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!"