Culture and Politics – Page 14

DLGWGTW: October 31, 2017

n the spirit of “don’t let good writing go to waste,” this is a roundup of some of my recent social media comments. I’m one of those people who likes to take my free education to a number of left-leaning social media sites, so my readers may not see this.

Tonight it’s a special Tuesday night edition to cover for my dereliction over the last month. Most of this will come from a long back-and-forth I had with potential Democratic nominee from the First District Allison Galbraith. The initial post I responded to had a meme of a little girl holding a fish with the caption “Here is a heartwarming picture of a little girl saving a fish from drowning.” Galbraith added “GOP’s approach to preventing abortion is like this little girl’s approach to saving fish.”

But I didn’t respond to the initial post. My addition came after someone said “The fact abortion is used as a form of birth control is a disgrace,” and Galbraith went on a screed about Trump taking her birth control away. So I pick up from there.

Realistically, how many employers do you think this will affect? Unless you are working for a religiously-affiliated entity such as a church or Christian school the chances are all will remain as is.

It’s just fewer grounds for a lawsuit.

Allison went off and sneeringly began her reply “Last time I checked, only treading on a few peoples’ rights and wellbeing didn’t make it okay.” before going on a reverse slippery slope argument. Thus, I countered:

Actually, it does impact me in higher insurance rates for the additional mandates. Besides, there is nothing that says an employer can’t offer the coverage as part of their plan, and if it’s that important to a prospective employee they will vote with their feet to find a company which will cover it. Do you think people need the government to hold their hand when they make a choice of where to work?

As for the concept of this being a “right” let me remind you that health care is not a right. However, the Declaration of Independence reminds us life is pre-eminent among our inalienable rights and life begins at conception.

One mistake I made was not adding “I believe” before saying life begins at conception because she pointed out that’s not in the Declaration. But, she added, I needed to do something real to prevent abortions and not support the systematic oppression of women, whatever that means.

Regarding abortion, there are really only two measuring points to determine life: birth or conception. If you support abortion only, say, to the point of viability (about 20-22 weeks I think) that’s a copout. The fetus in the womb was just as alive before that. Theoretically, since you seem to be pro-abortion, then you should be just fine with it right up to the moment of birth. So are you?

And if the SCOTUS is infallible, explain to me how black people were property and “separate but equal” was justifiably the law of the land, since the Supreme Court said they were, too. At some point a future court may properly come to the conclusion there is no “right to privacy” in the Constitution. (Similarly, the plain meaning of “life” was surely assumed by the writers of the Declaration of Independence as meaning beginning at conception – however, I see your point as I made that a bit of a run-on sentence in my previous reply.)

If you believe not allowing abortions is infringing on the “systemic oppression of women” then you give your gender a lot less credit than they deserve.

And since I support the Eastern Shore Pregnancy Center with a modest monthly donation (that will increase this coming year) I am trying to do my part to reduce abortion.

Ooooooooh, that got her mad, as she sputtered that nobody is pro-abortion and I’m crapping all over the Constitutional rights of women and 40 years of case law. Seriously, read the screed. Oh, and I had to be careful with my Constitutional rights because it protects my “precious guns.”

Time to get this back on the rails, I thought.

First of all, you didn’t answer my main question – but I sort of expected that. Then you went into a litany of male-bashing which I really didn’t expect but perhaps should have.

We both know not all pregnancies are planned because birth control doesn’t always work (except for abstinence.) But I think there’s a solution you’re missing: turning away from a culture that promotes mistreatment of women, cheap and casual sex, and not taking responsibility for your actions. Unfortunately, the last half-century of misguided policy has led in no small way to the problems we have now – look at the proportion of unwed mothers now as compared to the year I was born, 1964. I always thought the idea was that with rights come responsibilities, but how much responsibility is needed when both partners know that if they don’t get married after baby comes there’s a better chance they qualify for “free” stuff from the government? (That’s assuming Dad sticks around, which is a major change in gender relations over the years. In days of old the girl’s family – perhaps aided by a shotgun – made the boy honest.)

Long story short, we have been addressing most of what you speak of by throwing money or regulation at it. Maybe what’s “stupid and cruel” is trying the same thing and expecting different results. But I’m just a man and I don’t get it, even though I’ve raised one child not my own from the age of 3 (she’s about your age) and helped to raise another by a different dad in her teen years. (I have no biological kids.)

“I’d be careful where you go with your Constitutionality arguments since it is also what protects your precious guns.”

I didn’t really expect the slice of condescending I got in the second part, either. Let’s just say “my precious guns” are part of the reason you’re able to run for election in this fine republic of ours. As I see it, the Constitution should be interpreted in the manner in which its authors intended it to be, and “right to privacy” to allow for abortions wasn’t on there. (To the point on guns, “shall not be infringed” has a plain meaning, too.)

As I see it your argument has descended into the overly emotional, which seems to be the place your party likes to inhabit. (I also get a batch of your prospective Congressional cohorts in my feed and the sole purpose of their updates seems to be that of bashing Republicans and riling up their base. At least Andy puts up useful stuff once in awhile.)

To circle back to my main point: the rules put in place basically address the issues that were central to the Hobby Lobby case. Note that conscience-based objections were intended to remain, even under Obamacare.

Instead of reading the screeds about how women are now going to be barefoot and pregnant because thousands of companies will drop coverage for contraception, here are the actual proposed rules for the straight scoop.

Then she took it personally. Now I have met Allison one time in my life, and the brief discussion was amiable but not in-depth. In our back-and-forth about various subjects via social media it seems to me she had a very bad relationship or encounter, which is a shame. Just in my opinion she seems to be a reasonable person otherwise, just trying to be a single working mom. I have a little bit of history with that, since each woman I’ve married was one – so I have more expertise than most men in dealing with their struggles because they became my struggles too.

So I decided to reassess.

I thought it was a pretty simple question I started with: at what point in the pregnancy do you think abortion should be made illegal, or is there one?

So I have sat here and read what I have written just to see what’s triggered this response. First of all, if you read the statement put out by the Trump administration you’ll note that many more women are affected by having particular insurance plans than would be affected by the new rules on contraception. And they always have the choice to seek new employment if they don’t like the health coverage, just as millions do each year because of that and many other reasons, like more pay, better opportunity for advancement, closer commute, and so on.

Yet you never really addressed the idea I brought up of how our culture affects the debate on this issue. Instead I was told I’m not qualified to comment unless I walk a mile in your shoes.

“I don’t receive subsidies. I worked hard for everything I have and have been through a hell of a lot to get it. When I speak on this subject, I know what I’m talking about. Yes I was angry, and legitimately so.”

Nor was I implying you didn’t work for what you have; however, there are thousands upon thousands over the years who haven’t had those scruples. Anger doesn’t really do me much good, but if anything I’m angry that people take the path of least resistance when it comes to unplanned pregnancy, to the detriment of their children who could have been in a loving home.

“But it does not make any of what I said less truthful, and your complete unwillingness to do much as even consider what I was saying is one of the many problems women face every day.”

To be perfectly honest, I have a harder time doing so when your original assertion, “GOPs approach to preventing abortion is like this little girl’s approach to saving fish” is complete hyperbole. But I responded the best way I knew how.

Again, I contend: no one is speaking about banning birth control pills, few employers will stop covering them, and even so over-the-counter costs are nominal. (My co-pay for asthma medication is almost as much.) Now I understand there is a medical need for the Pill with select women who have issues with their menstrual cycles, so it’s not just about birth control.

But I will not apologize for being pro-life on the grounds that the right to life of the unborn trumps the personal liberty of the mother and/or father. You may feel free to disagree, but I have stated my case at some length.

And if I didn’t wade into one controversy I made it into another, closer to home. A couple weeks ago Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis was critical of a demonstration at the Baltimore Ravens game against Chicago and someone captured the screenshot of his social media remarks that were later taken down.

I guess the question I have is: who took the screenshot? Finding out the source would go a long way toward determining their motives.

Also, I think this comment from Jamaad Gould deserves a little more scrutiny:

“There’s no way people of color can trust someone that says ‘one of their own’ rather than ‘one of our own.'”

I’ll grant you I was not an English major and have a public school education, but if the subject of the sentence is the “hundreds of black men” who were (predominantly) shot by other “people of color” (as Gould would say) then the use of the phrase “one of their own” would be correct because Lewis doesn’t fit the description. To use a different example, if I was in someone else’s house and used a towel, I wouldn’t be using one of “our” towels, I would be using one of “theirs.”

And then we have Mary Ashanti, who said:

“She says focusing on the post is wasting energy better spent on finding a new sheriff when Lewis is up for re-election.”

You may be wasting more energy looking for someone to run against Lewis, since he ran unopposed the last two times and won with 62% of the vote the first time he ran. I suspect the vast majority in this county are pretty happy with the Sheriff they have.

The only problem with the statement is people didn’t realize the 62% was when he had opposition. It will be interesting to see if he has any this time.

So that covers the last month. Last couple weeks I’ve been a bit more silent, but as always that is subject to change.

DLGWGTW: October 29, 2017

In the spirit of “don’t let good writing go to waste,” this is a roundup of some of my recent social media comments. I’m one of those people who likes to take my free education to a number of left-leaning social media sites, so my readers may not see this.

This week I’m splitting this feature in half, with one half tonight and the other half on Tuesday night after I stamp my thoughts on the Wicomico Lincoln Day Dinner tomorrow.

Regarding a letter to the Daily Times chastising Andy Harris’s health care votes:

If the writer is a member of “Regressive Maryland” (as I like to call them) it’s doubtful she has ever voted for Harris anyway. So she’ll be disappointed again when Andy gets his 60% or more of the vote in our nicely gerrymandered Republican district.

In a nutshell, instead of encouraging people to be insured by perhaps making the premiums fully deductible or allowing standard, basic policies to be sold nationwide, the government decided to make it mandatory to have insurance. And guess what? If you are forced to be in a market, what do you think the prices will do?

The federal government needs to be out of health insurance – stat.

I have a lot of fun writing responses to the House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer when he gets his inane commentaries up – like this one in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting.

I’ll out myself as a so-called “right winger” (I prefer the term Constitutional, liberty-minded conservative myself) but here’s a pro tip: arguing in ALL CAPS isn’t getting the job done.

The reason Steny’s stayed in office so long is the way his district is gerrymandered to include a large chunk of PG County. That saved his bacon early on and subsequent redistricting (as well as the growth of Charles County as a bedroom suburb of PG County) keep him there. There was once a proposal to split the Eastern Shore up and put the lower half in his district, but I’m sure he wanted no part of that. We don’t think he makes a whole lot of sense.

Now, as for a time to debate gun control: the left-wing malcontents couldn’t even wait for the full accounting of dead and wounded (or all the facts surrounding this incident) until they were screaming about gun control. But what if he had driven a truck into the crowd, or planted a shrapnel bomb? Would you be caterwauling for truck control or nail control?

Simply put, a gun is a tool and its usual job is protecting the bearer. Sometimes it’s used for the wrong purpose, as it was this time. So in my view the discussion shouldn’t be about guns, but about God. What drives a man to violate the basic commandment of “thou shalt not kill” because he has a hatred for a group? Well over 90% of people who own guns have at least the basic understanding of their power and also have the sense to know right from wrong – you know, that whole “thou shalt not kill” thing?

One rumor has it that this assailant was a member of several anti-Trump online groups. I see more vitriol about our current President (a guy I didn’t vote for) than I have about the last two combined. Last time I checked, no one from that evil right wing pulled out an arsenal and tried to mow down Obama supporters in numbers like this guy did – and I’m sure it could have been done 100 or more times.

So how about we debate self-control and leave guns out of it? I can sit and stare at the whole arsenal this guy had all day, but since I would have no intention under any normal circumstance to pick it up there’s no harm done.

Or how about the Avoidable Care Act? I responded to one commenter who threw shade on the idea of selling insurance across state lines as a Republican “panacea”:

You make a fair assessment, but there is one area you’re discounting. At the time the study was done, the federal mandates of Obamacare were already being put into place, so states weren’t going to be terribly innovative about what they did. In order for something like this to work there has to be a minimum of federal regulation as well – the less, the better.

Remember, the concept of Obamacare came about at a state level and I think that is where the solutions lie. Here in Maryland we will likely always be a nanny state, so a company that wants to sell here would have to enact policies that match up to our laws. On the other hand, a state like Texas could be more lenient. Yet if someone could create the most bare-bones policy possible with a robust physician network and a la carte features (like I wouldn’t need maternity coverage but may want more enhanced mental health coverage because this government drives me crazy) they may pick up enough of a risk pool around the country to make insurance affordable. Then it would be up to consumers to demand their states give them more choice by relaxing their regulations.

Yet there could be advantages to even allowing policies to be sold across state lines – people are price-conscious. I live maybe two miles from the Delaware border so if there was a policy available there which had a network that extended here into Salisbury (very possible because we have the largest regional hospital) it would be to my advantage to do so – it’s the same reason you see all the stores that sell furniture and other portable big ticket items clustered just across the line in tax-free Delaware, and the largest Royal Farms chainwide cigarette seller being the store out in the middle of nowhere but literally 50 yards into Virginia and its 30 cent per pack tax (compared to $2 in Maryland) right on a main highway.

I agree selling across state lines isn’t a complete panacea, but it would be a useful tool in the toolbox.

Then after another comment complained about Trump opening the door for the insurance industry, Big Pharma, and doctors to raise rates I set her straight, too.

If the first word of (the writer)’s initial statement had been “Obama” that would have been solid gold truth. When people are forced to buy a product and lobbyists write the regulations, what incentive is there to “bend the cost curve”? Think of how much you pay a month for auto insurance because the state forces you to have it – the only saving grace is that they set comparatively few regulations on policies so there is competition to help give people a bit of a break.

I don’t spare our junior Senator when he plays the class envy card, either:

It seems to me cutting the brackets from 7 to 3 and eliminating a batch of deductions few people take IS simplifying the tax code. But of course any GOP plan is “tax cuts for the wealthy” to you. News flash: they pay the largest share of taxes.

Personally I think the FairTax is the best way to go but that doesn’t allow for nearly as much government modification of behavior.

After someone whined that cuts should be spread in a “more equitable manner” I added:

When you pay the most, you get the most benefit. Let’s get more numbers and throw away the class envy card, as I have.

Later on I added as a status:

Three facts for future reference when responding to Chris Van Hollen, Ben Cardin, Steny Hoyer, Allison Galbraith, etc. Per the Tax Foundation:

The share of income earned by the top 1 percent of taxpayers rose to 20.6 percent in 2014. Their share of federal individual income taxes also rose, to 39.5 percent.

In 2014, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.3 percent of all individual income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.7 percent.

The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (39.5 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.1 percent).

So when they talk about “tax cuts for the wealthy” and “not paying their fair share,” well, here are the actual numbers. If you want “Atlas Shrugged” just keep raising tax rates on productive people.

You know, I can see why some of our representatives run out of patience with people. One example at a Michigan townhall meeting was made into a story by the real Faux News, the Shareblue website. So I said my piece:

Gee, were the eight people in the back who were clapping and cheering the question offended? Out of a crowd of what looked like 75 to 80 people you all could muster 10? Pretty sad.

Now instead of picking up the video halfway through like your share did, I watched the whole thing. Walberg answered the question respectfully only to be shouted down near the end because a select few didn’t like the answer.

Did he handle it well? Could have been better, but I’m not as worried about him as I am the mental state of some of those commenting here. And you may want to ask yourself regarding North Korea: who enabled them to get nukes in the first place?

For that I was accused of being an idiot who voted for him. Try again.

Sorry, I don’t live in Michigan (although I grew up close by his district – Tecumseh is maybe a half-hour from Toledo.) But yes, I have my own Congressman nowadays who’s pretty good – it’s the two lame Senators I’m stuck with that are the problems.

But again to my point: who enabled North Korea to get nukes in the first place?

You know, they never answered my question.

Okay, let me wrap up this one with something lighter. We all have opinions on baseball uniforms, so this was mine in response to a poorly written piece that I’d be ashamed to put my name on.

I don’t know which was worse…the writing, editing, or fact she could have picked another dozen as good and definitely some straight-up bad ones…Padres in brown and gold first come to mind on the bad side. On the other hand I actually liked the Seattle Pilots jersey given the style at the time. Better than what the Mariners first wore.

And maybe it’s a product of growing up in the 1970s but I was more impressed when teams actually went to the colored jerseys than when they simply swapped out the road gray for light blue. It didn’t work well for the Cardinals, Twins, Rangers, or Phillies, but a little better for the Brewers, Cubs, Blue Jays (I liked the split-letter font too) and Royals. It was so-so for the Expos and Mariners.

I will say that the Astros rainbow jerseys spawned a couple imitators from local high schools in my area, so someone liked them.

And yes, as a Tigers fan there is no beating the Olde English D as a classic.

True dat. Look for the next installment on Tuesday and I’ll pretty much be caught up.

Chalk talk

Over the summer in Salisbury, there has been a controversy over a plaque in front of the courthouse that honors a native of what would become Wicomico County after his death. Brigadier General John Henry Winder was a West Point graduate and veteran of the Mexican-American War, but he also played a role in the War Between the States as a military prison commander in the Confederate army, and that trivial fact has enraged a certain segment of the community.

The plaque itself dates from the mid-1960s, as it was placed by a commission created to mark the centennial of the Civil War. Its original location along U.S. 13 made it a target for wayward drivers, so it was relocated in 1983 to its present location on the front yard of the old county courthouse, facing south along East Main Street. (The old courthouse itself fronts North Division Street, so the plaque is sort of off to the side. In truth, visitors to the courthouse seldom see the monument as it’s on the back side of the more recent addition to the county’s halls of justice, where most enter.)

Last week an incident at the courthouse reignited the uproar, as two men were charged with malicious destruction of property after chalking up the building and walks leading up to it with various slogans and phrases indicating their displeasure with the monument’s presence.

With that background in mind, know that I decided to drop by an event on Friday that I’ve been meaning to check out but hadn’t. The final edition of “Fridays at Five” for the year was this past Friday and even though I had a family function later that evening I decided to go scan the scene. As parties go, it was comparatively modest: a beer truck and team of two DJs surrounded by a host of games to amuse the partygoers. But there were also a couple of buckets of chalk there and I think these gentlemen weren’t through with their messaging.

Yes, these guys were just the life of the party, all right.

And not only were they being blowhards about a dead subject – the plaque’s not going anywhere fast unless another criminal act is perpetrated – but they’re not too bright, either. “Buget”? (He tried to fit a “d” in after it was pointed out to him.)

While he’s pretty close on the number, there’s a reason it’s so high: sequestration. It didn’t seem like anything else on the budget was subject to it, but something that’s Constitutionally mandated was. And the FY18 defense budget had bipartisan support.

Since the chalk was going to be used anyway, I had my own little message, set off to the side.

Because I’m not a professional chalker, this is what it says: “Let history be history, work to a better future.”

I say just leave the Winder plaque where it is, because it’s not hurting anyone and nary a complaint had been made about it for 33 years until a certain president was elected. Now if they want to commemorate other things that occurred there, let them go through the proper channels (since I believe these are state-sponsored monuments) and see if there can be monuments to the lynchings or slave trading that may have taken place in downtown Salisbury.

With so many more important issues and problems in our community, worrying about a plaque seems a waste of time. Notice I’ve been relatively quiet about the whole NFL kneeling for the National Anthem thing because there are more important things in life for me to obsess over – if NFL players want to cut their collective economic throats, people can do other things on Sunday. I don’t really worry about football season until the World Series is over, anyway.

And with the news of the Las Vegas massacre, it’s a reminder that we have serious issues which demand that we hug our loved ones a little tighter and not be as offended with things we don’t wish to read.

DLGWGTW: October 1, 2017

My argument regarding federal workers from last week went on:

Seeing that I’ve had over two decades in the field and my industry isn’t one that’s “affected by automation and digitization” you may want to try again.

And I did not bring up Obamacare because no one really knew what it looked like at the time. It was just a sense that the economy was going to rebound very slowly, if at all. Having seen some of what O’Malley did over the previous two years and how it affected our local economy, people were bearish on prospects.

And you may want to ask our friend who was laid off in 2009 (above) why he blames his situation on Bush? He was out of office after January.

I’ll start the new stuff with some thoughts on infrastructure, in agreement with a trucker friend regarding the expansion of several highways across the bridge:

“You eliminate congestion by building more and separate roads. That is the only way.”

Very true. For example, imagine if the state had completed I-97 as envisioned to Richmond – then people may have used it as an alternate to I-95. The same would hold true if the feds, Maryland and Delaware would extend the current Delaware Route 1 corridor from I-95 to Dover as a badged spur of I-95 to Salisbury, providing a limited access, 70 mph link across Delaware,

Since many people consider U.S. 13 an alternate route to I-95 to avoid Baltmore and D.C. why not give them better options?

I’ve said this for years, and it still holds true: to succeed this area needs better infrastructure and access for goods to reach larger, more populated markets.

Yes, there was a big National Anthem controversy last Sunday. But my “boycott” of the NFL has been for the last several years because I agree the play has been awful (this coming from a coach.)

I’ve noticed that too. Obviously you can’t throw out the size and speed differences, but a team like the ’72 Dolphins or Lombardi-era Packers would mop up the floor with most of these teams because they played better fundamental football.

Another friend of mine contends that we shouldn’t boycott the NFL for the actions of a few. But if the economic juggernaut that is the NFL went away, there would still be college football, right? I’m not so sure:

Maybe this year, and the next. But as the issues with long-term brain damage percolate more and more, and the big money is no longer to be found at the end of the rainbow for the players, you may find in a decade or so that the college game will begin to wither, too. You’ll lose the FCS and small FBS schools first, but eventually we may be down to a small number of programs.

But the big rivalries like Michigan-Ohio State would go on, right?

Being from Toledo I know the importance of that rivalry. But if parents aren’t letting their kids play football for fear of long-term injury, the pool of talent necessarily will shrink. Unlike other sports, football doesn’t seem to have a foreign pipeline of talent to choose from.

Turning to a more local protest, who knew that chalk could be so controversial?

It’s chalk. People chalk up the sidewalks at 3rd Friday and no one bats an eye. Unfortunately, since there’s no real chance of rain in the forecast some county employee had to take a half-hour to hose it off.

I have some photos that may make for a good post later this week, so stay tuned.

Yet the protests ignore larger local issues, such as job creation, as a letter to the local newspaper pointed out in a backhanded way. But I don’t.

Unfortunately, right now (gas station and convenience store jobs are) where the market is. And while we have a governor who seems to be interested in bringing good-paying jobs – jobs that add value to commodities, not just the same semi-skilled positions we already have too many of – our legislature seems uninterested in assisting him because they cater to the REAL state industry – serving the federal government.

But the best way to stay out of poverty is following rules in this order: finish school, find a job, get married, then have children, Too many people do these things in the wrong order (particularly the last one) and end up working low-wage dead-end jobs.

Now someone did note that the best way to stay out of poverty is for all to work and not have kids, but if everyone did that we’d be extinct in a century or less. So that’s not realistic.

In a similar vein, I had to help a gubernatorial candidate understand things, too.

So look at the map of Maryland. The area around Washington, D.C. is light blue and green while the western panhandle and Eastern Shore are varying shades of orange. But this is deceptive in a way because median income around Washington is so high that it pulls the average way up and makes this area look worse by comparison.

Then consider the current and previous sources of wealth for various regions of the state: in the western panhandle it used to be coal and could have been natural gas had Governor Hogan not been shortsighted enough to ban fracking, which could have increased their score.

As you get closer to Washington, the source of wealth is the American taxpayer, either directly via working for the federal government or indirectly as many companies headquarter there to be closer to that taxpayer-provided manna.

The Baltimore area used to be industrial, but those jobs went away and now they are heavily into services, Some jobs are good and some menial, but too many have no jobs.

Finally, in a crescent around from Carroll County through the Eastern Shore, agriculture is heavy and in our area chicken is king. We have a share of the tourist dollar in season, but the backbone is agriculture.

People who talk about one Maryland are all wet, in my humble opinion.

But it also makes things deceptive in terms of “prosperity.” One can live on the median salary rather well here because housing is inexpensive but struggle mightily in the urban areas where rent is twice as high.

I agree there should be more of a focus on vocational education, though. Not everyone is college material – and I don’t say that in a bad way. Many youth have abilities that won’t reflect on the ACT but will reflect in the real world.

See, I’m bipartisan and can find common ground with people like Alec Ross. It’s hard with some others though. Take tax reform for example.

You know, when I read Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (or pretty much any Democrat, for that matter) talking about taxes it bring to mind the old Beatles song:

“Should five percent appear too small/Be thankful I don’t take it all.”

I remember old Bill Clinton telling us he worked so hard but couldn’t give us a middle class tax cut. But Bush did.

Here, read this and educate yourselves. This is one I can’t claim.

Yet when Andy Harris discusses it, I find a lot of misinformed people who love taxes come out of the woodwork. This one whined about the 10% bracket becoming 12% as a tax on the poor, but leaving out one key fact:

What Ben Frey forgot to mention is that the standard deduction will practically double. So if you had a taxable income of $18,650 as a married couple (the top of the 10% bracket) would you rather pay 10% of that or 12% of $7,350 with the much larger standard deduction ($24,000 vs. $12,700)?

Wanna try again?

Then I added:

Here’s the plan in a nutshell. Yes, it’s more vague than I would prefer but you need to have a starting point and you can make your own decision on it.

Admittedly, Cheryl Everman (a former candidate herself and longtime lefty in these parts) came up with the point that the individual exemption goes as well – and that the plan as presented doesn’t get specific about the child care credit. It’s true, but the plan could still result in savings.

The one weakness with this “family of 4” line of argument is that we don’t know what the child tax credit will be nor the changes to the EITC as they may apply. So your mileage may vary.

But to address the initial argument, the married couple would still benefit because the two individual exemptions only equal $8,100 while the additional standard deduction is $11,300. In other words, they could make more gross income. So instead of creeping into the low end of the 15% bracket, they would fall into the 12% bracket.

And when someone asked for taxpayer input on the new tax code, I gave her mine:

Okay, here’s my rewrite of the tax code:

Sixteenth Amendment: repealed.
Backup withholding: eliminated.
Consumption tax: enacted.
Federal government: rightsized.

Oh, did that lady whine! She got on this whole tangent about paying for stuff, so I had to play bad cop.

Spare me. You obviously have little understanding of the proper role of the various levels (federal, state, and local) of government.

Please avail yourself to two resources: the Constitution, which spells out the role and functions of the federal government, paying particular attention to Article 1, Section 8 and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the FairTax book, which advocates for a consumption-based tax system as opposed to income-based.

If you get the concepts spelled out therein, you will understand perfectly my succinct answer to the “rewrite of the tax code” question.

The conversation also turned back to health care:

Employers pass the increases in premium along to their employees by increasing their share of the cost.

Those “subsidies” don’t come out of thin air either, because somewhere along the line our taxes will have to edge up to pay for them.

And that “sabotage” you pin on Republicans is thwarting a bailout to the insurance companies. The “risk corridor” concept was fatally flawed to begin with because it assumed the market would be a net equal when instead more and more people demand “free stuff.”

It sounds to me like you just want us to submit to having the government pay for everything, forgetting that the government gets its money from all of us. What was so wrong with fee-for-service anyway?

Give us single-payer and taxes will have to go so high that we will be in a real-life “Atlas Shrugged” although I fear we’re not far from there anyway. (You seem like the type that needs to broaden her horizons and read that book.)

Our Senator Chris Van Hollen joined in the “tax cuts for the rich” budget fun, too.

Let me hit you with this then: if we had a corporate tax rate of zero we would only have a roughly $420 billion budget hole to fill. Why not cut the tax rate and see if it increases revenue because businesses may be inclined to expand if they could keep more of what they make?

Personally I couldn’t care less if the Waltons get a $52 billion tax break because their ancestors took the risk in starting a department store. (If you don’t think it’s a risk, consider how many have failed in the last 30 years.) So whether we have the highest business tax in the world or not, ask yourself how much risk is the government taking by sticking their hand into corporate pockets?

And as for those who argue over whether debt is a Republican or Democrat problem: look in the mirror. The fact is we couldn’t tax our way out of debt given current spending levels without significantly increasing taxes on everyone, and I mean everyone.

If you really want low taxes and a balanced budget, you pretty much have one option: sunset Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Obamacare. Just ask the CBO (page 10 here):

“Today, spending on Social Security and the major health care programs constitutes 54 percent of all federal noninterest spending, more than the average of 37 percent over the past 50 years. If current laws generally stayed the same, that figure would increase to 67 percent by 2047.”

We already have a steeply progressive tax system, so the dirty little secret is that those like Chris Van Hollen are doing their best to make the middle class the lower class and certain elites even more prosperous.

Finally, I promised you last week I’d go into my interaction with a Congressional candidate. One of the Democrat opponents of Andy Harris, Allison Galbraith, was up in arms about the replacement of rules established by a 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Now, I’m probably more in tune with the subject than 99% of the population because I’ve written about it several times in the Patriot Post, and the DeVos change was the most recent. So maybe she was sandbagged a bit, but someone has to set people straight.

There were a couple serious flaws in the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter. First of all was lowering the standard of proof to preponderance of evidence from clear and convincing evidence. Second was the restriction in practice for the accused to be able to cross-examine witnesses and in some cases not even know what he was accused of until the time of hearing. (It was also based on a faulty premise of 1 in 5 campus females being victims of sexual assault, which simply doesn’t jibe with crime statistics. But as Betsy DeVos said, one victim is too many. So is one person denied due process.) This is why groups like the American Association of University Professors and American College of Trial Lawyers were urging the rules be revoked.

The biggest problem with the approach in place now is that the maximum punishment for someone who actually raped a co-ed would be expulsion from school, but he could still be loose to commit more rapes.

And while the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter was rescinded, the order specifically states we revert to the previous guidance as a temporary measure while new rules are formulated with input from multiple stakeholders.

When she disputed my dismissal of the “1 in 5” claim I came back.

This is for the education of those reading this thread then. These are the actual numbers as reported by the Justice Department. Bear in mind that 1 in 5 of 1,000 would be 200.

I agree the numbers should be zero, but I also contend that those who are accused should have due process that was missing under the Obama rules. That aspect was important enough that they had to be rescinded – which also should cut down on the hundreds of lawsuits falsely accused people have filed against these schools because of their shoddy practices as prescribed in 2011.

She alerted me to an appendix in the work – which I was aware of – so I had to add a little more.

I did look at that…again, we are talking a variation of 7x here between the reported numbers and “1 in 5” statement.. Biggest flaw in the NISVS is the low response rate, which would be affected by the bias of a person that’s affected being more likely to respond – this may account for a significant part of the difference.

I think Secretary DeVos will come up with fair rules that take all sides into account. It’s also worth noting that some school administrators have announced will continue with the 2011 rules despite the new guidance.

It sounds to me like Allison’s had some experience on this, and I have not – so my response is not as emotional. But the contention, to me, is this: the Obama-era rules gave credence to victims but not the accused and oftentimes those who determined the fate of the accused did so on the barest preponderance of evidence at a “trial” which was more of a one-sided affair. New rules should account for both, or perhaps move the venue to one that’s more proper: a court of law, where there are advocates for victims who are sensitive to their plight and protections for the accused.

A charge of rape is a serious charge, not to be taken lightly. Often at stake is the very continuance of a young man’s education (and let’s face it, the accused is almost always a man.) But if the person is an actual rapist, wouldn’t it be better to get him off the street than just off some college campus, enabling him to victimize someone else?

I had a busy week on the commenting front, so maybe I’ll slow down – or maybe not. As Walter E. Williams would say, I’m pushing back the frontiers of ignorance on social media.

On this Constitution Day 2017

After 230 years, our founding document is beginning to show signs of wear and tear. No, I’m not talking about the actual document housed in its sealed case, but instead the wear and tear its principles are undergoing as people are taught less and less about its true meaning and purpose and those who would prefer the absolute power to be corrupted absolutely take advantage of the situation they lent a hand in creating.

In the last few days before I wrote this we have had people who aired their grievances by protesting in the streets and creating a violent disturbance about a trail verdict they disagreed with, others who object to the placement of statues, monuments, and other historical markers they deem to be racist or inappropriate to the point of tearing them down, and a gathering of “juggalos” that emulates two men who call themselves the Insane Clown Posse demonstrating in the nation’s capital because the government believes they are a gang. (I’m not a rap fan so don’t ask me what they sing.) Believe it or not, of the three, the juggalos and juggalettes seem to be petitioning for a redress of their grievances in the most proper way. Whooda thunk it? [And, before you ask, I have drank some share of Faygo – to me (and a few others) rock n’ rye was the best flavor, although I think many are partial to the redpop.]

Now it’s not just the Bill of Rights that people are taking advantage of. Consider what the government of today, particularly Congress, does to “promote the general welfare,” and compare it to a paraphrase attributed by the Annals of Congress to then-Rep. James Madison: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” As economist and pundit Walter E. Williams correctly surmises, “Any politician who bore true faith and allegiance to the Constitution would commit political suicide.” And never mind the so-called “deep state” of bureaucrats that Congress has, over the years, ceded more and more of its oversight power to.

Thus, we have created a federal judiciary system with judges who often value the emotion of the so-called “victims” of a law more than what the Constitution says (or doesn’t say) about it, with the backing of the easily interpreted intent of those who wrote it to help guide them. We have created an educational system where Washington has an outsized role – even though the vast majority of the funding is raised locally – and it too often teaches children about their “rights” (whether real or created out of whole cloth) but not their responsibilities. And we have created an enforcement arm that can taint broad swaths of people with the accusation of being engaged in criminal activity based simply on music they listen to and symbols associated with it. (And before you say that’s well-deserved, ask yourself if you reacted like that when it was the TEA Party being scrutinized for criminal activity because they disagreed with policy decisions.)

I certainly wish the Constitution well on its birthday, but truly believe that too few understand its role in shaping our national history. Anymore it seems that if the Constitution conflicts with what they want then they call it outdated or irrelevant, but if it happens to be on their side suddenly they’re the stoutest defenders.

Many years ago I suggested some amendments to the document, and perhaps this is a good time to revisit these ideas with a little updating as needed. We have gone 25 years without a change to the Constitution, which is the longest drought in over a century. Aside from the 13th to 15th amendments in the few years after the War Between the States, the Constitution was largely untouched in the 19th century. But after the 16th Amendment was adopted in 1913, there was a flurry of activity in the following two decades that brought us up to the 21st Amendment, which repealed the earlier 18th Amendment that brought Prohibition. Another peak of activity in the 1960s and early 1970s was primarily to address civil rights, although the 26th Amendment established a national voting age of 18. But since 1992, when it was codified that Congress couldn’t vote itself a raise in its present term (an old idea originally intended as part of the Bill of Rights) we have left the body at 27 amendments.

So this is my updated version.

**********

If I were to ask for a Constitutional convention (allowed under Article V of the Constitution) I would ask for these amendments.

28th Amendment:

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments are hereby repealed, and the original Constitutional language in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 and Article I, Section 3, Clauses 1 and 2 affected by these amendments restored.

29th Amendment:

Congress shall make no law that codifies discrimination for or against any person based on their race, religion, gender or gender identity, or sexual orientation. This Amendment shall also be construed to include a prohibition on Congress enacting additional criminal code or punishment solely based on these factors.

30th Amendment:

Section 1. With the exception of the powers reserved for Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of this document, funds received by the federal government shall be disbursed as prescribed in the federal budget to the States in accordance with their proportion of population in the latest Census figures. No restriction shall be placed on how the several States use these funds.

Section 2. Congress shall not withhold funds from states based on existing state laws.

**********

The desired end result of these three amendments would be to restore state’s rights, make the government live within its means, and provide truly equal justice under the law. Naturally, I don’t foresee any of these passing in my lifetime (because, as I said, absolute power corrupts absolutely) but the idea still needs to be placed out there.

9/11 in the age of Trump

This morning – and I say “this morning” despite the fact I’m writing this about 12 hours in advance of publication – President Donald Trump, a native of New York City, will preside over what is described as a “mostly solemn and nonpartisan occasion” with ceremonies at both Ground Zero and the Pentagon. (Vice President Pence will handle duties in Shanksville, PA at the Flight 93 Memorial.)

Because he’s a native New Yorker, Donald Trump has a unique perspective on the event. Most of his critics point to a declaration The Donald made in the wake of the attack that his 40 Wall Street building became the tallest in the city thanks to the demise of the World Trade Center. On the other hand, President Trump made a very solemn Patriot Day declaration on Friday, bringing it up to date by citing our response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. One notable departure from the Obama years, though, is the dropping of the “National Day of Service and Remembrance” from the release (although Trump alludes to it in the body of his text, in keeping with the Obama-era law recognizing September 11 as such.)

Some of the conditions which led to the 9/11 attack (and its ongoing response on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq) have been addressed by President Trump, although his main initiative of a temporary pause on accepting refugees and visitors from nations deemed to be potential sponsors of terror was thwarted by a series of activist judges. However, on a broader foreign palette, we have had little change in Middle East policy over the last several months, particularly in dealing with a poorly-drafted nuclear agreement with Iran: well-respected former U.N. ambassador and foreign policy hawk John Bolton is on record as wishing Trump would back out of that bad deal.

Regardless of what policy initiatives come and go, though, the passage of time insures that those who recall the incident first-hand are a dwindling majority. The number of Americans under age 21 now rests at about 27%, and if you add in those who weren’t Americans when the attack occurred you’re probably talking a number north of 3 out of 10 Americans who have little to no memory of the day because they weren’t born yet, too young to understand it, living somewhere else at the time, or some combination of those factors. I know I won’t forget where I was that day but the 17-year-old in the house won’t recall because she was only a toddler. The day may be remembered at school, but even then only in passing.

And while we live in an era where being patriotic isn’t necessarily cause for suspicion by certain groups as it was not so long ago, we’re a long way from the fever pitch we had in the months after the attack. Then again, perhaps our nation has given us cause to be cynical after such a Long War with few tangible results. One could readily surmise that, with our superior military firepower, we could have made short work of any of these tinpot regimes if we put our mind to it and employed more of a scorched-earth policy. Lord knows we were willing to do so in 2001 but President George W. Bush preferred a coalition approach. Some may call that kicking the can down the road.

It’s frightening to think that we could be on the doorstep of another such attack, but the possibility is there and it’s not necessarily going to involve Islamic terrorism. So-called “suitcase nukes” or an EMP attack that North Korea could be capable of delivering would bring tragic results on a scale many times that of 9/11 – and we really can’t defend that well against them. Yet the response, some civil libertarians argue, would be tantamount to living in a police state.

Walking that fine line is now the job of a 71-year-old man who’s prone to fits of pique as expressed on Twitter but was supported and elected by a group of patriotic Americans who believed he would be the one to get tough on these threats. Since this is the first of what could be eight occasions where Trump commemorates 9/11, this is the one that sets the tempo.

At throats redux: Charlottesville edition

To be perfectly honest, I knew very little about the events in Charlottesville until well after they happened. I was in a vacuum of sorts because I was tuned out from the world, enjoying family and festivities surrounding my wife’s attaining her bachelor’s degree in this stage of her life as a University of Phoenix graduate. So while the family watched her and hundreds of her fellows walk onstage to accept their degrees at the newly-rechristened Capital One Center in Washington, D.C., a few dozen miles to the southwest a chaotic scene was unfolding. As I have since learned, Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old white woman who was a paralegal from the city, was killed when she was struck by a car reportedly driven by a 20-year-old white Ohio man, James Alex Fields, Jr. While Fields lives in my old stomping grounds (Maumee, Ohio is a suburb of Toledo) he grew up in Kentucky and is supposedly an “alt-right” Trump supporter.

You’ll notice I linked to the CNN story, but through the evening Saturday and into Sunday afternoon there were all sorts of different reports and rumors on what happened: different identities on the car driver and registration, people describing how the original protesters (dubbed “Unite the Right”) had their permit pulled, then restored, then pulled again while the counter-protesters never got a permit, a tale alleging the Unite the Right group was set up by the city for a beatdown by the “Antifa” and “Black Lives Matter” groups by ordering them to leave the park a certain way through their counter-protest, and so on and so forth. Obviously the Left blames the Right and the Right counters that the Left is really at fault.

But my question goes all the way back to the root of the problem. In the last several years, the city of Charlottesville – which is home of the University of Virginia – has become what is described as “progressive.” At one time it had parks named after Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, but no more. This latest controversy was about removing the statue of Robert E. Lee that graces what used to be called Lee Park; a statue put up decades after Lee’s death in 1870. (Unlike most other conflicts, in our War Between the States neither the leader of the opposition army nor government was executed for treason – Lee lived until a stroke and subsequent illness felled him five years later, while Confederate president Jefferson Davis was imprisoned for a few years but out of prison well before his death in 1889.) In his postwar days, Lee was best remembered for restoring what became known as Washington and Lee University while his former estate became Arlington National Cemetery. (In no small bit of irony, our family spent a good part of Saturday afternoon there after the graduation ceremony and our lunch.)

It’s also true that Lee turned down the opportunity to lead part of the Union forces as a colonel (his rank at the time the conflict began) because he felt more loyal to his home state of Virginia, which chose to join the Confederacy – this despite Lee’s personal opposition to secession.

So then we come to the reason people were in Charlottesville to protest. The “Unite the Right” had one very valid point in that there’s no good reason to remove this piece of history from its longtime place. If anything, more context should be added: why was Lee deemed important enough at the time to be so honored and what have we learned about him since? (To that end, three states still celebrate his January 19 birthday as a legal holiday; oddly enough, every few years it falls on the date we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. As another example, there is also federal law that equates Confederate veterans with Union veterans when it comes to grave markers.) In short, taking an honest look at Lee’s life and legacy would be more complex than simply boiling it down to the four years he spent leading a Confederate army, but most people don’t want to do that because it doesn’t suit their political purposes.

We then loop back to the events in Charlottesville. What we know is that there is a young man who’s being portrayed as one whose head is full of racist, neo-Nazi tripe and he stands accused of maiming innocent bystanders to the extent that one has died and several others were left in critical condition. We also know that this rally necessitated additional police coverage, and a police helicopter carrying two Virginia State Police officers crashed on Saturday, killing both men on board. All four of these lives were changed irrevocably and senselessly for no good reason, over an inanimate object.

And that same controversy roils locally on a smaller scale over another Civil War figure. Brigadier General John Henry Winder was a Union officer in the Mexican War but later served as the administrator of all the Confederate military prisons until his death just weeks before the Confederate States of America ceased to exist. Since he was born in what would become Wicomico County after his death, and the state needed something to commemorate the war with here after 100 years, we got a plaque that originally sat by where the Evolution brewery is now but moved to its present location around 1983. For 33 years this was no problem but then Donald Trump was elected and suddenly it became so. Oops, did I say that?

Why, yes I did. And despite the fact I didn’t vote for the guy and he’s generally the epitome of politically tone-deaf, in this case he’s getting a really raw deal. Trump puts out a statement on Saturday that may have seemed bland on the surface but was immediately panned for noting the “hatred, bigotry, and violence” came from “many sides.” So a couple days later he reiterated his disapproval and was regaled with a press reaction sort of like this: (courtesy of the Patriot Post)

So when the President went back to the more original tone today you had to know the media would crucify him once again, and again they miss the point. It took two sides to tango down in Charlottesville, and note that several previous events (such as the tiki torch rally the night before) had gone off without the violence. It was only when the BLM and Antifa side showed up that the clashes occurred. As for using a car as a deadly weapon, James Fields will have his day in court – if he survives that long. I’m sure the more conspiratorial among us are already trying to figure out just how their bogeyman du jour (George Soros, the Clintons, the Rothschilds, et. al.) will make his death look like a suicide. We know Fields will be in jail until then because he was denied bail.

For those of you who partake in such things, maybe the best answer to all this is to look to the Almighty in prayer. Pray for the families of Heather Heyer, and VSP troopers Berke Bates and Jay Cullen, who surely need comfort and strength through this difficult time of loss. Pray that this becomes a time of reflection and repentance for James Fields, to drive out the wickedness and hatred in his heart and turn his life in the right direction, and that others see this result and step back from the brink before it’s too late.

And pray for a nation that’s being torn asunder more each day by forces wishing to divide it. Pray that we once again remember that we are a nation that God blessed, and in return we should be grateful for our abundance. We are all part of His creation, so perhaps it’s time to remember Luke 6:31.

The first to step forward

We have barely made it six months into President Donald Trump’s term. And while Democrats were ready to oppose him from day one – Trump’s Presidential honeymoon lasted less than a nanosecond after he was sworn in – no one really expected the 2020 race to begin shaping up until we made it through the 2018 midterm elections.

But as further proof we now have a continuous campaign, the first somewhat serious candidate to enter the race on the Democrat side made his intention known Friday by foregoing another term in the House. Rep. John Delaney put an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday that claimed he would be the candidate to “have an original approach to governing and an economic policy that can put us on a different course.”

Yet while the incumbent President is a businessman, Delaney thinks he’s not cut out to be a leader. “I think Trump, to some extent, is a punctuation of everything that has broken down with our politics,” said the Congressman in a separate WaPo interview.

So he’s going to do things a little differently.

As a progressive businessman, I’ve made it a priority to be solutions-oriented and have been consistently recognized as one of the most innovative and bipartisan members of Congress. I’ve done this by simultaneously celebrating the power of our free-market economy while insisting that there is a role for government to set goals and rules of the road and take care of those who are left behind.

And let me grab one more excerpt to illustrate his approach:

We need to be smarter, fueled by more investment in science, education and research. We need new ideas on the future of jobs and work, one where we build a stronger and more vibrant middle class. We need to encourage a more just and inclusive form of capitalism and reduce barriers to small-business formation, start-ups, job creation, investment and growth. We need to strengthen our safety-net programs and create a new social contract. We need to reform the systems of education, health care and immigration, and encourage more volunteerism, impact investing and public service. And we need to take affirmative steps to reduce our security, fiscal and climate risks. This is what my campaign will be about.

Let me begin at the top. Would it not be fair to say that, in order to have a truly free-market economy, there should be a minimum of government-set rules and goals and a maximum of market-set ones? I’m sure John didn’t wake up every day when he was building his businesses and say to himself, “Gee, how can I meet the specifications and expectations laid out for me by the federal government today?” I know I don’t say that when I consider what to write in my little space.

And the problem with the government taking care of those being left behind is that they become overly comfortable in that lifestyle and create generations that don’t aspire to anything more than living off the state.

As a Democrat, Delaney has to include the old canards about “investment” (read: more unnecessary spending) in science, education, and research. But what really reveals the game is the idea of a “more just and inclusive form of capitalism.” Capital is as just and as inclusive as the market participants, which I will agree goes in with reducing barriers. But those barriers should be reduced in such as way that no one gets an advantage for themselves – the problem is, as we all know, Democrats will rig the game for certain constituencies in order to buy their votes.

All in all, I’ve figured out just what Delaney’s campaign will be about: he will be the arbiter of everything. I mean, he already has a website for his campaign where he has the catchy “D” logo with a highway disappearing into the horizon, and in the video he has there he goes over just how wonderful and peachy everything will be if he’s in charge and in control of everything, because that’s what “progressive” policies entail – government calls the shots and you get what they grudgingly give you. One of the women on the video talks about what a great progressive businessman Delaney is to his employees, and that’s outstanding. But let that be his choice, not forced on every business whether they can afford it or not.

Yet there’s another point to be made here as well. Think back to this time on the calendar in 2009, when Barack Obama was perceived as popular – even if many of his policy ideas were not. On the other hand, there’s been little discussion about Trump’s policy ideas (aside from the GOP’s failed attempt to rid us of Obamacare, which Trump was more or less ambivalent about, in all honesty – after all, he was the one who introduced Republicans to the “repeal and replace” concept.) But if you transport yourself to the end of July 2009, the GOP presidential contest was thought to be Sarah Palin’s to lose – but she was months away from announcing her intentions, as were other 2008 and possible 2012 contenders. So Delaney’s entry into the race, well over 2 1/2 years before we deal with the snowy Iowa caucuses, either means Democrats are just chomping at the bit because they think they have 2020 in the bag or they are just trying to extend the perception of Donald Trump’s unpopularity. And who knows? The 2020 field for the Democrats may make the 2016 GOP field look small in comparison because EVERYONE who thinks they can be President will give it a shot. Maxine Waters, anyone?

There’s only been one President who was elected from being a sitting House member, and that’s James Garfield. (Technically, Delaney won’t be a sitting House member when elected since he’s dropping out of Congress after three terms.) Even so, I think that 140 year streak will be safe. But in any battle someone has to charge forward and take the arrows, and it looks like John Delaney is that guy. The only question is whether he will be first in, first out.

And somewhere Larry Hogan is breathing a sigh of relief. I’ve thought all along Hogan was most vulnerable to a Delaney challenge given their similar backgrounds, but it appears John has more ambition than to just be governor.

The betrayal

You know, since the events that led to the formation and rise of the TEA Party the Republican Party has promised to be our savior if only given the chance. After they successfully won the messaging battle over Obamacare in 2009-10 – aided by the ham-fisted, cynical fashion it was rammed through Congress and onto Barack Obama’s desk – the GOP won a smashing electoral victory that flipped the House just two years after the second of two successive wave elections convinced many political pundits we were on the verge of another decades-long run of Democratic dominance in Washington. While that success took a pause in 2012, perhaps because the Republicans nominated the originator of state-supported health insurance in Mitt Romney to face Barack Obama, the actual implementation of Obamacare beginning in 2014 resulted in yet another midterm electoral shellacking for the Democrats that November, costing them control of the Senate.

All along, Republicans told us these various steps along the way, once they won the House in 2010. First they whined that they only had one-half of one-third of the government, which sufficed as a campaign plank until 2014, when they won the Senate. Once they won the Senate, they actually passed a bill repealing Obamacare – of course, it was vetoed by Barack Obama and the votes weren’t there for an override. So now they needed the White House and then, once and for all, we could be rid of Obamacare.

July 26, 2017. The Senate has its chance to pass a nearly “clean” Obamacare repeal bill, with a majority of Republicans in the body. There’s no question such a bill would sail through the House and we have a nominally Republican president in Donald Trump who would be for repealing Obamacare – although he wanted to replace it, too. It just has to get through the Senate, and yet – it did not. Seven Republicans joined all 48 Democrats (as one would expect) in turning their back on the people who elected them.

So who’s in this Hall of Shame? Well, it’s mainly the usual suspects: Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Susan Collins (Maine), Dean Heller (Nevada), John McCain (Arizona), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Rob Portman (Ohio). With the exception of Maine – where Trump won one of the state’s two Congressional districts (for one electoral vote) but lost overall – all these states went GOP in the last election, yet their Senators sided with the Democrats. And as President Trump noted, “Any senator who votes against repeal and replace is telling America that they are fine with the ObamaCare nightmare, and I predict they’ll have a lot of problems.” Yet only Heller faces the voters in 2018 – McCain, Murkowski, and Portman were just re-elected and the other three aren’t up until 2020.

The question now is how GOP loyalists are going to spin and explain this one away. To be quite honest, I think people have known for many moons that the Republicans were selling the voters a bill of goods but if you can’t keep your caucus together on something that’s been a fundamental promise for seven years then it’s clear even the fig leaf is gone. Despite their high-minded rhetoric, the GOP is now just as much the party of big government as the Democrats are. Now it’s just a question of which side gets the spoils.

And now where do those who believe in limited government go? They are now political orphans because the Republican Party just showed they aren’t willing to stand by those principles when push comes to shove.

41st annual Tawes Crab and Clam Bake in pictures and text

For some reason the vibe seemed a little different to me this time around – maybe it’s because this is the first one I’ve attended as an erstwhile political participant. But at 10:00 I rolled into town and got my ticket (this was a first, too – more on that in a bit) so I started looking around while I was there. Immediately I found there was still one constant.

Bruce Bereano probably brings half the people down there, and I’m not kidding. If you consider that the political people are a significant draw to this festival, and his massive tent is annually chock-full of Annapolis movers and shakers, one has to wonder just what would be left if he ever pulled up stakes. Would they have a crowd like this?

But the Crisfield Chamber of Commerce (as event sponsor) has its own ideas on VIP treatment.

For an additional $15 fee on top of the ticket price, you could get access to this tent with its amenities. It was an answer to some of the corporate tents that were doing this anyway. Many of those were still doing their thing.

Most of the people were already in line at 11:30 waiting on lunch. While the ticket says 12, if you wait until then you’re waiting for food.

But let’s face it: the media doesn’t really come here to see food lines, although that’s where I found this crew from Channel 47, WMDT-TV.

No, the real draw for this edition was the potential 2018 candidates. Until the last couple cycles, odd-numbered years were somewhat sleepy because the campaigns weren’t really underway yet, while the even-numbered years saw Tawes fall on a date less than two months before the primary. That’s now flipped on its head because the primary was moved up to June, so this is the last Tawes before the 2018 primary. So several contenders were out scouring for votes – none, I would say, moreso than this guy.

State Senator Jim Mathias (standing, in the gray shirt) has a huge target on his back that’s far larger than the logo on the front. He is the one Democrat Senator on the Eastern Shore, and the GOP sees his seat as a prime candidate for taking over next year as they need to flip five Senate seats to assure themselves the numbers to sustain Larry Hogan’s vetoes.

To that end, Mathias was the one candidate who had his own supporter tent. To me, that was interesting because most of the local Democrats that I know spent their time milling around the Mathias tent (wearing their own gray shirts) and didn’t hang out at the “regular” Democrat party tent.

Just a couple spots over from Mathias was the Somerset GOP tent.

Now you’ll notice I said Somerset. For whatever reason, Wicomico’s Republicans chose not to participate this year and there were few of my former cohorts to be found. Since that’s how I used to get my tickets, I had to make alternate arrangements this time. That’s not to say there weren’t Wicomico County Republicans there such as County Executive Bob Culver, Judge Matt Maciarello, Salisbury City Councilman Muir Boda, and many others – just not the Central Committee.

Closer to their usual back corner spot were the Democrats.

Their focus seemed to be more on the larger races, as even their state chair Kathleen Matthews was there. Here she’s speaking with Crisfield mayor Kim Lawson.

(Lawson has a smart-aleck sense of humor I can appreciate. When a photographer introduced herself as being from the Sun, he thanked her for making it a little cooler here than back home. I got it right away, she looked befuddled.)

The small posse you may have noticed in the original photo of the Democrats’ tent belonged to gubernatorial candidate Alec Ross, who eventually caught up to them at the tent.

I asked Ross what he would do differently than the current governor, and he said he would focus more on education. One thing I agreed with him on was something he called a Democratic “failure” – focusing too much on preparing kids for college when some aren’t college material and would be better suited for vocational training. But he limits himself in the palette of school improvement and choice to public and charter schools, whereas I believe money should follow the child regardless. Ross also has this pie-in-the-sky scheme about government credit to working moms for child care which I may not quite be grasping, but one assumes that all moms want to work. I think some may feel they have to work but would rather be stay-at-home moms.

The thing that stuck out at me was his saying that when two people disagree, at least one of them is thinking. You be the judge of who ponders more.

But the Democrats’ field for the top spot is getting so crowded that I got about five steps from talking to Ross and saw State Senator Richard Madaleno, another candidate.

Having done the monoblogue Accountability Project for a decade now, I pretty much know where Madaleno stands on issues – but I was handed a palm card anyway. Indeed, he’s running as a “progressive.”

And then there’s this guy. I didn’t realize he was talking to the state chair Matthews at the time, but I wonder if she was begging him to get in the governor’s race or stay out of it. I suspect state Comptroller Peter Franchot is probably happy where he is.

Franchot is probably happy because he works so well with this guy, the undisputed star of the show.

This turned out to be a pretty cool photo because I was standing in just the right spot to see his car swoop around the corner, come to a halt, and watch the trooper open the door for Governor Hogan to emerge.

If you follow me on social media you already saw this one.

Say what you will, and Lord knows I don’t agree with him on everything: but Governor Larry Hogan was treated like a rock star at this gathering, to a point where he could barely make it 50 yards in a half-hour.

This would have been of no use.

I said my quick hello to Larry moments before WBOC grabbed him for an interview, and that’s fine with me.

Here are two ladies who were probably glad he was there, too.

In her usual pink was State Senator Addie Eckardt, while Delegate Mary Beth Carozza was in her campaign blue. And since Carozza told me she treasures my observations, here are a couple.

First of all, it’s obvious that Jim Mathias is running scared because why else would he spend the big money on a tent and dozens of shirts for the volunteers that showed up (plus others who may have asked)? Not that he doesn’t have a lot of money – the special interests across the bridge make sure of that – but Mathias has to realize there is some disconnect between his rhetoric and his voting record. And he’s not prepping for a major challenge from Ed Tinus.

A second observation is that most of the Mathias signs I saw driving down there were flanked by signs for Sheree Sample-Hughes, and you don’t do that for a Delegate seat you were unopposed for the first time you ran. Something tells me Sheree has a higher goal in mind, but it may not one worth pursuing unless the circumstances were right.

One thing I found out from the Democrat chair Matthews is that at least two people are in the running against Andy Harris and were there. I didn’t get to speak with Michael Pullen, but I did get to chat for a bit with Allison Galbraith.

So when I asked her what she would do differently than Andy Harris, the basic response was what wouldn’t she do differently? We talked a little bit about defense, entitlements, and health care. Now she is against government waste (as am I) but I think my idea of waste is somewhat different. She also claimed to have saved some sum of money based on her previous work, but I reminded her she would be one of 435 and there seems to be a “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality in Congress. (I should have asked her who she would pattern herself after as a Congresswoman.)

But in the end, I was hot, sweaty, sunburned, and dog tired. I will say, though, that despite the rancor that seems to be pervasive in our world these days when it comes to politics most of the people in Crisfield got along just fine. I think I was very bipartisan in speaking since I talked to many GOP friends and met some of these Democrat candidates I didn’t know so I had an idea who they were. And who knows? I haven’t checked yet, but I may be on the Sun‘s website – that same photographer Lawson joked with took my photo later while I was asking Ross questions and got my info.

By the time we do this next year, we will know who’s running for office and the campaigning will be more serious. So will the eating for the 50% that don’t care about politics and never wander by Bereano’s massive setup. As long as the Tawes event can cater to both they should be okay.

“It’s all about the f***in’ attitude…”

It’s probably been a decade or so, but once upon a time I picked up a used CD at a store that sold such things called “Full Bluntal Nugity.” As you may be able to guess, I’m a fan of Ted Nugent’s music and this album was a recording of a “Whiplash Bash” New Year’s Eve live performance he did many years ago in Detroit. The phrase in my title was a joking reference Nugent made to how he did his songwriting as part of the expletive-filled banter between songs. (I like Ted, but let me tell you the dude could make a sailor blush. Maybe he’s mellowed out a little bit as he approaches the age of 70?)

But what triggered me to think of the phrase (and I realize in this day and age that’s a loaded word) was the Scalise shooting that’s almost a month gone by now. (I actually didn’t intend the puns at first, but stuck with them.) With the schedule I keep these days I have less time for writing but I still have time to read social media, and on that medium I often check out what the Left has to say more than what my peeps on the Right have to say. And as is predictable in these cases, their sentiments often broke down into two categories, and generally without the fig leaf of well wishes for the victims that the politicians had to put up.

On the one hand, you had the crowd who thought the Republicans deserved this as karma for trying to take away people’s health care by repealing Obamacare. Setting aside the obvious fallacy of that mindset of deserving anything bad to happen to them for any action that’s legal – and, I would argue, more in accordance with the intention of those who founded our nation – the reality of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) is that it’s a work in progress and there’s still going to be way more government involvement in our healthcare than there should be. Remember, many of the provisions that characterized Obamacare were untouched by the AHCA. Moreover, there are several states rushing to fill the gaps they perceive in the AHCA so their laws will likely supplement the federal regulations.

The other side of the coin was the usual banshee-like cry for more gun control, and this is the part I want to spend most of this post addressing. Like many people around this area, we are gun owners. Members of our family went out of their way to be legal gun owners, as a matter of fact, because they strive to be law-abiding citizens.

Those weapons that we have, however, even if they were laying around loaded, would not hurt anyone because (and I realize this is a stunning revelation to some) guns are inanimate objects. I could pull a handgun out of its safe place in our house, lay it in front of me, and stare at it for hours – it’s going to just sit there. No one will be injured. The only risk of someone being injured from that gun would be the exceptionally unlikely events of one of our cats knocking it off our table and it falling just the right way to discharge; meanwhile the random line of fire would have to actually strike someone.

So as the events unfolded in Alexandria and we learned more about the mindset of shooter James Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old retired home inspector from Illinois who identified himself as a leftist and supporter of Bernie Sanders for president last year, we once again saw the Right blamed for actions a member of the Left was participating in. But let’s look at two basic facts regarding the shooter here: he was born in 1951 and came of age in the Illinois town in which he last permanently lived.

Thus, Hodgkinson grew up in an era when he could have been sent to Vietnam, could have gone to Woodstock (although it appears he did neither), lived through Watergate and the energy crisis as a young adult, and was approaching middle age during the Reagan Revolution. Whatever the case, his story ended as he was living out of a van several hundred miles from home and hanging around a local YMCA, according to this somewhat sympathetic Washington Post feature. While he was married, Hodgkinson had a violent past and perhaps became moreso as he aged, regardless, the question has to be asked: what made him believe he was justified in picking up a rifle to attempt to kill people who presented no physical threat to him?

Moreover, one also has to ponder what Hodgkinson would have accomplished had he mowed down the entire field of Congressmen: would that have scared the remainder into inaction or simply redoubled their resolve? Maybe it would have been a moment not unlike the days after 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing, when Americans turned introspective regarding their place in the world. The AHCA may have been shelved for a time, but likely would have returned after the wave of special elections made necessary by the slaughter of Congressional membership, with most of the seats likely remaining in GOP hands and Democrats perhaps paralyzed by having to run campaigns against a wave of sympathy.

I don’t believe for a second that access to guns is the problem in this nation. Instead, I think what we need to access a better sense of morality, beginning with a newfound respect for life. Hodgkinson lived most of his adult life under the rules of Roe v. Wade, and ironically enough spent many years as a foster parent – so he dealt with a number of children who were deemed expendable by their parents. Just days before I began writing this piece in the wake of the Alexandria shooting last month, our city of Salisbury was rocked by two shootings in one night that left two men dead in separate incidents less than an hour apart – then last night two other men were gunned down at a local Denny’s restaurant.

You keep hearing about these gatherings where we are told violence is not the answer, but that message is being drowned out in a cacophony of cultural and political references:

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.”
“I’d like to punch him in the face, I tell ya.”

(Respectively, Barack Obama reputedly paraphrasing the 1987 movie “The Untouchables”, Obama adviser Jim Messina, and Donald Trump.)

So which side is winning here? Is it the side with the attitude that life is something that should be treasured and preserved, and that differences in philosophy aren’t so great or insurmountable that they can generally be worked out with patient discourse and a little bit of compromise if it achieves something that’s good for everyone?

Or is it the side that takes the first sign of disrespect as the cue for escalating violence because it’s what they were taught and encouraged to do?

Whichever is the case, there is only one person over whom you have full control, and that is yourself. You determine your own attitude, so perhaps this is a good time to discuss turning the other cheek. I give you not just the verse (which comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount) but some context as well.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:38-48, KJV)

How you approach life and how you approach others is the one thing you have control over. A good attitude can go a long way in making things better, but that is also something which needs to be encouraged in the culture by turning away from those who would tell you otherwise. Heck, even Nugent himself pledged to tone things down in the wake of the Alexandria incident and if he can follow through so can the rest of us. It truly is about the attitude.

The Democrats’ summer of resistance (to common sense)

You know, there’s no shortage of irony that exactly 50 years ago many of the granola-crunching veterans of the leftist political movement were putting flowers in their hair and heading out to San Francisco to celebrate the “Summer of Love.” (Yes, that was 1967. I was two years old at the time.) Now their progeny are gathering around their computers later today to hear Rep. Keith Ellison of the Democratic National Committee and other “special guests” blather on about how they will have the “summer of resistance” this year. More than likely it will be just as successful as one of the several “recovery summers” the last administration tried to drum up support for, but no matter – we know how this will go. Instead of the summer of love, it’s the summer of hate for what’s made America great (and I’m not talking about Donald Trump.)

Just look at what the Left has been getting themselves all worked up over since President Trump came to office. They dressed up as large-scale versions of certain lady parts to promote funding Planned Parenthood, a code spoken with the true meaning of their “right” to murder babies in the womb under the guise of “choice” or “reproductive rights,” completely forgetting that, at the moment of conception, the tiny human inside them earned the most pre-eminent of all rights, the right to life. (For without life, how can you enjoy liberty or the pursuit of happiness?) Corollary to that was Trump’s vow to repeal and replace Obamacare, which was a replacement more than I would have preferred.

We have spent countless hours of news coverage and barrels of ink talking about a possible Russian influence on our elections, but the question that should really be asked is why their propaganda was so believable? If we thought the worst about Hillary Clinton, there had to be a reason why and I don’t think we have been working for the last 16 years, through two other presidents, just so the Russians could set up an election between Clinton and Trump because they utterly feared the former and had plenty of dirt on the latter. I would believe the reverse far more readily, but the Left keeps playing with the “Trump is a Russian puppet” narrative.

The latest hissy fit from the Left comes as Donald Trump has decided the Paris Climate Agreement as negotiated by the Obama administration isn’t for him, so he wants a do-over. Of course, the Left is having a collective cow on this one as well, but it’s also worth noting that some of the more foolish states and localities among us are vowing to continue working on their own toward the parameters of the Paris Climate Agreement.

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As I see it, what the Democrats are proposing isn’t the summer of resistance but the summer of submission: willfully being tied to an inept, impersonal, and immoral nation-state that dictates our actions to us rather than allowing us the freedom to chart our own course. A true Summer of Resistance would perhaps have a convention of states that proposes only a handful of new amendments to our founding documents to provide for the following:

The repeal of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, with concurrent adoption of a consumption-based tax system and return to state legislatures electing Senators as terms expire
An amendment prohibiting discrimination against or for certain groups in various legal functions, including crime and punishment
A balanced budget, except in instances of Congressionally-declared war or state of emergency
Additional language to clarify and rein in abuse of the general welfare and commerce clauses

This convention would also come up with a list of names from around the nation that would constitute a new court system to replace the present appellate system that has gone too far out of balance. Along with sending the new Constitutional amendments to the states for ratification, this new court system would be on the Congressional Summer of Resistance docket as well as a budget that completely rightsizes the federal government by returning it to the duties they are supposed to do.

By summer’s end, Americans would be free of their federal burdens. Yes, for some it would be a struggle at first but it would be incumbent upon a nation that is the most charitable in the world to give the helping hand to those in need voluntarily, and not via the force of government edict.

Instead of a good Summer of Resistance like the one I described, though, we’ll just get more anger and angst from people who still haven’t accepted the fact that Donald Trump won more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton did. Try as they might, they can’t resist that simple fact. But they can (and will) continue to piss and moan a lot.