Tag: PlanMaryland

Why add to the debt?

Obviously this post I cite is an oversimplification of the educational approach needed for many children, but I thought it was appropriate to point this out given the fact a small group of parents – backed by an all-powerful school board and sympathetic County Executive and newspaper – are putting big-time pressure on our County Council to approve the debt necessary to build a new middle school.

But Richard F. Miniter, a writer posting on the American Thinker website, makes the case that education can be as simple as applying a little discipline and effort, given the vast library now available to anyone who has an e-reader and cares enough about their child to make sure they learn. And there is a time savings, as Miniter writes:

It also sums down to a little block of time because without having to get ready for the school bus; the bus ride; dispersing to classroom; disciplinary issues in classrooms; having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom; noisy, chaotic hallways scenes every fifty minutes; noisy, chaotic lunch periods; announcements; fire drills; lectures about bullying, respecting alternative lifestyles, or strangers; then preparing for the bus ride home, followed by homework, one can do a better job with a child in two hours than a traditional school classroom setting can in eight.

Now extrapolate that to the building itself. If one can learn in the small space of time allotted to learning at home, it can also be assumed that learning can be achieved in a regular school building, regardless of the age.

Continue reading “Why add to the debt?”

PlanMaryland, like it or not

Why? Because the Governor says so. And you will like it.

I have found it interesting over the last few days that our “beloved” Governor seems to be operating from the shadows. First of all, his hand-picked redistricting committee dumps out the General Assembly redistricting plan on a Friday evening, when many have tuned out for the weekend, and now this move a week before Christmas. It seems to me that he could have gotten the same thing by making it part of his legislative package for the 2012 session and legitimized PlanMaryland more in the eyes of the public. Instead, Martin O’Malley rams it into law via executive order. Maybe he has learned a lesson or two from Barack Obama and certainly eyes the 2016 Democratic nomination.

And while the Executive Order claims that “PlanMaryland is not a substitute for local comprehensive plans and it will not supplant local planning and zoning authority,” let’s see what happens if a local jurisdiction doesn’t “identify proposed Planning Areas by reviewing their existing comprehensive plans and regulations to see where and how they align with Planning Area Guidelines.” Of course, those will be commanded from on high at the Maryland Department of Planning – the same people who gave us our redistricting.

The biggest problem I have with PlanMaryland is my belief that those who already have growth and development will be allowed to keep going, while areas like ours which need something to spur job creation and attract growth will be starved. There’s no question that the Radical Green idea of maintaining our rural heritage isn’t one of agriculture, but restoring our land back to a state of wilderness. Sadly, we have a Governor who’s pretty much in allegiance to Radical Green – hence the War on Rural Maryland.

Moreover, it’s a question of autonomy. Similar to the argument for supporting an elected school board over one appointed by the Governor, generally the closer government is to the people the more responsive and proper it becomes. Our interests may not be those of some Annapolis bureaucrat in his cubicle, but with PlanMaryland what that faceless and feckless automaton says will dictate our policies regardless of how we would prefer to proceed.

Now that the process is underway, a group called the Smart Growth Subcabinet will have the task of receiving reports over the next 180 days from various state agencies on how they will implement PlanMaryland, then another 60 days to come up with a summary report. Thus, by the end of next summer we will have some idea of PlanMaryland’s effects on our way of life.

Speaking for the other side, Delegate Justin Ready noted that “(t)he O’Malley Administration has said that PlanMaryland is nothing new.  However, they have also said that it is a ‘first step’. My view is if this is a ‘first step’ towards any change in how we deal with land use in our state – that first step should be vetted by the General Assembly,” Ready concluded.   “This discussion will definitely continue in the 2012 Legislative Session.”

However, the problem with Ready’s approach is that it’s almost certainly doomed to fail. Even if legislation which curtails some or all of PlanMaryland manages to pass the General Assembly it’s likely to be vetoed by Governor O’Malley. Then the question would obviously be whether the General Assembly could muster the votes to override next year and I don’t think the majority party really wants to cross the governor. They can conveniently let him take the blame since he’s not up for re-election in 2014 – but they are. And given the short attention span of many Maryland voters who don’t notice their freedoms being eroded drop by drop, they just might get away with it.

And yet they blame farmers?

There was a story in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun by Timothy Wheeler which was brought to my attention, a story which documented the troubles both Baltimore City and County are having with a sewage infrastructure which, in some cases, is over a century old. Between the two municipalities over 160 million gallons of untreated sewage has leaked into the watershed this year alone.

Obviously this is a situation which is slowly being addressed, as the story points out over $2 billion is being invested into repairing the system over the next decade. Certainly that’s a legitimate function of government, and I have no objection to local tax dollars being used in such a manner.

It’s the unfortunate tendency of farmers and rural interests getting the blame for a problem that occurs because of urban areas like Baltimore City and County which bothers me the most.

Continue reading “And yet they blame farmers?”

The ‘clean energy scam’ in Maryland

The inspiration for this post was received yesterday when I perused a commentary by Townhall.com writers Amy Oliver Cooke and Michael Sandoval called “Disasters Keep Hitting Clean Energy Scam.” It picks out over two dozen news items which illustrate the folly of so-called clean energy, alternatives which have “so far failed to demonstrate the necessary economic and energy-efficient capacity to succeed in a true energy market,” the authors write.

Their work got me to thinking about events closer to home. While Maryland doesn’t have its own Solyndra on a federal level and our efforts against Radical Green have been more concentrated lately on the battle to thwart the adoption of PlanMaryland, we indeed have our issues and spend many tax dollars on alternative energy. Governor O’Malley is foursquare a believer in anthropogenic climate change and has connived the Maryland General Assembly into passing several measures ceding a significant market share to these alternatives without a clear market demand for them.

For example, we’ve passed and since tightened twice a solar energy portfolio utilities are mandated to meet or pay a penalty, entered the extortion of local utilities otherwise known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – a nifty model of wealth redistribution – and mandated a 25% reduction in greenhouse gases (read: our standard of living), just to name a few. Aside from the original solar energy portfolio mandates, these bills were all introduced at O’Malley’s behest and rushed through without much thought about the impact on the state’s economy. On the other hand, even exploring for offshore oil is something O’Malley “can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to go forward with” and tapping into a proven source of energy such as the Marcellus Shale formation has to be studied to death before Marylanders can take advantage. Meanwhile, our state is a net importer of electricity because of its high density, small land mass, and unwillingness to build the generating plants to bring balance (a Calvert Cliffs would likely not be built today.)

I have little doubt that there may come a time when some of these alternatives could work well, but the problem is we can’t depend on the fickle nature of natural phenomena to promote a 24/7/365 economy. To do so would place us in the same category as Third World nations which are lucky to have electricity a few hours a day, if at all. A stretch of cloudy, rainy days isn’t going to make a solar panel very useful nor will those hot, still days of midsummer do much to turn a wind turbine. Even a more reliable natural source like hydroelectric production could be curtailed by a lengthy dry spell.

It’s quite telling to me that radical environmentalists reflexively believe that any alternative energy or restriction of fossil fuel usage is great, and those skeptics like me need some sort of reeducation. (After all, why else would Maryland mandate environmental education in the schools? Can’t let those who know the real score influence those “skulls full of mush” in a politically incorrect way.) I’ll concede that someday in the distant future we will indeed eventually run out of marketable fossil fuels, but I have faith that someone in the private sector will also figure out a way forward – sort of like how Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, or the Wright brothers did.

The problem I have is in the force of law telling us we must adapt or the government tilting the playing field in a specific direction toward these unproven technologies. If someone wants to place a bed of solar panels or put up a windmill to power their farm (as was done a century ago) I say go ahead and do so – just pay for it out of your own pocket. If there’s economic viability in doing so, then by all means take advantage. But that economic viability shouldn’t include a cut from the state funding siphoned from your neighbors while other legitimate functions of government go wanting.

It’s a war, I tell ya!

I’m not sure just how many outlets got this ‘letter to the editor’ but State Senator E.J. Pipkin lays out his case that Governor O’Malley has indeed declared a War on Rural Maryland. I’ll excerpt from his letter here:

Despite protests to the contrary from the O’Malley Administration, it has been clear for the past few years that the Administration’s programs, policies and proposed legislation constitute an assault on rural economies and property rights. Whether the War on Rural Maryland is intentional or not is beside the point. The fact remains that implementation of the Administration’s policies and legislative proposals, from the proposed septic system ban to higher tolls, taxes, and fees will strip rural Maryland of any real opportunity to create jobs and boost its economy.

Continue reading “It’s a war, I tell ya!”

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.

More land off limits to development: a sign of things to come under PlanMaryland?

It was just another item on the agenda Tuesday evening at the County Council meeting, and since I don’t have the record of what happened yet I have to presume it passed without a peep of opposition. (I’d be happy to stand corrected, but I know the resolution passed. Whether it was 4-2 or 6-0, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference in the end.)

With that passage the county was authorized to spend nearly $2 million in state money to purchase easements on 710 acres of land along Nanticoke and Royal Oak Roads known as the Tracey Property – that’s a little over one square mile of territory.

Continue reading “More land off limits to development: a sign of things to come under PlanMaryland?”

Extension of remarks

Just as a quick follow up to something I discussed yesterday, Richard Falknor has a solid wrapup of yesterday’s meeting of rural lawmakers and interested parties regarding PlanMaryland. And the article from Ken Timmerman he cites almost makes it sound like we really are going to war.

Maybe the time is ripe for telling O’Malley to pound sand. If a county feels threatened by a regulation passed without benefit of a vote of the General Assembly, perhaps it should be ignored. What else can the state do to hurt us?

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”

WCRC meeting – October 2011

I suppose we were lucky he didn’t have a lot more to say.

The idea behind having Delegate Charles Otto of District 38A as this month’s guest speaker was for him to give us a rundown of the recently-completed Special Session, and once we went through the regular business of the Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, welcoming of guests, Treasurer’s Report, and a moment of silence for departed County Council members Ken Matthews and Bob Caldwell, it was time for Otto to speak.

After noting that one year ago we were in the midst of a heated campaign and thanking us for the opportunity to serve, Otto termed the Special Session a “success” – if only because they stuck solely to redistricting questions and didn’t make any attempts to raise taxes.

He then showed those assembled a number of the new maps, drawing snickers from some but getting the obvious comparison of District 3 to a Rorschach inkblot test. Yet that configuration received more than the requisite 85 votes (a 3/5 majority) for passage as an emergency bill, so pending any court action these are now Maryland’s Congressional districts. One piece of good news: “Andy Harris can stay in office as long as he wants to,” Otto said.

Continue reading “WCRC meeting – October 2011”

A different opportunity to have input

Most of us have concerns about Maryland’s tax policy insofar as it affects jobs and businesses, but there are other sneaky ways the state impacts our local communities. You may recall the controversy regarding new stormwater regulations and whether existing developments would be grandfathered in or not – it threatened to put a lot of projects on hold as they returned to the drawing board for reworking.

We in our local area have an opportunity for input on new plans as the Maryland Department of Planning is touring the state on its “PlanMaryland” tour, with Salisbury the first stop Thursday. Think of it as their excuse to promote so-called “smart growth;” one of the goals is to, “do a better job of steering development toward areas that already have roads, schools and other public infrastructure.” Sure, that sounds admirable but we know that the real goal eventually is to drive all of us into European-style housing where we’re all crammed together. Never mind the Eastern Shore is nothing like downtown Baltimore (aside from the crime rate in Salisbury.)

They’ve played this game before around here, and generally it’s an excuse for environmentalist wackos to get together and commiserate with a group from the state who’s firmly in their pocket. But we can stand up to them and tell the state in no uncertain terms that they need to adopt more business-friendly policies all around.

Sounds like a job for the local AFP activists – I have other plans so I can’t make this event – thus I put out the bat-signal and encourage right-thinking individuals to attend.