blogging – Page 10

Tired of the argument?

You know, once in awhile I have to take my fellows to task.

Perhaps it’s because I have such convincing arguments or maybe I have scared all the liberals away, but I don’t get a high number of comments on my website. (Well, I get a lot of comments but 99% are of the spam variety, which Akismet takes care of.)

So once in awhile I feel I have to give feedback to others. Included in this was a comment I sent in to the newly rechristened Lower Eastern Shore News regarding Jonathan Taylor’s criticism of the two dissenting voters in a recent County Council vote to allow overtime for building inspectors and other county employees in order to approve work on the rolling 4 1/2 day ‘Extreme Makeover‘ project.

My comment addressed three premises in playing devil’s advocate:

The idea that the county’s FY2012 budget is approved, and a general query as to where he would suggest cutting to make up this expense.
What sort of lasting impact this national exposure would have, as in if someone could name other cities which have had ‘Extreme Makeover’ homes without Googling it. (I don’t watch the show, so I wouldn’t know.)
The hypocricy of Taylor complaining about a $10,000 annual expense to the city to provide health insurance for part-time employees but feeling just fine about spending this $7,000 of county money.

I placed none of the seven words which cannot be said on television in the comment, and thought I had legitimate questions. Yet Taylor rejected it, saying he was “tired of having the argument…when you get on this Republican high horse is when you lose reason.”

But I think Culver and Holloway have a legitimate reason for voting their way – citing the fact ‘Extreme Makeover’ is a for-profit enterprise while the county denies taxpayer funds to non-profits – while the other five had their reasons for voting yes, primarily as a boost to the local economy and tourism. (That may be a stretch.) In the end, Taylor got his wish and I said as much. Personally, I would have tried to take the money from somewhere else to make it a zero-sum game so I’m not going to criticize Culver and Holloway for their vote. Nor do I think the other five are off base, since there’s a simple difference of opinion here and we may find the $7,000 is well-spent. Or we may not.

Ultimately Jonathan can run his website as he sees fit, and if rejecting comments because he’s “tired of the argument” is his best defense, well, I suppose I don’t have recourse there. I’d reprint the comment I sent in here on my site but it’s vanished into the ether of the internet like the thousands of spam comments I’ve sent packing have been. (There’s still 4,815 comments here, so that’s plenty of feedback over the years.)

The point is, though, had I been someone who didn’t have his own bully pulpit and decided to use it you would have never known the gist of what I said. I’m not saying I accept every comment I get, because obviously I don’t or there wouldn’t be 375,529 spam comments to my site now vanished.

Instead, my policy has always been that good comments help move the narrative along, so I reject as few as possible. In fact I like the ones which disagree with me because then I have to sharpen my arguments. So if you think Taylor was right, by all means tell me why.

My contention is that if you truly want to add to the discourse, you don’t get tired of the argument. Just ask yourself what else is missing when comments which are otherwise legitimate don’t get through.

Another goal to attain

Why, if it isn’t an invitation to narc on your neighbor. That pretty much sums up the content of Attackwatch.com, the latest Barack Obama attack website on GOP candidates like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry along with commentator Glenn Beck.

The site’s stated purpose is to “Get the facts. Fight the smears.” So I thought to myself, well, gee, that “fight the smears” line sure sounds familiar. Indeed it was. I talked about this same thing back in 2008, when I saw “smear” as the new buzzword. I guess Barack thinks we have short memories.

Back then, some of the topics of conversation were his birth certificate (of course), campaign finance, Bill Ayers, his religious faith, and ACORN. But this time he’s attacking others by name.

Yet I notice there’s one topic of conversation he can’t avoid discussion on: our dreadful economic circumstances. Can he say unemployment is lower now than when he took office? No. Can he say fewer people are on food stamps now than when he took office? No. How about gasoline prices – are they lower now? Nope. Three key indicators of economic health, three bad results, three facts. Try and smear me on those, Mr. President.

But I’m cheered to report the page has already sprung some great parodies. So there is hope for us, at least until Obama takes over the internet. Or is that just another smear?

And now for something competely different (sort of): Today I got another fun e-mail from Obama campaign asking me to donate $10 and get a car magnet. As Deputy Campaign Manager Julianna Smoot says:

When people see us out in the neighborhood showing support with our clothing, our dog leashes, our cars, or our water bottles, it starts conversations. You might get a chance to tell someone why you’re supporting the President, and maybe even convince someone to sign up to volunteer.

Now, honestly, an Obama dog leash? Wouldn’t that be considered animal cruelty?

As for a car magnet, why would I want to kill my car’s resale value like that?

Then again, I suppose one could see this as an intelligence test of sorts – if they have something with Obama 2012 on it, well…let’s hope they’re not reproducing, right? Go to an unemployment line with items like that and the only conversation that may start is derisive laughter. They may run off to volunteer – for Rick Perry.

I guess that’s the way things are these days in Obama’s America. Maybe this article can make the AttackWatch website; that would be a badge of achievement for me.

A new feature

A few weeks back I was contacted by an internet entrepreneur who wanted me to try his product. This happens from time to time, but his request was for an interesting reason.

It seems that the creator of SendLove.to had too many liberal websites already signed up and it was skewing his results. Somehow or other he got wind of this site and that it was conservative, and he asked me to install his plugin in order to balance things out.

So I thought, what have I got to lose and I installed it last night. (It was pretty easy, even for me – I’m not really all that much of a WordPress maven.) If you were reading the last dossier I put up and came to it from the Facebook page (thus, going directly to the article instead of through my main page) you may have noticed first that certain names are pretty in pink. In addition there are tabs on the bottom where the comments are with the names Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, and others. You would see the three I mentioned again (and again in pink) if you saw this page as an individual page because SendLove scans a post’s content for certain keywords and highlights them to solicit your opinion on the person. You can simply vote them up or down, or add a comment.

I can see a couple minor bugs in it – for example, it wouldn’t let me get back to a couple of the tabs once I pulled another down – but even just the little bit I played with it was interesting. I can even bring up past articles and it will bring up any name they have in the system, so I just dinged Ben Cardin quite nicely. (Since I brought him into this post now you can too.) And it doesn’t work from the main page, although I’m told they’re working on this. Since a good portion of my traffic comes directly to a post from Facebook, Twitter, or a search engine this isn’t such a bad omission.

Obviously I talk about national issues and political figures quite a bit, so I would imagine regular readers have an opportunity to weigh in a lot about particular people and follow the discussion from post to post (these are not wedded to one post like a normal comment.) I noticed Nancy Pelosi has a high national rating, for example, so my readers are going to have to take care of that.

As I figured would happen after Labor Day passed my readership is back on the upswing. So give this new feature a try and let me know how you like it.

David Craig (hearts) the Maryland conservative blogosphere

A headshot of Harford County Executive David Craig, provided by his 2014 campaign.

On Friday evening I, along with a number of other Maryland political bloggers, was invited to a confab with current Harford County Executive and likely 2014 statewide candidate David Craig.

Now unlike a lot of events, I chose beforehand not to provide a blow-by-blow account of the proceedings. I intentionally didn’t bring a notepad because I figured there weren’t going to be a lot of detailed questions or answers. I was sort of wrong, but that’s okay – why should I write the same thing four or five others may write? So what you’ll read are my observations of the evening, with a few pertinent items tossed in from memory.

Let me begin with a roster of the other bloggers who attended – there were six of us. I was told that there were about a dozen or so invited, but the list of non-attendees seems to be guarded like a state secret. And that’s fine, because I was just curious when I asked.

Besides yours truly, those who came in to Annapolis for dinner and conversation were Greg Kline and Brian Griffiths from Red Maryland, Bryan Sears and Brad Gerick from Patch.com, and Richard Cross, who does Cross Purposes. (He beat me to the punch with his thoughts on the evening.) It was a cordial conference with Craig and four of his staffers, and the conversations were broad in scope and depth around various parts of the table.

Besides dinner, we all received a party favor: the picture you see at the opening of the article comes from a flash drive Craig provided with his 2014 logo on the outside and various photos, background information, and news articles on the inside. Obviously it will be more useful once the 2012 election is over and Craig decides on whether he’ll seek the post of Governor, Comptroller, or Congressman – if I were a betting man I’d say that in rank order it’s about a 70-25-5 probability for which office he’ll run (the 70% being Governor.)

It was interesting how my fellow bloggers handled the evening. Sears (and to a lesser extent Gerick) treated this like an interview, asking pointed questions of the candidate about a number of statewide issues. Obviously Cross was taking some notes as well, while Kline and I did more listening. (Brian Griffiths came late since the Maryland GOP Executive Committee meeting was held down the street simultaneously to our gathering and he was representing the Maryland Young Republicans there.)

It’s funny that much of my direct conversation with Craig came when we talked about – baseball. He’s obviously familiar with the struggles of the O’s minor league system since the Aberdeen IronBirds play in his county and he could relate to my feelings about the Shorebirds. On the other hand, I wasn’t enthused about his ideas for league realignment but liked his stance on the designated hitter – indeed, it needs to go.

Continue reading “David Craig (hearts) the Maryland conservative blogosphere”

Ridin’ the storm out

Because of the weather conditions and the prospect I’m not going to have power, you probably won’t see new posts here until Monday.

As of right now, the Salisbury area is expecting the peak of the storm to hit about 2 a.m. Sunday, with sustained winds of 54 miles per hour. We could get 6″ of rain or more as well. Over in Ocean City, their sustained winds would be 67 m.p.h. – just short of hurricane strength, but certainly enough to do plenty of damage (not to mention the 6′ storm surge.) From my days in the architectural field, I recall that now mechanical and electrical units have to be set at 8′ above sea level, so it’s going to be very likely buildings may see significant damage in that regard too if the surge is just a bit higher.

We are pretty much as prepared as we will be; luckily it seems that the storm is weakening a bit more than first thought. Still, it’s going to be awhile (if ever) that we will be back to ‘normal.’

Oh, one other piece of good news: it’s likely we’ll never have to go through a Hurricane Irene again. Major hurricanes which affect large areas have their names retired, so the next cycle will have a new female “I” name. But what is it about “I” hurricanes? Isabel, Ike, and now Irene have been very damaging storms the last few years.

By the way, I have no clue why my website has been down from time to time. I’ve asked my server company to investigate but it’s one of those sporadic outages which drive me nuts.

Gary Johnson on ‘intolerance’ redux

A couple weeks ago, I commented on the remarks of Presidential candidate and former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson regarding the ‘offensive’ Family Leader Pledge signed by fellow GOP candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.

Yesterday I was invited to participate in a blogger conference call with Governor Johnson regarding intolerance as “a formula for Republican defeat.” Unfortunately I couldn’t participate directly but I asked for the transcript knowing this was an issue I’d broached previously.

Perhaps the question closest to the one I would have asked was offered by New Hampshire blogger Skip Murphy of Granite Grok. I’m going to shorten it just a touch for this purpose, though:

I do have a question about your opening statement, on social conservatives. Certainly the Tea Party is focused on the fiscal issues, but as we all know, social issues often have a fiscal cost to them as well. If you look at Medicaid, Social Security, other entitlement programs, have an outsized cost to them. Is it really something that Republicans and conservative Republicans should do? To concede the social issues to the Democrats and step away from that arena? And thereby letting them raise the fiscal costs of their agenda, versus fighting for what we believe is our agenda, which is cutting the fiscal costs across the board?

Governor Johnson responded:

Well, if you’re talking about fiscal costs, I don’t know where an intolerance to gays, I don’t know where a woman – where decision making should be taken away from a woman, and I’m talking about abortion – and, that that should be the driving issues of the Republican Party. And I guess I could go to immigration, and to the xenophobia about immigrants, and there are costs associated with illegal immigration. I think they should be addressed, but they don’t involve, in my opinion, building a fence, or putting the National Guard arm in arm across the border. There’s some real, rational steps that can be taken, and really, a win-win situation: immigrants that want to come in to this country to work being allowed to work. And businesses that would like to take advantage of being able to get workers that they currently can’t get, because of our immigration policies and our welfare policies in this country that have us sitting at home collecting welfare checks, that are just a little bit less money or the same amount of money for doing nothing, as opposed to getting out and getting an entry level job.

Murphy pressed further:

Well, I do notice that you brought up some hot button issues that are near and dear to a lot of Republicans. But I specifically asked about some of the other entitlements: certainly the ever growing welfare state is a social issue, and it certainly has a high fiscal cost. So, what is your strategy for bringing that down, and again I ask, is that something the Republicans should just forget about, because…

Johnson interrupted:

No, Skip, I didn’t consider welfare as part of this Ames Pledge. If I missed that, I certainly apologize. I saw this Ames Pledge as, really, vilifying, or just saying “No” to tolerance. I saw it as a very intolerant document. And I am a firm believer that we need to reform welfare in this country, and at the base of reforming welfare is “If you can work, you should work.”

It’s an interesting and broad-based conversation overall, but I think the problem with Gary’s approach is that a lot of the base he’s catering to – the small-government crowd – also cares about social issues.

Johnson makes the mistake of assuming that social conservatives are monolithic in their support of government-centered approaches to issues like abortion, gay marriage, and the general decline of society. As I noted in my original post on the Family Leader Pledge (refer to original pledge here,) I didn’t find a lot objectionable except for the call for a Constitutional amendment on marriage between one man and one woman. It’s not that I have an issue with protecting marriage, but it’s properly a state issue.

Ironically, Johnson is in agreement with me on that, but still chose to call me and others who care about these issues ‘intolerant’ because I don’t fall completely into line with his libertarian views on the subject. Perhaps he hasn’t a problem with certain portions of the Family Leader Pledge (particularly its call for a more limited government) but he chose not to sign it and that should have been enough. Many of the other contestants for the Presidential brass ring have forgone the opportunity as well but they haven’t besmirched the competition who did – even Mitt Romney withheld personal condemnation in refusing to sign.

Certainly I would like to pick and choose aspects of government to strengthen (yes, there are a few) and which ones should release their stranglehold on the American people. There are a few otherwise seldom-discussed planks in Johnson’s platform with which I agree and think should be brought out into the national conversation – chief among them the folly of the War on Drugs.

He certainly would like to limit government. Consider this passage from the call:

I just think that we’ve gone way overboard when it comes to this notion of need and entitlement, if you will. So I am promising to submit a balanced budget for the year 2013, which would cut 43% of government expenditures at existing levels. That means Medicaid, that means Medicare, that means military spending, for starters. So, in that context, 43% reduction with regard to everything it is that government does, I think that is a weeding out process that gets us closer to the notion of helping those that are truly in need as opposed to this notion of entitlement and really this give away that has us in the fiscal predicament that we are in. Really, we’re broke, and we’re on the verge of a monetary collapse because we print money to cover these obligations.

Good luck getting that through Congress. although it’s only cutting the budget back to 2002 levels. It also brings up a point that across-the-board cuts aren’t necessarily the correct solution – for example I think the budget of the Department of Education should be cut 100 percent, with the savings from the extra share used to maintain a strong national defense.

Yet the point is a good one. We haven’t prioritized spending in decades because the government gave itself a blank check with deficit spending, knowing they have the power to tax (also known as the power to destroy.) It’s time for some fiscal discipline, and I think TEA Party members understand this point. The question which Skip Murphy presented so well is whether we can have it all – advances in both social and fiscal conservatism – and I think the answer is yes, they are nowhere near mutually exclusive.

I would like to thank Gary Johnson’s staff for forwarding me the transcript. He’s been one of the best in working with bloggers, and that’s appreciated whether I agree with him or not.

Two thousand five hundred

It was almost a year ago that I hit my last ‘milestone’ post, and as part of that I outlined some of the websites that I’ve outlasted in the time that I’ve been online. Five hundred posts later, I’m still here as others fade into the woodwork.

But tonight I managed to hit a daily double, getting to another half a thousand posts on the half-year anniversary of my site. And after all the work outside the home and my various writing assignments that I complete each Wednesday, I finally have the chance to sit down and write about the most important aspect of this website: my readers.

Some may have ‘record days’ on a regular basis, but I’ve found over time that I have a loyal base of readers who come back day after day to partake in my opinion, news gathering, and photography. At times I do have more readers than others, as is often the case with a website that’s politically oriented, but many have come once and stuck around to be regular consumers of my writing.

So where do I go from here? Well, I have a lot on my plate these days but I plan on keeping on keeping on, grinding out posts on a daily basis. I still enjoy writing, and it’s good practice for my paying assignments. And with advertisers coming on board in recent months, what began as a hobby and creative outlet now makes me enough to pay for the server, anyway. (There’s always room for more, though!)

And don’t look now, but the 2012 campaign is slowly kicking into gear as more candidates enter various races. The bread and butter of this site is political coverage and comment, so I’ll have plenty to do.

So just keep coming back, and who knows – that 3,000th post might be here before we all know it. Thanks to each and every one of you for hanging here for some part of the first 2,500.

Update: Apparently mine isn’t the only local blogging milestone today. But I’d say this change is more like version 1.21 (rather than the version 1.5 claimed) since G.A. has been there quite awhile – about 4 years if memory serves. My advice for G.A. Harrison: just go back to what made the site good in the first place (original content) and it may become relevant again.

The PSA

It started with the Troopathon ad I put up a couple days ago, and now I’ve added a link to a charity show put on by the Chad Clifton Foundation, the 6th Annual Concert for a Random Soldier.

I know other blogs both locally and around the globe sometimes devote a little space to charitable events, so I’m not doing anything groundbreaking here. But the advantage of having an ad is that the event gets continual promotion – just like a business does – except I’m giving the space for free. (Naturally it’s a somewhat less advantageous space than paying ads, but the server has to be paid for somehow.)

Truly I don’t mind putting in a little effort for the cause, since the extent of adding these is manipulating a widget. It’s not hard to put pretty pictures and links on my sidebar anymore as opposed to my old template, which needed to have the html added to a long file. Truthfully, it makes the site look “fuller” anyway.

Since local music is on my mind anyway with the addition of this widget, though, I think the time has come to make a subtraction as well.

With the rapid evolution of marketing for bands, it’s become harder and harder to make sure their websites are up to date. Instead of relying on just the now-dying Myspace, bands have moved on to a number of different venues like Facebook, Reverbnation, or restored the old-fashioned domain name and website (or all of the above.) Simply put, it’s difficult to verify that I’m placing the latest info onsite, not to mention how quickly bands change and break up. For example, I found out on Sunday that one of my favorite local groups (Order 6D-6) is no more.

So I think the time has come to dissolve the “local music” area of my website and delete those links. Normally I prune blogs which are inactive for three months, but given this moving target and the limited amount of free time I seem to have anymore, there are better uses of my time then to try and keep up with band links. Truth be told, I’d rather have nothing than have something that’s wrong.

Now if local bands want to advertise on my site, well, that’s negotiable. I just might cut you a deal. It’s not like I don’t give them promotion after the fact or place up their videos, but why not be here all the time instead of for just one post?

It’s food for thought, right?

So support these charitable causes I place in the PSA box, whether they’re musically related or not – they’re worth your time and effort.

‘Kids’ who care

I don’t use the term in my title to be condescending, but the young whippersnappers over at The Other Salisbury News have taken a break from bashing the Camden contingent on Salisbury City Council (not that they don’t deserve it from time to time) and decided to attempt to begin some constructive dialogue on the city’s future. By gosh, they would like to stay and make a go of it in this fair city of ours after they graduate from Salisbury University, and I commend that thought.

Dubbing their effort ‘Operation S.S.F.I.‘ the crew at TOSN are beginning a multiphase project of kicking around ideas for the city’s improvement. (Perhaps they should see about what would attract these young entrepreneurs to the city as their own project matures and grows.)

Step one is a discussion of downtown Salisbury, and while I don’t want to make this a particularly lengthy post (after all, they deserve the dialogue and the readership for bringing the idea to the fore) I think I should note that there’s already plans which have been made and discarded about renovating the area. After all, creating the pedestrian plaza was one remedy for a downtown which saw its fortunes decline after the Salisbury Mall opened in the late 1960s – just as happened in thousands of other downtowns, big and small. (In my hometown this happened about 10 years earlier, but it’s a bigger city.)

The success of ‘Third Friday’ has been mentioned in other venues, and many have wondered why that couldn’t be replicated on a more regular basis. But what is attractive about Third Friday is its uniqueness as a date – just because once a month works, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can do it every weekend or even twice a month. If you had it 52 times a year instead of 12, the concept would cease to work after perhaps a year or so.

The key is mixing uses and making downtown a place to live, work, and shop. Unfortunately, old buildings don’t lend themselves to becoming a Walmart and people desire that sort of convenience, so tradeoffs have to be made. We don’t have nearly the urban density to be an area where a car is unnecessary, but we could do a better job of creating residential space where cars can be placed out of sight, with access to parking off alleys. It’s not to say a convenience store couldn’t work, although the crime issue needs to be addressed as well.

It goes without saying there also needs to be a toolkit for job creation – not just downtown, but throughout the city. People who live downtown need a job, and if it happens to be downtown, great. (My newest advertiser just opened up a business there – hopefully it will create a job or two.) But it’s not necessary for downtown’s prosperity because there’s already plenty of jobs down there from 9 to 5. The harder part is livening the place up the other 16 hours a day.

Things which would tend to draw young, single people downtown as residents are affordable housing and a thriving after-hours entertainment district. Salisbury’s downtown already has elements of both, but not enough to be a critical mass. The trick is figuring out how to make it cool to live downtown and not risky (as in taking your life into your hands venturing home after a night at the club.)

Wow. I went over 500 words in placing my two cents into the kettle. While you’re free to comment here, perhaps the discussion should migrate to their site.

The Leggs legacy

As most of my local readers know – unless they’ve just crawled out from under a rock seconds before they read this piece – Thomas Leggs confessed to killing Sarah Foxwell in 2009 as part of a plea deal which spared him the death penalty.

The reaction to this development seems to be one of bitter disbelief, but I’m going to look at this from a political standpoint. We have to fast forward to 2014, when both Wicomico County State’s Attorney Matt Maciarello and Sheriff Mike Lewis will presumably once again face the voters. If that comes to pass, Maciarello would be seeking a second term and Lewis a third.

Obviously the key question is: how long will voters’ memories be? Ramming through a series of tax increases in the first year of his term didn’t seem to hurt Martin O’Malley in 2010 as he defeated Bob Ehrlich for the second straight time and by a wider margin. But local elections are a little different.

We also have to assume that the Democratic Party won’t be in the historically bad straits they were in 2010. As it so happens, several of their existing longtime officeholders may decide not to seek another term so it’s worth believing that they will fill out ballot spaces three years hence – it’s doubtful Mike Lewis will get a free ride for sheriff next time, for example. Maciarello is already vulnerable, with some observers believing he got a great gift in the campaign with Davis Ruark losing a bitter primary fight on the Democratic side. (If Ruark were to try again, he would have to re-establish his registration as a Democrat; I believe he’s switched to unaffiliated since the election.) And surely there are a number of ambitious Democrat lawyers for what would be an open nomination process without Ruark.

Moreover, while Matt laid out his reasoning for taking the plea deal, many who demanded more will feel sold out. Certainly it will be an issue resurrected in 2014 by the Democratic candidate, whoever he or she is. Trust me.

On the other hand, Mike Lewis could be blamed if later digging reveals a weak evidence chain. However, the fallout shouldn’t be as severe for him as it will be for Maciarello – that will bring a sigh of relief to the local GOP brass.

Yet there is one more person affected, and while he’s not exactly political he’s claimed to bring a lot of influence to the local political scene in the past. Why, it was way back in the 2006 campaign where one candidate claiming that local blogs were a “cancer” on the political scene placed him squarely in the limelight. I bet he found that spotlight a trifle harsh today after this diatribe.

Of course, he defended himself from the accusations – but who’s really going to write that book?

So it’s the classic case of he said/she said. Yet Joe Albero could come out of this with the popularity he so craves. While Roberta Wechsler stated a good case in her portion of the press conference, she laid it on way too thick and in a tone that was far too vindictive to a point where some may not take it seriously – certainly Matt Maciarello was caught off guard. Meanwhile, if the case goes to court guess who gets more publicity?

There’s no question that Albero has taken far too much advantage of what has been a tragic situation hanging over Delmarva’s head for the last 15 months – in fact I daresay this case took him away from what he used to do best, which was a somewhat passable version of investigative journalism. Sure, he used it just to take on his enemies but there were things which needed to be said and he said them.

But the bright lights of national attention stemming from the Foxwell case were going to be his ticket to respectability. I recall the frequent citation of Alexa numbers and claims to be ‘mainstream media’ in the immediate aftermath of the search for Sarah but both have faded from the front pages of his site. Certainly he’ll get a bounce from this latest development, but can he keep the audience or have we just seen another patented Albero trainwreck in living color? Only time will tell.

One may ask where this affects me. I didn’t follow the Foxwell story developments closely within these pages, choosing to allow others to do so. My beat is politics, which is why I started this post writing on the speculative angle.

But just like the case in 2006 with Ron Alessi, I know that this saga will affect all of us who toil daily trying to write useful content to a local or regional audience. Having that laundry list of accusations thrown at one Salisbury blogger is sure to reflect on the rest of us and it diminishes our influence.

I have used the content of my site – words I stand behind and would stack up against any other journalist in the media – to get other writing jobs, including Liberty Features Syndicate and the national website Pajamas Media. Certainly in some aspects I exist in a vacuum insofar as someone looking here on a national level isn’t going to care much about my so-called local competition. But I’ve found about 2/3 of my audience resides in the state of Maryland and half of that is local. A casual observer who goes to Joe’s site and is repelled by what he reads may not be as likely to give me or the rest of us locals a shot. There are some talented writers about, and others who make a good run at it. And while ads on monoblogue don’t bring me a lot of revenue – although I’m always willing to sell space – this effect can take food out of my mouth. (Maybe I don’t need that much to eat anyway, but the point remains.)

If Matt Maciarello and Mike Lewis aren’t reelected in 2014, it’s pretty likely they can find regular jobs in the private sector. We local bloggers have a little more difficult time rebuilding an audience when our reputation is tarnished from without, through no fault of our own.

Someday we will be far enough removed from the Foxwell saga that it will lie on the fringes of our collective memory. Thomas Leggs will rot in prison, probably never tasting another breath of freedom the rest of his days. But the words we write and the electronic images we make will live on for awhile. My fear is that our history will be defined by a man described as the leader of a ‘cultlike’ following while the truth is forgotten.

The winners write the history, so we have to make sure the truth ends up on the winning side.

Programming note

Well, the people at The Hard Times should be pleased with their extra half-day atop my site. My intention was to do a post about the Andy Harris townhall meeting today, but I was called away by other duties.

So that will appear sometime ~~tomorrow afternoon or evening~~ (nope, probably Friday) along with an update on the Wicomico elected school board issue. It happens to the best of us, but I didn’t want people to think I had ignored the Harris town hall meeting since I was there.

Silence from the local left

In case you hadn’t noticed it, or just didn’t go there because left-leaning sites aren’t your cup of tea, the Progressive Delmarva domain and blogsite are moving (or have moved) into the dustbin of history. It all stemmed from a post done by one contributor (who goes by the nom de plume Two Sentz) about Shari’a law and the argument which followed. Once Melanie quit, others folowed and the Blogspot site now has a series of farewell posts at the top.

Obviously the lefties among us locally aren’t completely unrepresented, but speaking as an occasional commenter who attempted to set them straight on a few topics their demise leaves somewhat of a hole. However, a couple of them (including Two Sentz) have their own websites so those contributors will continue on their own as they see fit.

One immediate impact for me is that I lost my partner for polling the Salisbury City Council race, which I am planning to resume next week. But I will continue undaunted, and that’s an advantage of being a solo operation.

There was something quite interesting to me in one of the final comments on the Shari’a piece – it seems that Melanie left because she was concerned that her work colleagues got the impression she was posting these items. I happen to know she works at a local university, and that revelation scares me. I thought progressives were all about ‘diversity’ but as we see time and time again it’s only certain types of diversity they want to promote. Apparently diversity of thought isn’t one of them.

And when you think about it, doesn’t that make them a little bit inflexible and unequal like Shari’a law? Meanwhile, the contributors who left seem to be learning from their Democratic colleagues in Wisconsin and, instead of standing up for their beliefs, they run away. Of course there’s a difference between passing laws and running a website but it seems like they folded their tents in an awful hurry.

Anyway, that’s my take on the situation. I know Melanie used to be a fairly regular commenter here until the ‘birther’ controversy began, and if she wants to come back she’s welcome. She’ll just need to understand that I want to know why all this information is off limits for Barack Obama when, for example, she can gleefully call Newt Gingrich a “wanker of the week” for having affairs that some enterprising news reporter dug up and publicized. Why the double standard?

As for Progressive Delmarva, well, its demise means I have one less local blog to read. We’ll see how long the hiatus lasts.