Odds and ends number 36
Let’s begin with an item that only gets a couple paragraphs because of the circumstances. While I’m not at liberty to share the names of those who applied, I think I can safely say that we have no shortage of applicants to send four qualified prospects up to County Council in order to fill the District 4 seat made vacant by Bob Caldwell’s passing. Offoceseekers are both male and female, represent a broad spectrum of ages, and should be very interesting to screen. So that seat will be in good hands.
Now I could have had a great scoop in releasing the names but I respect the wishes of my Chair and the process too much to let any undue influence sway the decision, a circumstance which would certainly occur if the names were made public. Remember, this is not a typical political campaign because we as a Central Committee only make recommendations. The time for voting will be later and it will be done by County Council, not our committee.
All right, now for something a lot different.
The same old story
For those of you unaware, today marks the end of the federal fiscal year. Supposedly at midnight tonight Fedzilla begains working from the FY2012 budget.
Except there is no such thing yet. Like this fiscal year, where Democrats in charge during 2010 failed to pass an actual budget and counted on continuing resolutions to keep the government going, those inside the Beltway will have to subsist on a continuing resolution or two or three until the budget is finally hammered out – don’t count on that anytime soon because fiscally conscious Republicans only control the House while the Senate and White House are controlled by spendthrift Democrats who never met an entitlement they didn’t like.
Testimony before Redistricting Advisory Committee
These were my remarks as prepared for today’s hearing of the Maryland Redistricting Advisory Committee hearing at Salisbury University.
Good afternoon.
My name is Michael Swartz and I am a citizen of Maryland by choice, having moved here in 2004.
Because of my tardy timing in realizing this can be a great place to live, I missed out on the last redistricting battle ten years ago. All I know is that the whole affair ended up in court because the original plan was far too egregious for even political partisans to be able to defend, so it was changed around the edges to the map we have now. It’s a map which, sadly, divides a number of counties like a vast jigsaw puzzle, placing neighbors who might have a lot in common into different political districts because some Annapolis or Washington politician looked at voter registration data and wanted a seat which was safe for their re-election prospects until he or she wished to retire.
And from many accounts, it seems to me that the goal of redistricting in Maryland is once again not to empower the people or bring about a truly representative small-r republican state, but to reward certain politicians and punish those who don’t toe a particular party line.
I’m here to speak about both Congressional and state legislative redistricting, so I’m asking for your indulgence here. My goal is to maintain my testimony to the five-minute limit prescribed by the rules; ideally I’ll come in a little bit shorter but no less forthright.
A few weeks ago, Maryland Republicans put out their version of a Congressional redistricting map. It appealed to me not because of the prospect of placing several Democrats currently serving in Congress together in a single district; in principle a few minor tweaks could eliminate that issue.
Instead, the beauty of this map is that it leaves most counties within one Congressional district. No longer is Anne Arundel County divided among four different Congressmen without a resident representative among them, nor is there the prospect of again having some of what are considered the most gerrymandered Congressional districts in the country to place Maryland into a sort of political hall of shame. No, on the Republican map neighbors are left with neighbors and districts were drawn in a manner which makes relative geographical sense.
Unfortunately, what we will likely get is a package which reflects the Democrats’ goal of electing a Congressional delegation where all members come from their party, achieved by splitting Republican strongholds up as much as possible. Liberal Democrats have dreamed up maps which place Eastern Shore watermen in the same district as the toughest minority neighborhoods in urban Baltimore city and coal miners living along the West Virginia border with District of Columbia suburbanites, all in the name of something called the 10-0 Project. Needless to say, if you place these combinations together I don’t see a cohesive set of interests there.
While I’m certain the Republican plan won’t get a lot of traction from a group selected by a governor trying to work his way up in prominence among national Democrats for a future political run, let’s at least strive to be a little more sensitive to the interests of not breaking up counties and neighborhoods into multiple Congressional districts.
Now I’ll speak on the state level.
It so happens that I serve locally on the Republican Central Committee, and as such I was elected based on a vote by every Republican in Wicomico County. However, I realize that the old method of having State Senators elected from each county regardless of population went away a few decades back, to be replaced with the population-based system we have now.
Yet when I moved here there was one piece of the political puzzle which made no sense whatsoever to me – I have two different representatives in the House of Delegates from one district. Upon further investigation, I was flabbergasted to find that others in my same region have just one Delegate they could call their own while still others across the state had three different Delegates – in most cases, these areas elected all three from one political party while those areas where the minority party tended to hold sway had their districts broken up into two or three subdistricts. I was used to the system in my native state of Ohio where each of their 33 State Senate districts are broken down into thirds to create 99 separate House districts.
While the numbers are different, that is the system Maryland should strive to emulate – each Senate district should be broken up into three different House districts. That way rural counties would have more of an opportunity to get a resident Delegate, something which several counties on the Eastern Shore have lacked from time to time because of the current system.
Moreover, those who create the district maps should begin at the county level and attempt to minimize division. Here in Wicomico County we are a poster child for that phenomenon – while we potentially could elect six Delegates and two State Senators from our county, it’s just as likely we could have none. Imagine a county of nearly 100,000 people without a voice in the state legislature! While I’m aware that parts of our large county would have to be shaved off to maintain an equal population balance among districts, this county could easily at least have one House of Delegates district formed entirely within its borders.
I want to thank the Redistricting Advisory Committee for holding this hearing. Unfortunately, there are many of us who sincerely feel that the die has already been cast and the state is just going through the motions of having hearings so they can say they heard the public when another partisan map that tears apart communities in the name of political power is revealed.
Hopefully you’ll all surprise me and put out something which makes sense geographically and enrages political insiders from both parties because they’ll have to work for re-election instead of believing they’ll be a Delegate or Senator for life.
Once again, I thank you and hope you’ll take my constructive criticism into account when the decisions are made.
Update: I’ll have a report on the proceedings for Monday, as tomorrow I have a 9/11 piece that will be up most of the day.
Harris slates townhall meeting
Sure, it’s kind of short notice and perhaps not the best time of day for us working folks but Congressman Andy Harris has scheduled a townhall meeting for tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday) from 4 to 5 p.m. at Adam’s Ribs in Fruitland.
Certainly there are a lot of topics which could be brought up – and it will be interesting to see if the moveon.org crowd or someone in a chicken suit shows up. But I’d like to hear what Harris has to say about getting the nanny state off our back. I understand that not a whole lot can be done while Democrats rule the roost in the White House and Senate, but there can be a number of opportunities for positive change in appropriations bills which have yet to be passed. We need to stay on the offensive.
But all in all I believe those of us who believe in the right things locally ought to come out and give our Congressman a show of support. Those few cranks protesting his office or donning a chicken suit aren’t the majority in this district or even this town – those who work hard to make a living despite the obstacles thrown up by government are. We just need not be silent or silenced.
Oh, and one more thing: it’s nice to see that our Congressman likes to show up in person for these townhall meetings. A phone call is so impersonal.
Perhaps the analogy I’ve been looking for
Yes, Washington has an addiction.
The sad thing is that we’ve been feeding the addiction by voting in a lot of the same people to Congress. But there’s also the bureaucracy which hasn’t met a problem they couldn’t milk into additional appropriations down the line – if they actually solved the problem there wouldn’t be a need for continuing the agency. Instead, it’s a rare day that we see any government agency go by the wayside.
But we need to place a LOT of government agencies into the dustbin of history to solve our overarching problem, which in a nutshell is we have too much of a centralized, federalized government. I didn’t allocate the term ‘Fedzilla’ from Ted Nugent for nothing.
It’s more likely that we’ll continue to feed the addiction, though. Conventional wisdom is that the usual Washington horsetrade will occur – give Obama and Democrats the higher debt limit they desire in return for promised spending cuts which never occur. I keep seeing Lucy pull that football away from Charlie Brown for some reason.
Believe it or not, regardless of what Washington does about the debt ceiling, the sun will come up on Wednesday and millions of Americans will do their daily work. Don’t let anyone tell you the sky is falling.
The impasse continues
The Republicans in the House keep pitching them, and the Senate keeps letting them go by. So where is the Democrats’ plan?
It looks like either one of two things will happen: we will go past the so-called deadline of Tuesday or Republicans will cave. I’d prefer the former but it doesn’t take a lot of pressure to make the latter happen, based on previous results.
Personally I’d like the spending cuts now because there’s one big problem with a Balanced Budget Amendment: you would never get it through the Senate given its configuration at the moment. And then to count on 38 states? Not happening.
(I’m not even going to get into the drawbacks to having a budgetary system based on a percentage of GDP. Suffice to say that we lock in profligate spending for perpetuity.)
To balance the budget based on the money we take in presently, we only need to reduce spending to roughly 2003 levels. Scary to think we’ve grown our government over 40 percent in less than a decade, under Presidents and Congresses of both parties.
So why not get to work on that? Sure, it will take some rather draconian cuts but isn’t it all about shared sacrifice? Come to think of it, a consumption tax would do a dandy job of making all of us share, wouldn’t it?
Until we get to that point, though, it’s high time to share the sacrifice all over the non-essential areas of government – leave us overburdened taxpayers alone!
The debt ceiling, locally
Gee, that Jim Messina from the Barack Obama recoronation campaign – always telling me what to do. Now he wants me to call Andy Harris:
The President spoke last night about the need for Congress to come together to meet our financial obligations by raising the so-called “debt ceiling” — that is, to make sure our country can pay the bills Congress has already racked up.
You’d think this would be fairly straightforward. For many years, regardless of party affiliation, presidents have asked Congress to do this when it’s been necessary — and every time, Congress has acted. Just as an example, Congress granted Ronald Reagan’s request to raise the debt ceiling 18 different times.
Here’s what’s happening: President Obama proposed the balanced approach of raising the debt ceiling paired with responsible steps to reduce our country’s long-term debt — asking oil companies, corporations, and the richest Americans to do their part rather than placing the entire burden on seniors and the middle class.
A deal has been close at times, but an ideological faction of House Republicans has been effectively holding our economy hostage — making extreme demands like ending Medicare as we know it, gutting Social Security, and rejecting any compromises that might make millionaires or big corporations pay their fair share to get our debt under control.
So last night, President Obama spoke to the nation and made a suggestion to everyone watching: Call Congress and ask them to do their job. Since then, there have been reports that the flood of calls and emails has been slowing down the phone systems and websites on Capitol Hill. But keep trying until you get through — they need to hear from you.
Well, I don’t have to call Andy to find out what he thinks – he already let me know, in no uncertain terms:
“By an overwhelming amount, Maryland families and businesses have contacted me to demand that the federal government get its fiscal house in order, stop spending more than it takes in, and balance the budget,” said Rep. Andy Harris. “ I disagree with the President – we need a balanced budget amendment, and I won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling unless a balanced budget amendment is part of the deal. To create jobs in America again, we must stop the spending spree in Washington.”
Let’s return to Messina’s statement, which presumably is President Obama’s viewpoint.
First of all, he blames the legislative branch for “bills Congress has already racked up.” One problem with saying that is that we haven’t had a budget passed in 2 1/2 years because the Democrats decided not to do their duty when they ran the show in Congress. Yet Democrats passed budget-busting bills like the so-called stimulus and Obamacare. If the Pelosi/Reid Congress had simply maintained spending at the already generous 2007 levels they proposed, we wouldn’t be having this argument. Keep that in mind as I continue.
Of course, Obama has to bring Ronald Reagan into this by referring to raising the debt limit 18 times. Well, there he goes again. Remember who ran Congress and created the budget during those years? Yep, Democrats who were only too happy to vote for tax cuts but balked at cutting their precious social programs. I still remember how Reagan’s budget proposals were classified as “D.O.A.” every year.
More importantly, look at the phrase “asking oil companies, corporations, and the richest Americans to do their part.” There’s not going to be any “asking” about it if Obama gets his way – he’s just going to gouge their bottom line some more through higher taxation. I’ll bet he’ll be wondering why unemployment continues to go up. Sorry, that class envy card isn’t accepted here – not when the top 1% of wage-earners already pay more in tax than the bottom 95 percent.
So you can scratch the part about “extreme demands like ending Medicare as we know it, gutting Social Security, and rejecting any compromises that might make millionaires or big corporations pay their fair share,” since we shouldn’t fall for Mediscare or naively believe Social Security is healthy. (I already covered the “fair share” part in the last paragraph.) Instead, we should end Medicare as we know it and work to sunset Social Security because the government doesn’t belong in either health care or retirement. (Obviously those tasks have to be done over a number of decades, but the best time to start is now!)
I suppose my message is clear: go pound sand, President Obama.
Now as for Congressman Harris, my only quibble is that he shouldn’t vote to raise the debt ceiling whether there’s a balanced budget amendment with it or not. Make President Obama take the blame for any cuts he’d have to make, since he’s already hinting that seniors and the military will get it. You already have passed a plan, so there’s no need to make any other concessions until you see his proposal.
So if I’m going to call Congressman Harris’s office, it’s going to be with the message that there should be no increase in the debt ceiling and no compromise. Obama and the Democrats made their bed, let them lie in it.
Andy’s Salisbury townhall
Finally, I get a chance to reflect on Monday’s townhall meeting with a suitable multimedia presentation.
On Monday our Congressman, Andy Harris, culminated a day spent on the Lower Shore with a public townhall meeting at Chef Fred’s in Salisbury. Several dozen constituents took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions of Andy and otherwise say their piece.
His presentation began with a PowerPoint show which illustrated his main point of the evening: we have been “misled” for 20 to 30 years financially. Slides that showed the “reckless spending spree,” “tidal wave of debt,” “what drives our debt?,” and a comparison between the state we currently find ourselves in and the one in Greece before the EU bailout dominated his early remarks. One particularly interesting (and troubling) statistic: the foreign ownership that was just 5% back in 1970 is now 47 percent, with China the largest holder.
Against that stark backdrop, Harris told the group the aim of the House was to bring that debt under control. We “can’t be competitive with that amount of foreign debt,” he added. Their three-pronged approach was to trim spending without raising taxes – “increasing taxes is not the solution,” Andy said – and cutting regulation to “common sense” levels.
However, those cuts couldn’t just slash entitlement programs. “We have to establish a Social Security and Medicare system that’s viable,” stated Andy.
This took about the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the meeting. Most of the next two hours were spent answering questions on a number of subjects: among them the Federal Reserve, jobs and the economy, education, the PATRIOT Act, the Fourteenth Amendment, energy policy, and Medicare.
Perhaps my favorite question of the group was the one on education, which was asked as part of a soliloquy from a local teacher. It was a story from the front lines that lamented the amount of regulation placed on teachers, and Harris agreed that there was no federal role necessary in education.
I also thought Andy’s view on foreign aid was valid – we should require a country-by-country vote on foreign aid. This was friendly allies would be rewarded while those who oppose us would be first in line for cuts. Among those Harris favored retaining at least the present amount of aid for was Israel, our “staunchest ally” in the Middle East.
Andy also had a long explanation of his beliefs on the PATRIOT Act, a question asked by fellow blogger Julie Brewington of Right Coast. The process of resolving the act was “complicated” because of provisions which expired at different times and being of the belief that some parts of the PATRIOT Act were useful.
Of course, I asked a question, too. In short, what is wrong with the leadership?
Andy also revealed he’s a co-sponsor of a bill to clarify the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t apply to “anchor babies,” which makes sense because the parents aren’t under our jurisdiction as non-citizens.
Quite a bit of the discussion focused on government health care.
As a medical practicioner, Andy eaasily explained some of the factors which allowed drug companies to sell drugs cheaply to Canadians as opposed to here in America. Technically, purchasing drugs from Canada enables drug companies to flout Canadian law, but the reason drugs are cheaper there is the formulary they use – in other words, their selection is far less than ours. Later, there was a question about Medicare doctor reimbursements where Andy made the point that cutting the payments to doctors was a form of “backdoor rationing” because limiting Medicare payments to doctors forced them to stop accepting Medicare patients. (How many people would willingly take a 30 percent pay cut for doing the same amount of work? That’s what they are asking doctors to do, as I understand it.) A more desirable effect could be had by increasing competition between insurance companies, Andy concluded.
There was a questioner who asked about the cuts to job services, but Andy reminded her that there were 47 programs out there which still had $1.5 billion to spend this fiscal year. Meanwhile, due to overregulation, the poultry industry was “on the brink of leaving the country.” We have the workforce to bring light manufacturing to the area, but needed to have a government which would allow businesses to thrive.
Term limits? Andy is a co-sponsor of a term limits bill. I also recall in 2008 he said he’d serve no more than 12 years.
NASA was a good program, but in a time of limited budget flexibility they needed to prioritize their missions.
“Energy independence has to be one of our top priorities,” opined Andy. I couldn’t agree more. He pointed out the Marcellus Shale formation under portions of Maryland and other neighboring states as a key untapped resource.
But, it can’t be an Andy Harris event without somebody protesting, whether in a chicken suit or not.
Mike Calpino, the Libertarian candidate for a County Council seat last year, mildly protested the direction the two principal parties had led the country by holding this sign out front before the event. However, no one disrupted the proceedings inside. Aside from an admitted RINO who thought the Republican Party needed to jettison its right wing, the dialogue was relatively friendly.
Two final quotes from the meeting:
Referring to our financial situation: “(There is) an unwillingness in Washington to face the music.”
“My philosophy is, that if we reduce the size of government, we free up capital and our American entrepreneurship to create jobs and business, to be the best in the world.” That was a reply to the self-described RINO.
Needless to say, the Congressman encourages input from constituents. His district office is downtown at 212 W. Main Street, right inside the Gallery Building.
Harris: “I support an ‘all of the above’ energy approach”
This found its way to my inbox yesterday from the office of our Congressman:
(Yesterday,) as a member of the Natural Resources Committee Rep. Andy Harris participated in a hearing focused on America’s rising energy prices. Oil prices have recently passed $100 per barrel for the first time since 2008. Gasoline prices have increased 77 cents since this time last year. According to an analyst from Cameron Hanover, there is an additional cost to consumers of $4 million dollars per day for every penny increase in fuel costs. Last week, Rep. Andy Harris sent a letter to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu requesting immediate action on rising fuel costs.
“Too many times during past energy crises we have failed to act definitively,” said Rep. Andy Harris. “I support an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy approach that emphasizes American-produced oil, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear, and renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal. This approach will lower prices, create new American jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, strengthen our national security and raise revenue to help tackle the $14 trillion debt.”
A recent Congressional Research report indicated that our combined recoverable coal, oil and natural gas reserves total 1.3 trillion barrels of oil equivalent – the largest in the world. In addition to these resources, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates oil shale reserves could be greater than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. These numbers indicate that we have the resources to produce our own energy and the latest technology to do it safely. We should strengthen our national security by ending our dependence on foreign energy and create American jobs while doing it.
So that’s what he said; here’s what I have to say.
Unfortunately, Andy, you can send a truckload of these letters to Steven Chu’s office and all you’ll get is a forest’s worth of dead trees. He’s truly gulped a large pitcher of the global warming Kool-Aid. For all his talk about embracing nuclear power despite the Japan crisis, for example, we haven’t seen much action toward building new plants in the last two years – or the last fifteen, for that matter (the last new U.S. nuclear power plant came online in 1996.) Instead, the Obama administration is hot and heavy into forcing our nation to adopt solar and wind as renewable energy sources. They only prefer ‘some of the above,’ ignoring the fact that we have a mature market in fossil fuels and supplies, as you point out, are still plentiful. (They’re the government’s own estimates, for gosh sakes!)
Would it be possible to be completely energy independent? Perhaps, but I think the more realistic goal would be to depend only on one or two outside sources. Just cutting out the need to ship oil across the ocean would be a boost, and that may be doable since Canada and Mexico export a large percentage of the oil we use across their borders with us.
But it’s interesting to note that much of the advancement and infrastructure in the oil and natural gas industry is funded by the industry itself as opposed to the government, while the inverse seems to be true for wind and solar power. After all, what market would the offshore wind farms proposed off Ocean City have if it weren’t for government putting a fat finger on the scale?
So Harris is relatively correct in his assessment, although I’d love to have some followup on what he sees as government’s proper role. Certainly he has solid facts and figures, but Andy needs to share what specific solutions he would advocate in each area in order to address this crisis. The more it depends on the private-sector market, the better I’ll probably like it.
Harris opens Salisbury district office
The message was: he won’t be a stranger.
A crowd of perhaps 50 people crammed into (and spilled outside) the new district office, which takes over a space in the Gallery Building vacated by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Eventually the Congressman arrived to greet wellwishers and speak to other media. I happened to be the only blogger there but WMDT-TV came down the street to check things out, as did the Daily Times.
The newly-elected Congressman had a few remarks for those who waited to speak with him, noting that this was a scheduled off week by leadership as they exhorted their charges to “talk to the people more.” As a practice they will have at least one week a month off.
But he was “really excited to get back to Washington next week” and begin discussions on how to tackle the budgetary process for both the remainder of this fiscal year and next year. Andy called the debt and deficit “frightening” and warned that he’s “not sure we can get out of this.”
“The time for talk is way gone,” he continued.
After holding two townhall meetings earlier this week, Harris told those assembled he was surprised by the sentiment. Expecting a backlash on cuts, he was instead told, “how come we didn’t cut more?” and that those attending generally “appreciate finally being told the truth.”
And when people come up to complain about cuts, as they surely will, Andy vowed to ask them two questions: is the program worth borrowing from your grandchildren for, and, where else on the budget should the restored cuts come from?
He then opened it up to questions, and among them I asked how much he’s saving from the new office. I was told $500 per month, which equates to $6,000 per year (or, as I joked, about 1/10 of a job saved or created.) Then again, it could help to hire an extra part-time person to help with constituent service and that’s more important than a physical office.
I also learned through a conversation with a longtime observer that the former office had been a Congressional office for at least 30 years, to the era of former Congressman Roy Dyson. But this office has the advantages of better security and a more convenient location (it’s across the hall from the local IRS office and in the same building as Senator Mikulski – her office is on the other side down the hall.)
Staff, local elected officials, and Central Committee members gathered at the doorway for the formal ribbon cutting. (I took the picture instead.) One other announcement made at the event was there will be a local townhall meeting the week of March 21, with more details announced a few days prior to the event.
The new district office is located at 212 West Main Street, Suite 204B.
The federal land grab
Over the past few weeks there’s been a push to place more of the land below our feet under federal control.
Using the lure of potential tourism dollars, Democratic members of Congress from both Maryland and Delaware have submitted bills to set aside land for a national historical park – Maryland’s would honor Harriet Tubman while Delaware’s would encompass a number of the state’s historical sites. In particular, the Delaware lament is that they are the one state without a national park. (Hey, they’re also one of just five states where their state capital isn’t served by an interstate highway either, but I’m not seeing a clamor for something more important like that.)
Certainly there can be a case made that some historical areas are worth seeing and rank among the nation’s top tourist attractions. But the argument can and should be made that, if an area were worth preserving, it would have already been done by now. And, as fellow bloggers in both states point out, what other restrictions will be placed on those who live in areas surrounding the parks? In particular, Ann Corcoran speaks from experience, and as she notes:
I’m not saying economic development is bad. It’s just that when governments and developers team up to cheat or trick landowners that’s where I object. Our Founding Fathers would, I am positive, agree with me.
By the way, the strategy is always the same—they dupe those true historic preservation-minded citizens with this “preserving our heritage” mumbo jumbo into being shills for the plan. What about our heritage of private property rights and limited government?
And a side note: remember awhile back when there was a development planned for a tiny sliver of the Blackwater area? Well, those 3200 homes and the golf course will be a distant memory now that the state has its clutches of the land, but perhaps the even more onerous taskmaster would be the federal government. They’ll allow the state its $8 million boondoggle that’s already in the works, but that’s about it. Isn’t it nice to have a park suitable for maybe a three-hour day trip but nowhere to stay or play nearby because the natural beauty of farmland must be preserved?
It’s worth pointing out too that the federal government already controls about a third of the land mass in the country, although the vast bulk of the area is west of the Mississippi. Yet they can’t maintain what they have, nor are they eager to allow mineral, coal, or fossil fuel exploration under their land (which could help defray part of their upkeep costs.) Although it’s doubtful we have that particular concern under the Delmarva Peninsula, the counties affected will have to deal with the projected vast increase in tourism without the help of the property taxes they may have collected from the government-owned land.
Sometimes the powers that be just do something because they can. The state already has its mitts on the most important part of the Tubman area and presumably the same situation applies in Delaware for its historical sites. To me, that’s plenty enough protection – we don’t need Fedzilla telling us what to do as well.
If anything, let’s start returning land to taxpaying status and encourage upgrading our infrastructure to accommodate more commercial and industrial development to go along with the bid for more tourism. While it wouldn’t be appropriate to render these historical sites worthless by crowding them with development, we don’t need them to exist in isolation either.
It looks like Maryland CAN
Following up on a story that was so last year…love those New Year’s jokes I can make for a few days!
Today I received good news from my blogging friend (Potomac TEA Party Report) Ann Corcoran. She’s helping to organize the first Maryland CAN (Conservative Action Network) conference in Annapolis next Saturday. Alas, I cannot be there due to a previous commitment but she tells me that they’ll break the 100 mark in registrations this week. When we discussed the event, I surmised that “50 is a success and 100 would be huge” – so color it huge!
Among the speakers will be a galaxy of conservative activists from Maryland and beyond, with perhaps the most nationally famous being ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief. She now heads up an organization called Emerging Corruption. Bios on many of the remaining speakers can be found here.
Considering we had about 250 for the GOP convention (held in the same building) and they were supposed to be there as elected officials, drawing triple-digits for this conference is a good first step. The idea is to work and plan our moves for the next two to four years in the wilderness (as far as state politics is concerned) and manuever ourselves into position for success in 2012 and 2014. For example, it may be a great stop for those who are considering running against Senator Ben Cardin and for Congress against a slew of Maryland incumbents.
Certainly I’m sure Ann and other Maryland conservative bloggers will be taking up my slack in covering this event. I’ll keep my ear to the ground and see what develops.
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