Tag: Curt Anderson

Maryland, the slave state

It’s obvious the Democratic Party is all for “feel good” legislation, but this one probably takes the cake. I received a press release today from State Senator Brian Frosh, who has the ambition to be our next Attorney General. I won’t bore you with the whole story, but here is the upshot:

Senator Brian Frosh (D-16) and Delegate Curt Anderson (D-43) have introduced legislation to rescind Maryland’s ratification of a constitutional amendment to preserve slavery in America.

In January of 1862, the General Assembly of Maryland ratified an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, proposed by Thomas Corwin of Ohio, that would have prohibited any future abolition of slavery. After its adoption by Congress, only the Ohio and Maryland state legislatures ratified the Corwin Amendment before the Civil War made further state action irrelevant.

Ohio rescinded its ratification in 1864, but Maryland alone has allowed its approval to stand for 152 years.

(snip)

Senator Frosh said, “Ratification of the Corwin Amendment is a stain on our state’s history. I think the legislature owes it to the victims of slavery and to those who marched, fought, and died for freedom to set it right.”

This sort of meaningless legislation is nothing new. Two years ago Maryland finally got around to ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which (sadly) became law in 1913, with only a handful of Delegates (and no Senators) properly objecting.

I’m sure these bills sponsored by Senator Frosh and Delegate Anderson will pass unanimously – after all, who wants to be on record as supporting slavery? – but what I really want to know is: which party supported the ratification in the first place? Secondly, and since we’re talking about cleaning up a few Constitutional loose ends here, will Frosh be as circumspect about the Second Amendment should he become Attorney General? I doubt that.

TEA Party Caucus: Maryland Democrats need not apply

I’ll state the news item first: a day after it was announced he had become vice-chairman of the nascent Maryland TEA Party Caucus in the House of Delegates, Baltimore City Delegate Curt Anderson withdrew from the group at the request of fellow Democrats.

Yeah, I bet it wasn’t fifteen minutes from the time the news hit the wire to Anderson being called on the carpet by his fellow Democrats. Perhaps Anderson forgot that bipartisanship only works one way in Annapolis.

Honestly, I was surprised Curt would be the one to cross the aisle considering he never scored well on the monoblogue Accountability Project – I would have picked a Delegate like Kevin Kelly or John F. Wood, Jr. as they were the top two most conservative Democrats during the last term. (Wood is a cosponsor of the sales tax relief bill, HB465, introduced by Delegate Justin Ready earlier this week.)

But the venom from his city cohorts, as noted in this Maryland Politics blog posting, is scathing. The TEA Party is the Anti-Christ to the Democratic party? Get a grip, Delegate Glenn. What a poor choice of words! Let me tell the Democrats I know who participate in the TEA Parties that they’re quite at home in your version of the party. </sarc>

This just goes further to show the arrogance and disrespect elected Maryland Democrats have for the common working person. But it also shows the character of Delegate Anderson that he returned to the plantation so soon – why stop now, when they’re still threatening to take away your delegation chairmanship despite the fact you stepped aside from the TEA Party Caucus? To me, principles matter.

And despite the best efforts to marginalize the TEA Party Caucus, they’ve scored a victory by attracting the attention of liberal Democrats. Delegate Maggie McIntosh is quoted in the Sun as saying, “(The caucus is) highly organized. We should take them seriously.”

Damn right you should take us seriously because now we have a full four-year cycle to recruit candidates and build a war chest to defeat the liberals who have taken Maryland a long way down a dead-end street of debt and overbearing government. We didn’t do too badly in basically one year of preparation and not a lot of help from the state Republican Party since we picked off six Democrats from the House and it took a ton of special interest money to eke out two of OUR Senate seats that are now simply on loan to their Democratic occupants. (Yes, that means you, Jim Mathias.)

Go ahead and try to redistrict us out of existence – it won’t work because there’s too many of us now. If they want war because they consider us in the TEA Party the Anti-Christ, well, I say give it to them.

But Delegate Curt Anderson’s not a victim of that war, nor is he even a casualty. He may be put in his place for a short while, but eventually he’ll be back in the fold because they’ll need his vote and all will be forgiven when he delivers. Most likely it won’t serve the rest of us well, but that’s how the game is played in Annapolis and that’s why it needs to change four years hence.