How to fix just about anything

     Sooner or later, table talk at any morning coffee klatch will turn to what's broken, which is just about everything from Congress to sports.

     I have a partial list of my own, and some solutions:

     How to fix Congress:  1. For the next 12 years, elect all women. Men swagger too much.  Make them earn a return to Washington politics. 2. Elect House members to four year terms and limit them to two consecutive terms. If they take a term off, they can run again for one term. 3. Elect no one who has not had a job in the real world for at least 12 years (lawyers must have 20 years' in a grocery store or retail, or some other work involving everyday people). 4. Make it a felony for anyone leaving public office to go to work as a lobbyist until they have spent at least six years in charitable work for no pay.
     How to fix major league baseball:  1. Use the strike zone as set by the rulebook, not the umpires and the hitters' union. 2. Start the games on time, limit the time between half innings to a minute and a half, and stop pandering to the people who pay for commercials. They can advertise in the normal time it takes a team to take the field and warm up the pitcher, or forget about it. 3. Compensate for the loss of revenue by not paying players so much. They don't need and don't deserve to take home more than the national gross product of most of the world's nations. 4. Make the owners pay for new ball parks, and require that only residents of the city or at least the state in which the team plays may own a team. 5. Eliminate free agency bidding. Limits on salaries would stop the inflation of salaries. Players can still move to another team, but for no more than three percent more than they earned with their previous team.
     How to fix pro football:  1. Play it like they play it in high school and college, and banish forever any player who comes to dance instead of make the plays.  2. Exile any player who gets too violent to the showers in the nearest maximum security prison for one week.
     How to fix road rage and traffic congestion problems: 1. Take cars away from aggressive drivers and require that they commute to work on a Big Wheel toy tricycle.
     This is just a partial list, of course, and I really haven't given them any more than any of the Republican candidates have to their tax reform plans, but hey, it's a start.

Rothschild is a publicity hound, and the board condones it

     Commissioner Richard Rothschild is in love with the image in which he has recreated himself, and he's using county taxpayers' money to share it with the wider world.
     That's bad enough -- pathetic, really. But the really bad part is that the other four commissioners seem to go along with it.
     Is Rothschild running the agenda?  Seems so.
     The decision to hold a "forum" with hand-picked "experts" on climate change and its causes in Pikesville, rather than Carroll County, is an attempt to increase the liklihood of Baltimore television station coverage, likely set up by Rothschild's pick, promoter James Simpson also on contract with taxpayer dollars.
     Haven Shoemaker is disgusted, but one has to wonder why he does not speak out enough; he certainly wasn't shy about running down then-commissioner Julia Gouge when he decided to go after her place on the Board of Commissioners.
     This was the same Shoemaker who in the several years prior had praised the county leaders for coming to Hampstead's aid in getting the Route 30 by-pass moving, saving the old Hampstead High School and turning it into senior housing, and cleaning up some zoning issues that had occurred because of developers' games in past years.
     Once he decided Gouge was vulnerable, largely because of the redistricting for five commissioners, Shoemaker cozied up to the northeast news rag or whatever it was that the anti-Gouge crowd funded and began his campaign.
     Well, that was just politics, as they say in the sleazy shadows of the game. But now, he's in office, and has responsibilities, so why has he not taken the lead against what he, more than anyone on the board, knows is nothing but a self-serving, career-building agenda by a slick-talking snake oil salesman whose rhetoric comes as easily as that of the con man Professor Hill in The Music Man?
      Or does Shoemaker feel beholden to that man behind the curtain who helped him get elected?
      And, as I have asked before, what does Dave Roush stand for, or against?
     Rothschild goes on radio stations, which will play to their ratings -- right wing listeners -- and share chuckles and inside jokes, and compliment each other, back and forth, on their wit and wisdom.
    Perhaps Rothschild will resign and run for Congress; he's telling audiences on all his tours that he is now a national political figure, bearing the burden of carrying the flag for the Constitution and conservative ideals.
    He seems bent on making a career of it. Not a stupid plot, when you think about it, seeing as how the real estate business, in which he allegedly became one of the ten wealthiest Carroll Countians, has been played out like a Nevada tin mine, leaving so many Americans on the short end of the boom.
    It's just that most of us, when we have been forced to make a career change, don't run a populist campaign to gain access to public money to pay the way.
   Has anybody INSIDE the county office building mustered up the nerve to point out to Rothschild and Simpson that they are making a laughing stock of the county? We all know about the public critics, dismissed by Rothschild and his benumbed loyalists as "lefties." But the critics are just locals, and there is a wider audience out there he wants to reach.
     I understand that the staff members I counted on for candid advice don't feel welcome to speak up off camera with this board.
     I feel sorry for those whose service to the county citizens for so many years now find themselves carrying water for the likes of Rothschild and Robin Frazier and Doug Howard.
     Perhaps if Shoemaker and Roush had the spine to push back with the vigor that is called for, those county employees would find some redemption.
     How many months remain in this term?
    
    

Note to Times' copy desk: Bad "facts" should be edited out

     Several items on the editorial page of the Carroll County Times about the proposed waste to energy plant and the upgrades to Carroll County Regional Airport contain errors in fact that should never get past a professional copy desk.
     I know the editorial page is a place for opinion, and that any flake can express any off the wall opinion so long as it isn't malicious, libelous or lewd.
     Well, malice seems to be the new virtue in the media, especially the electronic versions, because mere outrageous indignation is too benign for our over the top, Jerry Springer culture.
     But a good editorial page will not knowingly allow continued propagation of assertions that have been proven false, let alone malicious.
     Certain claims in favor of both the trash to electricity project and the airport certainly arguable, but let us make something clear right now: Never was any fuel dumped by any plane landing or taking off at Westminster's airport. Never will happen. The allegations that the discolored rooftops and the blisters on the feet of children playing in wet grass was caused by dumped fuel was disproved several years ago, so can we please stop letting the falsehoods creep into articles, opinion or not, as fact?
     Another misrepresentation of fact is the continued assertion that the city of Harrisburg's bankruptcy was caused by their investment in a waste to energy plant "just like the one Carroll and Frederick Counties are proposing."
          Wrong context! Harrisburg tried to upgrade old technology, which is nothing like the Maryland operations and the one planned in Frederick. They mishandled the premise, then mishandled the ways they financed it, including caving in to fiscal critics and limiting their options.
     Ironically, the plant is now operating at a profit.
     Waste Not Carroll kept getting it wrong, too, but I have came to the conclusion that they didn't care about facts; their job was to oppose "incinerators"; perhaps there was a fear that having an open mind to new technology -- and new facts -- would erode the number and zeal of those with environmental concerns.
     In a recent column on the Times' editorial page, Westminster City Councilman Dennis Frazier got it wrong on both the treatment plant and the airport, and the copy desk allowed him to show his ignorance.
     But then this is the councilman who proposed getting rid of parking meters without asking if anyone had ever studied such an idea in the past. Been there, done that, he might have been told by anyone who has paid attention to city issues at all over the past decade or so.
     So, opinions are free, and worth what they cost; facts are rare, and context is everything, particularly if credibility is valued at all.
    

Static in our connected culture

     I'm not sure we're as well-connected as the hype contends.
     Sure, any twit can tweet their twerps instantly almost anywhere with trivia of the moment, but try getting hold of your doctor. A real person in the doctor's office, I mean.
     Technology advances have allowed telemarketers to find me as I am sitting on the toilet, but if I try to get hold of my cable company, phone or utility provider, medical services or even the same salesmen who called me when I was indisposed, chances are I'll get a recorded menu.
     Then there is the touted paperless society -- reason given for requiring that I have 147 passwords, each with different rules (upper and lower case with numbers, no numbers, yadda) to go on line to access my accounts for banking, social security, insurance -- everything.
     I used to plan trips on a travel site, for which I had a sign-in and a password. Over time, I forgot either the sign-in or the password -- the site is vague about that when it denies me access to "my" account. After three tries, I am shut out. For my safety. So, I no longer use that travel site. When I try to create a new account, it tells me I already have an account, please sign on to that. There is no phone number to call.
     Same deal with a timeshare account; I can't use the thing, because whenever I sign in, some little troll in the system tells me I have only two choices, neither of them during the times I can travel. The troll obviously has not been introduced to the salesman who promised us we could buy one condo and visit thousands around the world.
     Back to the doctor; stress problems. Once I breach the walls, I go in and find that I have to fill out forms. Again.
     What did you do with the info I gave you on my last visit? If they can't keep track of my name, address, social and phone numbers, who knows where the files on blood pressure, etc., went.
     And it's not just one doctor; I see half a dozen for various ailments, and they're all the same.
     Can't blame the doctors, though; they don't run their offices. The Women do. The Women are tired of inconvenient calls from needy and cranky patients, and they are united in their crusade to restore order to the chaos.
     In our overly connected world, they have found ways to screen the incoming calls, and take it slower. Can't say I blame them, really.

It's more like wee wee on the people . . .

     "We the people" used to be a term to be respected, but the perverse interpretations it takes on when used by those who spew hatred do our Constitution a disservice.
     The original words were written by people of character and courage, who signed their names to the document dedicated to higher ideals, just as the writers of the Declaration of Independence signed theirs.
     When I hear and read some of the things said by the self-anointed guardians of American patriotism and freedom, most of them with pseudonyms, it seems they are hiding behind a good idea to destroy true democratic discourse -- or their opponents' reputations.
     That's when free speech gets as offensive as urinating in public.
     Like drunks outside a neighborhood bar, they think they're amusing, or sharing a bonding, rebellious moment, but the fact is they are ugly, repulsive and self-defeating.
     No-class knows class when it sees it, only class knows no-class when it sees it.
              

Tribes and factions in America

    At some point, I suppose I will have to try to pass myself off as a member of one tribe or another, or risk exile, or worse.
     We like to think that Americans are an advanced culture, and long past tribalism. Rivalry among tribes, we know, is at the root of the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and most of the other nations of Africa. We're supposed to be better than that. More enlightened, more sophisticated.
    In spite of that self-assured opinion, we see an awful lot of evidence that Americans really, down deep, need to be identified with a tribe, need to be part of some group that shares our values and -- well, biases.
    Political parties are sort of like tribes. There are unconfirmed reports of some extreme political factions eating their young.
    Some of us are not really given a choice of which tribe we belong to; we are told by media or academics or marketers that we are the Baby Boomer Tribe, the Millennium Generation Tribe, which may have overrun the Gen-X and Generation Y tribes. It's hard to keep up.
     One way to get your bearings and find out what tribe you should be in is to look at your junk mail. Someone knows who you are and where you live.
     Once you are labeled as a member of one tribe, it's hard to get into another tribe.
I wonder what would happen if, say, a member of the Tea Party tribe decided to become a member of the Occupy Wall Street tribe. It might be hard for outsiders to tell one from the other, but I don't think you can be both for long. It would be interested to see if one tribe would absorb the other, the way the conservatives tribe has tried to absorb the teaparty members.

    That can happen; just outlive the other, or get absorbed. Old hippies and flower power tribes eventually morphed into their parents' Establishment tribe, and it's hard to tell them from the AARP and American Legion tribes today, until the arguments break out between those who served in the military and those who never have.
   Most people eventually join some tribe -- for one thing, there's a certain comfort level to be found in a group of like-minded people.
     I suppose I should settle down and pick one.
     On the other hand, it's probably too late for me. Come to think of it, I went into self-exile sometime in the 10th grade, and despite participation in a number of civic organizations, service clubs, rec leagues and even (urrrp!) political office, I have never really been part of a tribe.
     Just a wandering pilgrim on the landscape, an observer at the edge of the campfires.
Just as well:  Someone once told me I ask too many questions to be a good tribe member.                

Want to find a cult? Flush out a fundamentalist anything

    During a visit to Annapolis, back when I was trying to play nice with the Republican establishment, I was introduced to a woman who, I was told, was a new member of the central committee. No sooner had we exchanged a handshake when the woman asked me, "Have you been Saved?"
     "None of your business," I started to say, but -- well, I was really, really trying to play nice with all of these wingnuts that I had not realized were serious. I thought all Right Wing zealotry was an act, like kids playing cowboys and Indians, only this was Republicans and Everyone Else.
     Probably not by your definition, I said, but I have a relationship with God. Him, or Her, or That Which Has No Name.  Personally, I really liked that Star Wars term, and wanted to tell the smiling witch who was inquiring about my soul, "May the Force be with you," but that might have ruined the evening.
     I never liked people who think they have all the answers when they never bothered to ask enough questions.
     Fundamentalists, one the other hand, will not tolerate one who questions.
     The biggest threat to a fundamental belief of any kind is a very human question: "Why?"
     "Why?" pops the lid off Pandora's box. First thing you know, someone in the back of the room is asking, "Who says so?"  And it goes downhill from there.  Questions require answers, and answers lead to interpretation and even more questions, which leads to nuance, and that is the definition of education, and education is feared by another name -- Liberalism.
     I think the person who coined the phrase, "Keep It Simple, Stupid," was talking to a fellow fundamentalist, and it was a term of endearment.
     Some of us can't resist the need to ask questions. Seek new ideas or thoughts.
     During my Navy days, I spent three weeks aboard the USS Sacramento off the coast of Vietnam. I shared a small office deep in the ship with two Mormons who were delighted to tell me about their religion. They gave me the Book of Mormon, which I read. They testified, and proselytized, and witnessed for their creed, but I was just full of questions.
     I wasn't trying to undermine their faith; I was trying to understand it, and I was delighted to discover that these two Mormons were able to remain friendly even when others might have become defensive or playing the judgment card.
     I had a similar experience with a young man who worked with me at the News American in Baltimore. As nice a young man as you could ever meet, and full of family values; Monday nights, the TV was off, and he and his wife and kids played board games together.
     Jack Anderson, the syndicated columnist, was a Mormon; not quite as friendly or as engaging as the other Mormons I had met, but not a bad guy to talk to.
     I know that some practices and history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- or what we call Mormons -- are less than savory to most of us.
     But you see, those were the actions of strict Mormon fundamentalists.
     That introduction of Gov. Perry by the nice Christian fundamentalist preacher might sound like a warm embrace to people of a like mind, but to me, it was like a preamble to a lynching; the man of the cloth judged all Mormons as not only non-Christian, but anti-Christian members of a cult.
     I have been over the wall and seen the world, and I can testify that the Mormons I have met consider themselves Christians. But not all of them are what you would call fundamentalists.
     Seems that fundamentalists of all  kinds, Christian, Jew, Muslim or Constitutionalists, leave something to be desired.

Mooooo! The sound of a different ox being gored

     That sound you hear from the good ol' country boys on the back 40 is the sound of THEIR ox being gored, for want of a less polite euphemism.
      Talking about redistricting here, which is always painful for someone, depending on which party is in power when the time comes to restore fair and balanced representation in government.
     Forgive me for enjoying the moment, because the folks braying about political manipulation now are the very ones who engineered the corrupted county redistricting plan prior to the "five commissioners by district" debacle.
     Talking about the Republican Central Committee now, and master maneuverer Joe Getty, who went and got himself elected State Senator, once Larry Haines got out of the way. Joe was likely beginning to think Larry would never sell out and move to Pennsylvania. Getty paid his dues for years, and now he's top dog, but the pound neighborhood is changing, and maybe not as nice a place to be as the old dogs would like.
     Haines was the perennial good ol' country boy, spinning tales about when every farm house in Carroll County had an outhouse out back, and boys walked barefoot to the pond to catch fish for supper, and Sunday was a great day because it started with four hours of church and ended with one less chicken in the barnyard.
     When the commissioners wanted to put up a "Welcome To Carroll County" sign, Haines lobbied to add the words, "Gateway to Western Maryland."
     I said the appropriate place for that sign was somewhere on the western side of Parr's Ridge, on the way to Thurmont, because most people living on the eastern side of the county related more to the Baltimore area, from whence most of them had emigrated, and many of them commuted to work. Larry did not appreciate that.
     Neither did Joe Getty, or any of the other Conservative Republicans who were determined to turn their eyes West, to the hills, and ignore the creeping urbanized culture coming to the county.
     They were incensed that the county commissioners had membership in the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, and that we had good working relationships with the leaderships in Baltimore County and city, Howard, Anne Arundel and even Montgomery Counties -- again, areas where many of the 65 percent of commuters from this county earned the wages that made their $600,000 "country estates" in Carroll possible.
     They Jerry-rigged the county commissioner districts prior to the last local election because some of those new residents might be inclined to be a little more progressive on matters of schools, parks, and transportation, and less inclined to see roads clog even more with the continued growth of residential units on farmland.
     Preserve farms my patootie! Farms were to raise corn until you sold it to a developer. It did not sit well with this crowd that farmers were learning that preservation worked just as well for the retiring farmer as selling it off for housing.
     That's because the real client here was Real Estate and its development.
     Did I mention that Haines was active in real estate?
     And business interests in the county like the good ol boy system, too. Think about it: If you bring modern information-based industry to Carroll County, that would put upward pressure on salaries paid to local workers in key jobs.
     Years ago, the powers that were in nearby Hanover, Pa., kept Harley Davidson and Caterpillar plants out of town because the local shoe and clothing factories were afraid they would lose workers or -- Heaven forbid -- raise wages.
     The redistricting plan put forth for Maryland makes uber-conservative Andy Harris, a darling of the Club for Growth set, more vulnerable because he loses conservative areas and gains communities who are -- well, less conservative, maybe even moderate in their politics. And out West, Roscoe Bartlett, who ran 30 years ago on a platform to limit terms in Congress, will lose some local voters.
     A Democrat might even be the county's representative in the south of the county. Golly, what's Carroll County coming to?
      Hear it?    "Moooooooooooo!"

Has anyone heard from Commissioner Dave Roush?

     As Carroll County commissioners Richard Rothschild and Robin Frazier display their one-note ideology over and over again, colleague Haven Shoemaker has spoken up in opposition to the extreme tilt to the Right and may have redeemed himself as a reasonable and more centrist, pragmatic thinker.
     Why, indeed, give $6,000 a month in taxpayer dollars away so Rothschild can lay claim to a "national presence," which, Rothschild laments, has brought him undue scrutiny and criticism similar to that suffered by Sarah Palin.
     Rothschild, not satisfied with self-serving rhetoric, wanted to hire a like-thinking hack -- that's what real news people call a hired spin master  -- to polish up the image for a larger audience.
     Shoemaker knows a grandstand play when he sees one, because he made a few beauties in successfully campaigning against incumbent Julia Gouge in The Election The Republican Central Committee Engineered through savvy redistricting and reduction in the Gouge base.
     But now, to his credit, Shoemaker has had enough, and has said so.
     Doug Howard, who I once thought was a lot brighter than average, seems to prattle on about the Rightness of the new board's agenda, as if the five of them have somehow been anointed with mandates to completely reverse everything that could be called reasonable progress in recent years.
     His defense of the inability to find a planner as reported in a recent issue of The Carroll County Times actually inspired horse laughs in those who know what's really the problem. Howard said it may be difficult to find a professional planner who can work with the policies of the current board of commissioners and take the plan where the commissioners want to go.
     Ya think?
     NO self-respecting professional planner would touch the Carroll County planning job unless they were ready to retire, and willing to toss their reputations and take the money and move to Florida.
     That's why former economic development director Larry Twele left the county for a job Howard County. No dead-end streets for him.
     Virtually every planner -- and economic development professional -- knows that Carroll County was on the right track with reduced emphasis on residential growth and development of zoned areas to attract modern, state of the art business. The election of this board was a huge U-turn to the pre-1960 era.
     It is unsustainable. Rothschild does not even understand the definition of that word, but he does not like it, because it does not fit his iron-bound politispeak. Here is a guy who refuses to acknowledge that islands are disappearing because water is rising.
     But we all saw all of that coming. Where we are and where we are headed, at least until the next election, is no surprise.
     What is a surprise to me, and some other observers, is the absence of any semblance of leadership from Commissioner Dave Roush.
     Roush had strong opinions when he served on the economic development commission, and later on the Board of Zoning Appeals. He heard all the testimony of the advisers and saw the results of professional surveys on what direction the county needed to go to keep the tax rate down and create local jobs of a status to pay for the county quality of life. He spoke up, contributed to the dialog.
     So where is he now?
     Of all the candidates for commissioner in the last election, Roush had the most solid position of understanding of the issues the county faces, and the consequences of turning back the clock. Frazier was and is hopelessly didactic about conservative values and clueless about realities; Rothschild was obviously an ideologue with a conspiracy mentality. Howard had potential, in a benign, deer-in-the-headlights sort of way, but has failed miserably to examine the facts because he's too busy justifying actions. Note to Howard: It's okay to think for yourself. Key word is "think."
     Shoemaker has come to the party.
     I expected a lot more than I have seen or heard from Roush. Perhaps he is not being served well by the press, which tends to ignore or under report reasonable comment.
     But I never questioned his judgment, and thought that as a commissioner, in a position that requires openness and leadership, he would stand up for what he knows.
      He is past due.