No, I won't sign your petition

     No, I won't sign your petition to overturn the bill signed by Gov. Martin O"Malley to give every Maryland student, even those whose parents are "illegal" aliens, the right to get the same considerations as they persue an education as any other Maryland student. And since you asked me to, I will tell you why I will not.
     First of all, I am tired of people getting up petitions to take everything they don't agree with to referendum. Our country's system depends on electing representatives to make policy decisions, and if we don't like what they do, we can un-elect them in four years. If we let the public vote on every item of business, we don't need elected officials, but we'd need more referees.
     Also, if we took every tough and complicated issue to a vote, this country would never have formed a constitution, let alone a nation, abolished slavery, fought to save the world from tyranny in 1918, returned to clean up what public opinion allowed to happen in World War Two, or ended the war in the Pacific without massive casualties that would have made two nuclear bombs look like firecrackers.
     We probably never would have had public schools (some are doing their best to trade them in now for private schools, usually sectarian in nature), the interstate highway system, the national energy grid or a space program.
     If we voted on every public expenditure, people would starve to death, die of curable diseases, and duke it out among neighbors in generational feuds (exactly like the tribalism that gave birth to the terrorists we deal with now from the middle east).
     Our economy would be based not on the auto industry, but on oxcarts, or working for the rich who own the mines, factories, big oil and big money. All those rugged, card-carrying, self-sufficient individualists who claim they hate government intervention in their lives would be wondering what that "all men are created equal" thing was about.
      The American dream would be a nightmare.
     But at least we would not be inconvenienced by the arrival of people from other nations who want a chance to work in the system we do have; we would have not had to deal with the Jews from Eastern Europe, or the Italians, or the Germans, or the Welsh or the Irish, or even the Mexicans and Central Americans.
     Yep, we'd have a lot fewer illegals, and the children they brought here with them to seek a better life.
     I guess my problem is that I can't muster up a reason to think that I, a grandson of Irish, German and Welsh immigrants, am that much superior to the "illegals" of today, who got here the same way my forbears did, but after the rules were changed.
     But most of all, the reason I will not sign your petition is that I can't imagine sitting down across the table from a young man or woman who may have come here as an infant, has committed no sin, no crime, no offense against me or my country.
     I cannot sit across from someone who may have been an honor student, class leader, better scholar than I ever was, and tell them they are not entitled to continue their education under the same rules as any other resident of my state.
     I know that the argument is that the "illegals" compete unfairly with the children of legal, taxpaying citizens. Sorry, it does not compute. What about the competition from the children of big contributors to schools and colleges? You think your middle-class kid gets the same shot as the fat cats?
     Maybe you're too much of a romantic, and I am too cynical.
     Or maybe it's the other way around.
     Either way, good kids with potential who have and can continue to make our nation better deserve something better from me than mindless, remote, and shamefully easy dismissal of their value.
     That's against every American ideal I ever learned.

Cutting the budget was the easy part

     The easy work is done: The Carroll County Commissioners set out to cut spending enough to cut taxes by two cents and they accomplished that. They passed the budget Tuesday despite the protests of Commissioner Robin Frazier, who said they should have cut the rate five cents.
     Easy. No problem making cuts. All you have to do is tell everyone right up front that it makes no difference what the consequences of those cuts will be, that's the way it is. There will be a two cent cut in the tax rate and everyone will have to live that. No wonder you didn't hear much grumbling; program leaders were probably terrified that they would be slashed more.
     Yes, revenues are down; we dealt with that reality for the past two years. Assessments are leveling off or even falling on real property, income tax revenues are off because people are working less hours -- some aren't working at all -- and there have been no raises in two or more years. Costs have to be contained, and good sense dictates that some cuts are necessary.
     It just seems to me that with all of that being said, why would responsible leaders cut their operating funding even more by starting out with a two cent cut in the tax rate?
     Because they said they would. Campaign promises, and all that. Living up to the uninformed and over-the-top rhetoric and unrealistic expectations of their base constituency. That's pandering, not leadership.
     Leadership would have set the goal at holding the tax rate and cutting spending, but not gutting programs.
     Leadership would have been acknowledging that an increase in tipping fees to trash haulers will, indeed, be passed on to consumers (and there goes the two cent cut in taxes for many people). And why has the local press insisted on repeating the hollow assertions of the commissioners that the hike in trash hauling costs need not be passed along to consumers?  Sounds like spin, to me.
     Commissioner Doug Howard, nearly crowing with pride, is allowed the gratuitous quote that "because of the great communication . . .there wasn't an outcry" when the governing body approved funding cuts.
     "The whole process was better than I anticipated," he chirped.
     Richard Rothschild, another whose pride was obvious with the slash and burn approach to civic programs, including education and human services, drug interventions and other public safety initiatives built on for the past eight years, intoned, "The best thing that a board of commissioners can do is make sure we're not shy about asking the really tough questions."
     Wrong. The best thing that a board of commissioners can do is seriously consider the consequences of its actions. You can debate the issues, carry a strong argument for a point of view, and seek to find compromise before you take actions that adversely affect the lives of people and the programs that have been found worthy for years.
     But when you begin with the outcome determined, it means you don't care about the consequences, and tells people you are not willing to listen.
     Oh, they listened to the people in the streets who elected them. That makes them populists, perhaps. Populists are followers, following public opinion, right or wrong.
     Leaders know they have to listen to those who elected them, and they need to listen, look, and learn more than the public knows -- or wants to know -- about the realities of maintaining, sustaining, and supporting an entire community of disparate and often competing needs and wants.
     The commissioners think they succeeded. In the larger and longer term, they failed their first big test.

Rabid Right nips at Gingrich; Obama's gutsy faceoff with Israel

     Newt Gingrich has a well-deserved reputation as a loose-lipped agitator, which he probably thought should play well in today's political atmosphere. Problem is, he got candid about one of the icons of the Right's movement to deconstruct government -- Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan.
     Gingrich forgot that centrist, moderate arguments are for the general election, not the primary. The primary campaign is where the most extreme, radical, over-the-top ideals are put forth to attract the worker bees for the partisans. So when Gingrich says that Ryan's plan is too radical, well, it makes the worker bees buzz angrily, and sting.
      The same effect is what set the dogs to barking when President Obama made candid comments about what needs to be done if we are ever going to have any chance of peace in the Middle East. He said Israel may have to control the radicals in their country who think they have a right to whatever land beckons for settlement. That's true, but it's not what the radicals on the Israeli Right want to hear. It offends American Jews who have tied their own identity to Israel as much as they have to The United States. Many of those American Jews -- 31 percent in the last election -- voted for Obama.
     Now, there are those who would not vote for him or donate to his campaign if he parted the Red Sea. There's that doubt about the Muslim-sounding name, tool.
     The President is opposed by Republicans for -- well, whatever.
     Whatever you think of Gingrich, or Obama, each spoke candidly -- perhaps even told the truth -- and each are paying for it.
     Also this week, the man considered a solid leader with skills and experience you seek in a president said he will not run for the Republican nomination. Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, is respected by moderate Republicans and Democrats, but he will not subject his family to the muck that would fly in a primary campaign.
    That tells you something about politics, which is, of course, that truth and ability are not valued as much as rhetoric by the absolutists who are most involved in the selection and support of candidates. And with the primary systems we have in this country, the only choices that more reasonable folks among us have are what's left after all the shouting and lying is over..
      

Carroll County as a private club?

   Perhaps I was wrong about Commissioner Richard Rothschild not having a vision; the list of principles that he read for the record this past week as a quide for what he thinks should be in the county master plan show that he does, indeed, have a vision. Few of us would argue with it.
    Few Carroll County residents might question the ideals of big homes, lush lawns manicured with riding mowers, long, winding driveways.
    Who would not want to live in and enjoy the environment he and commissioner Robin Frazier see being possible, if only the government didn't take so much in taxes:  "Large homes on large lots," with nice set-backs off quiet, county-maintained country roads. Patios and perhaps outdoor kitchens with built-in stainless steel barbeque grills, a pool. Someone to keep house. A cook, maybe. Nannie?
     More people should enroll their children in private school, don't you think? The parents are so much more, say, substantial. Call it family values; our family values, of course.
     That's a nice vision, really. Like Cinderella, after the Prince matches the shoe to her foot.
     Problem is, most of us are living a life more like Cinderella before the ball: Less-than-palacial homes, but all that we can afford, taxes or no. Crowded roads to distant jobs, high gas prices, rising costs for food, clothing, and the constant nagging fear of losing the job - or jobs - that make sustenance possible.
     Most of us are glad to have a house with a back yard, or at least in a neighborhood where you can get to a playground, an open lot, or just a safe place for kids to play outside.
     The problem with the vision of Rothschild and Frazier is that it is limited by blinders; blinders they wear as part of an ideology that has as its root the premise that those of us who achieve are nobler, more deserving, special, and -- well, threatened -- by those who can't afford to keep up.
     Their vision is exclusionary; Us versus Them. Fortress Carroll against the less deserving, more problematic, sometimes chaotic, always needy, and much too diverse masses that populate most of the rest of Maryland.
     Carroll County as a private club for white, well-to-do conservatives who want only those neighbors who think like them.
     Howard and Frazier would save us from becoming another Howard County, which, despite having the highest standards in public education even at the national level still is, non-the-less, too urban. We don't want to be like Howard County, judged by most standards as having the most livable communities in the East, and certainly in Maryland.
     When you begin picking apart the holes in the "vision" of Rothschild and Frazier, you find that many current residents of Carroll County don't really fit in.
     They oppose the kind of residential planning and location that permits teachers, firefighters, police officers and middle-ranked salary owners to find affordable housing. Indeed, they find the term, "affordable housing" objectionable.
     They also break out in hives when you use words like walkable communities -- maybe it's the community word, which is too close to being more like sociable, another word related in their heads to socialism.
     The principles they would like to impose on the new master plan use terms like "we", and "the people," but the word that drives their agenda is "constituency," which consists of people who have already arrived, have theirs, and don't want others messing up their personal landscapes. And that conjurs up different images -- not a vision -- that many find darker, exclusionary, short-sighted, and wrong for average, everyday folks who were the bedrock of this county when I was growing up and then raising a family.
      The so-called principles put forth by Rothschild and Frazier are not my principles. Nor is their attempt to "guide" the county planning commission leadership. It's an attempt to hi-jack the processes which by law are set forth to keep short-sighted, narrow-minded, selfish and misguided elitists from enhancing their own status at the expense of the dreams and ideals of those still seeking a better life.
     The question still to be answered is, will the public see past the smoke and mirrors, ideology camoflaged as conservatism. Will we give up moderate ideals of sharing common resources to ensure good public schools, public playgrounds, convenient and affordable housing for a larger share of the existing polulation?
     Recently, we have seen the hard Right employ the stick and carrot approach with some success: The stick of fear of people Not Like Us, and the rhetorical carrot, blurred with limited vision, which keeps us from seeing that the majority of us might just fall into the category of Them to the Rothschilds and Fraziers and others seeking political powers.

Memorial Day's Promise

By Dean Minnich


I am the soldier America recalls,
Thousands of names chiseled in walls,
On crosses and stars on old battlefields;
No longer alert to the bugle's shrill peal.
Lying silent in unfound graves.

I am the marine for whom you mourn,
Our mortal bodies ripped and torn
On beaches and jungles no one knows;
Battles that echo the Corps' credo.
Charging the hill, "Semper Fi".

I am the sailor for whom you weep,
Gone forever to the murky deep;
Sailing a course through Heaven's seas
To Preserve our dream of liberties.
Now gone to a last safe harbor.

I am the flier who hears your prayers
Amidst the flak and bursting flares;
Soaring through the iron-filled skies
With the hand of an angel as my guide
As I climb to the Great Beyond.

I am the prisoner who longs for home,
And the Missing In Action all alone,
Who dreams when dreams have been forgot
And all that we did seems for naught
When the world turns its back in neglect.

Now Americans stand in solemn respect
To Salute their warriors and to reflect
On the higher ideals of one free nation --
And those whose lives in dedication
Allow liberty so dear to prevail.

Weep not, America, for what we've paid
And do not mourn us where we lay;
Instead, carry on to future glories,
And keep us alive in your stories
Because we kept America's promise.

Which shell covers the real costs in the county budget?

    One of the more intriguing shifts in the county budget is the $75,000 the commissioners have added to something called the "legal defense fund." The plan, apparently, is to take the state to court -- or defend the county when the state takes the county to court -- to fight the Maryland State Growth Plan.
     They're going to need more money than that, even more than the $5,000 they saved by cutting the salary of departed county attorney Kim Millender. Millender left to take a job with the state. Before that, her number two, Terri Jones, left to take a better job. The staff is down to bare bones, but rumor has it that Roberta Windham, recently named an administrative coordinator (that's the new name for special assistant to a commissioner), is leading the list for the top legal job on the county payroll.
     Commission president Doug Howard brought in Windham at $35,000 a year. Officially, she is not his special assistant, because he and the other four commissioners said they would get rid of special assistants, that's his story and he's sticking to it.
     But she does coordinate his schedule, acts as his aide. Officially, she is assigned to chief of staff Steve Powell, but that's just for public display. She works for Howard,  and he set the $35,000 number first, then told staff to work the hourly pay rate out to a 30-hour work week; comes to $22.44 per hour.
     Richard Rothschild, who also said they would bar special assistants, championed the hiring of Kathy Fuller as administrative coordinator, at 25 hours a week, also, at $22.44 per hour. She is assigned to manage the schedule for Commissioner Rothschild, but she may have a promotion pending, too.
   The fact that Howard brought Windham on board miffed Commissioner Robin Frazier, and she insisted that her -- well, the administrative coordinator assigned to her through Powell -- be Shawn Reese, an ally when Frazier was in office prior to her election loss in 2002, and who was reassigned to citizens services jobs. She will not, apparently, be required to take the cut in pay that would put her at $22.44 per hour, and she is designated as an administrative coordinator III, which apparently outranks the others.
     But then the previous commissioners had assistants -- much more open about it, perhaps, but they each had one at upwards of $30,000 a year. The top pay went to Amanda Miller, who was hired by former commissioner Michael Zimmer, who, you may recall, campaigned for office as a critic of money spent on special assistants.
     More interesting is that budget allotment cryptically referred to as the "legal defense fund."  Apparently, the commissioners, who like to call themselves "The Fighting 59th", are girding to fight state planning and land use rules. Going to take them to court, if the state does not take them first.
     This, from the board that campaigned as critics of all the money the previous commissioners spent defending state growth policies over the past eight years.
     See, you have all these lawyers, and all these politicians, and all these irritable activists for and against growth and environmental regulations, and property rights issues, and on and on.
     Courtroom drama is inevitable, and the money must come from somewhere.
     When you get right down to it, tax dollars were spent by two previous boards of commissioners to defend the public against development and residential growth pressures.
     This board will spend your tax dollars defending development interests.
     Doesn't that kind of change make you feel just wonderful?