Marty Pusey – Page 2

The Good Beer Festival in pictures and text

Maybe it wasn’t the pinnacle political event of the year, but there was a nice presence over the weekend at Pemberton Historical Park. There were a few elected officials about to kick it off, including County Executive Rick Pollitt and County Council members John Cannon and David MacLeod.

In the end, though, it was about the beer!

It was nice of 16 Mile Brewery to take the lead on that one, as one of our (more or less) local brewers. Impressively, only 5 of the 27 brewers represented came from the Delmarva area. Here is some of 16 Mile’s best work, I believe this is their Old Court Ale.

Who knows, it could be the Amber Sun too. I tried all of their stuff and liked it. So did a lot of other people, as the next three pictures show.

Respectively, the pictures were taken at 3 p.m. Saturday, 1:45 p.m. Sunday, and 4 p.m. Sunday. I was told there were 1800 tickets sold on Saturday so I’d estimate they got around 800 to 1000 Sunday. Not bad for an event where vendors were told to expect 2000 for the weekend.

One intriguing aspect of the event was a sports theme, sort of like an outdoor mancave. You had your tent with two large-screen televisions, a row for various games and contests, and this simulator.

Strangely enough, this car was absent Sunday, which left the field open for frisbee and football tossing. No big loss.

And yes, we did our political thing.

Business was pretty good on Saturday, perhaps a little slow on Sunday. Most of the interest was naturally in the Ehrlich-O’Malley race, but other politicians showed up to garner votes.

Among them was County Executive candidate Joe Ollinger, who came both days. Here he’s pictured with Greg Belcher, who was kind enough to help me staff the tent both days.

On Sunday, District 38B contender Marty Pusey stopped by with a friend.

In reality, she was only getting even for Norm Conway, who had wandered around the festival the day before. I had a picture of Seth Mitchell out garnering votes, but decided not to use it. (He looked a little angry, even though I don’t think he was completely distressed by the fact there was a Republican tent.)

There was even a political overtone to some of the vendors. Not only was the Parsonsburg Fire Department selling raffle tickets, but their members who were present were clear on where they stood.

Since the weekend was also filled with music, I have a lot more pictures for a future post. But that will come in time.

NOvember arrived today in Fruitland

…and so did an interesting protest. But more on that later.

And despite having to bring the party indoors due to today’s inclement weather, the nationwide bus tour brought along information and enlisted speakers Andrew Langer from the Institute for Liberty and talk radio host Duke Brooks from WGMD-FM.

The bus had already arrived when I did.

I spoke briefly to the driver and was interested to find out that he’s been all over the country with the bus since mid-July. The tour continues with stops in New Jersey and Pennsylvania tomorrow.

After the brief interruption, Joe Collins noted that it was “sad that people are so misguided and so negative.” He apparently also introduced the first speaker, Duke Brooks. I missed the first few minutes of his speech investigating things outside.

I did video of the latter half of his talk, but Duke noted that “no government can avoid a recession.” However, they always seemed to use economic hard times as an excuse to take more control over people’s lives, and “that’s the problem in the first place.” Brooks also exhorted us to “redouble our efforts” as November approached.

Here’s the video of Duke Brooks.

Andrew Langer came up next and reminded us that “AFP gets it.” While the runup to the election is crucial, “after November is most important” because we had to hold the victors’ feet to the fire, whether Republican or Democrat. While the Blue Dogs won the 2006 and 2008 elections by portraying themselves as conservatives, voting with Nancy Pelosi 85% of the time was “unacceptable.”

“Our focus will be on accountability,” he continued, and described the worst parts of government were coming through the regulatory process. For example, regulations which were costing employers $7,700 per employee in 2005 (according to the Small Business Administration) were now costing $10,600 per employee. All told, the “regulatory state” was costing us $1.7 trillion a year, compared to $1.1 trillion just two short years ago. In short, this was the message of the day.

I like how that sign was autographed, too – the picture doesn’t do it justice.

One thing which surprised me was that so few local conservative officeseekers were there. Now I wouldn’t expect Frank Kratovil to show but I thought we’d have a number of candidates and current politicians in the house. To her credit, District 38B Delegate candidate Marty Pusey was at the event solidifying her support.

Two of those yard signs in the back of her car have been transplanted into my yard, and I encourage those of you who live in District 38B to do the same.

And there was a bit of a hullabaloo early on.

As for the chicken and his flock who came over to roost – see if you can make sense out of what they were trying to say since I took a couple minutes’ worth of video.

As near as I could tell, their babbling was about Andy Harris supporting tax breaks for companies to move offshore. But the irony for me (as I pointed out in the video to Chuck Cook, who is the tall, bearded person taping generally to my right) is that being seen in a chicken suit points up their support of overly punitive environmental measures which are driving the poultry industry away from Delmarva. Talk about offshore birds, that’s where they’re going!

Later I joked with them about their support of offshore drilling – hey, if they want to talk about really offshoring jobs here was their chance. But they turned a deaf ear to the logic.

Now, I suppose in the next day or so I’ll voluntarily lower my IQ about a half-dozen points and check out Progressive Delmarva to see how they crow about this latest stunt of theirs. But once this motley crew slinked out of the affair after being mildly disruptive for the first ten minutes or so they went back across the street to the Food Lion parking lot and piled into their cars, festooned generously with stickers supporting Martin O’Malley, Frank Kratovil, and Rick Pollitt, among other liberals. So much for their feigned support of Andy Harris.

At least they were environmentally conscious enough to carpool, I’ll give them that.

Unfortunately, my video of Andrew Langer’s speech is about 4 minutes too long for YouTube and I made the mistake of taking my camera (which does QuickTime format) rather than Kim’s, so I couldn’t edit the video. If I can figure out a way to boil it down I’ll have it for a future installment of FNV.

In the meantime, you can enjoy desperate liberals making utter fools of themselves. We did.

Oh, and the “Now or Never Maryland” tour will be in Salisbury October 22. Let’s see what these guys have for that.

Thank you for your support!

Update 9/16: I picked up another 46 votes today in the absentee count and increased my margin to 27.

It looks like I may have made it…just barely, but I may have made it.

With a few hundred absentee ballots out, I’m holding on to ninth place for the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee by a 25 vote margin. It’s a damn good thing my suggestion of a couple years ago (to expand the WCRCC from 7 to 9 members) was finally adopted by the committee or I’d be out in the cold!

Obviously I’m bummed that both of my statewide candidates I supported lost. It’s not a surprise that Brian Murphy lost, but I am heartened that he picked up 29% of the vote here – it means that Bob Ehrlich can’t take us conservatives for granted over the next seven weeks. (Murphy got over 30% of the vote in a handful of counties, peaking so far at 33 percent.)

But I guess Eric Wargotz may have bought himself a nomination, since he doesn’t seem to anywhere near the grassroots support that Jim Rutledge did. My friends who are Rutledge backers should be proud that the top two counties in the state to back Jim were (in order) Wicomico (#1) and Worcester (#2.) Shows we have some common sense, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see Wargotz skedaddle to the center now.

I did better on the homefront – wasn’t sure Marty Pusey would pull it off but she did! Congrats and way to go Marty!

More shocking was the ease in which Charles Otto won his primary. And people will be talking for awhile about the upset of Davis Ruark by Seth Mitchell.

Looks like later today I can condense my righthand column and prepare for November. But again, thanks to the 2,036 people who had faith in me and my efforts on the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee!

Just don’t tell me I’m a shoo-in next time!

A list of tax raisers

This is an extended version of an article I feature today on my Examiner.com page. Feel free to read it as I get takes on the proposed “dime-a-drink” tax from three candidates for Delegate: John Hayden, Dustin Mills, and Marty Pusey, along with State Senate candidate Chris Jakubiak. He and Hayden favor the tax while Mills and Pusey are opposed. Then come back for my argument on this.

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John makes some good points, but there are two items he didn’t consider. One is that sin taxes generally don’t bring in the revenue promised, and even the fiscal note for the 2010 Senate bill notes, “to the extent that the tax increases proposed by the bill result in a higher incidence of cross-border sales activity than is accounted for in the estimate, revenues would in turn be lower than estimated. This would most likely apply to the sale of distilled spirits, since these sales are likely to be more price sensitive than the others.” State beancounters estimated the tax would raise over $200 million but if they count on the revenue and it doesn’t come, who will make up the difference? We will.

Secondly, where does the taxation stop? As proposed, this would be a nearly sevenfold increase in the tax on distilled spirits, over sevenfold jump in the wine tax, and raise the beer tax by a factor of nearly thirteen. If passed, Maryland would have the second-highest tax on distilled spirits and highest taxes on wine and beer in the nation. Is that a way to portray being business-friendly?

What makes me even more incredulous is that Hayden would be representing a district where a significant percentage of that tax would be raised – walk into any Ocean City nightspot during the season and you would see hundreds or even thousands of patrons with a drink in their hand. It’s a highly competitive environment and these businessmen don’t need to give consumers any excuse to take their dollars up to Delaware (where drink taxes are also high but lower than those proposed.)

And while John advocates the drink tax, he stops short at raising the cigarette tax.”Any increase (in the cigarette tax) would be an unfair and harshly punitive tax on addicted smokers,” he said. And a drink tax would be different?

But the largest difference may be in philosophy. Where is it decreed that the government needs to pay for health insurance anyway? Hayden argues that the funding for these programs has to come from somewhere, but perhaps the better question lies in the need to have some of these programs at all. There’s no question that some in society need assistance, but does that funding really need to be from the government and does it need to come in a form which enhances Maryland’s reputation as a high-tax state?

It’s worth noting that many of those who signed the pledge are incumbents, but even for this noble cause they couldn’t be bothered to even have a committee vote on the bill last year – probably because they were afraid to back any tax increase in an election year. If they can’t stand up for principles even though the cause is so right in their eyes, why should we listen to them?

Candidate Wednesday: August 18, 2010

The second in the series will feature three candidates – one is running for Wicomico County Executive while the others are trying to replace Jim Mathias as a Delegate from House District 38B.

Having a more detailed budget and vowing to reduce government as John can sounds good. Cutting from the top and getting rid of “double-dipping” has its own populist appeal. Even lunch with the employees sounds good – but that’s going to eat up a lot of John’s income!

But is the ferry that big of an issue to run a campaign for County Executive on? John sounds like the opposite of Rick Pollitt in that he would be more of a hands-on executive. It would be a refreshing change in that respect.

The question I wish Matt had asked, though, was how Baker’s background in dealing with state government and unions would hold him in good stead on the level of a County Executive. In speaking with him before, the one beef he has with the Tea Party is their disrespect of unions (perhaps their anger is more with the union leadership than the rank-and-file, but it’s still there.) That’s something which may need to be reconciled in a Baker administration.

This is one of the more interesting interviews insofar as location, since it was shot in Marty’s dress shop. (Full disclosure: her dress shop is one of my advertisers as is she.) She started out a little slowly, but once the conversation got rolling her delivery improved. In some respects she is the perfect candidate, with some reluctance to serve the public in such a manner but determined to do so as a product of her background in small business and the agricultural community.

I like the part where Marty fretted about the effect on her life with the legislature being in session (I call it Maryland’s 90 Days of Terror), and certainly she raised some legitimate concerns about private property rights with the reference to HB63. (Spoiler alert: that committee bill is part of my upcoming monoblogue Accountability Project.) She’s part of a crowded four candidate field for the District 38B GOP nominations.

On the Democratic side in that same race is John Hayden.

John seemed to have a way to describe those things which were problems, but was a little short on details on how to solve them. He did make a good point regarding the coastal bays as opposed to Chesapeake Bay (a distinction which the state doesn’t always make) but seemed to have too much of a platitude for schools. And if he can “simplify” the state government it would be a Houdini act given he would be among a whole party of Democrats who are basically responsible for writing the labyrinthine code we have now.

One thing John didn’t point out is that he’s a fellow blogger; he does the Maryland On My Mind website I link to.

Unfortunately, the interview was marred by several interruptions – certainly not to the extent of Jim Rutledge’s bus interview from last week, but having a phone ring and other conversations going on didn’t help a voter decide. In fact, all three of these interviews featured seemed to be out of focus (they were among the first done so perhaps it was a guinea pig effect.)

I’ll continue this series next week with another 38B challenger, a hopeful from District 37B, and a County Council candidate – for the first time it will be an all-GOP edition. You’ll have to stay tuned and find out who gets featured.

Thanks again to Matt Trenka and Right Coast for allowing the usage of these interviews.