Tag: Parris Glendening

Odds and ends number 74

Believe it or not, this feature which used to be a staple of my site has gone dormant for over 18 months. But I decided to resurrect it because all these financial reports I’ve been doing as well as other regular features have taken up my time and allowed my e-mail box to become dangerously full of items which were rapidly running out of shelf life. So here you go: the return of odds and ends for what promises to be a cameo appearance.

As evidence of that shelf life, I wanted to bring up a thoughtful piece by my friend Rick Manning – not to be confused with the former Cleveland Indians outfielder – regarding the prospect of a continuing resolution for federal spending which would expire in December, necessitating a lame duck session.

Manning is right in believing that the strategy is fraught with peril, and if the pre-election polling is correct and Republicans take over the Senate come January this only invites Democrats to lay a few traps as they back out the door. Of course, if Congress (read: the Senate) would actually do its job and get the budget work done before the federal fiscal year begins on October 1, this wouldn’t be a problem.

One Senator, Rand Paul, received some criticism from Timothy H. Lee of the Center for Individual Freedom, who noted Paul’s flip-flop on foreign policy neatly coincided with a shift in public opinion regarding the Islamic State.

Returning to the fold of NetRightDaily – which has been on a content roll lately – I found someone who agrees with me on the Seventeenth Amendment. Tom Toth lays out the case, although I think we should do a couple other amendments first. Obviously this would probably change the composition of the Senate rather quickly to an almost perpetually Republican body, but someone needs to look out for the states and that element is missing in modern politics.

Something else Congress should get to (but probably won’t) are curbs on civil forfeiture, the subject of a recent push by the Institute for Justice. The bills themselves were introduced back in July by Sen. Paul and Rep. Tim Walberg, but while IJ has been doggedly against what they call “policing for profit” for several years, this latest offensive stems from a petition drive and video the group has done detailing abuses of the process in Philadelphia.

It’s clear the libertarian-leaning group doesn’t like the idea, and with good reason. Think of it as the step beyond speed cameras.

Philadelphia also figures prominently into my next piece. I’ll explain this more on Sunday, but there were a number of pieces I was perhaps intending to use for my American Certified site but instead will be mentioned in brief here.

One group which has made it to those pages a lot is the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Certainly they complain a lot about the trade deficit with China but AAM President Scott Paul (no relation to Rand Paul) also made a great point about the continuing lack of manufacturing jobs.

This jobs report is a big disappointment for factory workers. While we can never read too much into just a month’s worth of data, a goose egg for manufacturing doesn’t look like progress to me. And it will be hard to consistently move the manufacturing jobs number up unless our goods trade deficit with China comes down.

Two years ago President Obama campaigned on a pledge to create one million new manufacturing jobs in his second term. Our #AAMeter shows progress toward that goal is stalling. A national manufacturing strategy could help get us back on track.

Yes, they track the progress toward that elusive one million jobs, and Obama stands at a puny 193,000. It’s surprising because as Rick Manning stated in an earlier piece, we have the energy resources to bring American manufacturing back. We’re now number 1 in natural gas production, and our energy dominance serves to stabilize world prices, says Mark Green of API.

Looking at it from the perspective of state government, a recent video by Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan explained his thoughts on creating opportunity.

The key phrase in this video comes early on, when Hogan talks about his appointments. This is an opportunity which is rarely discussed, but when Democrats have run this state for all but four years of the last forty, the pool of those who get to be department heads becomes ossified. The Glendening appointee to one office may have been O’Malley’s point guy somewhere else and would be on the short list for Anthony Brown.

But if Larry Hogan can resist the temptation to overly rely on his buddies from the Ehrlich administration, we have the potential for real reform and new ideas at the department level.

Another reform is being pushed by the Maryland Liberty PAC, and Republicans will be pleased to know they are firing in the right direction by attacking the “toxic track record” of District 34A Democratic nominee Mary Ann Lisanti. They didn’t catch this gem, though.

Finally, I wanted to promote something a fellow blogger is trying. Peter Ingemi (aka DaTechGuy) has a radio spot for you:

It’s near the end of the year when everyone’s ad budgets are pretty empty so as I’ve got some ad space left on my radio show I’ve got an offer to make exclusively to the bloggers, advocates & folk on my e-mail blast.

Produce a 15 second plug for your blog, podcast or web site and for only $30 I’ll include it on my radio show DaTechGuy on DaRadio for a FULL MONTH.

That’s not only 70% off the normal price but it also means your plug will be included on broadcast replays, my own podcast replay, the live replay on FTR Radio and all four weekly replays on the 405media Tuesday through Friday. And if you want an even better deal I’ll give you 30 seconds for just $50 a month (or I’ll replay your 15 second spot twice).

This is a great chance to get your blog some national exposure on multiple platforms that you might not currently be reaching. (His emphasis, not mine.)

He’s the consummate salesman, is he not? But I have him beat, at least in terms of price. I’m not doing a radio show anytime soon, though.

And I may not be doing another odds and ends soon either. But it was fun to go back and put one together for old times’ sake.

Coming from behind?

Hey, what do you know? After saying my piece yesterday I got an internal poll. (Well, actually Jeff Quinton got it, but I can use it to make my point.) I did receive the presser which alerted me to the fact that Larry Hogan was polled to be within striking distance of Anthony Brown.

One other aspect of the Wilson Perkins Allen internal poll that I thought interesting was the “blind ballot test” question (page 2 here), where an ersatz candidate with Hogan’s background leads a Brown stand-in by a 45-44 margin. Yet, as Quinton points out, we don’t have the crosstabs or other information to correlate with the actual electorate. Using a 2010 turnout model – which may well be overstating Democrat turnout this time around and underestimating the GOP’s – and cross-referencing it to current partisan registration gives a model reflected below:

  • Democrats – 2,055.678 (55.2%) x 54.84% = 1,127,334, or 56.1% of electorate
  • Republicans – 952,320 (25.6%) x 62.45% = 594,724, or 29.6% of electorate
  • unaffiliated/others – 716,830 (19.2%) x ~ 40% = 286,732, or 14.3% of electorate

2,008,790 voters means first to a million wins. But the polling should reflect these numbers on a partisan basis; in fact I would be inclined to add a couple points to the GOP column so we really are punching a little beyond our weight. O’Malley fatigue may keep some Democrats home and motivate the Republicans.

Also remember that the rerun of Bob Ehrlich for a third time may have kept a few GOP stalwarts home, just as the 1998 rematch between Ellen Sauerbrey and Parris Glendening was far less exciting than the 1994 version. 1994 was a wave year for the GOP, and there are some signs 2014 may be the same if the GOP doesn’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as it has done before. Certainly turnout was better on all fronts in 1994: that year 64.93% of Republicans, 60.98% of Democrats, and 46.34% of “declines” turned out. Democratic turnout has slumped 8.37% from its 1998 peak, while Republicans have dropped 4.99% from their 2002 high-water mark in gubernatorial elections. Strictly unaffiliated voters have dropped off 8.35% from their 1994 high point.

For Republicans, turning out at 2002 levels could mean an extra 50,000 votes and perhaps that would swing some local races.

While playing with the numbers is fun for any candidate, there is that minor detail of getting past the GOP primary, and the poll doesn’t indicate whether Hogan remains in the GOP lead. Reputable polls so far have shown that Mr. Undecided is the clear favorite, but it’s impossible for him to win here in Maryland so someone else will have to prevail. It’s likely that whoever wins will not have a majority in the race, so he will have a lot of fences to mend.

But while Hogan and his cohorts have been speaking on the economy – and rightfully so – a close second in importance to many voters is education. This is why what David Craig had to say yesterday at Townhall.com was important. An excerpt:

If (former GM executive turned author) Bob Lutz is a car guy, then you can call me an “education guy.” I spent 34 years in Maryland’s public schools as a teacher and an assistant principal. My career started as our nation was on top, coming off an age when we sent men to the moon and returned them safely to the earth. There were no waivers, no Common Core, no ‘No Child Left Behind,’ and no U.S. Department of Education.

What I had back then, and what Governor Pence needs now, and what my home state of Maryland urgently needs, is to give control to teachers in the classroom. Maryland has rushed head first to adopt every federal program in the last several years including Obamacare, Common Core and EPA stormwater regulations, to name a few. The results are always the same – poor execution, millions of dollars wasted and excessive regulation and taxes.

Here is a simple message to anyone concerned about making education work for students and not education bureaucrats. Let teacher’s (sic) teach, let them do their job.

Nobody will ever capture a child’s imagination in the classroom from Washington D.C. Common Core is bean counters and bureaucrats run amok. They will destroy our education system. No amount of tinkering or re-branding will ever fix it. End it and return control of the classroom to teachers and local school boards.

Craig is perceptive enough to sense the concern that Indiana is adopting Common Core under another name. Yet the question sure to come up in any debate is how we would do without the federal grant money. I can also guarantee Craig will be painted as heartless and out-of-touch if he questions the wisdom of expanding pre-kindergarten, even with its dubious benefits.

Try as some might, education is not a one-size-fits-all commodity. What works well for Dylan in Maryland may not do the trick for Amy in California. And while I’ve had some thoughts in the past about education I still think are worth pursuing, we have to backtrack from where we’re at in order to get pointed in that right direction. The next generation is all we have at stake.

Nine days to Hogan

According to John Wagner in the Washington Post, Larry Hogan will formally announce his candidacy for governor on January 21 in Annapolis. It’s two months later than some thought he would – and about six months after this observer thought he should get in – but nonetheless the announcement will come a week from Tuesday.

Even with the brief Wagner piece, there are some things to watch for. For example, Jeff Quinton notes that Hogan’s campaign chairman is a veteran of the Democratic Glendening administration, although Quinton later concedes James Brady has given mostly to Republicans in recent years. It fits in with the Hogan pattern of emphasizing support from both sides of the aisle, which has been a staple of Change Maryland’s rhetoric over the last couple years.

Personally, though, I would be more interested to know which legislators are planning to meet with Hogan this upcoming week. With just 55 General Assembly Republicans – who already have one of their own in the race in Delegate Ron George – the identity of those participants will be vital in knowing how the race will proceed. Obviously if a Democrat bucks party lines to show support for Larry it would be a coup, too.

And while I disagreed with Hogan’s decision to wait until January to announce, it will give his campaign the advantage of knowing where his opponents stand financially as reports for 2013 are due this coming week. If one of his three Republican aspirants trails badly in the race, we may see some consolidation knowing from past experience Hogan is willing to lend himself seed money.

Now it’s time for something a little different. Due to a confluence of events I couldn’t make it to Turning the Tides this year. But in the reports I’ve been seeing it doesn’t appear any of the gubernatorial candidates stopped by. That may not be the case, but I read from Facebook that David Craig’s itinerary didn’t include the event, and I would have thought either of the other two would have made sure to mention their attendance on social media. Since I’m prewriting this by a few hours I’m waiting to see some of the “blogger’s row” coverage but it’s disappointing to me if the GOP candidates didn’t get there to at least say hello. Maybe that’s how the organizers and activists wanted it, but I would be curious to know how (or even if) various campaigns represented themselves.

Anyway, the nine days leading up to Larry Hogan’s formal announcement will also be a time of transition for Change Maryland. Who will be put in charge of the 74,000 strong organization while Larry Hogan runs? And can they succeed as Hogan has?

There’s a lot to look for in the next week or two on the political front.

Update (h/t Jackie Wellfonder):

 

Thanks, Jackie! I kind of figured he would be there since it was close by for him.

Update 2: Here’s the link to his gubernatorial website, which just has an announcement slide at the moment.

Ten Question Tuesday – June 11, 2013

As I noted in my original coverage last Wednesday, I received the opportunity to have a one-on-one interview with gubernatorial candidate David Craig after he concluded his public remarks. Rather than ask him strictly about his stump speech, I wanted to ask about some of the topics which may be more important to my fellow Eastern Shore residents.

**********

monoblogue: Just to ask you the first question, I know we’re the seventh stop or so on this tour…

Craig: Yes.

monoblogue: …so how’s your reception been?

Craig: It’s been very good. Started out good – a little rainy when we started out…

monoblogue: Yes.

Craig: …but good crowds everywhere we’ve been, the people who showed up have been very receptive (and) very happy about what was happening. Very impressive in Hagerstown, we got out there and did the walking tour of downtown and went in to see several businesses, went by the schools…a lot of people saw the bus, they saw me, and they started walking with us. Got a little reception afterward where people could just come in and talk about stuff.

We went to Silver Spring – how many Republicans are going to go to Montgomery County? But we drive through the neighborhoods and I think, “Why are these people voting for Democrats?” These people have their nice little homes, they obviously have nice jobs and stuff like that, paying income taxes…

monoblogue: Well, the problem is they may have government jobs that depend on the government being large.

Craig: Well, they may depend on the federal government being large but not us. Anyway, it’s nice neighborhoods and things like that. The one in Prince Frederick was very good, Annapolis was Annapolis (laughs)…that was fun. So they’ve all been very interesting, you see the differences –  everybody says one Maryland, but there are slight differences.

monoblogue: Yeah, well, for example I come from a rural perspective – I grew up in a rural area – and I know you talked in your speech about the lost balance between environmentalism and that. How’s that going to affect our “outhouse” out here?

Craig: (laughs) You tell people that farmers were the first environmentalists that we ever saw. Farmers are usually pretty fiduciary – they usually don’t waste money.

monoblogue: No, they’re trying to make money.

Craig: They’re trying to make money, so they’re not going to do things that are bad. What I’ve found in doing this in Harford County is I do have an executive – I have an Agricultural Economic Advisory Board and I have an Agricultural Preservation Board that I work with, and one of my deputy chiefs of staff is the agricultural deputy chief of staff. What I’ve found is the best way is to actually listen to the farmers have to say and have them come up with solutions for what they think needs to be done, and then convince the other farmer this is the best way to go – it’s not government talking to you. (They’d say) I did this on my farm, it saved me money, it did this and saved me all these rules and regulations.

But we get all these people that are in environmental services, they have this job, they’re lawyers, they’re environmental – but they know nothing. I had a situation talking with the Maryland Department of the Environment, I said give me an example of this rain tax, I have two – or septic tax. I have two farms, tell me which one’s the worst. How will I be able to determine which one – one guy’s doing the good job, one’s a bad job? And the guy looked at me and said we can’t figure that out.

monoblogue: Well, that’s reassuring. After they passed the septic bill and they can’t tell you that? I know there was a bill – and it was one of our Delegates (Mike McDermott) put it up – to rescind that entire septic bill. Now, if it does somehow get through the General Assembly would you consider signing that bill rescinding the law?

Craig: I think there are many things that have been done over the last 20 years that ought to be rescinded, particularly when it comes – what was the one Parris Glendening did? I can’t remember, it was some kind of infectious disease thing…

monoblogue: I don’t know, it was before my time.

Craig: Anyway, they came up with all these ideas – for them it’s always about what’s the headline, what’s the media going to report in the next 90 days – after it gets done, do they ever go back and evaluate what the bill did, and whether it was effective? You know, William Donald Schaefer was the one who put the Critical Areas section in – I was the mayor, I had to adopt Critical Areas legislation in the city of Harve de Grace or no building was going to be permitted. I had to actually impose a tax, I was the first one to pay it because I was the first one to go for a building permit. And they kept saying, we need 1,000 feet from the bay to be doing this. And I would say we’re not the only ones polluting this, you think it’s just us, why are you doing this to us? And does it actually solve things? If I have someone who rebuilds something and fixes it up, isn’t that better than just letting it sit there the way it is? Let’s come up with real solutions for what needs to be done. Did the critical area and the critical area tax solve the Chesapeake Bay problem?

monoblogue: No. And the problem is they keep moving the goalposts…

Craig: Yes! And they’re made up – that’s the thing, the numbers are made up. Who came up with the idea a football field had to be 100 yards? Why couldn’t it be 120 yards, why couldn’t it be 90 yards? You know, it’s like – first they make a number up, I’ll give you this example. I was the mayor of Havre de Grace, we get hit with this issue with our sewage treatment plant that we have to do this change – $9 million it costs us to upgrade the sewage treatment plant.

A week later, the rules and regulations were changed. They came back and said, this is no longer functioning the way we need it to function, now you need to do this – $47 million. Here’s the problem, the analogy I use. Let’s say you decided to redo your kitchen – new refrigerator, new stove, new microwave, you buy new ones, you put them in there, spend $4,000 – and then you come back home, no I think we need to rip the whole kitchen out and you throw away those appliances. None of that $9 million was good enough to maintain the $47 million, so we wasted the $9 million. We’re still paying – the people of Havre de Grace are still paying…

monoblogue: Salisbury has the same problem, they’re messing around with their sewer treatment plant.

Craig: Yeah, so they keep changing the concept of what’s going on, and they don’t really look at real solutions. And if someone comes up with a real solution that’s not what the government wanted, then they ignore it.

**********

At this point, we were interrupted by a well-wisher. When we got back to the conversation, I changed the subject.

**********

monoblogue: You also talked about the – all the tax increases we had. I love how you used all the Change Maryland numbers, that’s great. I said I could tell Jim Pettit’s on his staff now…

Craig: Well, we’ve got them for a variety of things but when Larry Hogan started Change Maryland we talked about it and said, you know, I might run, I might not run, but if I don’t run Change Maryland’s going to go with you. And I’d like to admit that Larry’s done a good job getting that information out…

monoblogue: He does.

Craig: …and persuading people. I think in the long run Larry realizes that he’s making more money (laughs) being a private worker…

monoblogue: Oh yeah.

Craig: …and I think ultimately he stays there. But he can he huge in helping us reform the state party.

monoblogue: Right. But is there any chance we’re going to see some of that stuff rolled back if you’re elected?

Craig: I will look at all of them. But if somebody says “which tax first?” I’m going to look at all of them. There are certain taxes that probably haven’t been on the table that people said, would you ever get rid of this? If the state says that we’re going to make – we have a Public Service Commission to keep your BG&E rate as low as possible, why do we tax it? Why do we tax it? If we got rid of that, it gets rid of $5 on your BG&E bill every – well, it would save you 60 bucks. And guess what? You’re probably going to spend it somewhere else.

monoblogue: Well, that’s the idea. It’s where YOU want to spend it, not where the state wants to spend it.

Craig: You know, sales tax…I go back to that Calvin Coolidge thing with lowering the income tax, if you lower the sales tax more people would buy stuff here and it increases what gets sold. My wife’s not dumb – we live 17 miles from Delaware. You’re going to buy $4,000 worth of appliances times 6 – you do the math…

monoblogue: And seven miles from Delmar – if you go up 13 you’ll notice all the big-ticket items, furniture stores…

Craig: Yeah, look at the ads, look at the ads. I mean, I was looking at ads this morning on the TV when I was here and it was like – I forget what the particular issue was they were selling, and they go “in Delaware, no tax.” You know, it’s like – and how far away are you? Cecil County last month, in May, had twelve liquor stores give up their licenses…

monoblogue: Yes.

Craig: …and close. And they did it because, if you live in Elkton in five minutes you could be in (Delaware), you can buy your liquor, you can buy your gasoline, you can buy your cigarettes. All that tax is lower or non-existent and we got nothing. And so, I don’t know how many people but say each had three business people – so 36 to 40 jobs gone?

monoblogue: Right.

Craig: And all because “oh, it’s an alcohol tax, it’s okay to raise it.”

monoblogue: And the same thing is true (for cigarettes), because I go to Virginia for my job every week and driving back into Maryland the last convenience store I see – “Last Chance for Cheap Smokes.”

Craig: That’s right.

monoblogue: Because Virginia’s tax is, like, thirty cents and ours is two bucks.

Craig: And if I throw out the issue of the corporate income tax, people are like “oh, you’re only for the rich people.” All right, I’ll throw out other issues: Harford County, a lot of military people stationed there, when they get done they retire. They move to Pennsylvania because their military pension is taxed. We shouldn’t tax a military person’s pension, they already made their sacrifices. So let them live here in the state of Maryland.

monoblogue: I think they have tried to do that a few times, and the legislature just doesn’t go anywhere.

Craig: Well, they haven’t gone with it because they haven’t been told to go with it. If the governor had said go with it, they would have gone with it.

monoblogue: That’s true, it’s usually Republicans who bring it up.

Craig: Well, you know, I think if enough veterans were showing up and saying – what was this whole thing about the governor pointing out and bragging about what he was doing about creating jobs for veterans, about a month ago? Remember he was changing some policies, it was going to make it easier for them to get a job?

monoblogue: Right.

Craig: Why would they want to come here and get a job and pay a higher tax on their pension that they also get and then a higher tax on their income tax? So, we need to change the income tax…(also) the death tax is ridiculous, somebody in your family passes away, they pay taxes on that money for their entire life – why are you paying a tax to inherit it? If they were smart I guess they should sell everything and give you the money before they pass away. But people leave the state all the time, go to Florida, no tax, go to Pennsylvania, don’t have to pay that tax.

The gas tax – I do tell people I have to be cautious to (not) say I’m going to get rid of this tax or lower this right away because – I’ll have to use the septic tax for an example – when Ehrlich was governor the septics were all done through PAYGO, so he didn’t have capital projects. This governor turned it to bonding, so if I’m stuck with paying off a bond I’ve got to do that first before I can get rid of the tax.

monoblogue: Right, exactly. I’m sure he’s created a few mousetraps for his successor to deal with if they want to change things. It’s going to be harder to undo this Gordian knot then most people would think.

Craig: And then they brag about, oh, we’re going to do this private-public partnership, this 3P thing, it’s like – most likely that’s not going to work. If you look at something that’s going to be a good financial thing with some private company coming in and doing something, they probably could have done it if they didn’t have to pay the minimum wage, if they didn’t have to pay the union fee, if they didn’t have to deal with the minority business stuff – you could probably lower the prices of those projects by 35 percent. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake just gets a billion dollars for school construction, well, $300 million of that is going to be wasted and she could have had it – that would have done how many more schools for her?

monoblogue: Exactly.

Craig: So which is better? Is it better to have a good school for the kid, or you created this “fake” job?

monoblogue: Right. I remember, being from Ohio, when Ohio built all its schools they actually eliminated the prevailing wage for schools just to get more bang for the buck.

Craig: Yeah, that’s what you should do. Period.

monoblogue: Speaking of education, I liked how you tied in the lack of – lack of academic achievement with our so-called “number one” ranking. Now where do you – where do you prioritize your spending to bring up the actual achievement and not necessarily worry about being “number one” in the country?

Craig: A couple things. There’s a lot of duplication that we could…a lot of duplication. Here’s the situation in Harford County. Since I’ve been County Executive, the size of the school board employees has increased by 650 employees. The school population has declined by 2,500 students. Why didn’t the size of the working staff decline?

Now, if they had had 2,300 new students move in they would have come to me and said, “we need 100 new teachers.” But when 2,000 went down they didn’t say, “well, we didn’t need 100 teachers anymore.”

monoblogue: No.

Craig: So we have that situation, and I get teachers complaining to me all the time, “well, you know, the size of the class has gone up.” If you’re a good teacher, it doesn’t matter how many kids you’re sitting in the class. The first year I taught, 39 kids in the class. Second year, 42 kids in the class. Forty-two. I didn’t even have enough desks for the kids; one of them had to sit at my desk and one of them had to sit at a table. So when they say there’s 23 kids, the fact is, studies have been shown that the change does not occur until the size of the class falls below 15. So that’s what you’re going to do, if you say we’re reducing the size, we’re going from 24 to 23 – so what? If you’re a teacher, you can’t teach 24, can’t teach 25? That’s one thing.

But there’s duplication, so much duplication, in government – county government and school board government. I have a capital projects committee, they have a capital projects committee – why do we need both? I have the same guys that do the investigations, the inspections and all that stuff, I have a procurement department. I don’t buy chalk and all that stuff, but they have a procurement department. That’s duplication. I have a lawyer, a law department, they have a law department – duplication. They have a human resource department, I have a human resource department, duplication. Now, do I get rid of all those employees? No, but at least get rid of the top person. The person who’s making $150,ooo, instead of having two of them, you only have one. And you can probably merge a lot of things together and only have office – and none of that takes place in the classroom.

monoblogue: You need to think about that at the state level, and not necessarily the county level – I mean, if a county wants to do that, that’s fine and dandy, that’s their money. At the state level is where you’ll be concentrating…

Craig: Yes.

monoblogue: …I would think we need to rightsize the state Department of Education…

Craig: I agree.

monoblogue: …because the localities should control anyway.

Craig: Yes they should. Yes they should. And it has grown exponentially. And if you look at higher education, when I was in the House I was always assigned the higher education budget and you look at a college that’s got nine vice-Presidents – why? We only have one Vice-President in the country, yet nine in a college? Come on! And are they teaching? No. You know, all these different people, you have all these professors that are teaching one class, maybe two classes. I had someone, when I was doing a debate one time, who said “what are you going to do about the cost of higher – you know, how much my education’s going to cost?” We need to reduce it on our size – on our side, for one thing. We’re forced to spend this money on that, it doesn’t need to be spent.

So there’s a lot of duplication in both higher ed and elementary through high school at the state level that I agree we could change.

monoblogue: Okay, I appreciate it.

Craig: Thank you.

**********

Ideally, I wanted to come in about 15 minutes and with the interruption that’s about where I ended up. Hopefully this establishes some of where David Craig stands on various issues.