Looking backward in Carroll County

     So, now you're on the hook for repaving a runway at the local airport without any help from the Federal Aviation Agency.
      Maybe we should just put a padlock on the gate and shut the airport down. It would cost county taxpayers less than fixing the old one now.
     The feds were willing to give the county its share of revenues from airport revenues around the nation, so we could have a nice little airport here to serve the businesses that will share in the costs of running it.
     The businesses would pay virtually all of the costs of the remaining $1.8 million of an expanded runway, though fuel sales, fees, hangar rentals.
     For whatever reason, the news reports of the costs to the county never explained that. The assertions that taxpayers would pay the two and a half percent left after federal contributions and state money were allowed to go unchallenged, and untruth triumphed because of the omission of fact.
     The taxpayers would have paid less than they pay for, say, Robin Frazier and Richard Rothschild's expense accounts over the four years they use the commissioner's office as a pulpit for their extremist views.
     And businesses and local pilots were willing to pay that share. What they were apparently not willing to do was take on the relative handful of local residents who were getting more than their share of newspaper ink with shrill and distorted protests about overreaching government, safety concerns, security issues and other nonsense.
     Too controversial.
     So, now they can continue to pay fees to land and take off on a deteriorating and increasingly costly surface that is less safe than the proposed improvements.
     Yes, less safe. And more of a public nuisance, which is what many of the opponents really care about. Really, they care more about noise than the safety of the pilot and passengers of corporate jets.
     A longer runway is a safer runway. More time to take off, more time to brake when landing. More margin for error, although the safety record is really a red herring altogether.
     A longer runway would have been less of a nuisance: Reduced need for the increased noise of engine thrust at takeoff, or reverse engine braking on landing.
     None of the facts fazed the opponents. They were against the airport, and that's all anyone needed to know.  It became a war of the "little people" with "overreaching government."  Populist fodder, hard for the media to resist.
     The justification of their votes by the respective commissioners prove hollow, and too late. Two said they voted for it, but they did not support it when they ran for office; not with the honest, straightforward rationale that was needed.
     The three who voted against it cited such specious reasons as making a statement about not spending tax dollars, even if they are contributed by the federal and state government.  Robin Frazier exhibited her ineptitude in starkly clear language. Read it. Rothschild showed that he is a demagogue first, and a commissioner to the county second.
     The problem is, the money that would have been provided to make the county airport better, safer, and more attractive to businesses who fly to and from the Baltimore/Washington area has been and will continue to be collected every day -- at other airports.
     It will be distributed for better, safer, forward-looking aviation in other communities.
     We are no safer; perhaps less so.
     And unless we put a padlock on the airport gates and shut it down, we're going to pay more than we had to for maintenance and improvements.
     What leadership.
    

What the DC in Washington stands for

     It took me awhile, including eight years in public office, to figure out what DC means after Washington.
     I know, it's supposed to stand for District of Columbia, but that's yesterday.
     Today, it stands for Distortion Central.
     How we survive with our political system is a puzzle.
     At the federal level, state level and local level, at least among the political set, it's not a lie if it misleads. It is not a lie if it leaves something out, or adds a little extra. Distortion is the new standard for free speech.
     Whatever the opposition says is disregarded as rhetoric. Whatever our partisan hero says is gospel. Who are we to believe?
     One reason you don't know who to believe is because you don't know who's doing the talking. Is it the candidate, or some Wizard of Oz type behind the curtain set up so nicely by the Supreme Court with its ruling that super pac funding is protected speech.
     So, if you have more money than Jack or Jill Public, your voice is louder, more dominant, intrusive, relentless, and unfettered by any regard for fairness, let alone accuracy.
     We elect representatives -- wait: Do we really elect representatives to serve us, or do we merely enable the powers behind the scenes to manipulate the democratic process?
     We allow politicians and the machines who create them in their image to mess with us in ways that we would never put up with when we buy a used car. At least we know who owns the used car lot. We have a better chance at researching the reputation of the sales department.
     The marketing of American political processes is a national disgrace. It happens in Washington, in every state in the Union, and right here at home.
     Those who attempt to be truly transparent become targets. Straight talkers are soon dismantled as arrogant or insensitive. We demand that our candidates pander. And then we insist that they lead us.
     When they lead, we accuse them of losing touch with the people; we remind them that they work for us.
     Populism is the worst way to find excellence. We seek excellent leadership, but we demand that leaders be popular.
     Popularity is useful in marketing music, games, movies and other trivialities. Popular music is fun, entertaining, and has its place. But classical music has survived because it is of high quality, creative, and sustainable over time.
     Today's politicians are judged by the same standard as a country music song.
     Willie Nelson for President, anyone?

GOP: Study in diversity

     Now they are down to five, with the departure of Huntsman, but the GOP has become so diverse, they may be unable to find a leader.
     How did it come to pass that the Democrats, long known for their inability to show a cohesive face in American politics, now can be seen as more stable that the Republicans?
     What the various factions of the GOP seem to want for President is Anybody Except Obama, which leads me to think they should no longer be called GOP -- Government Of the People -- but AEO, and I could have fun all day with alternative meanings for those letters.
     Here they are in January, 2012, and they are whacking at each other with greater zeal than a country gospel preacher at a whore's convention.
     They want someone as electable as Romney, as nasty as Gingrich, as simplistic as Paul, as good ol' boy as Perry and as socially conservative as Santorum. But when you try to pin them down, the result still comes up, "None of the Above."
     Wonder if that will be a choice on the Republican primary ballot in Maryland?

Satellite trash of the month club?

     Remember when you could wait with great expectations the arrival of your "Book of the Month Club" selection? Even if you didn't select it.
     If you forgot to send the cancel card in, they were going to send you a book. And the invoice for it. I put together a nice library by the time I was 25.
     I don't know if they even have a book of the month club any more. They say books are on the way out, and everybody will be reading tomes on their smart phones. Or on the Kindles or whatever. I like the feel of a book in my hands -- or in my lap when I awake from the dozing off part of enjoying a book. With the electronic devices, I'd waste a lot of batteries.
     I saw an item on line the other day about how many satellite trash events we can expect in the new year. Instead of a book arriving that you didn't order, you might have a piece of space trash the size of a school bus come crashing through your roof.
     That's progress for you.
     The odds of being injured by actual trash is like 14 million to one, but the odds of worrying about it as you lie there in the dark at night is closer to 100 percent.
     One of those polls said that 78 percent of the people surveyed think about space trash falling on them more than five times a day. I didn't actually see the poll, but the odds that somebody took such a poll are 98 percent.
     How would we get through life without the instant polls? Apparently, if you have nothing of substance to write about, or no one smart enough to find something interesting, you run a poll.
     I wonder why, because polls show that 75 percent of people don't place any credence in polls. But 88 percent have participated in one in the last month.
     I think what would be really interesting is to start a pool on where and when a piece of satellite junk will land. The winner would split half the earnings with the people who got hit -- if there's anything left of them.
     Gives you something to root for, between reading or participating in polls.
    

Weekly newspapers were weekly for a reason

     Just about every community around here had its own weekly newspaper in the middle of the last century. Most people got one or more daily papers, but everybody got the local weekly.
     They came out weekly for a good reason: In small communities, you could tell all the news fit to print in just one paper a week. The idea of publishing more often that than came mostly from the owners, who wanted to sell more advertising.
     Funeral directors, too, wanted to let neighbors know about deaths in the community more often, because not everyone was considerate enough to die on Tuesday or Wednesday, in time for the day of publication.
     Even today, you could probably get most of the week's real news in one good thick paper a week. The rest we could do without. Except for the comics; that's one place where papers are cutting back that I think is a big mistake. I've always said there was more truth on the comic pages than the rest of the paper altogether. Especially the opinion page.
     Of course, it depends on your definition of local news. I learned over the years that readers often had a different definition of local news than the editors and reporters who put out the paper.
     The occasional reader survey, once management decided to risk spending the money to really find out what readers read, showed that the most important news to readers was the obituaries, followed by Dear Abby. Then they wanted to know what their neighbors were getting into. Nosy, but loyal, those readers. I found out the hard way that they did not agree with me that who had Sunday dinner at the Joneses was not very important news.
     There is an old saying that a daily newspaper is a continuing education, and it's true. But not necessarily just for readers. You can learn something new all the time when you're producing a paper, too.
     I suppose it won't be long before they get rid of paper newspapers, and we click along on line to get information.
     People have figured out that information may not be news, any more than news is always fact. Opinion is more controversial, which makes it more readable, even by people who claim to dislike all the controversy of our times.
     The conventional wisdom today is that anyone with a computer can be a reporter today. I suppose that's true; I started a long career with less. But I wonder if whoever is producing whatever replaces the news as I defined it will learn as much over the years from their daily work as I did.
   

Why Iowa political races matter

     As I write this, we still don't know which Republican won the Iowa caucuses, but it doesn't matter.
     Iowa's standing in deciding national political leaders is almost exactly as important as Carroll County's standing in determining Maryland politics.
     Iowa and Carroll County have a lot in common, besides not mattering much, politically.
     Both are better known for farming than for generating positive change in public policy. That's because both are populated largely by people who don't thing change can be positive.
     Both Iowa and Carroll County are known for corn. People who have never visited Carroll County -- I knew a few such people when I worked in Baltimore -- think this county is just about as corny as you get. Iowa gets that same disrespect on a national scale.
     Hogs do better in both locations than Democrats. Butchering takes place every fall and every election in both places.
     But even those who make jokes about Iowa -- and Carroll County -- agree that they're good places to live. If you're white, that is. And Christian, preferably conservative Christian. And heterosexual. If you're none of those, it is assumed that you are a Democrat.
     Baltimore reporters -- any news people who were born somewhere else -- are a little smart-alecky about country news assignments. They see working here, or Iowa, as just a stepping stone in their careers. They cover the politics here to get the experience they need to get a job covering more important stories in bigger, more urban markets.
     It's more fun to cover the coverage of Iowa than it is to try to find the substance of the issues at stake. The only thing funnier, if you can keep your sense of humor, is to stand off a little to the side and add up the silly things that candidates and their frantic staffers do to try to get attention.
     It's a little like letting the kids take over the playground without the teachers around to keep everything civil. You can have name calling over by the basketball hoop, harassment down by the monkey bars, mugging behind the see-saw and a rock-toss on the ball fields.
     Just like right here.
     By the time this piece sees daylight, the politicians will be gone. The caucus-goers will be tut-tutting around the tables at the local diners, but at least they'll have their coffee in peace, without some slick and her or his entourage, followed by lights and cameras, for a hand-shake session, fresh from trying to milk cows out at the Dutch boy farm.
     The cows will be happy to see them go.
     The good thing is, we'll go through this frenzy in New Hampshire, then again in South Carolina, and I guess Florida.
     By that time, we can start counting the days until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.