The Old Line

And While Your Head Is Spinning, Hold Tight, It's Just Beginning

2007-03-11T13:46:00.000-04:00

As some of you may already know, the group blog Free State Politics got a grant from BlogPAC to move to a community, Daily Kos-style format. Well, I'm happy to report that the new site is live. And what's more, I'll be administrating the damn thing.

What does that mean? Well, for one, it means this blog will be coming to an end. No sense in maintaining two Maryland politics blogs. I do, however, have a personal blog that I'll probably use from time to time. Expect the posting there to be less often, and the content less timely.

So head over to the new FSP already!

2007 D.C. Idiotarod

2007-02-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

Well, I know what I'm doing this Saturday. Or I may just go and watch.

Tags: washington dc idiotarod

Kids Today

2007-02-28T13:48:00.000-05:00

A 19-year-old freshman from St. John's College, my alma mater, has started an international affairs magazine. And he uses Skype to conduct actual interviews with people around the globe and produce radio programs. Back when I was in college, just having a blog was considered cutting edge. And now they're producing indie versions of Foreign Affairs and CNN? God, I'm getting old.

Tags: st johns college media technology

Consumer-Directed Death

2007-02-28T11:04:00.000-05:00

Disgusting:

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.
If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.
Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.

I have no idea what to say. I guess it would be crass to point out that it's avoiding outcomes like these that are the reason to adopt universal health insurance; but then I suppose it was crass to use the Love Canal disaster to enact regulations for toxic waste sites, or to use the Enron scandal to pass new regulations for corporate governance. There was absolutely no reason this boy had to die like this, and if we had a rational health care system that didn't put even basic care out of the reach of millions of Americans, it would not have happened.

This reminds me of an article Malcolm Gladwell wrote a while back on why the American health insurance system, with its "thicket of co-payments and deductibles and utilization reviews," is such a failure. Among health economists, the theory goes that, if you have to pay a substantial portion of your health care costs, you will use health care more efficiently. But:

...when you have to pay for your own health care, does your consumption really become more efficient? In the late nineteen-seventies, the RAND Corporation did an extensive study on the question, randomly assigning families to health plans with co-payment levels at zero per cent, twenty-five per cent, fifty per cent, or ninety-five per cent, up to six thousand dollars. As you might expect, the more that people were asked to chip in for their health care the less care they used. The problem was that they cut back equally on both frivolous care and useful care. Poor people in the high-deductible group with hypertension, for instance, didn't do nearly as good a job of controlling their blood pressure as those in other groups, resulting in a ten-per-cent increase in the likelihood of death. As a recent Commonwealth Fund study concluded, cost sharing is "a blunt instrument." Of course it is: how should the average consumer be expected to know beforehand what care is frivolous and what care is useful? I just went to the dermatologist to get moles checked for skin cancer. If I had had to pay a hundred per cent, or even fifty per cent, of the cost of the visit, I might not have gone. Would that have been a wise decision? I have no idea. But if one of those moles really is cancerous, that simple, inexpensive visit could save the health-care system tens of thousands of dollars (not to mention saving me a great deal of heartbreak). The focus on moral hazard suggests that the changes we make in our behavior when we have insurance are nearly always wasteful. Yet, when it comes to health care, many of the things we do only because we have insurance—like getting our moles checked, or getting our teeth cleaned regularly, or getting a mammogram or engaging in other routine preventive care—are anything but wasteful and inefficient. In fact, they are behaviors that could end up saving the health-care system a good deal of money. (Emphases added.)

This is why Health Savings Accounts, so favored by the Bush administration, are so wrongheaded: having a high-deductible plan doesn't necessarily make you more cost-effective in your health care decisions, and the people who run up the highest health care bills -- usually people with chronic illnesses -- are going to bust through that deductible anyway. As much as some on the Right would like to make the health care system more like a "free market," the evidence suggests that it causes more problems than it solves.

Tags: health care health insurance

Look Out Ahead, See Danger Come

2007-02-28T10:48:00.000-05:00

When did the D.C. area start to turn into L.A.:

A routine attempt to pull a car over in Baltimore County early this morning turned into a bizarre televised police chase across suburban Maryland, into the District and back into Prince George's County, according to law enforcement officials and news reports.
The chase lasted one hour and 10 minutes, and ended in Prince George's County with the fleeing car hitting at last two Maryland State police vehicles, a pickup truck and a light pole before driving onto a sidewalk and coming to a stop.
The hood of the car was crumpled and had been pushed open, obscuring the windshield. The car was belching steam from the radiator and sparks from the undercarriage.
Police with their guns drawn surrounded the driver as he stepped out of the vehicle, while a traffic helicopter that had tracked the chase from Baltimore continued to shoot video that was broadcast live on local television stations. The officers slammed the driver against the side of his car, and took him into custody.

This happened just one day after another high speed chase occurred in the Tenleytown neighborhood of the District. I'm with Sommer on this one: I hope the local media avoids sensationalizing these events in the future -- i.e., no helicopters.

Tags: maryland washington dc car chases media

Clean Cars Bill Passes State Senate

2007-02-27T08:43:00.000-05:00

And the vote was 38-9; Gov. O'Malley will probably sign it into law within the week. Good news, but I want to highlight something one of the few opponents of the bill said:

Sen. Allan H. Kittleman, the Republican whip from Howard County, argued on the Senate floor last night that Maryland is giving up its sovereignty by adopting the California standards. "We would be allowing the mayor of Riverside to be enacting regulations that affect the citizens of Maryland," Kittleman said. "I don't think that's a good idea."

That might be of some concern, if Maryland had much sovereignty to begin with, what with the whole federal supremacy clause of the Constitution and all. Pegging our carbon emissions standards to California's, by comparison, doesn't seem like that big a deal.

I also found this bizarre:

Charles Territo, spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said the main effect of the law will be to make it harder for customers to buy the large SUVs and pickup trucks that they want. "We think it will limit vehicle choice for the people of Maryland," he said.

That's certainly true. 'Cause when it comes to choosing between getting an SUV and helping make sure half the state isn't under water in the next 50 years, I'm going with the Canyonero!

Tags: maryland climate change clean cars fuel economy

Smarter Opponents, Please

2007-02-27T08:01:00.000-05:00

David Wissing appears to not be aware of the existence of carbon offsets, or of renewable energy. Either that or he and the right-wing think tank he cites are just parroting Drudge and Sean Hannity without putting any thought into it. This is, after all, the guy who considers James Inhofe to be an expert on environmental issues. Now if conservatives got serious and started to, say, debate the merits of carbon offsets or explain why individual solutions are to be preferred to collective ones on global warming, then we might get somewhere.

Tags: climate change al gore carbon offsets

Saturday Morning Outrage

2007-02-24T10:55:00.000-05:00

Some of you may recall the series of articles in the Baltimore City Paper that described the unsavory behavior of recruiters for the Maryland National Guard. Well, that wasn't the end of it:

The Maryland National Guard's top general has stripped his senior Army recruiter of his command and disciplined 13 additional soldiers after an internal investigation found members of the recruiting battalion misappropriated $40,000 in training funds and, in at least two cases, signed up soldiers who were ineligible to serve.
Officials said yesterday that the accusations of impropriety in recruiting efforts were first raised in December. The Guard launched an internal investigation immediately but found little to substantiate the initial allegations involving the mistreatment of new recruits, according to Guard spokesman 1st Lt. Wayde Minami.
But as more accusations poured in, including fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel, the Guard quickly launched a second investigation. The lieutenant colonel in charge of that probe found merit in some of those claims and discovered additional wrongdoing independently.

If you want to know how unpopular the war in Iraq is, look no further. Most parents are not going to let their children be sent off to near-certain death, dismemberment, or PTSD when the cause is so doubtful and the leadership so incompetent. But with the Army and National Guard under heavy pressure to recruit more bodies, the pressure to hold on to people, even those with personal problems that would otherwise disqualify them, is intense. Of course, this results in people who don't belong in the Army fighting in perhaps the most volatile place on Earth. At least one atrocity can already be attributed to this situation, and I fear it may not be the last.

Tags: maryland national guard iraq recruiting military

Net Neutrality in Maryland

2007-02-23T16:20:00.000-05:00

This just appeared in my inbox from Save the Internet:

Dear Isaac,
Maryland is on the front line of the fight for Internet freedom.

Verizon and Comcast lobbyists are now descending on the state capitol to kill a bill that would help protect Net Neutrality -- the principle that keeps big companies like these from controlling where you go and what you can do online.

This important bill (HB 1069) was put forward last week by Del. Herman Taylor. He is standing up for the Internet, working to keep it open and free, and making sure that everyone can get high-speed access in their neighborhood.

Verizon and Comcast are sending in dozens of lobbyists to speak against the bill before a legislative committee hearing scheduled for next Tuesday.

It's time the people of Maryland pushed back. Your state legislator needs to hear from you now: Protect Net Neutrality! Support HB 1069!

Here are two things you can do to help:

1. Call now and tell your state representative to vote YES on House Bill 1069.

Your State Representative
Phone: 800-492-7122

Click here for a sample script.

Then, please tell us about your call by clicking here.

2. Attend Tuesday's open hearing in Annapolis to show your support for Net Neutrality in Maryland:

WHAT: Legislative Hearing on Maryland Net Neutrality Bill (HB 1069)
WHEN: Next Tuesday -- February 27, 2007
TIME: 1:00 p.m.
WHERE: Room 230, House Office Building, Annapolis, MD

Anyone who wants to can show up and testify, as long as you are there by 12:00 p.m. (noon).

Without this bill, Verizon and Comcast would be free to gut Net Neutrality, cherry-pick which communities receive high-speed broadband and video services, and ignore consumer protections.

With your help in 2006, we stood up to the phone and cable companies in Washington, D.C. By speaking out today, you send a powerful message to your representatives: Maryland needs an open Internet for everyone.

Thank you,

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net

Here's the Taylor bill's official page, and Art Brodsky has a good overview of what the bill would do. As readers will likely be aware, net neutrality has been an abiding concern for me, as it is for most bloggers. I would highly encourage bloggers in Maryland, liberal or conservative, to support it.

Tags: maryland net neutrality

Grabbing the Bull by the...

2007-02-23T12:47:00.000-05:00

I don't believe you can legislate taste. But if you could, the first thing to go would likely be fake bull testicles on trucks.

Tags: maryland trucks ornaments

State Solutions for Global Warming?

2007-02-23T11:47:00.000-05:00

Via Gristmill, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network is making a huge push for Maryland to pass a bill to reduce the state's total greenhouse gas output this year, citing a change in the "political climate." (Ha ha.) This is good news, undoubtedly, but it's important to keep a few things in mind:

There may be significant legal constraints on the ability of states to reduce emissions. As with the Clean Cars bill currently making its way through the General Assembly, a lot hinges on the outcome of the Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, which will determine whether the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. If the EPA can't, it's pretty likely the states can't either, as the Clean Air Act preempts state regulations. However, even if the Court says it can, states (California in particular) still need to obtain a waiver from the EPA to adopt air pollution standards that differ from the federal standards, something that Bush's EPA has not shown much willingness to do.
The method by which CCAN wants to reduce emissions -- cap-and-trade -- is not without its own problems, compared to, say, a direct tax on CO2. Basically, it can be easy for businesses to manipulate a cap-and-trade system so that they don't actually have to reduce their emissions, which would defeat the whole purpose of the scheme. For more info, see these posts on Gristmill -- which is not only one of the best environmental blogs out there, it's one of the best blogs, period.
Let's also remember that Maryland is set to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative this year, which also aims to reduce CO2 emissions through a cap-and-trade system. Moreover, the goal of RGGI is to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, just like CCAN's plan. Of course, it's not clear whether RGGI requires emissions reductions to each state's 1990 levels or just that of the entire Northeast. If it's the latter, then I can see the usefulness of CCAN's plan. Otherwise, wouldn't it be redundant?

Tags: maryland global warming climate change cap-and-trade rggi

Two Cheers for O'Malley

2007-02-23T11:20:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to see Gov. O'Malley come out strongly against the death penalty, both before the General Assembly and in the Washington Post. I'm also glad to see him pledge to improve safety conditions for prison guards (link from last week). Now if he really wanted to go all out on prison reform, he could say something about the violent conditions the inmates themselves suffer. Not only is inmate-on-inmate violence more prevalent than inmate-on-guard violence, but the most horrific aspect of modern prison -- prison rape -- is completely off the radar in these debates about prison reform. According to Human Rights Watch, many states don't even have statistics on prison rape, much less make serious attempts to report accurate numbers.

As I've said before, this isn't an issue many people are concerned about -- they either joke about it, or imply that rape is part of the convict's punishment. But this, I think, touches directly on the current death penalty debate. If our reasons for repealing the death penalty are based on its being inhumane, one has to ask whether the alternatives are any better in this regard. On the other hand, the targets of prison rape are often nonviolent or otherwise low-level offenders, so perhaps that's a separate issue from the death penalty. In any case, we're a long way away from a prison system that doesn't bring to mind Abu Ghraib.

Tags: maryland martin omalley prison sexual assault death penalty

I Get Up Early in the Morning and Begin My Mission

2007-02-21T13:24:00.000-05:00

Early voting, to no one's surprise, has passed both the state Senate and the House, although it'll be at least 2010 before it will go into effect. Will this actually improve voter turnout? It's hard to say. The Carter-Baker Commission mentioned in the Sun article said early voting doesn't do anything, but the picture presented by Reed College's Early Voting Information Center is a little more complex. It turns out that early voting does increase turnout somewhat, but only when combined with absentee ballots on demand, and then only in a midterm election. The conclusion to its most recent paper, "Early Voting and Turnout," (PDF) is worth quoting here (emphasis added):

In conclusion, we find that early voting reforms have, at best, a modest effect on turnout. We believe, after additional testing, that this will prove to be a robust finding, since it is consistent with prior research as well as with political science theory. We are skeptical of those who continue to advocate in favor of early voting reform primarily on the basis of increased turnout. Our data simply don’t support these claims. There are good reasons to adopt early voting—ballot counting is more accurate, it can save administrative costs and headaches, and voters express a high level of satisfaction with the system. If a jurisdiction adopts early voting in the hopes of boosting turnout, however, it is likely to be disappointed.

So early voting isn't a cure-all, but it does some good. Ultimately, it is enthusiasm for the candidate or cause -- or loathing -- that makes people go out to the polls. This is one reason why Barack Obama's candidacy is so heartening: something about him makes lots of people want to campaign for him, and (one hopes) vote for him. Of course, not every politician can be an Obama...

Tags: maryland early voting barack obama

The Men in the Factory Are Old and Cunning

2007-02-19T15:06:00.000-05:00

In the annals of conservative myths, "union intimidation" has to rank somewhere up there with "voter fraud" and the "liberal media." Sure, such phenonema probably exist, though the evidence for them is rather thin. But in terms of perniciousness, they are simply dwarfed by their opposites: conservative-friendly media, voter intimidation, and, of course, suppression of unions and union organizers. With the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier to join a union, currently winding its way through Congress, the knives have been coming out against it: Dick Cheney has said President Bush will veto EFCA if it ever reaches his desk, and an anti-union diatribe recently graced the pages of the L.A. Times.

Michael Swartz's contribution to this effort comes in the form of raising the specter of "unionistas, who want to have the perfect right to strongarm and intimidate 50 percent plus one of the workers in a place of employment into signing a card guaranteeing that the union collects dues from 100% of the workers." Unlike, say, the virtuous employers who force employees to watch anti-union propaganda, threaten to close down the firm, or actually fire workers to try to form a union. While that's technically illegal, the penalties for doing so are so feeble, and the National Labor Relations Board so tilted in favor of management, that there are really no protections at all. It might be nice to have secret ballot elections, but there's no point to keeping that if the entire process is screwed up. Granted, my sources on this are all from pro-union sites, just as Michael's are from anti-union sites. But intuitively, wouldn't it make more sense that the guy who signs your paychecks has more influence over you than the guy next to you in the employee locker room? I may be strongly in favor of unions, but let's not kid ourselves: they're not demigods.

Speaking of unions, if you're on Facebook, go check out the EFCA group I set up.

Tags: unions labor card check employee free choice act

President's Day Blogging

2007-02-19T11:29:00.000-05:00

So the last week was taken up mostly by a research paper I had to finish, digging out of the snow and ice (or was that concrete?) and some traveling. I couldn't get around to posting, but it had its upside: I upgraded from an old (?) Mac G3 to a MacBook (belated Christmas/birthday gift from my parents), which is already making my life easier. At some point today I'll resume posting. In the meantime, some links:

The "Clean Cars" bill is set to be voted on in the General Assembly soon. My paper was actually on the original "Clean Cars" law in California, and I hope to provide some analysis on it soon.
Maryland finally gets its hands on George Washington's resignation speech after the Revolutionary War.
And if you haven't read the Post's two-part series on the state of injured Iraq War veterans, please do so -- and be ready to curse at the top of your lungs.

Tags: meta

Catch-up Post

2007-02-10T12:54:00.000-05:00

Let me pull together some stories that I never got around to commenting on recently, before they go down the memory hole:

Montgomery County is going forward with a new sex education program that includes the radical and dangerous idea that gays and lesbians are people. Meanwhile, the Astroturf radical right groups that derailed an earlier version of the program are appealing to the state Board of Education (More about them here).
The Post has an interesting profile on the D.C. area's various attempts to slow down the rate of growth. Which, by the way, getting more of.
How the hell did Johns Hopkins lose personal data on 135,000 people? And why did it take them seven weeks to notify people? If it hadn't been for privacy laws in several states -- not Maryland, incidentally -- they might never have informed people at all.
As Blog Arundel notes, the University of Maryland has put out a study showing that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium to reduce carbon emissions in the Northeast, and which Maryland will be joining this year, won't harm the state's economy, and may even help it.
Gov. O'Malley intends to have firms doing business with the state pay its workers a living wage.
And yet another Marylander dies in Iraq so that George W. Bush doesn't have to admit his failures.

Tags: maryland sex education growth johns hopkins living wage rggi iraq

Ever Fallen in Love -- Buzzcocks

2007-02-10T12:38:00.000-05:00

Saturday afternoons and punk rock, they just go together:

Tags: buzzcocks punk music

Friday Flickr Find

2007-02-09T16:56:00.000-05:00

"ode to cat stevens" originally uploaded by steve_gobeil.

Tags: bus flickr cat stevens

Yuck

2007-02-09T15:43:00.000-05:00

Well, this will make me uncomfortable on the UM bus for a while.

Tags: university of maryland bus exposure

Last Cigarettes Are All You Can Get

2007-02-07T16:31:00.000-05:00

So a group of Delegates is proposing a new health care bill that expand health insurance coverage in various ways, with funding coming from a hike in the tobacco tax. As health care plans go, it's OK; it expands coverage in some ways, but doesn't make any fundamental changes to the system.

The tobacco tax part is getting a lot of attention because of the budget situation, but I'm skeptical of its use as the basis of a health care proposal. Normally with Pigouvian taxes you isolate the behavior or substance you want to reduce, tax it, and then distribute the money as you see fit. Since the object isn't to raise money, but eliminate some social ill, how much money you do raise isn't that important.

With this plan, however, how much you raise is very important, particularly when health care costs are rising as much as they are. The Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative claims, regarding an earlier version of this plan, that the tax would raise "$211 [million] the first year and conservatively, at least $170 [million] each subsequent year," which sounds a little fudged to me, given the downward trends for smoking. (Although if the CDC is correct, that trend may be flattening out.) I'd be interested to see if this sort of scheme is feasible, but I'd rather see a more comprehensive -- and sustainable -- proposal.

Tags: maryland health care tobacco taxes

Shelter from the Storm

2007-02-07T12:28:00.000-05:00

I appreciate the sentiment behind Del. David Rudolph's plan to force insurers to cover coastal homeowners, but it seems misguided to me. (Background: Some major insurance companies, including Allstate and Nationwide, announced a while back that they would stop writing new policies for certain parts of the mid-Atlantic region, citing the increased probability of hurricanes due to higher ocean temperatures -- i.e., global warming.) Besides undercutting the whole basis of insurance -- you can't mitigate risk, after all, if you have to throw down money on almost-certain losses -- it also strikes me as a denial of the situation we're in. Even if we start aggressively limiting our carbon emissions now, we still have to develop policies for living with the consequences of global warming, stronger and deadlier hurricanes being only one aspect.

Much of the debate on global warming focuses on the supply side -- energy policy, mainly. Just as consequential, I think, will be our land-use policies, which perhaps due to their intensely local nature, don't get as much media exposure. This means not only developing less energy-intensive communities, but also making sure communities are able to cope with a changing climate. It's not exactly Smart Growth, but it's in the same vein.

Tags: maryland mid-atlantic climate change insurance land-use sustainability

Electoral College Dropouts

2007-02-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

I like the sound of this:

Lawmakers hoping to propel Maryland into a more prominent role in presidential campaigns have introduced bills that would award the state's electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide.

The aim is to prevent a repeat of the 2000 presidential election, in which Democratic nominee Al Gore won the popular vote but lost to Republican George W. Bush in the contest for electoral votes.

According to National Popular Vote, which is spearheading the initiative to have states adopt laws like this, 20 states have introduced the bill this year, but only Colorado's Senate has passed it. California's Assembly passed it last year, but Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger vetoed it.

Of all the things the framers of the Constitution got right, the Electoral College was not one of them, and we're been tryin for the last 200 years to move away from it. These days, its main purpose seems to be to deny half the country the right of actually participating in a presidential campaign (Maryland, for one, falls in that category). And in a time of dysfunctional election machines (and administrators), do we really need yet another means of casting doubt on the legitimacy of our political institutions?

Tags: maryland electoral college popular vote

I Wanna Talk as Much as I Want

2007-02-06T13:49:00.000-05:00

I'm ambivalent about the use of the filibuster -- historically (and yesterday) it has been used primarily to block worthy legislation, including civil rights and universal health care; yet like any minority right, it can be useful (see Bush administration, appointments by). That's why I'm not too concerned that the Maryland Senate voted to reduce the number of votes needed to break a filibuster from 2/3, the number from four years ago, to 3/5. I'm also not that concerned that a requirement to have every bill have a committee vote was struck down. Is there any legislature anywhere that has this requirement?

That said, did the Senate need to do this? It's not as if the Republicans have been that good at obstruction in the recent past.

UPDATE: Douglas Tallman of the Gazette says the votes were a proxy, at least in the eyes of the GOP, for debates over restrictions on eminent domain.

Tags: maryland senate filibuster

Nothing's Shocking

2007-02-03T19:41:00.000-05:00

Let me step into the debate over the BGE rate hike last year and its repercussions. Stephanie leads off, Maryland Conservatarian rebuts, and Bruce follows up.

It's helpful to remember the context in which the Parris Glendening and the General Assembly moved to deregulate the electric utility industry. 1999 was at the height of deregulation mania, when government at all levels was urged to privatize, outsource, or deregulate as many of their functions as possible. So it was not a shock to see even Democrats going along for the ride.

Seen from the point of view of today, of course, the deregulation fad may well be on its way to Macarena status. Whether you're talking about contractors in Iraq or the rushed privatization of social services in Indiana, the idea that substituting private entities for public ones would solve the problems of government now seems rather naive. Deregulation, while not precisely like government outsourcing, shares the same unearned faith in the ability of private enterprise to make government (and other public functions, like electricity) work better.

One could argue that Maryland went about deregulation in the worst way possible, by leaving on the rate caps. Possibly, although I would argue that some kind of cap would have been necessary in order to prevent Enron-style price manipluation (Atrios laid out the rationale for this a while back). Certainly, though, it could have been higher, enough to allow some competition in energy suppliers to emerge.

But that's the thing: every state that has done deregulation is facing higher electricity rates, either now or in the near future. Nor have the various efficiencies promised by deregulation -- more competition, improved infrastructure -- yet emerged. I suppose it may take more time, and more policy tweaking, to get to that point, but in the end I think there's a reason why electricity production is usually classified as a natural monopoly.

UPDATE: If you have the time, go check out the Baltimore Sun's gallery of articles on the BGE rate hike, especially the early ones.

Tags: maryland electric utilities deregulation

The Wages of Bamboozlement

2007-01-31T17:48:00.000-05:00

Sen. Barack Obama has introduced a bill to harden the penalties for voter intimidation, as well allow people to sue those who use deceptive tactics on Election Day. I wonder what he had in mind...

Tags: maryland michael steele md-sen election 2006 voter suppression

When They Kick at Your Front Door, How're You Gonna Come

2007-01-27T11:49:00.000-05:00

We all saw this coming:

Gov. Martin O’Malley is ready to fire the Public Service Commission. And if he doesn’t, the legislature is ready to dilute the power of its chairman.
The troubled PSC, which dominated politics in 2006, promises to be a focal point of this year’s General Assembly session.
O’Malley administration officials are prepared to replace all five commissioners or fire Chairman Kenneth D. Schisler, an Ehrlich administration appointee who has borne the brunt of criticism over a recent massive hike in electricity rate hikes.
And the General Assembly will consider a bill that will expand the five-member PSC to seven members.
The bill, to be introduced by Senate Finance Chairman Thomas McLain Middleton, also would let the PSC choose its own chairman, which would effectively end Schisler’s chairmanship.

Now if the General Assembly would reconsider its misguided attempt at deregulating electric utilities, we might actually get somewhere.

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley kenneth schisler psc electric utilities

People Get Ready

2007-01-25T12:21:00.000-05:00

Maryland Conservatarian says he was being tongue in cheek with his earlier post on diversity and the Democratic Party. Fair enough; although given the frequency with which conservatives have taunted the Democrats for preaching diversity but not practicing it (the Steele campaign provided a wealth of examples), one could be forgiven for taking him at his word.

Of course, the whole question, "Is America ready for a black/woman/Latino/etc. President?" is rather silly. Press coverage of elections, however, is a constant search for novelty and drama, so talk about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is plagued by the "significance" of electing either one, to the detriment of talking about their actual policies. Hopefully, when we get closer to the primaries, we'll see a more substantive discussion come to the fore in the traditional media. (It's already happening on the Web.)

On the other hand, given the history of gender (and especially race) relations in this country, electing non-white or non-male President would undoubtedly mark a turning point in our history. After all, it's not as if the exploitation of prejudice is that far in our past.

Tags: maryland race gender hilary clinton barack obama democrats

The First 100 Hours: How Maryland Voted

2007-01-24T20:56:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has a handy webtool showing how members of the House of Representatives voted on the six bills that made up Speaker Pelosi's "First 100 Hours" agenda. One of the remarkable things about these bills was how many Republicans voted for them, including 82 (!) who signed on to a minimum wage increase. How did Maryland's delegation vote? Well, naturally, all six Democrats voted for all six bills. As for the Republicans, Roscoe Bartlett and Wayne Gilchrest, let's take a look:

Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act: Bartlett and Gilchrest both voted no.
Fair Minimum Wage Act: Bartlett no, Gilchrest yes.
Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act: Bartlett no, Gilchrest abstaining.
Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act: Bartlett and Gilchrest both voted no.
College Student Relief Act: Bartlett and Gilchrest both voted yes.
Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act: Bartlett and Gilchrest both voted yes.

So all in all, Bartlett didn't deviate from the GOP line much, except on student loans and energy policy, which Bartlett, to his credit, is rather forward-thinking on. Gilchrest, as might be expected, was less of an ideologue (the minimum wage vote was a surprise). This doesn't mean they'll be voting Democratic, but it does mean the lockstep voting behavior of the past Republican Congresses masked a lot of differences of opinion among the GOP rank and file.

Tags: maryland republicans house of representatives

Your Crusade Is Just a Losing Fight

2007-01-24T18:32:00.000-05:00

Michael Swartz replies to my post mocking his grasp of foreign policy. Sadly, there is not much of a learning curve. Of the various polls I cited showing widespread public disapproval of the war in Iraq, Michael writes:

All this tells me is that the constant beatdown by the partisan media has borne fruit and turned Americans against the War on Terror. As I noted before, back on September 12, 2001 we couldn’t wait to turn our guns on whoever knocked over the Twin Towers. But Americans now seem to be cursed with a short attention span and the enemy is smart enough to see how the steady drumbeat of criticism is yielding results much as the antiwar slant in the media eventually doomed South Viet Nam to a Communist takeover.

Or, call me crazy, maybe the American people have grown weary of an increasingly violent conflict that has killed and maimed so many Americans, and has no clear mission or any tangible relationship to the national interest. Everyone was for going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere; after all, they were the ones who attacked us. What invading Iraq had to do with that, however, was always rather shadowy, and the Bush adminstration had to lie, deceive, and bully the American people into going along. How many people were called traitors and appeasers for having the temerity to think going to war with Iraq was a bad idea, especially since we hadn't even caught Osama bin Laden yet? Then when the war came, it turned into an occupation that has dragged on and on and on, managed in perhaps the most incompetent manner possible by this administration, which intends to drag this war on and on interminably in the same incompetent manner. You can see why so many Americans have become angry at this President.

So it's rather appalling that Swartz attributes this change of sentiment to the "partisan media," as if Americans couldn't make up their own minds about Iraq. As if the mounting casualties and sectarian violence have all been just the inventions of editors in a newsroom. Swartz and the other dead-enders in the Republican Party may not be willing to admit it, but the American people are done with this war. And no, that doesn't mean doing nothing, as Swartz alleges. It mean stopping an insane policy that has made this country less safe, and trying something that works. Withdrawing our troops from Iraq is just a start.

Tags: iraq middle east conservatives

Are We Who We Say We Are?

2007-01-23T12:32:00.000-05:00

MC, about blacks, women, and the Maryland Democratic Party:

I think you attribute to race and sex what would be better explained by partisan affiliation and other factors. Ellen Sauerbrey's sex didn't make up for the fact that she was a Republican, with all the baggage that carries in this state. Granted, Parris Glendening wasn't the greatest of politicians, but nothing about Sauerbrey ever struck me as superior in this regard -- an impression that continues to this day.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend? There's a reason her nickname among Democrats is "Worst Campaign Ever." Not to mention that, as Timothy Noah argued at the time, many people took out their frustration with Glendening's problems (and peccadilloes) by voting for Bob Ehrlich, much as some in 2000 vented their disgust with Bill Clinton's infidelities by choosing George W. Bush over Al Gore.

Kweisi Mfume? It is true that the Democratic Party preferred Ben Cardin, and feared Mfume's name and personal history would scare off moderates, such as those who voted for Ehrlich in '02 (see above). But even by underdog standards, his campaign was, by all accounts, not well run. The fact remains, however that black Democrats are fully integrated into the party's infrastructure (Besides Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, witness how many black Democrats have committee chairmanships in the House of Representatives). Can the same be said of black Republicans, honestly? How many black Republicans are in Congress? Oh, right, there are none.

As for Anne McCarthy -- who is Anne McCarthy? Seriously, I think if the Maryland Republican Party had known William Donald Schaefer would lose the primary, they would have fielded an actual candidate.

I could go on (I haven't even mentioned Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland institution if ever there was one), but the truth is, while the Democrats have had an imperfect record on promoting a diverse party, they are giants compared to the GOP. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama (and Bill Richardson, for that matter) are just the latest examples of that.

Tags: maryland race gender hilary clinton barack obama democrats

You Can't Write a Song That's Gonna Save Your Health

2007-01-20T11:04:00.000-05:00

I meant to comment on this earlier, but it looks like Fair Share is dead for good. Which is fine with me: As I've said before, we live in a much different political climate than we did when Fair Share was first proposed, and Maryland ought to be out there with Massachusetts and California in taking substantial steps toward making good, affordable health care available to all.

Having said that, there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm in Annapolis (at least not right now) for such an overhaul. And the plan that would likely be considered -- the Health Care for All bill created by the Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative and sponsored by Del. James Hubbard of Bowie in the last session -- has a lot to offer, but suffers from a major flaw: By focusing mainly on covering the uninsured, it more or less leaves the employer-based health care system in place -- a mistake, in my opinion. Besides the fact that having something as important as your health insurance tied to your job is a large impediment to prospering in a fluid job market like today's, employers shouldn't have running a health care plan as part of their job description. It's put GM and Ford on the verge of bankruptcy, and many other businesses are already ditching it, leaving their workers in the lurch. I understand there are good reasons to take this "market-based" approach -- you don't want to upset what insured people already have, for starters -- but this plan, or something like it, needs considerable improvement.

Tags: maryland politics fair share health care

Twilight of the Donald

2007-01-20T10:29:00.000-05:00

William Donald Schaefer's last day as Comptroller is Monday, and as Maryland Moment reports, he's not taking it very well.

Tags: maryland politics william donald schaefer

Talking It Out

2007-01-19T00:47:00.000-05:00

The League combs through Martin O'Malley's new budget so you don't have to. The Post and the Sun also have good analyses. For a first year budget, it looks pretty good -- Funding for K-12 school construction is increased, and college tuition is frozen, as O'Malley pledged to do during the campaign, all without tax increases. Of course, the rub is that he balanced the books by dipping into the state's "rainy day" fund, which he won't be able to do next year. He will, however, have a whole year to talk with legislators about how to overcome the future deficits. Mike in comments makes the point that, because the General Assembly's session is so short, much of the policy debate will likely be informal, behind-the-scenes negotiation between the Governor and House and Senate members. I don't have much to add to that, but it is worth remembering that much of what we call government rests on informal arrangements among policymakers, out of which emerges, eventually, the right law, program, etc. -- something that Bob Ehrlich, for one, never seemed to grasp.

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley budget government

Blogging Resources for General Assembly Session

2007-01-18T14:48:00.000-05:00

Let me note three great sites for people who want to follow the current legislative session:

Everyone should thank Bruce Godfrey for putting up a Maryland politics wiki, which we've needed. The content is still thin, but that will probably change soon.
Maryland BillHop is another wiki, but for legislation. Also needs more content.
The Baltimore Sun's guide to the current session has lots of good information on issues, legislative procedure, etc.

Tags: maryland general assembly wiki webtools

Let's Get It Started

2007-01-17T20:29:00.000-05:00

As you may have heard, Martin O'Malley was sworn in as Governor. David Lublin has the text of his inaugural address, if you want to read it. Now obviously, no one can say for certain at this point whether O'Malley will be do a good job. One thing, however, that is interesting is that, despite the lofty rhetoric of his recent speeches, he's not taking an aggressive approach to promoting his agenda, as the Post notes. And while several Democrats in the General Assembly have put forth a number of ambitious proposals, O'Malley hasn't yet committed political capital, as it were, to any of them.

Compare this with the newly-elected Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, who has proposed a panoply of initiatives, ranging from universal preschool to campaign finance reform. The House of Representatives, meanwhile, has been quick to pass a series of important legislation, albeit of narrow range. Indeed, among progressives, there's a sense that we are in a moment where Democrats can begin to set the terms of political debate in their favor, rather than constantly arguing within Republican frames. It's a shame, then, that O'Malley, in one of the most Democratic states in the union, doesn't feel confident enough, at least not yet, to pursue a strong progressive agenda. The Post article above attributes this reticence to experience as Mayor of Baltimore, which certainly would kneecap most idealist politicians. And as I've mentioned, tackling the coming budget deficits may well curb any chicken-in-every-pot instincts in Annapolis. But I hope O'Malley doesn't let his reticence, however well founded, get the better of him.

UPDATE: Dan Rodrick's column on O'Malley's inaugural address covers the same ground in more detail:

O'Malley represents a generation of politicians - he's one year younger than Barack Obama - who can take a fresh approach to things, who can set high ideals and dare the states and the nation to achieve them.
But - and I never thought I'd be saying this - in some respects, it appears O'Malley has become too cautious in his approach. His inaugural speech was another example.
One of the attractive qualities of this guy was his impatience.

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley democrats progressives

Good for a Laugh

2007-01-16T18:26:00.000-05:00

Proof that parody websites are sill good for a laugh, long after their targets have left the scene.

Tags: maryland politics john giannetti

"Death or Glory!" Becomes Just Another Story

2007-01-16T09:53:00.000-05:00

Here's a rule of thumb that has served me well: Anyone who uses the term "Islamofascism" knows nothing of either Islam or fascism. Case in point, Michael Swartz's reaction to a letter from Sen. Ben Cardin on Iraq. It almost seems cruel to have to point out to him that regarding the whole of the Middle East, with all its complexities, as a single "Islamofascist" threat is not only shockingly ignorant, it is astoundingly dangerous. Agitating for war, as Swartz does, without understanding who the hell we're supposed to be fighting -- that sort of thing tends to lead to disaster, as you might have read in the news lately. Hint: the real enemy's name begins with the letter "q"; it doesn't end with it.

Another rule of thumb: Anyone who says the following, and doesn't call for a draft, is fantasizing:

So this is a message from me to both of my Senators, Senator Cardin and Senator Mikulski (who also had remarks about the troop buildup.) It will be time for the troops to come home when we have achieved victory in the Long War. That will be the point when the threat from Islamofascists and their allies has subsided to an internally manageable level because of the use of our force to a point where free and elected governments thrive - not just in Iraq, but Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and any other country that yearns for freedom in the Middle East.

Our Army and Marine Corps is on the point of breaking just in Iraq and Afghanistan. How the hell does Swartz think they can up and depose the Iranian regime, the Syrian regime, the Lebanese regime, etc. without drafting every able-bodied male, including me and him, into a war that would last decades? Swartz may be willing to gamble with other people's lives, but I am not, and neither is the majority of Americans. Oh, and the troops Swartz claims understand the danger of his "Long War"? They're against the war too. I know it must be hard for a staunch conservative like Swartz to see the country turn against his party's agenda so strongly (e.g., he laments, "And even if Americans did speak with an antiwar tone in their vote, it still doesn’t mean they’re right"), but as Matt Yglesias once said, a comic book view of the world can only explain so much. It's time to get serious.

Tags: iraq middle east conservatives

New Rules for the New Boss?

2007-01-15T18:12:00.000-05:00

The General Assembly's investigation of Bob Ehrlich's questionable hiring and firing practices may result in Martin O'Malley not enjoying the same amount of power over at-will state employees, the Sun reports. If I recall, there was some concern from various quarters that the Democrats in the General Assembly would regret trying to constrain the Governor, in this and in other areas, once a fellow Democrat comes into office. This may, indeed, be the case here, but unless O'Malley has his own Joseph Steffen, I doubt it. Moreover, even if the General Assembly does make new rules regarding executive appointments, O'Malley is still going to have a lot of power: The General Assembly only meets 90 days out of the year, meaning that the executive branch (including the Comptroller, Treasurer, and Attorney General) will, of necessity, have a lot of control over not just the broad agenda, but the details, of government.

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley political appointments patronage

Why Did Martin Luther King Hate America So Much?

2007-01-15T14:06:00.000-05:00

By now, the legacy of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement have become so cliché that conservatives feel free to style themselves the true heirs to both, while liberals have, in fact, betrayed them. (This so-called traditional liberal is a good example.) So it's helpful to remember that King held some rather radical views that would earn him the enmity of many of the people, liberal and conservative, who laud him today. Views like these:

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

In this vein, check out John Edwards' speech on Iraq at the same church where King made the above speech almost 40 years ago. How little things change.

UPDATE: These two posts on Dr. King's radical legacy are worth reading.

Tags: martin luther king vietnam iraq john edwards

They Like to Watch

2007-01-12T13:29:00.000-05:00

Members of the House of Delegates Environmental Matters Committee watched "An Inconvenient Truth" yesterday. It's certainly a novel approach to educating lawmakers. Hopefully, this will be followed up with initiatives to combat carbon dioxide emissions and promote clean energy in Maryland.

Tags: maryland politics global warming inconvenient truth movies

We're Just Trying to Do This Jigsaw Puzzle

2007-01-10T11:35:00.000-05:00

Maryland's General Assembly convenes today. Both the League and the Post give good rundowns on the items likely to be on the legislative agenda, among them reforming the archaic ground rent system, raising vehicle emission standards, dealing with the possible abolition of the death penalty, and amending the state constitution to allow early voting.

Looming over all this, I think, will be the coming budget deficits, and the prospect of either cutting programs, raising taxes, or both. Like many states, and unlike the federal government, Maryland effectively cannot run deficits: The Governor must submit a balanced budget to the General Assembly, which in turn can only delete appropriations from the budget, not add to it; and should a special session be called, any new appropriations must be matched with new taxes or other revenue sources. (See this for more details). This restriction, I think, hampers the ability of the state to adequately respond to the needs of Marylanders. Not that I'm advocating being fiscally irresponsible, à la the Bush Administration, but rather that a modest, manageable deficit might be preferable to, say, having to yet again put off support for education, especially in Baltimore. Paul Krugman, BTW, made a similar argument a while back with respect to the new Democratic Congress.

Speculation aside, I think Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly will need to take a good, hard look at both Maryland's spending commitments and its tax code before they can make headway on any major policy initiative, of which there are a few. No doubt also Comptroller Peter Franchot will weigh in on the matter as well.

Tags: maryland politics budget taxes

Halloween in the Hood, Cont'd

2007-01-09T18:22:00.000-05:00

The Johns Hopkins student behind the infamous "Halloween in the Hood" debacle has had his punishment reduced, although details about the specific punishment are being kept private. Whatever it is, it is probably more appropriate than suspension, the sheer stupidity and insensitivity of his antics notwithstanding.

Tags: baltimore johns hopkins race lynching

Smart Growth and Politics

2007-01-08T15:57:00.000-05:00

I'm still in the process of catching up on the news, especially stuff that came out over the Christmas break that fell by the wayside. But let me note this Baltimore Sun article on Martin O'Malley's plans to revive the Office of Smart Growth in Maryland, which also fell by the wayside during the Ehrlich administration. The need to tackle sprawl will be especially acute in the next few years, as more BRAC jobs come into the area.

One issue the article raises, which I hadn't considered before, is the political implications of Smart Growth; namely, that by directing development toward existing urban areas, one risks denying economic growth to suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. Of course, economic growth isn't a zero-sum game; and indeed, many rural Marylanders (e.g., in Frederick County) see sprawl as a threat to their way of life. Still, there is a paper to be written about the economic winners and losers of Smart Growth policies, and whether clamping down on sprawl produces unintended consequences vis-à-vis the equitable distribution of prosperity.

UPDATE: In fact, it already exists, albeit from a biased source.

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley smart growth development

Things I Learned Over the Christmas Holiday

2007-01-04T23:51:00.000-05:00

On balance, religious Christmas music is much, much better is secular Christmas music. Not that the content necessarily makes it better; but it seems holiday music written before a certain decade -- even music that's not explicitly religious -- is just more melodically and thematically interesting. In other words, yea to The Boar's Head, nay to Wonderful Christmas Time.
Speaking of music, the day will soon come when people will have no idea what the song White Christmas is about. Well, maybe not in Denver.
Champagne and Chambord? A great combination. Champagne and Ouzo? Not so much.
Apparently, the best way to keep a New Year's resolution is to resolve to continue what you've been doing.
Some people die well; others die horribly.

Overall, I had a good Christmas and New Year's. We're breaking in a new cat, which, after a few missteps, is adjusting well to her new surroundings. And yes, if I get a digital camera, I will subject you all to Friday cat blogging :-) Regular posting should resume soon.

Tags: christmas new years winter cats

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-24T20:34:00.001-05:00

As you could have guessed, posting isn't going to be happening over the holiday. It'll likely resume sometime around New Year's. I wish you all a happy and joyous holiday, and for God's sake, don't waste as much energy as the guy who owns this house:

34th_Hampden_02 originally uploaded by Kung Fu Reference.

Tags: christmas baltimore hampden

Travel Day

2006-12-21T15:48:00.000-05:00

No posting today, but I thought these links were interesting:

The bill is coming due on global warming in Maryland:

Allstate Corp., one of Maryland's largest insurers, will stop writing homeowners' policies in coastal areas of the state, citing warnings by scientists that a warmer Atlantic Ocean will lead to more strong hurricanes hitting the Northeast.

The company will no longer offer new property insurance beginning in February in all or part of 11 counties mostly along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Existing customers won't be affected; a spokeswoman said Allstate intends to renew those policies even in coastal areas. It will continue to write new policies in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

[snip]

Allstate's change in Maryland is broader than a move by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. two years ago to cap new business in coastal areas and not to write new business in two ZIP codes near Ocean City. Allstate's move will affect residents in Calvert, Dorchester, Somerset, St. Mary's, Talbot, Wicomico and Worcester counties and parts of Anne Arundel, Charles, Prince George's and Queen Anne's.

It looks like the long-delayed Inter-County Connector will be delayed yet again:
Four environmental groups and a Montgomery County couple filed lawsuits yesterday arguing that federal transportation officials approved the intercounty connector project before adequately studying the highway's effects on wildlife and public health.
The two federal lawsuits -- one filed in the District and the other in Maryland -- also allege that the federal environmental review did not meet legal requirements to consider other east-west transportation options. Building mass transit and improving local roads, among other measures, would cost less, do less environmental damage and combat traffic better than an 18-mile road cutting across Montgomery and Prince George's counties, the complaints say.
This seems awfully weird, and a little Machiavellian, even:
Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley gave his longtime political nemesis an early Christmas gift yesterday when he single-handedly pushed to raise State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy's annual salary by nearly $83,000 - instantly making her the city's highest-paid employee.

But the raise - which will boost Jessamy's base salary from $142,055 to $225,000 - might have been more backhanded than benevolent, the latest and perhaps most bizarre twist in a years-long struggle between two of the city's most powerful personalities.

At the Board of Estimates meeting, O'Malley justified the nearly 60 percent raise - significantly higher than the 6.5 percent increase recommended by his finance department - by saying Jessamy has "a very, very tough job. This jurisdiction has the biggest challenge of any in our state."

He later tipped his hand, ever so slightly, to what might have been the real motivation behind the unexpected move: encouraging others to run against her.

"I don't think we've had a competitive race for this very important job since 1983," O'Malley said before the board voted to approve the raise. "Shouldn't that tell us something about how difficult this job is?"

What have you found on the Internets today?

Tags: maryland baltimore intercounty connector global warming martin omalley

A Liberal is Born

2006-12-20T19:21:00.000-05:00

Let me congratulate my friends Chris and Kate Charuhas of Frederick on the birth of their first child, Peter William. They are great people, and I wish them the best.

Tags: birth

The Limits of Fair Share

2006-12-20T13:03:00.000-05:00

Thomas Nephew raises an important point about the erstwhile Fair Share Health Care law: Just as current federal law on employee benefits (known as ERISA) proved to be Fair Share's undoing in court, so may any attempt to enact universal health care through the states be in jeopardy:

Butler's brief leaves me with the feeling that just about any health care reform law can founder on the shoals of a vague federal ERISA preemption provision, shifting legal interpretations, and individual judicial temperaments... If a clear, fair choice to "pay or play" like Fair Share can be preempted by ERISA, so can any number of other laws.

This is a good point, but it's perhaps reaching to say Massachusetts' or Vermont's health care laws would run the risk of being preempted by ERISA. As I understand the Massachusetts plan, anyway, there's no connection between one's employer and one's health insurance, which was the fatal flaw of Fair Share. Since any health care reform worth its salt, in my opinion, should discard the employer-based health care system (This old column from the American Prospect explains why), I think ERISA won't be a huge impediment to reform in the states.

While we're on the subject, I think Sen. Ron Wyden's proposal for universal health care has a lot of merits to it (Ezra Klein lays out the details). It would do a lot to make health care in America more accessible without radically disrupting the market for health insurance. If it passes, it would pretty much obviate the need for state-by-state reform.

Tags: maryland politics health care

That Filthy Five! They Did Nothing to Challenge or Resist

2006-12-20T11:26:00.000-05:00

To add in my two cents on the death penalty debate (background here, with comments from Stephanie, Bruce, and Andy):

It's easy to think of people who probably deserve the death penalty -- John Allen Mohammed, Slobodan Milosevic, Timothy McVeigh, etc. -- but when it comes to the marginal cases (say, people who might have committed a crime, but the evidence was sloppily presented, or the defense counsel was asleep at the wheel, or the governor doesn't believe in mercy) it becomes a lot more difficult to say that justice is being done well, or even adequately. That is, we should ask ourselves, Are there enough safeguards in the criminal justice system to put all the really bad guys on the chopping block, while keeping those whose guilt isn't indisputable away? The evidence suggests that there isn't, not if you want to execute enough people to have the death penalty function as a deterrant -- a dubious proposition in itself, as Andy notes.

That said, while I'm against the death penalty for a variety of reasons (for one, I don't believe a democratic state should be in the business of revenge), I have a hard time believing the alternative -- life without parole -- is more humane. As I've noted before, prison brutalizes ordinary people and makes already brutal people worse. This might not be so objectionable but for the fact that prison is supposed to have some kind of rehabilitative component to it. It's one thing to just lock away the truly bad people who are beyond all hope, but the barriers between them and the people we nominally want to help aren't very strong.

Tags: maryland death penalty

Meet the New Bosses

2006-12-19T22:06:00.000-05:00

So the Republicans in the Maryland Senate have chosen David Brinkley of Frederick County, where I grew up, as minority leader. As I recall, Brinkley is a conservative, but not a wingnut, so he'll probably be able to have some influence on the Democratic majority, particularly with the more conservative Democrats. In the House of Delegates, on the other hand, the GOP has gone with Anthony O'Donnell, who you might remember from the many articles in the Sun, Gazette, et al, in which he could always counted on for fire-breathing right-wing rhetoric. Of course, as Democrats well know, when you're in the minority, not playing along with the majority has its benefits too.

Tags: maryland politics republicans

Answering Your Economics-of-Prostitution Questions

2006-12-19T21:13:00.000-05:00

Concerning a "sex tax" for prostitutes in Germany, Bruce asks:

Does the imposition of a monthly levy, rather than a surcharge to the value added tax, distort the market for prostitution in inefficient ways? Does it discourage the marginal producer, allowing the more famous madams in the spirit of Lulu White to reap the benefit of reduced competition and charge oligopolistic rent? What about non-compliance and evasion; is the infamously picky German customer equally picky about paperwork in this area, and will heavy-handed German bureaucrats inflict their obsessive-compulsive Kantian ethic of the categorical imperative to prosecute the non-compliant? How would Borat's sister - the 4th most famous prostitute in Kazakhstan - adjust to these market conditions?

I'm not that familiar with VATs, which are more common in Europe than the U.S., but this "sex tax" appears to be a kind of professional license fee, which is found in lots of jobs, from lawyer to hot dog stand vendor. A license to whore, if you will. It's true that licenses, and license fees, can be a barrier to entry into a given market; Milton Friedman, for one, argued that the American Medical Association uses licensure to deliberately restrict the supply of doctors (which has a fair amount of truth to it). On the other hand, you do want your doctor or lawyer to be well-qualified, just as you want the guy who sells hot dogs to do so in a sanitary fashion, and (I imagine) you want your hooker to know what she's doing. How you would determine such a thing, I have no idea.

This blog post has been brought to you by economics: making the taboo banal since 1776.

UPDATE: For a more sober perspective on legalized prostitution, this CSM article is informative.

Tags: economics prostitution germany protectionism

Delaying the Inevitable

2006-12-19T13:06:00.000-05:00

It looks like the consensus coming out of the meeting between Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly leadership is to kick down the road for a while the whole matter of raising taxes:

O'Malley said revenues and surplus funds from previous years are sufficient to make meeting the state's balanced budget requirement possible this year without changes to the tax code. But he added that the long-term picture is worse, with billions in projected deficits later in his term. At the same time, a state law requiring more public school spending is entering its final stages, and health care costs continue to balloon.

"We've got to make a lot of tough choices," he said.

The restructuring could include increasing the state's current 5 percent sales tax rate; expanding the sales tax to cover services; making the income tax more progressive so that higher-income Marylanders pay higher rates; and increasing the gas tax to pay for more roads and mass transit. Slot machine gambling is also sure to be discussed.

While the Sun and the Gazette both portray the meeting as refreshingly cooperative after four years of Bob Ehrlich, I think there's much more disagreement than is being let on. We're told that Maryland's tax code is long overdue for reform, but the last time one was proposed -- the so-called Linowes plan of 1990 -- it went nowhere. And we had Democrats in both the State House and the Governor's mansion then, just as we do now, with many of the same players (e.g., Mike Miller). Contrary to some Republican caricatures, many Democrats are loathe to raise taxes, particularly if it's done badly -- like, say, an increase in sales but not income taxes. Add to that the permanent fixture of many prominent Democrats in Annapolis, and O'Malley may be right in wanting time to build up political will for reform.

UPDATE: The League's thoughts on the subject are apropos.

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley taxes budget

The Teacher is Survival, But Soon the Present Will Be the Past

2006-12-19T12:55:00.000-05:00

The semester's over (finally), so posting may or may not become more regular...

No Posts Today (Again)

2006-12-18T12:30:00.000-05:00

Statistics exam, the last thing I have to do this semester. Perhaps in the spirit of Time Magazine's Person of the Year award, everyone will get an A!

Bruce, BTW, has an excellent rant on the subject:

How has citizen opinion journalism and commentary overtaken print media? It's not because "we" are "the most important people." We are not. The dead tree edition is simply inefficient. Readers enjoy the back-and-forth of commentary and linking of supporting material. It's not so much a "publication" as an ad hoc graduate seminar with everybody having half of the library in their backpack. Consider your own college education: what impressed you more, the discussions in your 300 and 400 level classes or the wit and wisdom of the school newspaper that might, or might not, print a letter to the editor? If anything, blogging has taken the some of the self-importance and smugness out of opinion journalism. A number of bloggers have daily readerships well in excess of the subscription bases of many print opinion magazines. But it's not about us being important or the "person of the year" for 2006. It's about economics and accountability.

Tags: blogging statistics time magazine person of the year

Hard Time

2006-12-16T15:42:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I blogged about the prison system in Maryland. Evidently, things are not looking up:

The Maryland prison system is so dangerous that even inmates placed in protective custody are frequently the victims of assaults and threats on their lives, a top prison official testified in court yesterday.
In a highly unusual acknowledgement of dysfunction in the state's prisons, the administrator in charge of security operations said vulnerable inmates -- especially jailhouse informants -- are routinely attacked even after officials move them to special cells for their protection.
"I'm not going to sit here and tell you that we've got everything under control," said James V. Peguese, assistant commissioner for the Division of Corrections. "Unfortunately, people die in prison so we don't have a perfect record."

This reminds me of a point Brad Plumer made recently: Part of the reason prisons in America are so dangerous is that prisoners are implicitly expected to be abusive to one another behind bars. Not that anyone really cares what happens to prisoners, even the non-violent offenders; but given that prison tends to make people more likely, not less, to commit crimes in the future, you would think there would be more concern about this situation.

Tags: maryland prison violence recidivism

The Kobayashi Maru of Exams

2006-12-15T11:32:00.000-05:00

So the microeconomics exam turned out to be a no-win situation; everyone, even the people with bachelor's degrees in economics, did badly. And that was by design.

Tags: tests microeconomics no-win situation

Ugh

2006-12-14T09:32:00.000-05:00

Microeconomics final today, so no posts. Go amuse yourselves.

I'll give you a head start:

Tags: blogging testing music hold steady

Time to Get Ill

2006-12-13T14:02:00.000-05:00

This makes me feel so much better:

Maryland is one of the lowest-ranked states in the country in terms of preparedness for health emergencies such as bioterrorism or pandemic flu, but Virginia is among the 14 best-prepared states, according to a report issued by a health advocacy group yesterday.
[snip]
Matthew Minson, a senior official in the Maryland Health Department, said he did not want to comment on the report's findings without more access to the data it used. But, he said, Maryland has made "substantial improvement" on preparing for health disasters. He also said he was "pleased" with confidential evaluations that Maryland had received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

[snip]

The report found that half of all states -- including Maryland and Virginia -- would run out of hospital beds within two weeks of a moderately severe pandemic flu outbreak. The District is in better shape: About two-thirds of its hospital beds would be filled in that period, according to the study.

[snip]

Three years ago, Maryland was ranked among the best prepared states by the Trust for America's Health, which at that time focused more on readiness to confront a bioterrorism attack. Maryland got a lower score this time, in part because of its vaccination rates and nursing shortage.

That last part is especially troubling, not just with respect to health emergencies, but also because of the aging population, both in Maryland and nationwide. This UMD-Baltimore study found that the state has a shortage of about 3,000 nurses, and that was in 2003, when Maryland was supposedly more prepared. Between caring for the elderly and dealing with potential epidemics or bioterrorist attacks, health care workers will be under severe strain.

In spite of this, there doesn't seem to be much effort to bring more people into the nursing workforce, or even retain them. As the study noted, nursing education programs in Maryland haven't expanded to admit more students, real wages for nurses have been stagnant for at least 10 years, and many nurses have quit due to poor working conditions. Given that nursing, along with teaching, will be one of the few skilled professions that's also in high demand in the coming years (see this Demos report (PDF) for more details), making nursing a more attractive line of work will be necessary both for the sake of public health and for preserving a strong middle class in Maryland.

Tags: maryland nursing labor health bioterrorism epidemics

Sustainability and Distribution

2006-12-13T11:47:00.000-05:00

John McGrath of Gristmill namechecks Herman Daly, a professor at the Maryland School of Public Policy and one of the founders of the field of ecological economics (I may even take a class with him next semester). EE, of course, posits that a sustainable economy must ultimately achieve a "steady state," limiting both population growth and industrial output. McGrath connects this idea with the current problems of inequality in the world:

It is frequently said that developing countries will never accept sustainable development if it means prolonging their poverty. What this independent audit of the World Bank's policies show, however, is that growth itself is not a panacea for poverty. Similarly, academic research now suggests most of China's anti-poverty progress occurred not in the 1990s but in the early 1980s, well before the rapid growth in China's recent past.

International development policies have fetishized growth while ignoring inequality and sold it to the developing world largely on the promise that growth would lead to less poverty. This promise has turned out to be a lie. If you don't deal directly with inequality, it doesn't get better. Indeed, multiple examples (China, Russia, even the U.S. today) show it gets worse.

In a world where renewables are rapidly becoming competitive with fossil fuels, it may become possible to sell the global poor on sustainable development. But if we want to build a solid consensus, we also need to directly and meaningfully address the poverty of individuals, not just the poverty of nations.

Ecological economics is to be distinguished from environmental economics, which addresses environmental problems but stays within the neoclassical paradigm, which ecological economics sees as inadequate. Mark Montgomery of the AEI-funded American magazine has more on the difference.

Tags: herman daly ecological economics environment sustainability

Explanation

2006-12-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

The Maryland Court of Appeals finally explained its reasoning behind striking down the early voting law in August. As you could have guessed, the court said the state constitution strictly limits voting to one day, not many. Hopefully, this will result in a constitutional amendment to permit the practice.

Tags: maryland politics early voting

Roll With It

2006-12-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

This leans more toward the John Waters version of Baltimore than the Wire's, but it's still kind of fascinating:

WYPR profiled the group a while back; go check it out!

Tags: baltimore sports roller derby

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

2006-12-11T11:40:00.000-05:00

Pretty much eveyone, including the Washington Post, was cheering the departure this past week of Sen. James Inhofe, who in keeping with the Republican tradition of putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse, was a climate change denier in charge of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. At least we have Maryland's own David Wissing to sing his praises:

That's right, the same media organs that are breathlessly reporting about the threat of "global warming" were, thirty years ago, talking about the coming "ice age". This is a reason it is hard for me to take a lot of what I hear in the media about "global warming" seriously. This doesn't even take into the account the rank hypocrisy you get from those politicians that scream about global warming in speeches, but do absolutely nothing about it in their private life. Whether it is Al Gore taking private jets around the world, or John Kerry's numerous SUVs (oh wait, those are his family's SUVs, not his ... my apologies), or Ted Kennedy refusing to allow a wind farm near his compound ... and on and on. Never mind the fact that Global Warming hero Al Gore was Vice President for eight years (two of which he had a Democratic Congress) and despite this being the "most important issue in the world", he did not do damn thing about it. To people like Gore, Kerry and Kennedy, it is all political rhetoric more than anything....

Oh, David, can't you even come up with an original line of phony argument and crocodile tears? Yes, some in the popular press in the 1970s predicted global cooling, but the scientific consensus for that was nowhere near what it is with respect to global warming now. Indeed, as the links above indicate, the popular press has, if anything, been too deferential toward the self-appointed "skeptics" of global warming, most of whom have little or no scientific training.

And while Ted Kennedy should justly be criticized for opposing a wind farm near his property, Al Gore at least takes the trouble to buy carbon offsets for his travels, which is only one of the many things Gore is now doing to combat global warming, from starting an environmentally-friendly investment firm to switching to green power options for his home (David Roberts has more). Also, Gore, along with President Clinton, did try to do something about climate change in the 1990s: it was called the Kyoto Protocols, and regrettably was opposed by the Republican Senate and the Democratic minority.

At least, however, they tried. By contrast, President Bush and the Republican Congress have been in a continual state of denial, even while so many others, from British Petroleum to the insurance industry, have come to acknowledge that global warming poses grave problems for the future of mankind. This kind of willful denial of facts would be laughable, if it weren't so dangerous. Roberts' post above has an appropriate rejoinder to the likes of Wissing (emphasis added):

Nobody is perfect on climate issues. Why? Because our political and cultural system makes it extraordinarily difficult. That's the issue: changing the system to make it easier to act in environmentally benign ways, and harder not to.

[snip]
As I've argued again and again and again and again and again and again, the lifestyle choices of any given individual are beside the point. Those who try and fail to be righteous are better than those who are unapologetically wicked. Those who speak the truth and fail to fully live by it are better than those who speak lies. Those who advocate societal changes and fail to make individual changes are better than those who do the reverse, and better twice over than those who seek no change at all.
We need to change our laws, regulations, tax codes, and business practices. We need to change our minds about what is and isn't acceptable in a 21st century society.

Meanwhile, Blog Arundel points us to a Chesapeake Quarterly report on the effects of climate change on the Bay.

Tags: global warming climate change chesapeake al gore

The Return of Friday Flickr Find

2006-12-08T17:13:00.000-05:00

On the road this weekend, so this seemed appropriate:

"Northern Maryland" originally uploaded by Bruno4ever.

Tags: maryland flickr roads travel

Gregory Kane is Making Sense

2006-12-08T16:30:00.000-05:00

I admit that Johns Hopkins' decision to suspend the student behind the "Halloween in the Hood" fiasco (background here) offended the libertarian side of me -- Bruce Godfrey makes some good comments in that vein -- but I think Gregory Kane, who I don't ordinarily agree with, gets to the heart of the matter:

Free speech, free speech, free speech. Let's slow down for a brief reality check: Park's case isn't like "Red Emma" Goldman being imprisoned for advocating anarchy in the late 1890s, or socialist Eugene Debs being sent to a federal pen for speaking out against World War I.
This is about a college kid who watched a black comedian's television show and then figured he'd try to be as funny as the comedian. But Chappelle brings certain cultural credentials to his humor about black folks. Chappelle grew up in "the hood." Whatever else has been said about Park -- and much is said about him on www.savejustin.org -- no one's claiming he grew up in the hood.
In short, as we say in the hood: Humor about black folks is an A and B matter Justin Park needed to C his way out of.
[snip]
The issue at Hopkins isn't free speech; it's whether people are willing to take the heat for the free speech choices they made.
Hopkins officials might have let Park off easy. If I had my druthers, he'd still be in school.
But he'd be doing his comedy routine about black folks in front of an audience comprised of a few Bloods, a few Crips and a whole mess of ticked-off Black Muslims.

Tags: johns hopkins race racism comedy

One Veteran's Voice

2006-12-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

Through the magic of the Internets, I learned that Brian Van Reet, an old friend of mine from high school I had lost all contact with, served for a year in Iraq, or as he puts it, "a year long government sponsored work/study program in the middle east where I learned how not to wage a counterinsurgency." He gives a bracing account of his experience there at the website for IAVA.

He also has a blog, One Veteran's Voice, where he writes under the name One Veteran. As you might expect of a veteran, especially of the current war, he does not mince words, whether it's about George W. Bush, domestic surveillance, or John Kerry's comedic skills. You have been warned.

Tags: iraq veterans blogging iava

Delayed Correction

2006-12-08T15:29:00.000-05:00

It wasn't the NIST that failed to recommend paper trails, it was an advisory group for the Federal Election Assistance Commission. In any event, at least the NIST's report has brought Senate President Mike Miller around on the need to fix our electronic voting machines. Sometimes Miller can be a stick in the mud when it comes to reform, but it's good to finally see him on the right side.

Also, D.C. will have to wait until next year, at least, to have voting rights legislation considered. Why? Well, in addition to being corrupt and extremist, the outgoing Republican Congress is lazy:

Utah will not get an additional House seat by the end of this year. The House Republican Leadership decided it would not take up the bill that would have created it before Congress adjourns for the year at week's end.

Tags: elections electronic voting washington dc voting rights

Links

2006-12-05T21:14:00.000-05:00

In voting news...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has failed to recommend paper trails for electronic voting machines. In the wake of the Florida undervote scandal, you would there would be more support for preserving the legitimacy of our elections in any way possible.

Also, Washington, D.C. inches closer to getting some actual representation in the House of Representatives. Good news, but is the District ever going to get any Senate representation?

Tags: elections electronic voting washington dc voting rights

Bob Ehrlich, Sex Offender?

2006-12-05T20:35:00.000-05:00

OK, even I think this is dumb. Funny, but dumb.

Tags: bob ehrlich sex offender

Free State Ethanol

2006-12-05T19:29:00.000-05:00

The link is a week old, but I wanted to note this Sun article on a proposed ethanol plant to be built in either Baltimore or the Eastern Shore:

The surge of interest in the once-marginal fuel is driven by a desire for freedom from Middle Eastern oil and billions of dollars in federal subsidies. Increased demand for ethanol is boosting income for corn farmers and could reduce global warming pollution - but it might also translate into higher food prices for consumers, because more expensive corn means higher feeding costs for cows and pigs.

[snip]

Three gas stations in Maryland are among the few nationally that sell nearly pure ethanol - called E85, for 85 percent ethanol. But only 2.5 percent of the vehicles in the United States can run on this concentrated form without damaging their engines.

The rush to build corn ethanol plants in Maryland is a microcosm of the trend nationally, where about 50 ethanol plants are under construction and 107 more are operating. As a result, the price of corn futures - which reflects expectations of future markets - has soared 50 percent since September, from $2.40 per bushel to $3.60 this month, Silver said.

[snip]

Rice said producing ethanol becomes more profitable as oil prices rise. "A few months ago, it was a lot easier to get financing for ethanol plants because gasoline prices were higher and a lot of this market hinges on gasoline prices," said Rice. "If we all of a sudden get a plummeting of gas prices, you might see a lot of these financiers pulling the plug."

Of course, ethanol, like any fuel, is no silver bullet, but it does have the potential to boost the economy, especially in rural areas like the Eastern Shore. And it will take some time before an ethanol industry can function well without subsidies -- indeed, instead of Exxon and Shell, we may well have ADM and Cargill as our future energy giants, which is not an appealing prospect for those of us concerned about undue corporate influence on our government.

If you want to learn more about biofuels of all kinds, from ethanol to biodiesel, I highly recommend this series by the environmental magazine Grist, which provides, I think, a balanced look at the topic.

UPDATE: Speaking of corn, it appears climate change may well wreak havoc on any plan to farm our way out of the energy crisis.

Tags: maryland eastern shore ethanol biofuels alternative energy

Getting the Memo

2006-12-05T18:12:00.000-05:00

Part of the reason why I haven't been posting much lately is my Political Analysis class, which is requiring me to produce two policy memos in two weeks, with the second due Thursday. To get an idea of what I'm doing, check out academic blogger Mark Kleiman's description:

These exercises are intended to be simulacra of real-world work assignments: in particular, memos from staff analysts to decision-makers who are generally above them in the organizational pecking order. That makes them very different from exams.
Your goal in an exam is to show that you know the material, and can use the relevant technical vocabulary properly to give precise answers. Your goal in a memo is to help the recipient figure out what to do.

Kleiman, incidentally, is a visiting professor at Maryland this year. Sadly, I didn't know he was teaching here until long after the semester had begun.

Tags: public policy memos writing

Blogs Fall Apart

2006-12-05T17:38:00.000-05:00

Mike Raia is going offline. Too bad; he's done good work. I wish him good luck in the General Assembly.

Meanwhile, Bruce Godfrey says he'll be scaling back blogging for a while -- and then proceeds to post six times in a day. Like smoking, blogging is really hard to quit.

While I'm doing meta-commentary, I believe, with Matt Stoller, that local bloggers will be key to building a progressive infrastructure, but we need to make blogging more than just a part-time profession; after all, the best bloggers out there do it full-time. And as Mike probably knows, even grad students can't devote enough time to blogging to make it ultimately worthwhile.

One day I hope Maryland has something like Blue Jersey, a great progressive blog on local issues in Jersey, with lots of resources. Something like Free State Politics, only bigger. In the meantime, the local progressive organizations could do worse than to add blogs to their website. I think I would visit Progressive Maryland or the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's sites more often if they had a continual stream of new content.

Tags: maryland politics blogging

Tough Choices and Truth in Budgets

2006-12-05T16:10:00.000-05:00

Martin O'Malley says "tough choices" will have to be made with the budget next year, but declines to elaborate. Whether that means he'll be giving up on some of his spending plans or try to enact new taxes, such as slot machines, is unclear.

This is probably as good a time as any to mention the Progressive States Network's big report on policies for state legislatures. There's a lot of good stuff there, especially on smart growth, balancing work and family, and election reform. The section on tax and budget policy is germane here:

A prime strategy should be promoting truth in budget reforms that track what the tax burden is for different income groups, the extent of corporate loopholes and other tax giveaways, and which companies receive state economic development money and government contracts. Such reforms give the public the tools for a more robust understanding of what really goes on with state money. And once special deals for corporate interests are exposed, it becomes easier to enact reforms that save taxpayers money and frees up resources for other needed state programs.

While Maryland likely won't see a TABOR initiative any time soon, we ought to have more accessible information on taxes in the state; I'm thinking of a one-stop-shop website like the Maryland Voter Information Clearinghouse that would easily and clearly show who's paying, and who's getting paid. Perhaps Comptroller-elect Peter Franchot would be interested in expanding the Comptroller's website into something other than a glorified tax preparation site?

UPDATE: It turns out there is information on the Maryland tax system, but it's a PDF file, and doesn't really say anything about government contracts and subsidies (which would, after all, concern the disbursement of tax money, rather than its collection). Maybe I'm just spoiled on Wikipedia, but this is 2006, people! Information on something as important as taxes and the budget should be as accessible as possible!

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley taxes budget

Fair Share Has Done Its Fair Share

2006-12-01T16:46:00.000-05:00

OK, one more thing...

I hope the General Assembly doesn't refight the Fair Share Health Care battle in January, and it looks like they won't, even as the bill is still being argued over in federal court. As policy, it was severely deficient, in that it would have entrenched the obselete system of employer-based health care. As politics -- i.e., as a way of highlighting the sorry state of health care in this country, as well as Wal-Mart's failures as a corporate citizen -- it has served its purpose. Massachusetts won't be the last state to enact a universal health care system in the near future, and with the Democrats in control of Congress, we'll probably even see some federal action, both on health care and on the best way to make Wal-Mart behave -- unionization.

Tags: maryland politics health care wal-mart unions

Last-Minute Friday Blogging

2006-12-01T16:27:00.000-05:00

Light posting through the weekend, but I wanted to note that my brother has designed a blog for Christopher Hayes, an excellent writer out of Chicago. Check it out, especially his post defending card check for unions.

Tags: chris hayes blogging unions card check

P.G. County Officials Maxed Out?

2006-11-28T20:33:00.000-05:00

At the request of State's attorney Glenn Ivey, the State Prosecutor is investigating whether several members of the Prince George's County government, including County Executive Jack Johnson and Councilmembers David Harrington and Camille Exum, misused county-issued credit cards, as was reported last week. The latter two, you'll recall, endorsed Michael Steele on the eve of the election, along with Wayne Curry and and some other Councilmembers. No doubt there's some bad behavior here, with few clean hands -- with the exception of Doug Peters and Tom Dernoga, perhaps. We in Prince George's need to do better at holding their feet to the fire.

As for Johnson, for a guy who just barely scraped past a primary challenge from Rushern Baker and lost a lot of his power due to recently passed charter amendments, you'd think he'd be a little chastened, right? Well, not so much. In an interview with the Post, he calls his reelection "the greatest victory I could have had," and "a very strong mandate to me that people like the direction I am taking the county." However, the article also gives signs that Johnson is taking a conciliatory approach from some of his opponents, so perhaps there's hope.

Tags: prince georges jack johnson camille exum david harrington credit cards

Accentuation

2006-11-28T17:37:00.000-05:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The South
The Northeast
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

This quiz is, I suppose, somewhat accurate. I grew up in western Maryland, near the Pennsylvania border, although apparently I could be from anywhere. To the extent I have an accent, though, it would be something not included in the survey: the Appalachian accent, which is similar to the Southern accent, but has a flatter, harsher tone. I know that when I am in western Maryland, West Virginia, and environs, I tend to slip into this accent.

Of course, the survey is fatally flawed because it doesn't include that all-important category: Merlinese.

Tags: accents maryland baltimore

Returning

2006-11-28T13:16:00.000-05:00

I had meant to resume blogging yesterday, but the end-of-semester crush is about to begin, so I may not be able to post as often as I'd like for the next few weeks.

In other news, the Post ran an interesting profile on John Leopold, incoming Anne Arundel County Executive and one of the few triumphant Republicans in Maryland this November. He's certainly not your average Republican, or your average politician, even: Few politicians start out life as an abstract painter, for example. There seems to be a dearth of politicians with a creative streak (Martin O'Malley being an exception), but I think it's something that needs to be encouraged.

UPDATE: In this vein, the Post profiles John Hall, the first bona fide rock star Congressman.

Tags: maryland politics anne arundel john leopold creativity

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-22T19:58:00.000-05:00

And with that, I'm off. I'll be back sometime this weekend.

Congressman Pothole

2006-11-22T19:39:00.000-05:00

I was agnostic on the question of John Murtha or Steny Hoyer as Majority Leader; neither one struck me as particularly appealing or inspiring. This Post profile of him doesn't change my impression of him very much:

Hoyer persistently and successfully has secured federal resources -- some call them "Steny Dollars" -- for major projects in his district, which covers all of Southern Maryland and parts of Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties.
Hoyer has helped to steer billions of federal dollars for several projects, including the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge and the University of Maryland. He is credited with protecting two Southern Maryland military bases through the BRAC process.

One can only hope that Hoyer will devote as much attention to bringing about progressive change as he does to looking after his constituents, of which I'm one.

While we're on the subject of House Democrats, check out this run-down of Nancy Pelosi's "First 100 Hours" plan for January.

Tags: maryland steny hoyer nancy pelosi democrats

Verizon TV

2006-11-22T19:20:00.000-05:00

The Gazette reports on Verizon's attempts to get a video-franchise deal (i.e., to sell TV service over their fiber optic network) with the Prince George's County Council. I hope the Council ensures that Verizon will provide service to the entire county; the article is unclear about about whether people outside of Bowie and Laurel even have access to the fiber optic network. And as Art Brodsky noted a while back, the big telecom bill Verizon was championing earlier this year (the same one that would have eliminated net neutrality, BTW) didn't do much to ensure equitable access to fiber optic video, so I'm not expecting them to have had a sudden change of heart since then on this subject.

Tags: prince georges verizon net neutrality cable

Money, Meet Mouth

2006-11-21T18:48:00.000-05:00

David Wissing scoffs at Rep. Charlie Rangel's proposal to brink back the draft, and in the process completely misses the point of the proposal. I think the Poor Man's reaction gives the appropriate response:

Oy. Charlie Rangel is not really advocating a draft. Also, Swift was not seriously advocating that the Irish eat their own children. Rangel is advocating a public debate about the costs of the war, with testimony from Administration officials, and he is advocating that war supporters in Congress make a choice between ending the war and commiting political suicide.

He then notes that Rangel voted against his own draft bill when he last proposed it in 2004, after the Republicans brought it immediately to the House floor, with no hearings whatsoever. Rather than seriously consider the possible necessity of the draft to shore up a breaking Army and Marine Corps, let alone debate the wisdom of continuing the war, they tried to score a political point. Indeed, Wissing's reaction, like many other conservatives, is one of scorn -- as if this war that they supported so much is unworthy of collective sacrifice.

To put it another way: We're constantly told by war supporters, from John McCain to Bill Kristol to just about any conservative blogger you could name, that a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq would spell disaster. Even when, as the New Republic acknowledges, the current American occupation is unsustainable and Iraq is in the midst of unending violence. So what, exactly, should the U.S. do next? Of the three options that the Pentagon has put forth, one requires more troops, and another requires the armed forces to maintain the same tempo they're at now. How exactly are we to do either, given plummeting support for the war in all sectors of the population? If conservatives like Wissing aren't willing to call for a draft to bolster troop levels, what do they recommend? How serious are they about their support for the war?

Right now, I see only two options: start a draft to continue the war, or withdraw our troops from Iraq and rethink our policies in the region. Since the former is clearly unacceptable, even to the war's cheerleaders, what keeps us from going forward with withdrawal as soon as possible, other than the pride and vanity of our President, and his enablers in the establishment media and the conservative movement? This is why Congress' dereliction of its oversight duties has been so infuriating, and why I hope the new Democratic Congress will put as much pressure on President Bush as possible to start bringing troops home. This war has been an utter catastrophe, and there's nothing continuing the occupation can do to make it less of one.

Tags: iraq draft republicans

Shore Against the World

2006-11-21T18:11:00.000-05:00

Bruce says that Michael Swartz's "Prince Baltgomery" lament stems less from a urban/rural tension and more from the peculiar culture of the Eastern Shore:

Bombast aside, the Shore is a somewhat distinct society and culture with special geographic and economic characteristics. That distinctiveness, more than its Republican voting patterns, justifies the geographic exemptions that the Shore enjoys from many Maryland laws. I would prefer that more such laws be written locally under home rule, but full charter home rule is somewhat unpopular on the Shore due to the extra tax burdens of fully-developed local government. It isn't just liberal or distant government, but government period, that many Shoresmen resent, and I respect that view.

Of course, this raises the question of why the Eastern Shore and the Baltimore-Washington corridor are even in the same state. Indeed, Maryland's current boundaries, and its machine-gun shape, are a relic of colonial-era border disputes, which culminated in the now-famous Mason-Dixon line. So maybe instead of the Shore seceding, as Bruce suggests, Maryland should annex Delaware, which used to belong to us. I'm sure we'll be greeted as liberators :-)

Tags: maryland eastern shore delaware

New Feed

2006-11-21T12:30:00.000-05:00

I'm using FeedBurner now, which should make it more readable to everybody. Update your RSS readers.

Is There Anything Those Oil Companies Can't Do?

2006-11-20T13:41:00.000-05:00

Maryland Conservatarian writes:

I'm sorry but I'm still waiting for my local shale oil gas station to open up. Realistically, the only sure-fire way to make these alternative energy sources economically viable is to let the market decide if and when they come of age.

[snip]

This all makes me appreciate our oil, coal and electrical companies even more. They have to go through considerable risk and expense to bring oil and coal to the surface, transport them considerable distances to convert them into a viable energy source for delivery to us. Meanwhile, solar companies just have to throw a solar panel on the roof...and yet somehow we still find it cheaper to go the coal and oil route.

Leaving aside MC's ignorance about how solar panels are manufactured, I'll concede that solar power alone won't meet our energy needs; the same is true, though, about ethanol, wind power, and biomass. Hell, the same is true of coal, oil, and natural gas, considered individually. This is why most experts on sustainable energy policy warn against finding a "silver bullet" to solve our energy problems.

I also find MC's veneration of the free market baffling with respect to fossil-fuel industries, given the massive subsidies that the oil, coal, and natural gas companies get from the federal government every year, more so since President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act into law last year. The truth is, as in so many other areas of the economy, government is going to play a role in the energy decisions we make. Whether government is a force for good or ill in this regard will be for the American people to determine.

Tags: energy policy solar oil gas coal renewable energy

Shorter Michael Swartz

2006-11-20T12:33:00.000-05:00

If it weren't for the majority of Marylanders, Republicans would have won big!

Seriously, I think his claim of "the fiefdom of Prince Baltgomery" is undermined by the fact that much of the Democratic leadership in the General Assembly comes from the rural and exurban areas of the state Swartz claims are getting shafted by the urban and suburban core: Besides Mike Miller (Calvert & Prince George's) and Mike Busch (Anne Arundel), you have Senate Finance Chair Mac Middleton (Charles), Senate Executive Nominations Chair Philip Jimeno (Anne Arundel), and House Appropriations Chair Norman Conway (Wicomico & Worcester). Certainly Maryland's population centers are going to get a lot of attention in the General Assembly -- anything involving mass transit, for example, will require a lot of consideration from the state -- but as one who grew up in Frederick County, I've yet to be convinced that Baltimore, Prince George's, and Montgomery have it in for the rest of the state. (Though Michael's concerns about taxation in the Eastern Shore vis-a-vis Delaware are legitimate.)

Tags: maryland politics baltimore prince georges montgomery eastern shore

D.C. Going Green

2006-11-16T13:41:00.000-05:00

Good move from the D.C. government:

The District is poised to become the first major city in the country to require that private developers build environmentally friendly projects that incorporate energy-saving measures.
By 2012, most large construction in the city -- commercial and city-funded residential -- would have to meet the standards, if the D.C. Council gives final approval to a new bill next month.
The era of "green buildings" would include devices such as low-flow shower heads and recycled materials and would require designing passageways that encourage walking, choosing drought-tolerant plants and improving air quality by reducing the need for artificial heating and cooling.
Although smaller cities, such as Pasadena, Calif., have adopted similar laws, the District would be the first large city to force private developers to meet the standards, said Cliff Majersik of the Institute for Market Transformation, a nonprofit environmental group that promotes green buildings. All 13 council members voted for the measure in a preliminary vote this week. "This is big," Majersik said.

Tags: washington dc environment green building development

No Money, Mo' Problems

2006-11-16T13:31:00.000-05:00

The Post reports on the looming budget deficits awaiting Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly next year:

According to analysts' projections, the state faces a shortfall of $413 million for fiscal 2008, which starts in July. That gap could be closed, lawmakers and fiscal analysts said, with relatively modest spending cuts or by dipping well into the state's "rainy day" fund.
Far more difficult choices are likely to occur in fiscal 2009, when projected spending is expected to exceed projected revenue by $1.6 billion.
The gulf, analysts said, remains largely attributable to major increases in education spending mandated by a 2002 law that was passed without a funding source.

In addition, the slowdown in the housing market is going to take the wind out of the economy, both in Maryland and nationally. And for his part, Bob Ehrlich mainly delayed the inevitable, by raiding funds meant for transportation and land preservation, while benefitting from a fortunate economic climate during his term.

Since there's only so many state programs that can be trimmed, and since O'Malley has a bunch of new policies he wants to fund, the debate is going to focus on how best to raise revenue, which, given the last few years, means talking yet again about slot machines. I had been meaning to comment on O'Malley's slots plan, as reported last week, and I hope that bringing slots just to race tracks will kill enthusiasm for the larger slots programs that Sen. Mike Miller and others have proposed. I've no beef with gambling as such, but as everyone should know, legalizing gambling as a means to raise money basically amounts to a regressive tax. Unfortunately, something in human nature seems to regard direct taxation, no matter how fair, as distasteful, while not minding more harmful back-door taxes.

Tags: maryland politics martin omalley budget taxation slot machines

2nd Policy Memo on Net Neutrality

2006-11-15T18:29:00.000-05:00

The following is the second of four memos concerning network neutrality; the first one is also available for reading.

***

Introduction

The issue of network neutrality -- whether providers of Internet access should be allowed to give preferential or adverse treatment to content and applications on their networks -- has given rise to two competing policy options, and with it, two competing coalitions of interest groups. Supporters of codifying the principle of neutrality into law, in order to, as they see it, preserve free expression and innovation online, include a diverse array of Internet-based firms, small businesses, consumer groups, and political advocacy groups from both the left and the right. Opponents of mandating neutrality, on the grounds that it would amount to needless government regulation, include the major telephone and cable companies, as well as some pro-business and conservative interest groups. This memo will describe the positions and strategies of the two rival coalitions, as well as the opinions of policy makers and of the country at large on the matter, and what impact the efforts of the two coalitions have had on them. As will be shown, net neutrality is not on the front burner of public debate, but it has generated a considerable amount of controversy, both in and beyond Washington. And while both sides have been able to claim victories in Congress, where the battle over a proposed telecommuncations bill has brought net neutrality to the fore, the issue is still far from resolved.

Public Opinion

In part due to the technical nature of the debate and the relative novelty of the issue, net neutrality has yet to assume a high profile in the public consciousness, as mentioned above. A national poll commissioned in September 2006 by Verizon, one of the largest telephone companies in the country and a staunch foe of neutrality legislation, found that only 7% of respondents had heard of the term. However, the vast majority of respondents expressed support for a "Consumers' Bill of Rights" that would provide many, but not all, of the things neutrality advocates want, including keeping network carriers from "blocking, degrading, altering, modifying, or changing the data consumers send or receive over the Internet." As for the term "net neutrality," the poll found little support for it. Many neutrality advocates have criticized the poll for being biased in favor of the telecom firms, and for characterizing net neutrality as inhibiting innovation and competition. Nevertheless, the poll does show that there is broad approval for choice and open access with respect to Web, TV, and other communications services. For each side, the key to winning will be to translate that general approval into support for the more detailed policy positions in the neutrality debate.

"Save the Internet"

The coalition trying to preserve net neutrality is comprised of two groups. The first, Save the Internet, consists primarily of public-interest organizations, such as the ACLU, Common Cause, the Free Press, and the Consumers Union. In addition, numerous small businesses, church groups, and bloggers who see net neutrality as essential to their livelihood are members. The organization is unusual in that it includes both liberals and conservatives; seldom does one see MoveOn.org and the SEIU on the same side of an issue as the Christian Coalition and the Gun Owners of America. The second group, It's Our Net, is composed mainly of Internet-based companies, including giants like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Microsoft.

Both Save the Internet and It's Our Net believe in the same goals: No changes should be made to communications policy without adequate provisions for net neutrality. They see the current telecommunications bill, which was passed by the House and is pending in the Senate, as unacceptable without those provisions. They are especially opposed to what is called access-tiering, in which carriers would charge providers of content, such as a website or Internet telephone service, a fee to have their content be given priority in transmission. Not only would this hurt the ability of small businesses and startup companies to compete and innovate, they argue, but by giving that kind of power to the network carriers, it would have the potential to drastically limit what people can read, hear, and watch online.

The key to the neutrality advocates' strategy has been to engage Internet users from all walks of life and make the case to them that the Internet as they know it is threatened. Besides a massive letter-writing and petition campaign, as well as a nationwide series of public rallies in favor of net neutrality, the coalition has used many of the tools of the Internet, from blogs to the video site YouTube, to make their case to the public. They scored a significant coup in June when they helped circulate an audio clip of a speech by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), a neutrality opponent and lead sponsor of the Senate telecom bill, in which he notoriously referred to the Internet as "a series of tubes." Not long after, several Senators came out in support of net neutrality, making passage of the bill much more difficult. In general, the pro-neutrality coalition has sought to depict their opponents as being ignorant about the Internet's potential as a democratic medium, or else more interested in profits than freedom of speech, which neutrality advocates see themselves as defending.

More recently, the pro-neutrality coalition has been trying to block a proposed merger between AT&T and BellSouth, which was approved by the Justice Department without any conditions (including provisions for net neutrality) and currently awaits final approval by the FCC. Amid protests from members of the pro-neutrality coalition, the FCC has delayed a vote on the matter several times.

"Hands Off the Internet"

The opponents of net neutrality legislation are not quite as diverse as its supporters: Besides the cable and telephone companies and their respective trade associations, there are only a handful of pro-business and conservative advocacy groups, such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the Center for Individual Freedom, listed on the website for the main anti-neutrality coalition, Hands Off the Internet. Despite that, the groups wield an enormous amount of clout in Washington and in the state legislatures. Verizon's top lobbyist, for example, is former Rep. Tom Tauke (R-IA), and the cable and phone companies have collectively donated about $10.8 million in campaign funds to both Republicans and Democrats this past election cycle alone.

The goals of the anti-neutrality groups can be summarized as follows: They believe that network operators should have as much control over their networks as possible, and should be allowed to make whatever deals they like with content providers. Net neutrality legislation, in their eyes, will hamper their ability to improve and expand their networks, primarily because there would be not much incentive for the carrier to do so. In particular, the telephone companies have a keen interest in what is called video franchising, or television over phone lines. They wish to compete in the TV market with cable companies, who are already starting to provide phone service themselves, and believe that net neutrality legislation would make such capital-intensive projects prohibitively expensive, since they could not charge bandwidth-intensive content providers, e.g., Internet telephone companies like Vonage, more for their rate of usage.

Originally, the anti-neutrality coalition hoped to have quickly enacted new telecommunications legislation that would augment the regulatory changes wrought by the 2005 FCC and Supreme Court rulings, institute desired video franchising and Internet telephony rules, and eliminate net neutrality. And indeed, Congress early this year seemed eager to pass such legislation. But it was not long before neutrality advocates started to make their voices heard. Neutrality opponents responded by forming Hands Off the Internet and launching an agressive, multi-million dollar media campaign. Their ads portrayed the dot-com companies who favor net neutrality as trying to have the government "regulate" the Internet, while claiming that only the unregulated market can deliver the Internet, TV, and phone services that consumers want.

However, since Congress has failed to pass telecommunications legislation this year, the telephone companies, for one, are planning to move to the states to obtain video franchising legislation there; already such a bill has been proposed in the Pennsylvania state legislature. Outcry from consumer groups and local governments, however, forced a delay in the vote on the bill. Also, as mentioned above, AT&T and BellSouth hope that their proposed merger will go through with no strings attached, and therefore free them from neutrality requirements. There may also yet be action in Congress on the matter: Sen. Stevens has said he intends to bring the stalled telecom bill to a vote in the Senate during the lame-duck session.

Conclusion

Arguably, the net neutrality debate has been a kind of asymmetric warfare. Neutrality opponents have used their longstanding influence among policy makers to seek their desired legislation, while spending heavily to shape the media environment in their favor. By contrast, neutrality supporters have taken a more decentralized, individual-centered approach; one of the more popular appeals for net neutrality, for example, was a YouTube video made by a 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker from Alabama. The result so far, however, has been a stalemate: the cable and telephone companies have not yet gotten the regulatory changes they have sought, nor have the neutrality advocates secured their desired protections. Despite the intensity of the respective interest groups, the public debate has not yet provided a solution.

Tags: net neutrality

"All Those Problems"

2006-11-15T17:27:00.000-05:00

OK, I promised myself I wouldn't kick around Michael Steele again, but I can't help it; it's just too tempting.

He was just on Wolf Blitzer's show. When asked about Trent Lott's election as Senate Minority Whip, and why he fell from grace a few years back, Steele says he'll make a great leader. He also says he forgives him for those unfortunate comments he made about why Strom Thurmond should have been elected President in 1948; apparently, humoring another man's racism is just something you do at birthday parties. Of course, it helps if you're a stone-cold racist yourself.

I also learned that he nothing to do with the deceptive sample ballots the Republicans passed out to African-American areas of Maryland; this despite his having claimed credit for the scheme earlier this week.

Amazing, such moral idiocy on display...

Tags: michael steele trent lott strom thurmond racism segregation

Language Games

2006-11-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

In a sign of cultural divisions even within a Blue state like Maryland, the Washington Post reports that dual-language immersion programs are on the rise in the D.C. area, while the Baltimore Sun says that the city government in Taneytown, Carroll County, has passed a resolution making English its official language -- this despite the fact that only 1.5% of city residents are Latino, and only 37 out of 5,000 claim to speak English less than "very well."

Tags: maryland bilingualism taneytown english immigration

Steele Denied RNC Chairman Job

2006-11-13T18:45:00.000-05:00

Instead, Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and current RNC general counsel will co-chair, says the Washington Post.

As for Michael Steele, whose name was floated briefly as a candidate, I'm sure he'll find work elsewhere; in the wake of massive GOP losses among blacks and Latinos, the party needs more bamboozlers now than ever.

For more on Martinez, John Aravosis has a short take, and notes especially his homophobic tendencies.

Tags: republicans mel martinez michael steele

Coal and the Damage Done

2006-11-13T17:58:00.000-05:00

Jeremy Bruno from Frostburg has an eye-opening post on the effects of coal mining on waterways in western Maryland, complete with pictures. Check it out.

Tags: maryland environment coal pollution

Hoyer v. Murtha

2006-11-13T15:57:00.000-05:00

On the impending fight for the position of House Majority Leader between Jack Murtha and my congressman, Steny Hoyer, the consensus among liberal bloggers seems to be, it's a tough call. Neither are progressive Democrats; if you put aside the Iraq War, Murtha is actually even more conservative than liberal bete noire Hoyer, to say nothing of his ethical troubles. But Murtha's best selling point, as Ezra Klein points out, is that he and Nancy Pelosi have been allies for some time, whereas Hoyer has openly criticized Pelosi on several occasions. If Murtha were Majority Leader, Pelosi would have a strong hand to take on, not just Iraq, but many other issues the two might not see eye to eye on. On the other hand, Hoyer is apparently well-liked by many in the Democratic caucus, and one can argue that his history of political "realism" could move him to strongly support Pelosi if he thinks it will help him as well.

What worries me now is that Pelosi has staked much of her credibility as Speaker on winning this leadership fight; if she loses, it could haunt her and the House Democrats for months, if not years; Republicans and the established media would quickly revive the old "Democrats in disarray" meme (though Republicans are in for some backbiting and internecine warfare themselves). But at this point, I don't think anyone can say what will happen.

Tags: democrats nancy pelosi steny hoyer john murtha

Bamboozlement Watch

2006-11-13T15:29:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post details the Ehrlich-Steele "fake sample ballots from homeless people" plan. Apparently Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose image Ehrlich and Steele appropriated for their Election Day flyers in 2002, made a preemptive strike this year, asking that neither they "nor any group associated with [their] campaign use my picture on mailers or Election Day ballots."

In comments, Thomas Nephew tracks down the radio program (C-SPAN's Washington Journal) on which Steele made his "everyone does it" defense of the fake ballots, and the actual quote:

Again, I have to laugh at that because I, I find that that's somewhat amusing that that's the same tactic that Democrats have used in previous campaigns against eachother and I borrowed from that, one, two, I don't find that nowhere nearly as offensive as the, the signs that went up around my county calling me a "Clarence Thomas", that we have to reject the "Clarence Thomas" Michael Steele.

Tags: maryland michael steele md-sen election 2006 voter suppression race

Saving Islands in the Chesapeake

2006-11-13T11:51:00.000-05:00

From the Baltimore Sun:

The Maryland Port Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are proposing to spend more than $1 billion to rebuild two islands in the Chesapeake Bay -- the government's latest plan to use dredge spoil from shipping channels to enhance the environment.

The two agencies propose to remove tons of silt and sediment from the state's waters, then haul it down the bay to create a 2,000-acre wildlife preserve at James Island, a spit of land off the coast of Dorchester County that is quickly vanishing. The two agencies also want to replenish the shoreline at nearby Barren Island, another fast-disappearing remnant of land near Hoopers Island.

There seems to be a lot of benefits to the plan, as the article notes, but whether it will get the funding it needs, and whether the Army Corps of Engineers, given its history, will do the job right, in uncertain.

Tags: maryland chesapeake environment

Going with Green Roofing

2006-11-13T00:27:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to hear that a new bank headquarters opening up in Annapolis will be the first commercial building to include a green roof (via Blog Arundel). Indeed, I've wondered why more buildings in America don't have them, given all the clear benefits -- e.g., catching run-off, reducing heat, aesthetics, etc. Apparently, however, buildings with green roofs have specific structural requirements in order to accomodate all the extra weight, which makes it difficult for some kinds of buildings, especially older ones, to be retrofitted with them. The problem is not unlike that of hybrid cars: The technology is there, it's turning over the current fleet of (non-fuel efficient) cars that will take time -- time we may not have.

Tags: maryland annapolis environment green roof

Michael Steele: Pro-Bamboozlement

2006-11-12T21:36:00.000-05:00

Thomas Nephew picks up this comment from Michael Steele about the fake sample ballots the Republicans had out-of-state homeless people pass out in African-American areas of Maryland:

I just have to laugh at that. This is something Democrats have done to each other for a long time.

If true, a despicable comment. After a campaign in which Steele made his race his chief selling point to African-Americans, he would condone a scheme that so obviously takes African-Americans for fools, and then laugh it off? Well, if he wants to become head of the Republican National Committee, I say let him: he'll fit right in. And let's not forget that this isn't the first time Steele and Bob Ehrlich have bamboozled the homeless in this way.

Did anyone else hear the radio program Steele was on when he made the comment? Is it possible to get an audio clip of it?

Tags: maryland michael steele md-sen election 2006 voter suppression race

Overheard in Takoma Park

2006-11-12T15:06:00.000-05:00

Little kid in a grocery store: Mommy, can we get something to drink that doesn't have green tea in it?

Tags: maryland takoma park humor

Notes From After "The Thumpin'"

2006-11-10T15:02:00.000-05:00

Several events conspired to keep me from posting until now. First and foremost, I was an election judge in Adelphi Tuesday, which takes up a lot more time than you might think. My Internet connection has also been spotty again -- we'll be switching from cable to DSL soon, thankfully. And there were plenty of school and personal matters to attend to as well.

Anyway, my thoughts on the election: Obviously, the last few days have been a good time to be a Democrat. After years of constantly being shunted to the margins, Democrats finally have some real influence over the direction of cour country. What's more, the Republicans' hubris has finally blown up in their face. Seeing George Bush forced to dump Donald Rumsfeld, a man who has damaged this country's reputation and whose incompetence has led to the deaths of so many Americans and Iraqis, was deeply satisfying. That said, I hope Democrats don't overplay their hand or try to pass too much too soon; the Gingrich Republicans tried that in 1995 and it backfired rather badly for them. As for recommendations, I think Kevin Drum's are pretty good.

In Maryland, despite attempts by Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele to illicitly swing the vote in Prince George's and Baltimore, they both lost, and deservedly so. Running on a no-agenda agenda, or pretending to be someone you're not, does not merit a popular mandate. Even better, the Maryland GOP was decimated, losing seats in both the Senate and the House of Delegates (MoCo Politics has some details). But the election also exposed some tension within the Maryland Democratic Party over the racial makeup of its leadership, as Howard Dean reminded us today. Yes, we have Anthony Brown and Ike Leggett, as Mike Raia notes, but in a state with the highest (and wealthiest) population of African-Americans outside the South, Maryland Democrats have a responsibility to set an example for the rest of the nation about diversity in public office. So far, we've only made baby steps in that direction.

Let me note a few of the local races that haven't gotten much ink:

Andrew Duck lost to Roscoe Bartlett by 20 points, unfortunately. This was a wave election, but evidently it didn't come to Western Maryland. The thing is, Bartlett wasn't deeply connected to the Abramoff machine, or the DeLay machine, or any other machine; he's just a kook who carries robes for a cult leader from time to time. So it was harder to hang the hat of corruption on him the way you could on, say, Curt Weldon. Still, Duck did better than Democrats have done in the 6th District in a long time, and he has set himself up well for 2008. Bartlett, after all, will either retire or be dead soon (he's 78, I think). I look forward to more good things from Mr. Duck.
I was quite pleased at the end of the night to see that the precinct I was in had voted for Jim Rosapepe over John Giannetti 2 to 1, which happened to be true across the board. Not only can we say goodbye to a fool and a turncoat, we can welcome some upstanding representatives, from Rosapepe to Joseline Pena-Melnyk.
In Frederick County, Mike Cady and Jim Lovell, the two pro-developer Republicans on the Board of County Commissioners, were crushed Tuesday, while Jan Gardner, Kai Hagen, Lennie Thompson, and two other Republicans won handily, changing the BOCC from 3-2 in favor of developers to 4-1 against. Now there's a move afoot to change the law so that Gardner, who won the most votes, but for complicated reasons can't become board president. Also, the movement for Frederick County to adopt a charter form of government like Montgomery's or Anne Arundel's appears to be reviving.
Will absentee ballots give Candy Greenway an upset win over Alex Mooney? Apparently not, but she certainly gave him a tougher race than he expected. Perhaps a rematch in 2010?
And it looks like Frederick (the city) will be sending an all-Democratic team to the House of Delegates, with Sue Hecht reclaiming her seat from Republican Patrick Hogan, and Galen Clagett holding on to his.

Since I mentioned above my work as an election judge, I should probably say a bit about how the voting machines fared. Despite my (and many others') fears, both the voting machines and the e-poll books did quite well. I worked with a well-trained group of election judges, and I trusted that everyone who voted in the precinct I was in would be counted. That said, we're still a long way away from a reliable voting system. Stephanie Dray points in the right direction, and I hope the General Assembly takes the issue up soon. I tend to vacillate between supporting an Oregonian vote-by-mail system or just having printers attached to the voting machines; at the very least, we should dump Diebold and amend the constitution to allow early voting.

Tags: maryland politics election 2006 democrats martin omalley ben cardin frederick county

Urban, Suburban, Exurban

2006-11-04T12:25:00.000-05:00

I highly recommend this Post article from yesterday on the political implications of suburban and exurban growth in the D.C. area. Development in northern Virginia, in particular, has wrought dramatic changes:

Lang and other demographers believe that density is destiny: Large lots and single-family houses contain Republicans, high-rises and townhouses teem with Democrats. When Fairfax's population topped 1 million, its move to the Democratic column in presidential years was certain, demographers argue.
"Fairfax is just too urbanized to be anything other than reliably Democratic," Lang said.

In Maryland, however, the situation is more mixed: Charles County is becoming more Democratic, thanks to African-Americans migrating from Prince George's, but other outer-ring counties like Calvert, Anne Arundel, and Frederick are seeing an entrenchment, if not growth, of Republicans. Why is this? I don't think it's because the Democrats have "moved far to the left," as one GOP official claims in the article -- though to be fair, the state party could do more to compete in exurban counties. On the other hand, the growth of military employees in Anne Arundel and Frederick probably has something to do with it, if we assume that they are more conservative than the population at large.

One thing to consider, and I may be wrong on this, is that the Virginia suburbs and exurbs have been developing for a longer time than the Maryland suburbs and exurbs, and thus are now maturing into the liberal hubs that the article describes. Of course, this assumes that, as quoted above, density is destiny as far as political affiliation goes. It certainly sounds true that density is more congenial to liberal politics than sparseness, but one has to ask whether that's because of self-selection (i.e., liberals choose cities, conservatives choose suburbs) or because urban life somehow shapes the way you think about the world. If you're a hardcore materialist, I guess, the latter will be a more appealing reason.

Incidentally, the New Politics Institute published a report a while back on how Democrats can compete in exurban areas. It's a good read.

Tags: maryland virginia suburbs exurbs democrats republicans