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?