Tag: E.J. Pipkin

MDGOP 2011 Fall Convention in pictures and text

At the risk of a slow-loading post, there are 30 photos on this one. But I took a lot more, and you know every picture tells a story with me. And this is the story of the Maryland GOP Fall Convention, brought to you by…

I’ll begin with Friday night, the usual social time for the convention. Even though I’d never been to the Sheraton in Annapolis, once I saw these I knew I was in the right place.

(Of course, I took that snapshot yesterday morning.)

But first I sat through the first portion of the Executive Committee meeting. We got as far as a brief budget discussion and Chair’s Report before being tossed out when the meeting transitioned to a closed session. Perhaps the most interesting pieces of news were the search for a new Executive Director had attracted 40 applicants and the “several options” for a new home, where the goal is to choose the “place that’s most fiscally responsible.”

So it was time to find a hospitality suite and schmooze for votes. Because I’m a Cain supporter, that’s where I started out.

They had lots of balloons both inside and out. Naturally they had pretty substantial food too.

No, it’s not Godfather’s Pizza. Unfortunately, to be authentic we would have to endure cold pizza, considering the closest Godfather’s location is in Lancaster, PA – 72 miles from Annapolis. (Yes, I verified that.) It’s the thought that counts, right?

But I didn’t get the one thing I wanted from there because they didn’t have this swag on Saturday.

My car doesn’t have the Cain sticker on it yet. Maybe later.

But they also had the most witty signage by far, like this example.

Compare this to the quite understated Mitt Romney suite.

Many of those present there would be what one considers party brass. I see a former Chair and a current Committeeman in this picture.

Actually, I had an interesting conversation there with Audrey Scott there regarding a post I made awhile back. (I think it may be this one where I quoted something I wrote from 2006, before I was on the Central Committee.) I’m glad Audrey appreciates my passion but if that’s what she’s referring to she’s barking up the wrong tree.

Returning to the present day, I can’t ignore the other Presidential candidate with a presence there – although it wasn’t a hospitality suite.

I think that was the only Gadsden flag I saw there, despite the perceived influence of the TEA Party on GOP politics. I’m sure there is a segment of the TEA Party which prefers Ron Paul, but I wouldn’t go so far as saying he’s the most popular in that group.

It was a Senate candidate, though, who had the sweetest suite. Check out this spread, practically guaranteed to induce a diabetic coma.

It belonged to Senate hopeful Rich Douglas, who was holding court there with sponsor and former Ambassador Roger Noriega.

Notice the lapel poppy for Veteran’s Day; a nice touch.

Not to be outdone in the sweets department, fellow Senate candidate Dan Bongino had plenty of Smith Island cake, thanks to a friend. He also had the biggest space.

And, at the risk of making this look like a Weekend of local rock post, he’s the first candidate I’ve seen at these affairs with a band. These guys were pretty good classic rockers – I’m told the singer bassist is one of Dan’s county coordinators.

The signage was a little wordy but touted his endorsements. Dan revealed he has a few more before he’s done.

Besides the Bongino suite, which had decent traffic, I found the host county’s suite the most popular.

Maybe it’s all the elected official sponsors.

Speaking of supporters, it’s also worth further exploring something I touched upon with the Ron Paul table. A number of political organizations and businesses catering to that field had secured spaces. Here’s some of the examples.

The fairly new Maryland GOP Hispanic Coalition promoted an upcoming event – a forum on illegal immigration next week in Ellicott City.

As we were informed during the convention, the fight over Congressional redistricting is not over yet. This group is looking to install a much cleaner and fairer apportionment.

We had no shortage of social issue discussion there either.

Perhaps this group knew PMM was coming, and attempted a little bit of point/counterpoint.

Senator Nancy Jacobs, the former Minority Leader in the Senate, had her own backdrop. But it doesn’t reflect yet her probable run for the Second Congressional District seat held by Dutch Ruppersberger.

She also took a few minutes to appear on Red Maryland Radio, which was on location with co-hosts Greg Kline and Jimmy Braswell.

This looks pretty simple, doesn’t it? Here’s Kline getting set up earlier on.

And if you want true radio gold, give this a listen just after the 60 minute mark. Yes, it’s my RMR debut – long overdue, I must say.

But in all candor it was enjoyable to be part of that remote. Yet the show which was even more interesting came once the sun rose over Annapolis again.

Our breakfast speaker was Frank Kelly III. Now Frank isn’t an elected official, just an interested citizen and business owner who was tapped to speak to us about the marriage issue – something the GOP was “a little bit involved” in.

But I learned a couple things from Frank on the pro-life front. At the time of the adoption of Roe v. Wade in 1973, Maryland only permitted abortion in cases of rape, incest, or threat to mother’s life. That changed in 1990 when abortion on demand was passed through the Maryland legislature. And the chief Democratic opponent? A Senator named Frank Kelly.

The younger Kelly got emotional as he recounted how his dad’s eight day filibuster against the bill ended up costing him a pretty safe seat in the Maryland Senate, where he served three terms from 1978-90. “People were spitting on us” at the polls that year, but “my dad stood for life.”

Returning to the marriage front, Kelly also mentioned how the “language of discrimination has been artificially inserted” into the same-sex marriage issue. Gays want approval for their lifestyle, and thus anything said in disapproval is automatically labeled “hate speech.”

Frank yielded a portion of his time to Maryland Family Alliance president Derek McCoy.

McCoy echoed Kelly’s remarks, but also warned “there’s a culture war being waged” in Maryland and nationally. “We’re fighting for a signpost of morality” for future generations on the marriage issue, noting that North Carolina and Minnesota will have that issue on the ballot in 2012, and Maryland might, too, if a same-sex marriage bill succeeds this time in the General Assembly. Last time pro-homosexual advocacy group Equality Maryland “rigged the system” and threatened business which didn’t support their bill, McCoy claimed, but “we kept coming from so many sides” that a bill guaranteed to pass didn’t.

After breakfast, I sat in on an interesting training session on the media while others talked about candidate recruitment, fundraising, and other intriguing topics.

At lunch, Chair Alex Mooney went over some upcoming events before introducing our speaker, Delegate Neil Parrott.

Parrott was blunt in his assessment: “We see this great country under attack today.” He pointed out that the TEA Party delayed Obamacare by a year, which pushed back other noxious legislation like cap-and-trade. We had won victories on national issues thanks to the influence of the TEA Party.

In Maryland, though, Neil still believed “the arrogance of the liberal leadership is appalling.” Still, the petition drive he spearheaded against in-state tuition for illegal aliens was a model which could be used elsewhere. And since only 1/3 of the signatures gathered for the drive were under contention due to the collection system, there should be more than enough to place the bill on the ballot despite a pending lawsuit. The internet-based system “worked like a charm” in driving down the error rate, and was “a new tool” we could use – provided there’s follow-through and the issue wins at the ballot box, too.

Parrott also brought up redistricting, saying the Congressional map was “ridiculous” and that “we can’t allow O’Malley to get away with this” on either the Congressional or state redistricting.

In closing, Parrott brought up the real-life examples of Wisconsin, Maine, and New Jersey to conclude change is possible if we work hard enough to make it happen.

Finally, it was time for the main event.

I already detailed the fate of our bylaws amendment, but there was a lot more said in the session. I’m going to focus on the reports of the Senate Minority Leader E.J. Pipkin and House Minority Leader Tony O’Donnell.

The newly elected Pipkin called it “humbling” to be selected as Minority Leader, but spent much of his time contending that Martin O’Malley wants to drive people back to Baltimore City through the War on Rural Maryland and its 1.6 million residents. Included in that assessment were the proposed septic ban, the “dangerous” PlanMaryland, Watershed Improvement Plans” which would cost 65,000 Maryland jobs, and the refusal to progress on extracting energy from the Marcellus Shale formation under Maryland’s panhandle. “O’Malley’s policies will kill jobs in rural areas,” Pipkin countered.

O’Donnell began his remarks by pointing out the GOP success in Virginia. “I sense it’s coming” to Maryland, he said, as Free State residents react to the prospects of higher gas taxes, Congressional redistricting which “insults the people of Maryland,” and a $28 billion time bomb of unfunded pensions and retiree benefits. He also had a message for the Fifth Congressional District: we “must hold Steny Hoyer accountable.”

We also heard briefly from Prince George’s County Chair Mykel Harris about the redistricting lawsuit he’s a plaintiff to. The Maryland GOP isn’t on defense anymore, he said, but instead “went on offense.” It’s fitting from a party that “passed civil rights and…will enforce it.”

Before we got to the bylaws amendment, we also received quick reports from our National Committeewoman Joyce Terhes, National Committeeman Louis Pope, Chair Alex Mooney, and Linda Hernandez of the aforementioned Hispanic Coalition. One item I gleaned from Mooney’s remarks was his claim that PlanMaryland is indeed subject to referendum. Very interesting.

So there you have it, the sights and words from our biannual get-together. Our Spring Convention should present a united front as the Presidential race will be pretty much decided, but we will have additional national convention delegates and alternates to select. In the meantime, Heather and I will likely redraft the Rule 11 amendment to reflect feedback we received, so look for that as well.

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.

Continue reading “Odds and ends number 36”

Odds and ends number 34

Believe it or not, I have been besieged with another plethora of items which deserve perhaps an paragraph or three of comment on my part. So let me get crackin’ on them.

Since I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him in person, I would suggest that those of you who are political activists consider attending David Craig’s campaign school. It will make a stop here on the Lower Eastern Shore at the Comfort Inn in Cambridge this Saturday (October 1st) from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. It’s absolutely free and includes lunch too. You can sign up for the event here.

You know, I’d be curious to know if any liberals show up because it’s a freebie. But if it’s conducted like the “Bloggers and Burgers” confab you should leave the Craig campaign school neither hungry nor uninformed.

Speaking of liberals and freebies, there’s 116 people in Salisbury who really must suffer from terminal ignorance. I got this in my e-mail the other day, simply because September 30 is coming:

Here’s something you don’t have in common with 116 other supporters of this movement who tell us they live in Salisbury, MD.

That many of your neighbors have decided to own a piece of this campaign by making a donation of whatever they could afford. For some, that meant just $5. For others, it meant $100 or more. But each had their own personal reason for giving.

Our records show that you aren’t one of the 116 people where you’re from who have stepped up for 2012. Now’s your chance to change that.

Since the e-mail came from Jim Messina of the Obama 2012 campaign, don’t hold your breath waiting for my gift. I might give a little to Herman Cain, though.

It makes me curious, though – how many of my readers have donated to a Presidential campaign? I haven’t done so yet this cycle, but I did donate to Rep. Duncan Hunter’s ill-fated bid last time. He was my first.

Continue reading “Odds and ends number 34”

The war on rural Maryland

In response to legislation prohibiting septic systems in rural developments, State Senator E.J. Pipkin and Delegate Michael Smigiel created a website called The War on Rural Maryland.

It’s no secret that people in Maryland care about Chesapeake Bay. I’ve noted before that any legislation deemed to be “for the Bay” would likely pass in Maryland regardless of its merits – even the mythical Chesapeake Bay Legalization of Murder Act of 2011 might get the support of rabid environmentalists if they could kill off the right people – after all, it’s “for the Bay!”

(For all you high-strung progressives and PC police types, yes, I’m only kidding. Sort of. Somewhere in this state I’m sure a Jared Loughner type is lurking and he or she may just take up that type of offer if presented.)

But when septic systems in Maryland create a relatively small portion of the problem, the effect on rural development may be akin to taking a sledgehammer to an ant. It’s not like Wicomico County is growing by leaps and bounds, despite what the Census may have said – I’d wager most of that population growth occurred before 2006. Since that point, planned residential developments such as Aydelotte Farms and the Village at Salisbury Lake (a.k.a. the Old Mall) have built up slowly, if at all. The building slump also affected commercial plans such as the Hobbs Road development I was involved in. Overall, the number of building permits issued is well off its mid-decade peak.

While it’s true that other counties in Maryland may be developing faster, the idea of the ban is simple and can be summed up in two words: “smart growth.” (To me, it’s more of a “so-called” concept because who’s to say what is smart for us here on the Eastern Shore? Certainly not some faceless planner locked in an Annapolis or Washington office building.) In other words, under “smart growth” you will develop property where we (the government) tell you to, and if you happen to own property outside that area you may want to build on sometime down the road, well, you’re shit outta luck. We need to preserve those wildlife corridors and wetlands for mother Gaia’s creatures.

The state moved in this direction several years ago with the “flush tax” and accelerated the process last year by requiring nitrogen removal on new septic systems – but they only could cover a portion (if any) of the additional costs incurred by hapless homeowners forced to switch to or install these units.

A hearing on HB1107 is slated in front of the Environmental Matters Committee on March 11 at 1 p.m.

But even if we can stave off the ban for a year or two – you know O’Malley and his environmentalist buddies are going to keep knocking on this door until we finally tire of the fight and relent – we Maryland drivers also have the prospect of an additional gas tax hanging over our heads.

Now, the argument on this one is that we’ve not raised the gas tax in nearly twenty years and we need to make sure there’s money in the Transportation Trust Fund. (Of course, that’s until the fund is raided by a certain governor – who shall remain nameless – to balance his budget.) One bill which would make the pilfering more difficult but raise gas taxes 10 cents a gallon now AND provide for automatic increases in the future was introduced by Western Shore Democrats in the House and Senate. Another bill which would force Eastern Shore drivers to subsidize mass transit used across the bay via a 4% sales tax on gasoline is SB451. The House bill will be heard March 1; the Senate bills on March 9.

In general, we on the Shore drive a lot. It’s not uncommon for a resident to put 20,000 miles a year on their car or truck and if they get 20 miles from a gallon of gas the extra dime a gallon would cost them $100 a year. That may not seem like a lot, but for those who make their living on the road and pile on even more mileage it’s a serious dent placed on their finances. This provision also puts in place a permanent tax hike each year, meaning the state takes more and more out of your wallet.

If I didn’t know liberals as well as I do I’d be perplexed that they can back the state getting another dime of pure revenue out of a gallon of gas through taxation yet bitch and moan about the oil companies who actually do the work of extracting, refining, and delivering the gasoline to the pump for your use making a nickel a gallon profit. But I know them so I just shrug my shoulders at their hypocrisy. I’m used to it.

(And yes, I bitch and moan about the state of the roads, too. My suggestion for improvement: stop subsidizing mass transit that no one rides and start filling potholes. Oh, and get rid of that “living wage” crap while you’re at it so we can save a little bit on road construction labor costs.)

But if you’re tired of the state always trying to take, take, take, you may be interested in a brand new website called stopthegastax.com. (Frankly, I’m amazed they got the domain name considering there’s always someone in some state trying to gouge motorists.) There’s still a little construction to do there but you can sign a petition against the gas tax and vent your frustration.

Instead of raising the gas tax, the alcohol tax and income tax rates for the upper crust, why not prioritize what we have and live within our means for awhile? That’s what the private sector has been forced to do.

Maryland Senate GOP picks new leadership

The Eastern Shore is again represented in the upper echelon of Maryland Senate Republicans, for the first time since former Senator Lowell Stoltzfus walked away from leadership a few years back.

State Senator Nancy Jacobs, who was Minority Whip, was promoted to the leadership post yesterday in a vote among the Senate caucus. The new Minority Whip is State Senator E.J. Pipkin of the upper Shore.

A press release from the Senate caucus included reaction from the two:

“I am honored and humbled by the support of my colleagues in electing me Minority Leader,” said Jacobs. “While there are many difficult issues we need to address during this legislative session, I look forward working with my fellow senators to ensure Maryland’s success.”

“We have significant budgetary challenges facing us in the 2011 legislative session,” Pipkin said, “fortunately I feel that our caucus has a united sense of mission and passion in facing these challenges.  I’m ready to get to work.”

Now that the leadership question is settled, Republicans can get down to work being solid, conservative opposition. I’m especially looking forward to seeing how Pipkin can use his enhanced profile as a leader for sanity in the budgetary process.

The vote yesterday means the Eastern Shore is home to both Minority Whips as Pipkin joins Delegate Jeannie Haddway-Riccio of Talbot County in this leadership post.

Ideas for the right direction

On Thursday the BrinkleyPipkin budget reduction act (in Maryland that’s SB1004, Budget Reconciliation and Balancing Act) had its hearing. When I got the release on this hearing this was the part which jumped out at me:

The Brinkley-Pipkin budget reduction act had a hearing before the Senate Budget and Tax Committee today. By taking significant steps to further reduce spending in this year’s budget process, the Brinkley-Pipkin plan buys additional time to constrain spending to the existing available revenues without the need to raise taxes.
 
A key feature of the plan is the elimination of built-in statutory increases in state programs. This feature and an additional $75 million in spending constraint over the next three years would allow current revenues to “catch-up” with spending, thereby bringing ongoing spending and revenues into balance.

Many lobbyists and county officials testified today against additional cuts to state spending. Representatives of unions also opposed the Brinkley-Pipkin plan of additional cutbacks including the removal prevailing wage from state projects. The majority of citizens and taxpayers who testified supported all efforts to cut back government overspending. (Emphasis mine.)

So once again we have the government and big-government interests (i.e. the lobbyists) vs. the people. The information I was provided also had a chart showing the difference between our current budget path (which will certainly lead to higher taxes) and the Brinkley-Pipkin projections.

In theory, at least, the Republicans’ proposal not only balances the budget but creates a small surplus.

Obviously the counties were there to argue that the budget would be balanced on their backs and perhaps they have a point. But this should also lead the local governments into an effort to prioritize what services they wish to deliver, with the public being involved by determining how much they want to pay. For example, it would fan the flames of the ongoing debate here in Wicomico County regarding the revenue cap the county currently employs.

Government cannot co-exist with a free society as a cure-all. Every dollar taken out of your pocket to pay for services they wish to deliver is a dollar that you cannot use as you wish, despite the fact it was freely given to you. (In more and more cases, however, that dollar was given to you by the same government who wishes to take it away.)

It’s way beyond time to consider that role government has to play and amend it accordingly. Maybe not all of the cuts in the Brinkley-Pipkin proposal are wise, but they can begin this vital discussion of the role our state government plays in our lives.