"Contemplating" ...

Your humble host
agrees with the signers of
Declaration of Independence
that all men are created equal,
endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights,
including the rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness

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t-shirt
'I promise
not to talk politics
during dinner'
-------------------

Steve's favorite news links

* The Newseum's daily compendium of front pages from around the world

* Google News, Maryland election items, updated continuously throughout the day.

* nuclear.com - Steve's own site

* calamitology.com - another of Steve's sites

* The Compleat Advocate - Steve's new public policy discussion site

* Maryland Independent Party

* Alan Keyes for President

September 2, 2008

Core Values are the Keyes to Success
Chris Core's new show on DC50-TV is well worth watching

by Steve Schulin, Candidate for Congress, Maryland Independent Party

(Rockville, Maryland) September 2, 2008 -- A new political discussion TV show debuted here in Washington DC area Saturday. It's archived on the web and is well worth watching.

The host of the show is well-known by folks around here -- his name is Chris Core. He's been doing radio here for many years.

His first interview was with the head of Maryland's McCain campaign -- former Gov. Bob Ehrlich. Here's a transcription of part of their conversation:

Q: Where is the conservative movement now?
A: It depends on what happens in this election -- and if McCain wins, how he governs. I do not know the answer to that.
Q: I mean is it in trouble, is it going to abandon him? Conservatives don't like John McCain, in general.
A: There are a couple of folks auditioning for the Ronald Reagan position. Romney's one ... and Newt Gingrich as well is auditioning for the job. There clearly needs to be a philosophical leader emerge of right of center people -- Republicans, Democrats, Moderat- uh, uh, Independents -- in this country.

Chris also had a local pollster as a guest -- Keith Haller (president of Potomac, Inc.). Haller said that "...in my gut, and certainly what I see scientifically in a lot of the states, Obama has all the possibilities of winning this thing in a landslide. He mentioned that McCain may be pulling out of Iowa and New Mexico because he's so far behind there. Pressed by Chris to identify three crucial states, Mr. Haller specified Virginia, Colorado and Ohio.

The weekly Saturday TV show is titled "WEEKEND NEWS with Chris Core". It is broadcast on UHF channel 50 at 6 pm Saturday and replayed Sunday morning at 9:30. The video archive is on the show's web page at http://www.dc50tv.com/pages/weekend_news_with_chris_core/

The web page has a couple of listener poll questions and a listener comment section. Here's the comment I left:

Core Values are the Keyes to Success

Great show, Chris. Of the presidential candidates, Alan Keyes of Montgomery County best represents my views. I support his decision to continue to run for President as an independent this year. He's on the ballot in California, Florida, and Colorado so far. New state parties are being formed across the nation to provide conservatives a home. Here in Maryland, its the Maryland Independent Party. These parties are affiliating nationally as America's Independent Party. We had our first national convention in August and nominated Dr. Keyes for President and Brian Rohrbough for VP. Brian is an example of our "Every citizen a leader" moto. He became a citizen-activist after his son was killed at Columbine HS on that awful day. Our new party is already the 3rd largest national party in terms of number of registered voters, and I assure you that we're not satisfied with being #3 for long. I think the Republicans are Whigging out, Chris. Best wishes on your new show. Your interviews of former Maryland Gov. Ehrlich and pollster Keith Haller were interesting, and I look forward to seeing more Core Values segments, too.

August 16, 2008

Hollywood knows what a 'spectator sport' is

One of the ideas that my favored candidate for President has repeatedly stressed is that we the people are in danger of losing our precious experiment in self-governance. The process that picks our candidates and even decides the agenda is dominated by a relative few. The only solution is for many more folks to get much more involved. As part of my own choice to become more personally involved, I've added "Maryland" as one of the search terms I routinely use in sifting through the daily news. A column in Variety yesterday was one such hit. The Maryland part of the article wasn't so interesting, but I was struck by the columnist's characterization of the presidential election as a "spectator sport", and his discussion of polling: "For those fuzzy on math, here's a key equation to remember: Big events + media hype = bogus, meaningless numbers. To illustrate this trend, look no further than two spectator sports dominating the summer: the presidential election and the Beijing Olympics. In each case, figures are regularly distorted by the hunger for impressive-sounding facts, and perpetuated by misleading polls, fatuous studies and unquestioning reporting. In preliminary judging for this faulty-math competition, the U.S. election -- where the stakes are presumably higher -- clearly takes the gold. Nowhere is the appetite for numbers more ridiculous than almost-daily polling on the presidential contest, which seldom pauses to acknowledge how the margin of error renders perceived 'trends,' up or down, utterly bogus. Nor is there much mention on TV of whether poll respondents can be trusted, as the Wall Street Journal noted in an Aug. 2 piece titled, succinctly enough, 'When Voters Lie.' As far as lying to pollsters, consider a recent Rasmussen survey, which stated that 26% of Americans say they watch cable news daily for information about the campaign. Sounds good, except that would mean more than 58 million adults watched cable news on an average day. Yet based on a two-week span during which the poll was conducted, Nielsen data indicate Fox News, CNN and MSNBC totaled 31.5 million viewers daily -- suggesting that self-reported viewing was off by 45%. Even throwing in Headline News and CNBC, CNN placed cable news' combined reach at 19%, meaning 7% of those replying either misled Rasmussen or couldn't remember what they watched. Take this as additional evidence that polling reactions are influenced by what people think is expected of them -- one reason PBS does better in polls than actual ratings, while the reverse is generally true for pro wrestling and porn. It's also why surveys about media sex and violence should be approached skeptically, since everyone knows the 'right' answer, whatever their own viewing habits. Political polling obviously serves a purpose and provides cable talkers something to chew over. It's only when hosts and their sounding boards take the results' validity as gospel -- analyzing every dip and rise as if major shifts are occurring -- that the process graduates from amusing to absurd." [Source: Brian Lowry, "Spin makes big events even bigger | Cable news chews on Olympics, election", Variety, Aug. 15, 2008, 2:15 pm PT]

The cost of a reasonable campaign for sheriff of a jurisdiction of 30,000 - $50,000

While an uncontested election in Steuben County typically costs the candidate and party less than $1,000, contested races can rack up big sums, according to county Republican Party Chairman William Hatch. Hatch said $50,000 is a reasonable campaign budget for the sheriff's race. "Mailing fees have about doubled in the past few years, meaning bulk mailings are twice as much," Hatch said Wednesday. "You figure there's an electorate of 30,000, there's $7,500 right there. And then there's the cost of printing the flyers. There's no doubt it costs a lot of money." Other expenses in the race include political consultations, a paid campaign manager, printing, signage, fundraiser materials and contributions to party and others' campaigns.

One of the candidates, who has bankrolled his campaign to the tune of $14,000, is quoted as saying "I feel a candidate should be able invest in his own campaign if he's asking others to." He has received approximately $24,000 from other contributors. Another candidate has contributed $21,000 to his own campaign, while receiving $775 from others.

The winner of the Republican Primary will receive some party funds to continue the battle, Hatch said. "We will step up to the plate," Hatch said. "But the candidate had better come up with a budget."

[Source: Mary Perham (Gatehouse News Service), "Candidates open finances to public", Steuben Couier (New York), August 17, 2008 issue (posted online, August 15, 2008)]

Other Maryland mentions and mutterings

* Mercury emissions from cement plants: "...quarterly emissions testing -- which often involves just a three-hour sampling of the emissions from a cement silo -- can give misleading results. That was the experience in one city in the U.S., where a plant in Maryland that claimed it was emitting 16 kilograms of mercury was actually spewing out 40 times as much, or about 682 kilograms." Continuous monitoring equipment that is reasonably accurate for mercury is being used by some companies in Europe and the USA, according to Alvaro Linero, from the Department of Environmental Protection in Florida. Such equipment costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, and is certainly more accurate than periodic stack testing, he said. [Source: Martin van den Hemel (Richmond Review, Canada), "Lafarge among worst mercury polluters", BCLocalNews.com, August 15, 2008 5:00 p.m.]

* The cloverleaf interchange was patented by Arthur Hale of Maryland in 1916, and was first constructed near Woodbridge, New Jersey in 1928. [Source: Owen Sound Sun Times (Ontario, Canada), "Auto Almanac", August 14, 2008]

* Baltimore has a murder rate eight times higher than that of New York City. [Source: Kevin Carey, "Too Weird for The Wire | How black Baltimore drug dealers are using white supremacist legal theories ...", Washington Monthly, May/June/July 2008]. If you have ever been curious about the "sovereign individual" concept, you'd probably find this article worth reading for that alone. For the rest of us, the glimpse into the murderous world of Baltomore crack and heroin trade is just plain chilling.

* Places to petition in Hagerstown this weekend. You've heard of flea markets? Well, an event featuring dog washing is being billed as a flealess market. This, and more, listed in Herald-Mail's Weekend column.

* In 1985, 69 people in the Andean highlands village of Accomarca were massacred. The Peruvian Army lieutenant's men blocked an escape route while a subordinate officer and his men forced the villagers into buildings, where soldiers then opened fire. The lieutenant has been in Maryland since the early 1990s. He was arrested in Baltimore last year, and was was being held by federal authorities on immigration charges. Last March U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan ordered the man to pay $37 million in damages to two women who survived the massacre and the estates of their slain family members. The plaintiffs had accused him and another of war crimes, torture, crimes against humanity and illegal killings. He was returned to Lima on Friday on a Customs and Border Protection aircraft and was turned over to Peruvian authorities. [Source: Associated Press, "US deports ex-Peruvian officer accused in massacre", PR-inside.com, August 16, 2008 2:09 am]

August 15, 2008

Maryland quick to decide to abandon touch screen voting, but others were quick enough that voters won't use them this year

This year, less than a third of the electorate nationally will use touch screen voting. That's down from about half in 2006. ... [T]he shift away from the suspect touch-screens is gaining momentum. ... ... State governments in Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Tennessee and New Mexico have decided to replace their touch-screen electronic machines. While some states have completed the switch, others won't finish replacing the machines until 2010... EDS President Kimball Brace said touch screens would be used statewide this fall in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Nevada, Utah, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina, and in significant parts of or pockets of a dozen other states.

... Congress pushed counties toward electronic voting equipment — a reaction to the uproar over irregularities in Florida's 2000 presidential balloting. ... In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), creating minimum election standards and allotting nearly $3 billion to states to upgrade voting equipment, voter registration databases and otherwise to improve election administration. Facing deadlines to spend their so-called HAVA money, counties across the country began ordering new machines.

... Keith Ashdown, the chief investigator for the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, called it "sort of the classic case of the best intentions gone awry" by throwing money at a problem. "If a little more time was spent deciding exactly what they wanted to purchase, we may not have to be starting from scratch in many counties," he said.

... "What has traditionally happened in this country is that a change in voting equipment happens once in the lifetime of an election official. With some election officials, it never happens," said EDS' Brace. "We're now upwards of almost 60 percent of the country that in the last eight years have changed their voting equipment."

[Source: Greg Gordon (McClatchy Newspapers), "Did Washington waste millions on faulty voting machines?", McClatchy Washington Bureau website - mcclatchydc.com, August 15, 2008]

August 11, 2008

Abortion is the subject of a play this weekend in Baltimore



Today's Examiner includes a rave review for The 'A' Word -- a play at The Mobtown Theatre in Baltimore this weekend. See the review here.

August 7, 2008

Oprah delivered a million votes to Obama in primaries, but lost half a million viewers, sez U Md economists

The New York Post’s Page Six ran a story this week on how two University of Maryland economists had concluded that Winfrey had delivered a million votes to U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. ... Craig Garthwaite and Tim Moore were able to calculate that Winfrey was the motivating force behind precisely 1,015,519 primary votes for Obama, and his startling but undeniable defeat of once-sure-thing Hillary Clinton. The paper is available here. Here's from abstract: "In this paper, we use geographic differences in subscriptions to O! – The Oprah Magazine and the sale of books Winfrey recommended as part of Oprah's Book Club to assess whether her endorsement affected the Primary outcomes. We find her endorsement had a positive effect on the votes Obama received, increased the overall voter participation rate, and increased the number of contributions received by Obama. No connection is found between the measures of Oprah's influence and Obama's success in previous elections, nor with underlying local political preferences. Our results suggest that Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for approximately additional 1,000,000 votes for Obama." The authors controlled for "differences in county populations’ race, age, sex, marital status, educational attainment, family size, income, poverty status, home ownership, house prices, labor force participation, unemployment, veteran status and urban/rural mix."

This manifestation of political clout is a double-edged sword, however, as it was earlier noted that Winfrey’s ratings had dropped since she came out for Obama last fall. In a piece in the Los Angeles Times’ Top Of The Ticket political blog, Andrew Malcolm detailed how Winfrey’s show has lost half a million viewers since this time last year, and how her 'favorable ratings had fallen from 74% to 66% while her unfavorable ratings jumped by more than 50% from 17% to 26%.'

A mention of this shift in public opinion last April, while the Democratic primaries were still a contested thing, prompted an avalanche of comments on the Times blog by female Hillary supporters who were angry about Winfrey abandoning what they considered to be the most viable female presidential candidate ever. As noted on several political blogs at the same time was the likelihood that a notable portion of Winfrey’s viewership – stay-at-home mothers – might have been Republican supporters. Many who commented on the Times blog said that they’d switched their allegiances to Ellen DeGeneres’ show, while others claimed to have sold their TVs to buy ammunition.

Winfrey’s ratings have been declining for much longer than the current election cycle, however, as the Times noted a drop in viewers from 9 million during the show’s zenith three years ago to 7.3 million today, with a 25 per cent loss of her female audience between 25 and 54 during the same period.

[Sources: Rick McGinnis (Intellevision columnist, "Oprah's political gambit may have hurt her image", Metro Canada - Calgary, August 7, 2008;
Ben Smith (Ben Smith's Blog on politico.com), "Quantifying the Oprah effect", August 5, 2008]

Educ - avg parents to spend $594 to send each K-12 student back-to-school

... the average back-to-school expenditure for students kindergarten through high school is $594, according to the National Retail Federation. That's up over $30 from last year... And the federation said that one-fifth of parents set aside a portion of their government stimulus check to re-equip their offspring... At over $20 billion in clothes, shoes and batteries, sending the K through 12 crowd on their way is an industry.

[Source: Dale McFeatters (columnist, Scripps Howard News Service), " Endless summer? No, endless school", seattlepi.com, August 7, 2008 11:32 a.m. PT]

Educ - longer school year -- to 200 from 180 days -- to compete with China?

Many schools now resume in early to mid-August, a development that seems thoroughly un-American. Now the sound that inspires back-to-school dread may not be a tree full of crazed locusts but the Fourth of July fireworks. Independence Day means only 30 more days until school starts. There is even talk of lengthening the traditional 180-day school year to 200 days because just as a previous generation was threatened with the specter of Russian worker-drone students the current generation is threatened with the joyless grinds of Chinese schools.

[Source: Dale McFeatters (columnist, Scripps Howard News Service), " Endless summer? No, endless school", seattlepi.com, August 7, 2008 11:32 a.m. PT]

Educ - summer assignments trend, including Maryland school with 100-page math packet

Even when the kids are physically not in the building over the summer, many of them are not really out of school. To combat the dreaded – and, it must be admitted real, "summer learning loss" – schools are assigning summer homework. These are not the lists of light summer reading of yore. One Maryland high school sent its students home for the summer with 100-page math packets. There are heavy duty reading assignments. With essays. And in some districts the work reportedly counts as a regular-year grade.

The typical adolescent, because that's what adolescents do, will let it go until the last minute, causing even more trauma when the bugs of August sound. Three days to go and the poor kid hasn't written a word on the nature of good and evil in Milton's "Paradise Lost," much less read the poem of which Samuel Johnson said in broad understatement, "None ever wished it longer than it is."

The endless summer becomes the endless school year, and the reason no child gets left behind is because no child ever gets out of school.

[Source: Dale McFeatters (columnist, Scripps Howard News Service), " Endless summer? No, endless school", seattlepi.com, August 7, 2008 11:32 a.m. PT]

Trees - ash trees at risk from nonnative insect, spread via firewood; emerald ash borer first detected in US in 2002 (Michigan)

The insect disrupts a tree's ability to transport water and nutrients. Symptoms of EAB include winding tunnels just under the bark, one-eighth inch, D-shaped exit holes on the trunk, as well as canopy loss, usually from the top down. Other symptoms include vertical splitting in the bark on the trunk and increased woodpecker activity. Agricultural and forest experts estimate that the beetle has destroyed 50 million trees so far. It now lives also in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, according to a report released by the University of Nebraska Institute of Agriculture and National Resources. The insect is bright, metallic green with a flat back. Adults typically are one-half inch long.

[Source: KETV-7 (Omaha), "Invasive Beetle Moves Closer To Nebraska | Insect Inhabits Native Ash Trees", August 7, 2008 5:40 pm CDT

July 28, 2008

* Md. Reviewing Concerns About Death Penalty
Associated Press

Five inmates have been executed since Maryland reinstated the death penalty in 1978. Wesley Baker, who was put to death in December 2005, was the last person to be executed in Maryland. Maryland currently has five men on death row. There is a de facto moratorium against capital punishment in Maryland because of a ruling in late 2006 by the state's highest court. The court ruled the state's protocol for lethal injection was implemented without proper approval by a legislative committee. Executions can't resume until the O'Malley administration submits new rules for the committee to approve. O'Malley has directed the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Corrections to begin working on the protocol, a process that could be finished by the end of the year. Gov. O'Malley, a death penalty opponent, has supported repealing capital punishment in Maryland. However, repeal attempts have failed in the past two years.

The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment is scheduled to report recommendations to the Maryland General Assembly by December 15. The panel held its first of several hearings today. The subject today was racial, economic and jurisdictional disparities in the death penalty.

University of Maryland criminologist Raymond Paternoster was one of the witnesses today. He released a study in 2003 that concluded Maryland prosecutors were more than twice as likely to seek a death sentence for black defendants who killed white people than black defendants who killed black people. Paternoster found geographical disparities in his study as well. For example, Baltimore County prosecutors were more than 13 times more likely to seek a death sentence than prosecutors in the city of Baltimore, he told the panel.

Deborah Poritz, a former chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, noted similar disparities among counties in New Jersey, which repealed the death penalty this year. "It is difficult to sympathize with a cold-blooded killer, but it makes no sense that a murderer in one county is subject to the death penalty when an identical crime would be treated in an entirely different way, if it were committed in another county," Poritz said.

Former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti is leading the commission, which consists of 22 other people. The commission includes three relatives of murder victims and Kirk Bloodsworth, a former Maryland death row inmate whose case was the first capital conviction overturned as a result of DNA testing in the United States. The panel is scheduled to hold two more public hearings in August, and other meeetings through November. Members of the public can testify at the hearings. The commission also is charged with studying the risk of an innocent person being executed, and will compare costs of "prolonged court cases involving capital punishment" with costs for life imprisonment without parole.

July 19, 2008

Marylanders' score in top half of US in index summarizing life expectancy, education, income

A report released this week presents data, by Congressional District, used to assess how well folks are doing using life expectancy, educational attainment and enrollment, and median income as criteria. Description of methodology and a variety of excerpts and whatnot are available via http://measureofamerica.org/2008-2009-report/summary/. The data shown above for Maryland is from info made freely available via Media Kit link.

June 29, 2008

If you don't see a good choice, create one - that's what self-government is all about

Reuters released a story today about black presidential and vice presidential candidates going back to Frederick Douglass (who escaped from Maryland as a slave). I noticed that the article mentioned Alan Keyes only in regard to 1996 and 2000 campaigns. I submitted the following comment:

Your article notes that "Alan Keyes ran for the Republican nomination in 1996 and in 2000." He also ran for the Republican nomination in 2008 (he even earned delegates in NC) and has announced that he is continuing to run as an independent candidate. Folks across the nation are working to get him on the ballot. About a week ago, Colorado was the first state in which he met the requirements to be listed on the ballot as an independent for President in November. Great news for God-fearin', liberty-lovin', sovereignty-conservin' Americans came out of California this weekend, as the American Independent Party formally switched its national party affiliation to the new national party which supports Dr Keyes for President. This switch immediately makes the new America's Independent Party the third largest political party in the USA, in terms of the number of registered voters. Here in Keyes' home state of Maryland (where his family has lived since the days when they were slaves) a new party is being formed -- Maryland Independent Party -- and he will be our favorite son candidate for president on every ballot in the state come November. I agree with Alan Keyes that "If you don't see the choice, make the choice. If don't see the choice, create that choice for your country. That's what self-government is about. Government of, by, and for the people can't be produced if the people aren't willing to work at it."

Reuters moderates comments before publishing them. You can check on the whole article, and see if they published my comment, here.

The quote from Dr. Keyes, by the way, is from a really interesting radio interview last week -- the quoted comments are at about the 43-minute mark in the mp3 archive of the June 25 radio show available here.

[June 30 update: thanks and a tip o' the hat to poster at American Political Report for pointing out that there is a bigger party. It's a state party, so America's Independent Party is beter described at this point as the third largest national political party.]

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Another example of income tax being used to stifle free speech

Our tax code requires pastors to distinguish between taxable and non-taxable activities when it comes to expressing views about candidates. In fact, many pastors are reluctant to put their church's tax-exempt status at risk that they forego even permitted activities just to be on the safe side of the IRS.

Here's a story that crossed my desk today that puts the matter into good perspective:

Minnesota pastor could be in trouble with IRS
by Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 6/29/2008

Pastor Gus Booth of Warroad Community Church in Warroad, Minnesota, could be in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service.

Booth preached a sermon encouraging his congregation to vote against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when Clinton was still actively in the Democratic presidential race. He used scripture to outline why both candidates were out of line for supporting abortion and homosexuality. The IRS has imposed strict restrictions on what pastors can do and say in the political arena.

"I mean the law, the IRS law is unconstitutional. I have a freedom-of-speech right to be able to say whatever I want to say from behind the pulpit -- and they have no right to impede that," the pastor explains.

Booth was asked about the possibility of his church losing its tax-exempt status. "I would think they would try to and maybe they intend to, but ultimately I don't preach the gospel in order to get a political deduction. If we lose our tax-exempt status, then so be it. I want to keep it because it keeps more money in the kingdom, and we do good things as a church. I mean we do so much more than politics here, it's amazing," Booth adds.

The Alliance Defense Fund will stand by Booth in the event the IRS challenges his actions.

"I preached a sermon," Booth explains. "It was an opposition sermon based on the presidential candidates of Clinton and Obama -- that's when Clinton was still in the race -- and I evaluated their positions on some key issues in light of scripture. And scripture has come to a conclusion that those two issues -- specifically abortion and homosexuality -- are vehemently opposed [by God] ...." And because both candidates are "okay with those sins," Booth says he "just encouraged [his] congregation not to vote for them."

If the IRS relieves the church of its tax-exempt status, Booth says that means he must pay taxes in order to preach about sin as it relates to politics.

- - - end of article (and thanks to Charles Lewis of South Carolina for forwarding this. Charles is inspiring folks across the nation every day through his Save America Summit work. Please let him know if this piece was helpful to you -- email waywwords@charter.net)

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McCain hit for tax avoidance (California home property taxes unpaid for 4 years)

A blogger who calls him/herself "The Bag of Health and Politics" castigates McCain in an article here. At least one of The Bag's comments seems reasonable:"If a friend of mine who owns property in southern California was 4 years behind on her property taxes, her home would be foreclosed on. But not John McCain, he can skip out on his fair share and continue to live the high life." The Bag had a post yesterday that discussed Bill Clinton. The whole article is an interesting read, but the following sentence seems especially noteworthy: "In 1998, Bill Clinton turned his party into a party of liars. He failed to be square with Democrats. Despite that, Democrats went to the mat for Bill Clinton, and kept him from being impeached for his extramarital affairs." I am heartened to see The Bag start to speak openly about what Democrats have surely understood since the stonewalling of impeachment began. They will remain a party of liars at least as long as they keep trying to pretend that Clinton's impeachment was about sex. See the whole blog article here: Bill Clinton's Rage Overshadows McCain's Meltdown.

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Sunday, June 29, 2008

Notes related to today's front pages

Crack cocaine-fueled violence hit America's inner cities in 1989

The top story on front page of The Sun of Baltimore is on this year's lower muder rate in Baltimore, which is on a pace to be the lowest since 1988. Officials attribute the trend to "new crime-fighting strategies, including a focus on the city's most violent criminals."

Doctors squeezed by price controls, may turn into a crisis of availability of care

The middle of the front page of today's Sun explains why the president-elect of Maryland State Medical Society is thinking of leaving his practice next year. He's been a family practice physician in Crofton for 30 years. Half of his 4,000 regular patients are in Medicare. On Tuesday, a 10.6% reduction in Medicare reimbursement rates will take effect "unless Congress intervenes". I'm not sure why the Sun reports it like this, given that the Senate is on holiday until after 4th of July. "But even without the cuts, some doctors like Sroka of Crofton aren't sure their practices can survive. Private insurers reimburse at lower rates in Maryland than elsewhere, and the cost of living and overhead here are high, as are malpractice premiums. It's all adding up to a crisis, health care providers say. Practices may drop Medicare patients, and some will fold altogether. Already, Maryland has a shortage of clinical practice physicians in several regions, and that's expected to worsen as young doctors increasingly forgo private practice for salaried positions or leave the state for areas with higher reimbursement rates. 'The long and short of it is I was a wealthy doctor 15 years ago. I'm a struggling doctor today,' Sroka said. 'I am at the point now of thinking about quitting.'"
Full story

"Redneck Paradise"

That's the name of the float shown in this joyful photo taken at a cancer benefit yesterday in Springfield, Maryland.

Full story

Gambling and taxes, and volunteer fire departments

The top story on front page of today's Cumberland Times-News is
"State may seek local lotto revenue | Report could mean lawmakers after control; fire hall hurting without gaming". The LaVale Volunteer Fire Department in Allegany County was clearing about a thousand dollars a week from their gaming hall. But a bill passed by state legislature this past session bans slot-like machines such as were used there, and their hall is now dark, with machines removed. The fire department is looking to cut their budget for the fiscal year that begins Tuesday by the $50,000 they had projected as revenue. I don't like state-supported gambling, and I really have a problem with the state promoting gambling through advertising and cute colorful game pieces prominently displayed at stores. One of the many benefits of abolishing the federal income tax and shrinking the federal government is that there will be less squeeze on state and local funding mechanisms based on principles that we can all support.

Obama's "57-state" lapel pin

This wasn't on any front pages that I know of, but it should be. I doubt there's an adult who was here during Dan Quayle's stint as VP who doesn't remember his statement at a spelling bee. Where are those reporters today? Why are they silent on this 57-state statement by Obama? Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Freeper B-Cause for examining the implications of the 57-state statement.

And the article which prompted B-Cause's post is also worthwhile reading, here. The comments on this article prompted me to post about Obama campaign's foray into changing the presidential seal:

America's Independent Party highlights the E pluribus unum motto right on its masthead. This party was formed by folks who support Alan Keyes' decision to leave the Republican party. It's already the party with the third-largest number of registered voters in the USA, thanks to the affiliation Friday of American Independent Party, of California. The E pluribus unum masthead was added to Maryland Independent Party website last night. This new party also is the result of Keyes supporters, and I expect it will formally affiliate with the new national party in coming weeks. Poll data here in USA shows three-quarters of the public explicitly characterizing the country as being on the wrong track. I see Obama and McCain as representing two rails on that same track, both heading to a disastrous destination. The Keyes campaign has been hosting national public town hall style conference calls since October. In his opening comments on the call last Thursday (June 26, 2008), Dr Keyes talked about the changes to the presidential seal. The audio recording is archived at the Keyes campaign website.

Dr. Keyes' comments about the seal start at about the 11-minute mark of the mp3 file available here.

Open government

The top story on front page of today's The Daily Times of Salisbury discusses the relatively poor job of publicizing meetings done by Somerset County government.
Full story

Oil price impact on road repairs

Front page stories today out of Salisbury and Hagerstown point to problems already becoming apparent in road maintenance. Both articles cite the more than 60% rise in price of asphalt.

New laws taking effect in Maryland this week

Starting Tuesday, children under 8 in Maryland will be required to use a federally approved car seat, unless the child is 4 feet, 9 inches or taller or weighs more than 65 pounds. Violations can result in a $50 fine.

Maryland residents will, starting Tuesday, be required to indicate whether each dependent child claimed as an exemption on income tax returns has health care coverage.

Medicaid reimbursement rates will rise for dentists treating childen. in an effort to help avoid a repeat of the tragic death last year of 12-year-old Deamonte Driver. Bacteria from an untreated dental abscess spread to his brain.

Adults without insurance, employed by small business, who have incomes at 116 percent of the federal poverty line, will be eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid coverage of children will also be expanded in other ways.

An AP story highlighting these and other laws that take effect on July 1 was on the front page of the Salisbury paper. An online version of the article is available here.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Notes related to today's front pages

Who's accountable to the voters for this $6-million-worth of poor judgement?

The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown has a teaser above the masthead pointing to a story on p. C1: "Ex-Fort Detrick scientist, government settle in anthrax case. The Washington Post actually ran the story at bottom of front page, reporting that the settlement involves the federal government paying the biological weapons expert a settlement valued at $5.85-million in exchange for his dropping the lawsuit claiming violation of his privacy rights. The government did not admit wrongdoing.

"MY GUN PERMIT"

The Mideast edition of Stars and Stripes has an AP article on the DC v Heller decision, with a great photo of Dick Heller in a crowd in front signing a rally-goer's sign which says "The Second Amendment | My Gun Permit".

Building our new party's press list, reporter by reporter

The lead story in the Hagerstown paper is a tri-state piece on the DC v Heller decision: "Ruling on guns has local support", by reporter Josh Shaw. I added Josh to MD-press list. Dear readers, if you come across a reporter covering matters related to Maryland Independent Party platform, please forward whatever contact info you have for them to ideas@marylandindependentparty.org

Another endorsement for McCain

An AP story out of Vietnam is at bottom right corner of front page of the Hagerstown paper: "Jailer from 'Hanoi Hilton' says he'd vote for McCain". He says there was no torture of the prisoners, and that McCain made up his stories of beatings and solitary confinement in an attempt to win votes. Nonetheless, he considers McCain a friend and is quoted as saying yesterday that "If I were an American voter, I would vote for Mr. John McCain."

One of the reasons I think Sen. McCain will not be elected is that I have not heard, nor can I imagine, a good answer to the reasonable question: "Sen. McCain, how can the American public be assured that during your years of cativity, our enemies did not turn you into a 'Manchurian Candidate'?

On state and local taxpayers' dollars paying for lobbyists to better compete for federal funds

The Herald-Mail highlights an online poll question in a cute "What do you think?" box placed near bottom left. Today's question: Should local governments pay lobbyists to help them obtain federal or state funding?" Vote yes or no online at www.herald-mail.com.

I realy like the outreach represented by such polls. I hope all readers here will consider each comment an invitation to comment without explicit poll. If you think it's at all disrespectful, for example, to ask the Manchurian Candidate question above, please let me know.

High voter turnout isn't the be-all, end-all

The top story in The Washington Post made me think about the abysmally poor voter turnout in last week's special congressional election. The article was about Zimbabwe's election, and clearly shows that high turnout isn't always indicative of a thriving system. President Mugabe wants high turnout: "Mugabe's militias drove a frightened electorate to the polls Friday, checking off names of voters and threatening vengeance on those who failed to cast ballots for [him]." Each ballot has a serial number, and the identity of who casts each numbered ballot is recorded. A voter named Spencer Mashonga, whose parents live in subsidized government housing, is quoted as saying "We have been warned that we will lose our house if we don't vote for [Mugabe]. So we just have to vote. It's not like we want to vote." The Reuters photo accompanying the story is evocative in many ways. It features a close up of an old woman showing her finger, marked with dye to show she had voted. Her face displays focus and ambiguity. The reddish color of the dye is apt given the violence which prompted opposition candidate to withdraw.

Propagandizing from the get-go at The Washington Post

Above the fold in the Post is a story by Lori Montgomery and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum titled "Key Bills Caught In Senate Logjams | Session Marked by Filibusters, Ploys. The lead sentence of the story matter-of-factly portrays climate change as one of the "critical economic issues" that the Senate has failed to address. This sure seems a strained view of climate change issue. It is true enough that the mandatory CO2 cap bill that was filibustered would have had dire economic impact, but the claim that climate change is a critical economic issue seems designed to promote the alarmist view of CO2-climate. It's true enough that climate does change, and that such change does have significant economic impact. If we had not recovered from The Little Ice Age, for example, many things in many places would be significantly different. I respectfully point out that that characterizing climate change as a critical economic issue in this case is nothing more than alarmist exaggeration.

The article also appears to proclaim that the top issue in the coming election is "the sputtering economy".

I suggest that the top issue should be broader: the miserable leadership failure of the major parties in recent years.

One article I recommend today is a commentary piece from p. 13 of The Globe and Mail out of Toronto, Canada. "Global Warming: Science by Intimidation", by Rex Murphy, is an excellent discussion of some of the shoddy work being promoted as scientific.

Medicare

Below this propagandizing story just discussed was a pointer to a page A3 story: "U.S. freezes Medicare pricing system."

If there was some way this story could be spun to positively reflect on government control of our sick care/health care, I suspect more of the story would have been on front page.

Obamanation

In the middle of the Post front page is a large story about an Obama/Clinton event held in in a picturesque field or somesuch next to a home with a tractor in the back and what looks like a church next door, in the town of Unity, New Hampshire. The photos evoke enthusiasm and attentiveness of lots of attendees and a happy Obama speaking to them with a happy Clinton standing dutifully close behind.

The picture of the crowd also prompts me to think about the low-turnout election here I mentioned earlier. I've been voting at the same Candlewood Elementary School precinct here in Derwood, Maryland for the last twenty years. Typically, be it a general election or primary, voters have to pass through a sort of gauntlet of folks encouraging vote for particular candidate or slate. And I've gotten the impression over the years that the gauntlet invariably includes two members of the public school teachers union. It is my understanding that the reason schools are closed on election day is because the union wants its members to be able to man the polls in this fashion. I found it striking that not a teacher was present on this day when they weren't "on the clock".

The Washington Times also prominently displayed the fruits of the photo op. As much as I like Times editors, I think they do us a great disservice by going along with the major parties in closing the door on coverage before the ballot slots are closed. Three quarters of Americans say our nation is on the wrong track. Yet the same old two tracks, channeling us to the same destination, are given virtually all the promotional coverage they want, to the exclusion of other candidates. I suspect that most Americans don't know that Alan Keyes is running for President as an independent, and that folks across the nation are working to get him on the ballot.

Gasoline is getting to be more expensive than bottled water

At lower left of the Post front page is an interesting piece titled "Fuel Prices Boost Cause of S. Asia's Maligned Rickshaw". It notes that South Asian gvernments, after long decrying rickshaws as embarrassing symbols of the Third World, are being countered by folks who tout the rickshaws as environmentally sound and economic. I was in Charleston, South Carolina for a wedding a couple weeks ago, and bicycle pedicabs were a common sight. The bride and groom even left the recption in one. Very cool. Speaking of public conveyances, I called the Montgomery County government Taxicab Unit yesterday to get a feel for how much fuel saving potential is presented by taxicabs. I had read about a test in Calgary and Edmonton where hybrid engine vehicles were substituted for the some of the normally-used Crown Victorias. The gasoline savings were impressive, representing payback period of 14-18 months for the entire price of purchase. Here in my county, there's a bit of a disconnect between the price of gas and the taxicab owner's decision-making, because the gas is paid for by the driver who leases the car from the cab owner who has the taxi license. We have 650 taxicabs in Montgomery County. The county does record the mileage on the vehicles during annal inspections, but that data is apparently not routinely compiled into annual taxi-mile number. So I don't know how many miles or how much fuel is used by this sector. One of the officials who talked with me noted that there is one hybrid taxi on the road now, with another expected to be deployed after being repainted Monday. One other is planned to be deployed very soon. New York City and Arlington, Virginia are much quicker in adopting hybrid engine cabs. He mentioned that installing fare meters on hybrid cars has not been so straightforward a task, due to differences in the design of the cars. Taxicab companies here in Montgomery County typically purchase 3-year old vehicles as replacement taxis. The cost difference between a three-year old Crown Vic at $10-12K and a hybrid today is significant. A big part of that is that there is not a large supply of 3-year old hybrids available on the used car market at this time. The cab companies do feel pressure from drivers, however, so there is not a total disconnect between the owners and gas prices.

Korea

At bottom right, the Post highlighted some inside stories, including page A10 story on "N. Korea Destroys Coolling Tower". The added description highlighted by the Post is "The televised demolition is a symbol of its willingness to abandon nuclear weapons." I will look at the article, but that description sounds like tripe to me. A symbol of abandoning nuclear weapons would be to abandon any weapons they already have. I think the blowing up of the cooling tower is indeed a step in the right direction, but it is more a symbol of Korea's fear of China than anything else.

Electricity price Another inside story highlighted is a page B1 story on "Dominion Issues 18 Percent hike". The additional detail provided is "The huge rate increase will cost customers of the Virginia electric company an average of $16 per month starting July 1."

Food poisoning

And another highlighted story is a page D1 article about "FDA Continues Tomato Probe". "More cases of salmonella are reported, so officials think tainted tomatos may still be in stores."

June 20, 2008

The Plame game: 900 to 0

Googling today's news stories for "Plame" reveals over 900 articles about Scott McClellan's testimony at House hearing today. The ones I read were full of dark accusations. The fact is that McClellan stated: "I do not know whether a crime was committed by any of the administration officials who revealed Valerie Plame's identity to reporters, nor do I know if there was an attempt by any person or persons to engage in a cover-up during the investigation."

This prompts 900 stories? Sheesh. We couldn't even get a single local paper to inform folks that the special general election congressional candidates had each been given 4-minute video slot on Montgomery public access cable channel 21, where the videos were broadcast over a dozen times during the week before the election. Shame on the Gazette and other papers for censoring the news by their utter silence. If any editor at one of these local rags has the good sense to decry the abysmally low voter turnout Tuesday, and yet fails to fess up to their own dereliction, I hope you'll send 'em a note asking why they were silent. Heck, don't bother waiting. Ask 'em today.

I sent Gazette a transcription of my remarks the day they were recorded, and provided as much info about the broadcast plans as I knew at the time. That info never got used in a story, but the Gazette did see fit to report a claim that we had not succeeded in getting even a single petition signature. The reporter had several weeks prior reported that folks across the state were gathering signatures, and was reminded of this the day after the false claim was published. No retraction was published. No correction was published. Well, at least you know the quality of coverage that you can expect if they maintain their quality at this level.



I even sent the reporter a "How to turbocharge your clipboard" feature I had written for petition circulators, with this photo of one of five clipboards used to collect signatures at HometownHolidays in Rockville.

June 16, 2008

Steve's Comment re: AP article published at Annapolis Capital

A better choice

There are two places online where voters in the June 17 special election can compare the candidates, including more than the two mentioned in this article. The League of Women Voters invited all the candidates to answer the same questions. The answers received from four candidates are published in the League's voters guides - I'm sorry that the rules for posting comments here specify no links allowed. Google for ["League of Women Voters" Maryland Montgomery]. Also, the same four candidates were invited by Access Montgomery to record a 4-minute video statement. The statements by the four candidates can be seen online [Google for "Access Montgomery"] -- and have been shown several times on Montgomery County cable channel 21.

I'm one of those candidates whose answers you can read in the voters guide and who you can see in the video. My name is Steve Schulin. I'm a registered write-in candidate -- votes for me on June 17 will be counted. If you'd like to see a God-fearin', liberty-lovin', sovereignty-conserving Representative in Congress, I ask for your vote on June 17. My campaign web page, as are those of the other candidates, is shown in the voters guide

Steve Schulin - Rockville, MD

---sbs---

June 16, 2008

Steve's Comment re: pro-Edwards blogging by John Daly (of Rockville)

Donna Edwards, like McCain, Clinton and Obama, proposes mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions. If you liked the 85% rise in electricity prices here in Maryland since 2006, you'll love the thousands of extra dollars a year that such caps will cost a typical household. I'm running as an independent write-in candidate, and I respectfully urge voters to send a message to Donna Edwards and all those others. I thank the blogmaster in advance for posting this, and hope he'll do so before the election tomorrow!

http://www.md4steve.org

---sbs---

Steve's Comment re: Philip H. Coons blog (of Waldorf) and Baltimore Sun article which Phil highlighted`

A better choice

There are two places online where voters in the June 17 special election can compare the candidates, including more than the two mentioned in this article. The League of Women Voters invited all the candidates to answer the same questions. The answers received from four candidates are published in the League's voters guides. Also, the same four candidates were invited by Access Montgomery to record a 4-minute video statement. The statements by the four candidates can be seen online -- and have been shown several times on Montgomery County cable channel 21. I'm one of those candidates whose answers you can read in the voters guide and who you can see in the video. My name is Steve Schulin. I'm a registered write-in candidate -- votes for me on June 17 will be counted. If you'd like to see a God-fearin', liberty-lovin', sovereignty-conserving Representative in Congress, I ask for your vote on June 17.

Here's the links

My campaign web page is at http://www.md4steve.org

The League of Women Voters voter guides are at
http://www.lwvmd.org/pg/pgc.special.vg.pdf -- Prince George's County
http://www.lwvmd.org/mont/vgspecialcongdist4.pdf -- Montgomery County

The Access Montgomery 14-minute video compilation is at
http://www.accessmontgomery.tv/cn4_1_0.htm

Steve Schulin - Rockville, MD

---sbs---

Steve's comment to Washington Post blog entry

Thanks, midanae, for naming the others for whom votes will be counted tomorrow. Four candidates registered early enough to be included in the voters guides published by League of Women Voters -- the Montgomery County version is available at http://www.lwvmd.org/mont/vgspecialcongdist4.pdf -- and there's a 14-minute video compilation of statements by the same four candidates recorded at the Montgomery County public access cable TV station -- the video is available for online viewing at http://www.accessmontgomery.tv/cn4_1_0.htm

I invite folks to learn more about my God-fearin', liberty-lovin', sovereignty-conserving platform at http://www.md4steve.org

---sbs---

*

May 25, 2008

Wind energy - Carroll leads Maryland counties in accomodating homeowners' small systems; state grants available

The expense to install a windmill can range from $12,000 to $55,000... Tim Fluharty, who owns the Tilghman-based Fluharty's Electric, has put up eight windmills - including Abey's [Green Point crabber Paul Abey] - on the Eastern Shore, and has several dozen more proposals out from interested individuals, he said. Fluharty installed his first about a year ago at the company vice president's house, to pique curiosity... The Abeys estimate that their electricity bill has gone down by one-third... Paul Abey ... expects the turbine will pay for itself in four or five years. "I can't see how we can lose on it."

Most counties in the region don't address wind turbines, but Carroll County tweaked its zoning ordinance earlier this month to allow residents to install the systems [small wind energy systems]... Earlier this month, the Carroll County commissioners approved a zoning ordinance amendment that allows property owners to install up to two "small wind energy systems," each consisting of one tower not to exceed 150 feet in height. The amendment was the culmination of a process that began with several residents' inquiries at the end of last year, county officials said... And the state has begun offering grants to help people pay for them... Last fall, the Maryland Energy Administration launched a Windswept Grant Program for small wind energy projects. The pilot was spurred by the rising number of requests for assessments, said Crissy Godfrey, wind program manager for the administration. "It's been very popular," Godfrey said of the grant. As of December, she said, there were about two dozen wind projects in Maryland, most on residential properties, the majority on the Eastern Shore... Unlike Carroll's modified ordinance, zoning regulations in most area counties don't address wind turbines. In Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard counties, a windmill is considered an accessory structure, subject to the same restrictions as objects such as sheds. Property owners usually have to get a variance if the turbine surpasses regulation height - 15 feet in Baltimore County, 25 feet in Anne Arundel. In Frederick County, the planning division is expected to present a proposed amendment on wind energy systems in about six months, officials said.

... Wind users connected to the power grid can benefit by building up credits for surplus energy they produce, a supply they can fall back on when needed, Godfrey said. They can also sell power back to utilities, Godfrey and Baring-Gould said, although they don't necessarily get the same value... Mary Bowman is one of several people in [Carroll] county ready to forge ahead with wind power. The Eldersburg resident has seen her monthly electric bill soar to about $425, almost three times the amount she used to pay - even while attempting to cut back on energy use by flipping on ceiling fans and reminding her children to turn off lights. "They have a chokehold on us," Bowman said. "There's got to be an alternative so we're not working to pay BGE. … We have to start looking to the future. We have to start looking at alternatives."
[Source: Arin Gencer (Baltimore Sun reporter), "Electricity coming out of the air |Power costs have people looking into individual wind energy systems", The Sun, May 25, 2008, p. 1]

May 12, 2008

Free expression of religion: not a universal value in Maryland

A church in Columbia has proposed constructing a new building to include a 16-foot cross on the side facing Twin Rivers Road. An op ed in the local paper describes what the writer calls Columbia's "peculiarly militant form of ecumenism", and reports that "Exterior religious symbols have been more or less taboo at Columbia's interfaith centers from their inception as laboratories of cooperation between people of different faiths. The St. John's plan, the objection goes, tears at the interfaith ideal that is woven into the fabric of Columbia, integral to founder James Rouse's intent to create a place where no race, religion or social class would dominate others. As Wilde Lake Village Board member Mary Pivar put it, the new cross would be a 'stop sign to diversity and inclusiveness.'"

[Ref: Doug Miller, "Balancing faith, tolerance is Columbia's cross to bear", Columbia Flyer, May 8, 2008]

Example of impact of high electricity price in Maryland

In 2005, the single biggest electricity user in the state was the Eastalco aluminum smelting plant near Frederick. The plant, which employed 600 workers, required approximately 350 megawatts of our state's power plant capacity. During its 35 years of operation, the plant surely overcame many challenges. But it could not overcome the prospect of the tripled electricity bill that was the best deal it could negotiate for 2006. So, on December 15, 2005, the company decided to shut the plant. Within a month, 500 of the 600 jobs were cut. Soon thereafter, 75 of the remaining 100 jobs were cut. The site already has nice connection to the power grid, so a company named Sempra Energy considered building a power plant there, and purchased an option on the land. The company laid out plans for a 600-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant, to be called the Catoctin Power Plant. An article in Saturday's Frederick News-Post reports that the company has shelved the plan. Sempra spokesperson Art Larson said that while there's a need for more power in the region, "at this point, economics doesn't warrant going further". He said the plant would not be built without an energy contract in place. The company is curently moving forward on renewable energy pojects in southwestern US, but has no other plans for this area.

[Ref: Ed Waters, Jr., "Economic climate causes company to shelve power plant plan", Frederick News-Post, May 10, 2008]

May 4, 2008

Some notable items in last few days

Obstacles to voting recalled

In 2006 primary, some Maryland precincts had long lines and delays. Our state's Attorney General Doug Gansler, in a speech this week, recalled voters being lined up in huge "snake-like" lines at Evangel Cathedral, a church in Upper Marlboro. "This is America in the 21st century, yet it took three hours to exercise their franchise," Mr. Gansler said. "It reminded me of the days of literacy tests and poll taxes - obstacles to voting - to just merely exercise one of the most fundamental rights that we have in our democracy."

The article mentions that most of the problems -- human errors and technical problems -- that delayed voting in some of the state's largest jurisdictions, were addressed by the time of the 2006 general election.

[Source: Associated Press, "Task force releases report on 2006 voting irregularities", The Capital (Annapolis), April 30, 2008]

52,000 ex-convicts' right to vote was restored by Maryland last year

The same AP story mentions "a change in the law last year allowing convicts who have completed their sentences to vote, a change affecting an estimated 52,000 citizens."

Receipt please

Of all the hare-brained actions by our legislature in recent years, few are as contemptuous of our citizens as the one to spend millions of dollars on voting machines that allow no independent recount. A letter to the Cumberland Times-News this week puts the issue into good perspective. Here's an excerpt:

The vulnerabilities of Maryland's voting system were well documented in the study done by Prof. Edward Felten and his colleagues at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. Prof. Felten testified before a committee of the Maryland House of Delegates in 2007 about the results of his study.

His report is one reason that the Maryland Legislature voted unanimously to abandon touchscreen voting in favor of an accessible paper ballot/optically scanned voting system for 2010. In a time of severe budget constraints, the funding for a new voting system has been provided, signifying the importance of this switch.

The complicated set up and breakdown procedures, which Ms. Amyot explained [in letter published April 27], are a response to the security vulnerabilities built into the current voting system. Accomplishing all the tasks necessary to secure the voting units adds to the long hours that election officials must devote to Election Day.

It does not, however, address the most basic security concern that results from the state's dependence on the manufacturer (Premier Election Solutions - formerly Diebold) for the programming and technical assistance to run the system and compute the results. It does not compensate for the fact that paperless computerized voting occurs within a "black box" where votes are recorded and counted in secret by a system for which the manufacturer claims proprietary rights.

[Source: Mary Howe Kiraly (Bethesda/Cumberland), "Problem with touchscreen voting is well-documented", Cumberland Times-News, May 1, 2008]

Petition process and practices - controversy in Missouri

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had an interesting article today about petition-gathering in their state. I'd like to stress that the petition for Maryland Independent Party is an entirely volunteer effort. Here's excerpts from the article, followed by link to full text:

* With petitions having become an increasingly popular way to get issues before voters, the practice has been met by critics who say the process favors groups with deep pockets and is ripe for abuse. ... About half of the states ... allow citizens to petition for ballot access. In Missouri, to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot requires at least 130,000 signatures, which must be spread from throughout the state. This year, the secretary of state approved 25 initiative petitions for signature collection, up from 11 in 2004. The petition process has its roots in Progressive Era populism, and there are still issues -- such as the push in Missouri for a ballot item encouraging renewable energy -- that are largely volunteer-driven. For other interest groups, the petition has emerged as a way to bypass the Legislature. The state's casinos, for instance, have paid over $195,000 to a Michigan firm -- National Petition Management Inc. -- to collect signatures that would rescind the state's $500 loss limit. "It's pay to play," said Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University who has studied the effect of initiative petitions.

* At the Capitol... there is a move to further regulate signature gathering in the state. Storch has authored a bill that would prohibit signature companies from paying by the name, a law in effect in Wyoming, North Dakota and Oregon. "I think that the last few election cycles have demonstrated that this business of initiative petitions has become a serious one," Storch said.

* Though conceived as a grass-roots way for citizens to take issues directly to voters, collecting signatures on some measures has also become a big business. Well-funded organizations can contract with firms who, for a hefty fee, will guarantee ballot access. Individual signature gatherers are sometimes paid $1 or more for a name. States elsewhere have sought to crack down on petition circulators, either by limiting the time organizers have to collect names or making it illegal to pay by the signature. Now, some say, it's time to clean up the process in Missouri. "The ballot initiative goes to the heart of the democratic process -- we need to make sure it is not being abused," said state Rep. Rachel Storch, D-St. Louis.

* The process ... can be easily manipulated by those who peddle the petitions, Donovan says. One trick: Using a clipboard to cover the part of the petition that tells voters what they are actually endorsing. "There are professionals out there who know how to play the game," Donovan said. "Even when they are doing things legally, they have a song and dance."

* Signature collectors sometimes present voters with two or three petitions at a time, making it confusing for voters to know which one they are signing. Even the names can be potentially deceiving -- an effort to rescind the spending limits at casinos mentions schools, but not gambling.

* FIERCE BATTLES
In the absence of strict regulations, those on both sides of contentious ballot issues in Missouri have taken to policing each other's tactics. The result: a rhetorical battle playing out in front of voters at popular signature-gathering spots such as post offices, libraries and government buildings. This spring, the fiercest battles erupted over a measure to ban affirmative action. A group of volunteers and paid canvassers have mobilized against the initiative, which is similar to ones in other states that have generated complaints about deceptive petition tactics. Critics here say even the initiative's name -- the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative -- is misleading and may fool some people who don't realize it would ban affirmative action programs backed by the state and local government. The liberal-leaning group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has deployed crews of workers at $8 an hour to make sure people know what they are signing, even if it means being assertive about spreading their view. "I like to call it being pleasantly persistent," said ACORN organizer Jackie Tyler. Tyler said her workers were educating voters. The opposition has another name for them: "blockers." Last week, Tyler and a crew of about 20 ACORN workers dispersed through the region, responding to a hot line where people can call to report sightings of signature gatherers. One of those tips led her to the Maryland Heights Post Office, where she saw a petition gatherer juggling about six yellow and blue clipboards attracting a small crowd. Armed with a pile of yellow fliers that say "Think before you ink!" Tyler tried to approach voters, warning the affirmative action petition would harm women and minorities. The signature collector, David Ulmo, a furniture salesman from Kansas City, had a yellow flier of his own to counter Tyler's. "Please ignore these paid 'blockers' who use thug tactics and intimidation to stop you from signing," his flier read. "Don't be bullied into walking away." Later, Tyler laughed at Ulmo's flyer. It will make it onto a dartboard back at the office, she said.

* Tim Asher, who is leading the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, said critics who accused them of deceptive practices lacked evidence to back their claims. "I've never heard anyone misrepresent the issue," he said. The local and national offices for National Ballot Access -- the Georgia company hired by to collect signatures for the anti-affirmative action drive -- did not return numerous phone calls.

* Ken McKoy, a veteran political activist and African-American pastor, would never dream of adding his name to a petition seeking the end of affirmative action in Missouri. But that's exactly what he nearly did when approached recently by a signature gatherer ... who pitched the proposal as a push to end discrimination. "He looked like a progressive -- he had tattoos, he had an earring, he may have had a mohawk," McKoy said of the petitioner. "He seemed like a left-wing hippie type guy. And he almost got me." Welcome to Missouri's wild and largely unregulated petition gathering season, which culminates Sunday as more than two dozen groups are due to submit signatures to the state on issues ranging from gambling limits to eminent domain.

* Dave Maus, a retired salesman from Oakville, said a young woman approached him about two weeks ago with the casinos petition. He recalled her saying the measure would raise $105 million for schools. It wasn't until he got home that he realized the initiative would also do away with wagering caps and limit the number of casinos in the state. "I know we should always read a petition, and that's nobody's fault but my own," he said. ... Anne Marie Moy, a spokeswoman for the casino effort, defended the title of the ballot campaign -- "Yes for Schools First" -- as accurate. The proposal would raise the amount of casino taxes -- to 21 percent from 20 percent -- dedicated for education. "I don't think it's deceptive," Moy said. "I think it very clearly states the most important thing that the initiative is going to accomplish."

* According to the Missouri secretary of state's office, 15 voters have submitted an affidavit asking that their names be removed from a petition -- 14 on the affirmative-action push, and one on the casino petition.

[Source: Jake Wagman and Kavita Kumar, "Petition deadline is here -- but sign with caution", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 4, 2008]

April 18, 2008

The democrats aren't so pro-choice when it comes to the choices on the ballot

Bob Benenson of CQpolitics.com recalls that the last special Congressional election in Maryland was in April 1996, to fill the seat vacated by Rep. Kweisi Mfume (resigned to become president of NAACP). The circumstances were very different then, but it is noteworthy to point out that fully 27 candidates arose for Democratic primary in that case.

There will be no primary this time. And that is because our Democrat Governor requested our Democrat-majority legislature to pass a bill to set a single special election date with nominees chosen by party officials rather than by primary voters. The move was justified as cutting the length of time that the seat will be vacant and saving taxpayers the roughly $1 million it would have cost to hold a primary. See Bob's article here.

April 17, 2008

* Gov. O'Malley plans to call for June 17 special election for House seat to be vacated by Rep. Wynn

April 11, 2008

* Education - differentiated accountability - MD is one of two states to express interest in federal pilot program to improve on No Child Left Behind Law [Wash'n Post editorial]

* MD-4 special election, and date, is up to Gov. O'Malley; Donna Edwards wants it