’s pretty cute. Delegates Susan Aumann and Kathy Szeliga had their own take:

However, I have one objection – I hope they’re not playing ‘Angry Birds’ while they’re supposed to be taking votes or attending a hearing. Aside from that, they are right on target. And as others have pointed out, losing the Amazon sales via the ‘app tax’ could really hurt their bottom lines. Not so much here, but I like having the option open – at least for my friends.

Now let’s talk a little bit of activism. At the last WCRC meeting speaker Cathy Keim described what Election Integrity Maryland is doing, but in passing remarked about efforts in Wisconsin to verify recall signatures – a process rife with fraud thanks to multiple signatures from selected signers and obviously fake names like ‘Mickey Mouse’ or ‘Adolf Hitler.’ Regardless, these were supposed to be counted unless the validity of the signatures is challenged.

Verify the Recall is looking for volunteers to help with the effort of checking for duplicate signatures and against the database of existing voters. It would be utterly hilarious if the petition effort was found to have come up short because of the absolute and insidious fraud perpetrated by Big Labor and other anti-Scott Walker liberal groups.

Voter integrity will be one of the subjects of the next Worcester County TEA Party meeting at 6:15 p.m. on Friday, February 17 in the Ocean Pines Community Hall. They’ll also receive a legislative update from Delegate Mike McDermott. Hopefully I’ll get on-the-spot coverage from my correspondent over Worcester County way.

As I have the last two times, I’ll go through the sites I’ve added on my sidebar. Both of these are national sites which many of you have already heard of, but I had heretofore overlooked Instapundit and The Right Scoop. Not anymore. You may also notice I enhanced my link to the Maryland Democratic Party with a new widget in order to be fair and balanced.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t wish a happy 101st birthday to our late fortieth President, who was the first  President I cast a vote for in 1984 and for my money hasn’t been equaled in my lifetime before or since. Rest in peace, President Reagan, for you are sorely missed. The centennial hoopla may be coming to a close but the legacy remains.

I couldn’t figure out how to embed this “Made in America” video, but I found it interesting when I watched it. I’m generally in favor of free trade and against strict protectionism, but if the difference is as small as they claim then buying American is worth it. Perhaps the claim of using 5% more American products would create 220,000 jobs is a bit dubious, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.

Our nation needs to take steps in regaining its onetime prominence as a leading manufacturer. But it’s interesting to note several of the companies prominently mentioned have at least one plant in a right-to-work state. I can’t ascertain whether these are all non-union shops, but chances are fairly good – given that only about 1/10 of the private-sector workforce is unionized – that these good, honest American jobs don’t come with the union label.

Not that Maryland is making any quick moves to join the ranks of Virginia and other right-to-work states – this year, HB91 hasn’t progressed beyond first reading. But the group New Day Maryland pointed out to me a couple other bills of interest in the General Assembly this term to keep an eye on, and I thought I’d pass along the word.

House Bill 23, the Dedicated State Funds Protection Act, would prohibit the fund-raiding Governor O’Malley is almost as well known for as his constant zeal to raise taxes. And House Bill 43 would allow appropriations bills to be subjected to the same referendum process as those bills not dealing with appropriations. (The last remaining legal straw opponents of the in-state tuition for illegal aliens referendum are grasping for is that the bill is an appropriations bill, although it’s not.)

Both these bills have a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. on January 31. I presume written testimony is acceptable, too.

Of course, if you would like to provide more than testimony in writing and want to be a bulldog for individual rights and liberty in a state which isn’t as free as its moniker might claim it is, you may be interested in an upcoming event.

A “Citizen Watchdog Training Seminar” is being held on Saturday, February 4 at The Gathering Place in Clarksville, MD. For only $35 per person ($25 for students) to cover the cost of lunch and materials, participants will receive training in several areas:

• How to be an information activist
• How to use investigative reporting tools and skills
• How to impact the state and local government budgetary process
• How to hold elected officials accountable using social media

Sponsored by Maryland CAN and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, this seminar should be an interesting look at how to become a better citizen activist.

Citizen activists of another type are what Obama For Against America looks for. This is an excerpt from a recent e-mail I received from them:

Supporters of the President are organizing house parties in thousands of neighborhoods across America to watch the State of the Union on January 24th.

But I checked a little while ago and there wasn’t one planned yet in your neighborhood.

The State of the Union is one of the best chances we’ll have this spring to bring new folks into this campaign and our organizing work. We’ve got to make the most of it. (Emphasis in original.)

I have news for Jeremy Bird, who sent me the e-mail: you likely won’t have one in Salisbury and if you did it would be hosted by the same insufferable twerps who regularly tell us they know what’s best for us. If I were to throw a party for the State of the Union show, it would be for the response:

Tea Party Express, the nation’s largest tea party political action committee, is announcing that Herman Cain will be delivering the Tea Party State of the Union response at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on the evening of January 24, 2012.

(snip)

Sal Russo, Chief Strategist of the TEA Party Express, added:

“We are enthusiastic that a successful conservative governor like Mitch Daniels of Indiana will be giving the Republican response. I know that both Governor Daniels and Mr. Cain will contribute important ideas for the future of our country.”

I guess the only way to otherwise make the SOTU interesting would be to make a drinking game out of every time President Obama blames Republicans or a do-nothing Congress – unless you were taking shots of diet Pepsi, I wouldn’t advise driving afterward. Normally I just read it afterward because I have better things to do with my hour, but I would be interested in hearing what Herman Cain has to say.

Returning to items of state interest, the Eighth District Congressional race got a little more star power:

Nationally recognized investigative reporter and international religious-freedom advocate Ken Timmerman announced he will challenge incumbent Rep. Chris Van Hollen in the 8th District of Maryland, vowing to rein in out-of-control federal spending, promote jobs through growth, and maintain a strong national defense adapted to the challenges of tomorrow.

“In just three years, the Obama administration, eagerly assisted by Chris Van Hollen as Chairman and Ranking Member of the Budget Committee in Congress, has racked up a breath-taking $5 trillion in new debt, and now they are asking for $1.2 trillion more,” the Montgomery County conservative said.

“The scandalous enactment of Obamacare, with its special interest waivers and the potential bankrupcy of our health care system, is a poster child for everything that is wrong with Congress. Chris Van Hollen had a chance to work toward getting our fiscal house in order. He failed. Now he needs to go,” said Timmerman. (Again, emphasis in original.)

Obviously the best-selling author will have an edge in name recognition, but he also has some political history – Ken ran before and lost, finishing fifth out of eight in the Republican U.S. Senate primary 12 years ago. Granted, this was before he wrote his most successful books.

(And, as an aside to prove the fact some people just can’t get enough of seeing themselves on a ballot, two other contenders from that particular 2000 race are running again – George English is also in the Eighth District race as a Democrat and Robin Ficker is running for the Sixth District Congressional seat as a Republican.)

Speaking of national politics, you may have noticed that from time to time I point out items from or link to the Maryland Juice website. Something I just found out is that David Moon, who writes that website, is also the press contact for the Demand Progress group. While I normally don’t agree with their aims, Demand Progress was front and center on the SOPA/PIPA protest, and for that they deserve a pat on the back. As I said the other day, I don’t mind having people on the other side with me when they’re in the right.

Lastly, I want to debut a new feature that is probably appropriate for this irregularly-scheduled segment.

From time to time, I find new websites to link to but they may not necessarily be apparent to the average reader who sees my site daily because I just place them on my existing link lists.

But over the last month or so I found a couple good sites and I thought this was as good a venue as any to showcase them, so here goes. On a local level the Easton Savvy website looks promising, while Jen Kuznicki is an up-and-coming conservative writer and Mark Levin follower from Michigan.

Something I’m going to try and do more often is quality control on my links, pruning ones which don’t update all that much (thus, losing my interest) and finding new venues which look promising. So read and enjoy them after you go through what I have to say.

Update: Since I pruned a few links this evening, I also added a few and changed some around:

• The former Confederate Yankee site is no more, but CY co-writer Bob Owens has his own site now.
• She doesn’t post every day, but Zilla of the Resistance looks like a worthwhile read.
• It used to be Crisfield News, but now Patty Hancock has her own name on the site.
• I also moved the Maryland Society of Patriots site off the Free State bloglist and into the Political Links section.

I’ll probably add more in the coming days, but the Zilla blog gave me something to think about. I’ll post my thoughts on it tomorrow so stay tuned.