Okay, I see that the county commissioners are considering making English the official language of Carroll County.
Wonderful. Why is it that the very candidates who run for office on a platform for getting rules and regulations out of our lives are the same ones who come up with this kind of silliness?
Oh! I know: They have their fingers on the pols of We The People. A poll in the paper says 65 percent of Carroll County residents favor such a law, as if it protects us from alien life forms or something. This, from a populace that can't speak six words without saying, "...like, I think we, like, need to have everybody be, like, alike, y'know?"
This is what you get when elected leaders -- wrong word: Followers is the right word -- follow populist emotion instead of thinking things through to consider the relevance or consequences of their actions.
I would be prouder of my fellow citizens -- and my elected leaders -- if 65 percent of however many bother to really respond to polls said they want to spend county government time on a reasonable master plan for controlling sprawl and congestion, public services such as fire and ambulance training and recruitment, continued improvement in educational staff and facilities, and more recreational facilities for our kids.
That's enough without worrying about whether language is made "official" by decree.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Why have a plan at all?
Commissioner David Roush wants to remove any and all references in a master plan to saving streams, wetlands, woods, animal habitats. He says there's nothing in the code that defines benefits enough to tie the hands of local government -- make that read development and mining interests -- with a lot of silly rules about clean water and air.
This kind of thinking is what made him so popular with Union Bridger area residents when he was running the Lehigh Cement plant over there, and with environmentalists in general.
Silly me, I thought he'd be a better choice for Westminster District than Michelle Jefferson, or even Doug Mathias, the only Democrat to run for the post. Big problem with Mathias was that he was so desperate to get some Republicans to vote for him that he did a Mitt Romney and started saying stupid things to appeal to the Right.
Roush didn't say much at all, in public, which is in keeping with his style while he was on the county economic development commission.
He seemed a good fit on the EDC: his voice was a counterbalance to the sometime over-reaching and strident rhetoric of the more zealous voices at the other end of the spectrum. But he had plenty to say off the record, in the audience that he thought would agree with him (same tactic that backfired on Romney). While a member of the EDC, Roush let it be known among insiders that he disapproved of any attempt in a master plan to preserve the homes of people in the Mount Airy area where there was a proposal to zone for industrial development.
You have to be tougher than that if you want to zone for business, was his position -- then. Now, it's property rights, so long as you are the landlord owner of the site under consideration. You can bet that in his eyes, Lehigh's property rights trump the property rights of any homeowners or farmers between a mine and the Union Bridge plant.
Now the commissioners are reviewing the master plan and it would appear -- no surprise -- that what they're after is essentially no plan at all. Just a laissez-faire, open season for a big money approach to making more money.
Clean water comes in plastic bottles, and clean air from air conditioning and household filters, right?
This kind of thinking is what made him so popular with Union Bridger area residents when he was running the Lehigh Cement plant over there, and with environmentalists in general.
Silly me, I thought he'd be a better choice for Westminster District than Michelle Jefferson, or even Doug Mathias, the only Democrat to run for the post. Big problem with Mathias was that he was so desperate to get some Republicans to vote for him that he did a Mitt Romney and started saying stupid things to appeal to the Right.
Roush didn't say much at all, in public, which is in keeping with his style while he was on the county economic development commission.
He seemed a good fit on the EDC: his voice was a counterbalance to the sometime over-reaching and strident rhetoric of the more zealous voices at the other end of the spectrum. But he had plenty to say off the record, in the audience that he thought would agree with him (same tactic that backfired on Romney). While a member of the EDC, Roush let it be known among insiders that he disapproved of any attempt in a master plan to preserve the homes of people in the Mount Airy area where there was a proposal to zone for industrial development.
You have to be tougher than that if you want to zone for business, was his position -- then. Now, it's property rights, so long as you are the landlord owner of the site under consideration. You can bet that in his eyes, Lehigh's property rights trump the property rights of any homeowners or farmers between a mine and the Union Bridge plant.
Now the commissioners are reviewing the master plan and it would appear -- no surprise -- that what they're after is essentially no plan at all. Just a laissez-faire, open season for a big money approach to making more money.
Clean water comes in plastic bottles, and clean air from air conditioning and household filters, right?
Monday, September 17, 2012
More reasons to leave the Republican Party
Reasons 34, 42, 51 to change your party affiliation to Independent if you are now a registered Republican:
34. Hypocrisy about voter fraud. On the pretext that Democrats were stuffing ballot boxes with the votes of dead people, the GOP has engaged in an on-going strategy to disenfranchise voters who are not registered Republicans. It started years ago, and during the early 2000s, Republican "volunteers" pushed to have Democrats purged from the voting lists, particularly in Baltimore and the Washington suburbs. Meanwhile, other "volunteers" offered to help senior citizens register to vote by going to nursing homes and attempting to not only register voters, but to get the proxy to file their ballot for them. How generous.
It was going on all over the country, part of a national GOP strategy. Now, in Texas, 80,000 voters have received letters from the state saying they are officially dead, and if they do not call in to re-register, their votes will not count in the next election. People who call in are put on hold, sometimes for as long as an hour. An examination shows that most of the people receiving the notification are, indeed, alive, most are black or Hispanic, and almost all are Democrat. When the mayor of Houston called out the state official (Republican, of course) who ordered the notifications, the state official threatened to cut off state funding to Houston.
42. When candidates Romney and then Ryan were caught deliberately misrepresenting welfare facts in an attempt to discredit the Obama administration, a GOP campaign official said, "We're not going to have our campaign strategy dictated by a bunch of fact-checkers."
51. In the midst of an international crisis during which an American ambassador and three other U.S diplomats are murdered in Libya, a desperate Mitt Romney blames it all on President Obama for "apologizing for America," an egregious display of pandering to the more jingoistic elements of the Right Wing. When even Republicans question the tactic, pointing out that 1) there was no apology, just a condemnation of an irresponsible film insulting Islam, made BEFORE the attack on the consulate, and 2) the comment was made by the very people who were then killed, and not the President, the GOP candidate doubles down and says the President was still responsible because it happened on his watch. Really!
If the GOP is so desperate to return to the White House that it won't even stand with the rest of us in times of crisis, why should we trust them to serve anyone but the money changers later.
Those who cannot stomach changing their party affiliation to Democrat can still salvage their integrity by changing to Unaffiliated, regardless off how they vote on election day.
There are three reasons. If you can't fill in some of the blanks, you haven't been paying enough attention.
34. Hypocrisy about voter fraud. On the pretext that Democrats were stuffing ballot boxes with the votes of dead people, the GOP has engaged in an on-going strategy to disenfranchise voters who are not registered Republicans. It started years ago, and during the early 2000s, Republican "volunteers" pushed to have Democrats purged from the voting lists, particularly in Baltimore and the Washington suburbs. Meanwhile, other "volunteers" offered to help senior citizens register to vote by going to nursing homes and attempting to not only register voters, but to get the proxy to file their ballot for them. How generous.
It was going on all over the country, part of a national GOP strategy. Now, in Texas, 80,000 voters have received letters from the state saying they are officially dead, and if they do not call in to re-register, their votes will not count in the next election. People who call in are put on hold, sometimes for as long as an hour. An examination shows that most of the people receiving the notification are, indeed, alive, most are black or Hispanic, and almost all are Democrat. When the mayor of Houston called out the state official (Republican, of course) who ordered the notifications, the state official threatened to cut off state funding to Houston.
42. When candidates Romney and then Ryan were caught deliberately misrepresenting welfare facts in an attempt to discredit the Obama administration, a GOP campaign official said, "We're not going to have our campaign strategy dictated by a bunch of fact-checkers."
51. In the midst of an international crisis during which an American ambassador and three other U.S diplomats are murdered in Libya, a desperate Mitt Romney blames it all on President Obama for "apologizing for America," an egregious display of pandering to the more jingoistic elements of the Right Wing. When even Republicans question the tactic, pointing out that 1) there was no apology, just a condemnation of an irresponsible film insulting Islam, made BEFORE the attack on the consulate, and 2) the comment was made by the very people who were then killed, and not the President, the GOP candidate doubles down and says the President was still responsible because it happened on his watch. Really!
If the GOP is so desperate to return to the White House that it won't even stand with the rest of us in times of crisis, why should we trust them to serve anyone but the money changers later.
Those who cannot stomach changing their party affiliation to Democrat can still salvage their integrity by changing to Unaffiliated, regardless off how they vote on election day.
There are three reasons. If you can't fill in some of the blanks, you haven't been paying enough attention.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Nine Eleven, 11 years later; are we united?
Eleven years ago today, as I paused in my walk up Westminster's East Main Street to chat with the owner of Guillanova's, Cal Bloom stepped out of his barber shop a few doors up the street and announced that a plane had just crashed into one of the big towers at the World Trade Center in New York.
Wow! Big event. I walked up to stand in front of the TV with Cal and watch the story unfold. As we stood there, a second jet suddenly appeared on the screen and plowed into the second building.
I don't recall either of us making a sound. I think we were incredulous. I said, "The world just changed."
One plane was an accident; two planes constitutes a deliberate attack. Who would be stupid enough to attack the United States?
The nation mourned the deaths of 3,000 people in the attacks in New York and the Pentagon, and in the crash of a third plane which was taken down by American citizens rather than let the terrorists fly into another building full of innocents.
In the days following, America was one nation, indivisible, united in her resolve, her vision, her purpose.
We finally killed the mastermind of the attack, but in the meantime, we lost much. We lost too many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, killed too many civilians ourselves while seeking out bad guys. We soured credibility with much of the world, too, but that doesn't bother most Americans.
Eventually, we lost that sense of nation that we had called on immediately following those attacks. We have, since then, become a nation divided as never before, except for the years during and immediately following the Civil War.
All in just 11 short years. Makes me wonder what it would take to make this country's self-governance work again.
Wow! Big event. I walked up to stand in front of the TV with Cal and watch the story unfold. As we stood there, a second jet suddenly appeared on the screen and plowed into the second building.
I don't recall either of us making a sound. I think we were incredulous. I said, "The world just changed."
One plane was an accident; two planes constitutes a deliberate attack. Who would be stupid enough to attack the United States?
The nation mourned the deaths of 3,000 people in the attacks in New York and the Pentagon, and in the crash of a third plane which was taken down by American citizens rather than let the terrorists fly into another building full of innocents.
In the days following, America was one nation, indivisible, united in her resolve, her vision, her purpose.
We finally killed the mastermind of the attack, but in the meantime, we lost much. We lost too many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, killed too many civilians ourselves while seeking out bad guys. We soured credibility with much of the world, too, but that doesn't bother most Americans.
Eventually, we lost that sense of nation that we had called on immediately following those attacks. We have, since then, become a nation divided as never before, except for the years during and immediately following the Civil War.
All in just 11 short years. Makes me wonder what it would take to make this country's self-governance work again.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Let's hear it for servers
Just for giggles, keep track of how often you've just shoved a forkful of food into your mouth when the server comes up on your blind side and asks, "How is your meal?"
My wife says it happens to me more than others because I hardly give it a rest between shovels. Maybe, but I think it's a conspiracy among a group of people who absolutely must have a great sense of humor to do what they do, day in and day out.
So I'm not here to make fun of servers, but to give them due credit for a generally great job.
Get giddy over celebrities, if you will, and pore over the tabloids to see who's who on TV or in the movies. Get choked up over the fiery rhetoric of your favorite politician, but to me, those who serve us our meals in our restaurants are among the finest examples of solid, hard-working Americans you can find.
Kitchen help is spotty these days; hard to get people back there who can manage to show up on time and stay for a whole shift -- admittedly a long shift and hard work. Don't want to take anything away from the best of them, but the fact is, they prep and plate and kiss it goodbye.
It's the waitress or waiter -- I defend the honor in those job descriptions -- who takes the plate to the customer and will bear the consequences of the timeliness and quality of the food on arrival.
The store manager will make the obligatory rounds to ask customers how is their experience. I've been known to say the service is great and will remain so if management doesn't screw it up.
Indeed, in every restaurant I can think of, if there is a problem, it originates with or goes back to management: Lack of discipline in the kitchen reflects on the server, but shouldn't. It's a manager who won't deal with it.
I once got up and walked out of a restaurant after a loud argument broke out between two kitchen helpers in back who were yelling insults at two waitresses out front. The manager weighed in but didn't stop it -- she should have set those cooks straight right there.
Good cooks get my respect. Good servers even more, because they're on the front lines. Managers get credit when they manage, as opposed to enabling unreliable and unprofessional behavior.
How much support the store manager gets depends often on the real culprits in chain operations, the district managers, who are like those politicians who think that serving the public is all about making numbers add up.
Take care of the wants and expectations of customers and the needs of the people who serve them, and management gets easier.
My wife says it happens to me more than others because I hardly give it a rest between shovels. Maybe, but I think it's a conspiracy among a group of people who absolutely must have a great sense of humor to do what they do, day in and day out.
So I'm not here to make fun of servers, but to give them due credit for a generally great job.
Get giddy over celebrities, if you will, and pore over the tabloids to see who's who on TV or in the movies. Get choked up over the fiery rhetoric of your favorite politician, but to me, those who serve us our meals in our restaurants are among the finest examples of solid, hard-working Americans you can find.
Kitchen help is spotty these days; hard to get people back there who can manage to show up on time and stay for a whole shift -- admittedly a long shift and hard work. Don't want to take anything away from the best of them, but the fact is, they prep and plate and kiss it goodbye.
It's the waitress or waiter -- I defend the honor in those job descriptions -- who takes the plate to the customer and will bear the consequences of the timeliness and quality of the food on arrival.
The store manager will make the obligatory rounds to ask customers how is their experience. I've been known to say the service is great and will remain so if management doesn't screw it up.
Indeed, in every restaurant I can think of, if there is a problem, it originates with or goes back to management: Lack of discipline in the kitchen reflects on the server, but shouldn't. It's a manager who won't deal with it.
I once got up and walked out of a restaurant after a loud argument broke out between two kitchen helpers in back who were yelling insults at two waitresses out front. The manager weighed in but didn't stop it -- she should have set those cooks straight right there.
Good cooks get my respect. Good servers even more, because they're on the front lines. Managers get credit when they manage, as opposed to enabling unreliable and unprofessional behavior.
How much support the store manager gets depends often on the real culprits in chain operations, the district managers, who are like those politicians who think that serving the public is all about making numbers add up.
Take care of the wants and expectations of customers and the needs of the people who serve them, and management gets easier.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Romney needs no bump in Carroll County
Pundits say Mitt Romney gained only a little ground in popularity as a result of the GOP convention last week, and now he and President Obama are tied in national polls. They call it a bump.
The same pundits are saying that Obama will likely enjoy a bump after the Democrats' convention, and should pull ahead again, but it will be a close race down to the wire.
But that's nationally, not in Carroll County. Carroll County will be tight with Mitt and you'll be seeing Mitt bumper stickers on pickup trucks for another five years, no matter who wins this November.
What will be interesting to see, should Romney win the election, is whether he learns to relax in his skin as a politician.
He looks uncomfortable, and I have a theory: I think he knows that political campaigns are populated by advisers who keep telling you how to act, who to be, what to say and -- more important -- what not to say, and how to clean up the mess after you've said the wrong thing.
He's just not a natural at this image thing. Charisma is like hair; you either have it or you don't, and worrying about it just makes it harder to deal with realities.
Romney has the hair, and the teeth, and lean fit tallness that makes muster with those who value popularity first by appearances and other superficialities. But he has to say things that don't mesh with things he has done in the past and, indeed, most likely still believes today. He has to tell the hard-core conservatives what they want to hear, and Romney chokes on the words.
Ryan has shown that he has what it takes to campaign. He can say two things at virtually the same time and make it look like you must have missed something. He's obviously comfortable with expedient and glib rhetoric, and keeps winning a seat in Congress from a district that is considerably less conservative than the positions he pushes when he gets to Washington.
His skills will be tested now that he is in the national spotlight, and his words and actions back home are going to be contrasted with the obstructionist, uncompromising positions that he has used in concert with other absolutists in what has been shown to be the most ineffectual congress in modern history.
Like his colleague and another "Young Gun," Virgina Republican Eric Cantor, Ryan has great ability to revise the facts. Cantor smiled brightly and with a straight face told a public television reporter that it was Obama who refused to adopt the recommendation of the Simpson-Bowles Super committee on how to get the budget back on track. "He patted them on the head and sent them home," is the Ryan/Cantor talking point, when the fact is, it was they who voted it down in Congress. Had they been willing to build, rather than destroy, the plan would now be in effect, the so-called doomsday budget crisis would be over, and Wall Street and world markets would relax and be able to go back to working on a viable economy.
They sank the ship, then blamed the President and democrats. It is a lie, but it's their lie and they are going to keep telling it.
Same with the disinformation Romney's campaign people put out on the effects of the Obama plan for Medicare.The GOP claim has been branded "pants on fire, liar, liar" rhetoric by every non-partisan fact-checker covering politics, but as the Romney campaign chairman said, they're not going to let the facts get in the way of something that seems to be working for them.
It's working for the zealots on the Right, but what about the rest of us?
And is it giving Romney a bad taste in his mouth? I hope so.
Ryan still has his supporters, but after his convention speech, a number of observers expressed the same thoughts expressed by syndicated columnist Mark Shields, who said Ryan has enjoyed respect until now for his reputation as a truth-teller, but his loose interpretation of truth in his convention comments have undermined that.
Ryan was chosen because the extreme Right loves him. His ability to turn half truths and incomplete anecdotes into political fodder shows him to be capable of creating chaos if not a solution to complex issues. That's what the hard core wants.
Romney wants desperately, I believe, to be President to all the people, and it grates on him to play the games that this new breed of obstructionist Republicans demand of him.
I have to wonder if he'd get another bounce if he told us all what he really thinks and believes, and lets the chips fall where they may.
It won't make a difference in Carroll County, because there are enough Republicans here who don't want to be confused with the facts. Ryan's their boy, along with Cantor and the rest of the worst congress ever.
The same pundits are saying that Obama will likely enjoy a bump after the Democrats' convention, and should pull ahead again, but it will be a close race down to the wire.
But that's nationally, not in Carroll County. Carroll County will be tight with Mitt and you'll be seeing Mitt bumper stickers on pickup trucks for another five years, no matter who wins this November.
What will be interesting to see, should Romney win the election, is whether he learns to relax in his skin as a politician.
He looks uncomfortable, and I have a theory: I think he knows that political campaigns are populated by advisers who keep telling you how to act, who to be, what to say and -- more important -- what not to say, and how to clean up the mess after you've said the wrong thing.
He's just not a natural at this image thing. Charisma is like hair; you either have it or you don't, and worrying about it just makes it harder to deal with realities.
Romney has the hair, and the teeth, and lean fit tallness that makes muster with those who value popularity first by appearances and other superficialities. But he has to say things that don't mesh with things he has done in the past and, indeed, most likely still believes today. He has to tell the hard-core conservatives what they want to hear, and Romney chokes on the words.
Ryan has shown that he has what it takes to campaign. He can say two things at virtually the same time and make it look like you must have missed something. He's obviously comfortable with expedient and glib rhetoric, and keeps winning a seat in Congress from a district that is considerably less conservative than the positions he pushes when he gets to Washington.
His skills will be tested now that he is in the national spotlight, and his words and actions back home are going to be contrasted with the obstructionist, uncompromising positions that he has used in concert with other absolutists in what has been shown to be the most ineffectual congress in modern history.
Like his colleague and another "Young Gun," Virgina Republican Eric Cantor, Ryan has great ability to revise the facts. Cantor smiled brightly and with a straight face told a public television reporter that it was Obama who refused to adopt the recommendation of the Simpson-Bowles Super committee on how to get the budget back on track. "He patted them on the head and sent them home," is the Ryan/Cantor talking point, when the fact is, it was they who voted it down in Congress. Had they been willing to build, rather than destroy, the plan would now be in effect, the so-called doomsday budget crisis would be over, and Wall Street and world markets would relax and be able to go back to working on a viable economy.
They sank the ship, then blamed the President and democrats. It is a lie, but it's their lie and they are going to keep telling it.
Same with the disinformation Romney's campaign people put out on the effects of the Obama plan for Medicare.The GOP claim has been branded "pants on fire, liar, liar" rhetoric by every non-partisan fact-checker covering politics, but as the Romney campaign chairman said, they're not going to let the facts get in the way of something that seems to be working for them.
It's working for the zealots on the Right, but what about the rest of us?
And is it giving Romney a bad taste in his mouth? I hope so.
Ryan still has his supporters, but after his convention speech, a number of observers expressed the same thoughts expressed by syndicated columnist Mark Shields, who said Ryan has enjoyed respect until now for his reputation as a truth-teller, but his loose interpretation of truth in his convention comments have undermined that.
Ryan was chosen because the extreme Right loves him. His ability to turn half truths and incomplete anecdotes into political fodder shows him to be capable of creating chaos if not a solution to complex issues. That's what the hard core wants.
Romney wants desperately, I believe, to be President to all the people, and it grates on him to play the games that this new breed of obstructionist Republicans demand of him.
I have to wonder if he'd get another bounce if he told us all what he really thinks and believes, and lets the chips fall where they may.
It won't make a difference in Carroll County, because there are enough Republicans here who don't want to be confused with the facts. Ryan's their boy, along with Cantor and the rest of the worst congress ever.
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