Ethics complaint against Bobo

It appears as though someone has finally filed an ethics complaint against Liz Bobo for potentially unethical use of her official delegate e-mail address to promote her preferred CA candidate.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems like that was a pretty unwise thing for Bobo to do. Someone her age who has been in politics as long as she has should have known better. We'll see what becomes of it.

Vote for me, and I'll ignore you

Update: Be sure to read the comments. Mr. Weinstein graciously responded to my question. Also, check out this editorial in the Baltimore Sun for more on this same topic.

I am irritated at one of the folks running for a State Delegate seat for 9A, Jon Weinstein. Two times over the course of the past two weeks I posted a question on his blog, and he still has not answered. The question, in my opinion, is perfectly legitimate. I don’t know the exact wording that I used, but it was something like this:

In 2007, a bill was introduced in the House of Delegates (HB 1040) called the Maryland Compassionate Use Act. This bill would have essentially legalized marijuana for medical purposes under Maryland state law. HB 1040 did not pass. Would you be supportive of a similar bill if one was introduced during your term?

This question is particularly relevant this year, because the Obama administration (to their credit) has basically ended Federal raids on medical marijuana facilities. Therefore, such a bill would have teeth if passed in Maryland.

I think such a bill would make a lot of sense. Why would a politician, most of whom have no medical training, limit what kinds of remedies are available to patients and their doctors? The ban on drugs makes no sense at all, but the ban on marijuana for medical purposes is particularly harmful and foolish.

Mr. Weinstein, however, has not answered the question nor even allowed the question to appear as a comment on his “blog”. Furthermore, he appears to have scrubbed all comments from his blog. I honestly don’t even know why the guy is running if he doesn’t want to deal with the public. The public can be a-holes, and I know this because I am a member of the public who can be an a-hole. But I am not running for an office which gives me the power for force others to do things against their will, Mr. Weinstein is. The least he could do is be courteous enough to answer questions from those in his potential district.

So far, the only thing the guy wants to do is raise money. Hell, I could run for office of the platform “send me your money and I won’t answer any of your questions.” I’d buy a sweet MacBook Pro for my use during my “campaign”.

Don’t take this as an endorsement of any of Weinstein’s opponents. During the last election I sent an e-mail to Bates and Miller asking them to clarify their position on gay marriage/civil unions. Neither was courteous enough to respond.

Hey, Mr. Postman

The post office royally sucks. I went to the Lisbon post office this afternoon at about 1:15 because I actually had to mail something that could not be handled online. When I got there I found that the post office is closed everyday from 1-2 PM for lunch. What is this, 1950? I wouldn’t mind so much if this was a competitive business, but there are laws which forbid competition with the post office and they provide this terrible level of service. Super lame.

WTF?

I think that Doug Miller is confused as to the difference between news and opinion. I suppose there are a few blogs that provide news, but for the most part blogs are editorials. This is why I find the following analysis, courtesy of Mr. Miller, somewhat bizzare:

Many blogs come from individuals with agendas to push and without critical oversight. Consumers must always be skeptical of any news source, particularly those that have not established their credibility. But online media also present vast potential for disbursement of the nuts and bolts of government, the documents that form the paper trail.

This is what Mr. Miller said on his blog. Yes, on his blog. I don't think that he considers his own blog among those that push an agenda and lack critical oversight. He probably thinks he is providing news.

And is it just me, or does the last sentence of this quoted blurb not make any sense whatsoever? Very weird.

The seen and the unseen

[Sarcasm: on]

There is some great news for our local economy. It seems that vandals have broken the windows of Iron Bridge Wine Company. Now the owners of wine bar will have to hire a glazier to replace the broken glass. The glazier in turn will have extra money to spend on new shoes from Feet First. The owners of Feet First will have extra money to pay some employees overtime, who will purchase new books for their studies at HCC. This cycle will continue indefinitely. This way of thinking, at its root, underlies many of the government’s attempts to stimulate our economy.

The other alternative, of course, is that this is nothing more than the broken window fallacy. If that were case, the vandals have really just made society poorer by a few windows. I sure am glad this is not the case!

Yay Democrats! Yay Republicans! Yay government spending to get our economy back on track!

Spoon man

Every time that I hear about incompetence on behalf of the US Postal Service, I think of Lysander Spooner. Spooner was a colorful person who started a private company to compete with the US Postal Service monopoly in the mid-1800s. He was so successful that the post office sued him for competing with their monopoly. They eventually drove him out of business with litigation, even though he was delivering mail more cheaply than they were. The fact that we still have a government run post office monopoly is absolutely absurd.

He was such a thorn in side of government that the State of Ohio drained a river to damage land that Spooner owned. That’s my kind of dude.

Reduced spending

During a budget meeting, Ken Ulman joked that “Anyone who would like to ask for less money, please feel free.”

I would like to ask for less money to be spent. In fact, most people probably want less money to be spent, or at least for spending to be flat. The majority of people who attend budget meetings like that one are those who are asking for our tax dollars to spent on some pet project of theirs that will “benefit the public”. People who want a more restrained budget are not as motivated to go out and speak as the special interests are.

My favorite quote from a citizen who testified is this one: “Every dollar spent on a library is a dollar well spent.” Strangely enough, I think that person means that every dollar of someone else’s money spent on a library is money well spent.

More stuff the library does not have

For awhile, I have been passingly interested in developing my own apps for the iPhone. The extent of my programing background is limited to a little Visual Basic, but I am interested in pursuing some iPhone/iPod Touch stuff as a hobby (that is, if my wife will let me touch her Mac). With that in mind I decided to look at the library for books on iPhone application development. I was not surprised to learn that they did not have a single book on the subject. Very lame.

In fact, the library database is so out of touch that it offers to correct the spelling of "iphone" to "upon".

True, there is much information on the subject available online, but that is the case with nearly any topic imaginable. That is also part of the reason why libraries are obsolete. At any rate, Amazon has a somewhat respectable selection of iPhone app programing books so I don't think that using books is too old fashioned.

The HoCo library, pathetic as it is, is supposedly known across the nation as being top notch. Just think how badly the other libraries must suck.

F@%k you TurboTax

I was goofing around in Turbo Tax and decided to set up a fake dependent just to see how that changes tax liability. This is what it says in the "add a dependent" screen:

Supporting children and other family members can be expensive. We’ll help you get some of that money back by taking up to a $3,500 deduction for each dependent you claim.

Translation: Supporting children and other family members can be expensive. The government will make others in the community help pay for your children so that politicians can be sure you vote for them. Have a nice day!

I have nothing at all against children or people who have them. But having children is a personal decision, and not something that should be subsidized by the government. This is some serious BS.

More referendum fun

I don’t support the CB58 referendum, but this is getting ridiculous. 5,000 signatures is a very low threshold and should be raised. But requiring that the names of the signers be printed exactly as their names appear in the voter registration records is too complex. This is taken to the extent of using your middle name versus not using your middle name. Names are too fluid, which is why we have precise numerical identifiers like social security numbers. I for one have no idea how my name appears in the voter registration records.

Board of Elections Director Betty Nordaas said today that the board went back and reviewed the initial batch of signatures in light of a December Maryland Court of Appeals decision.

The review was suggested by the state attorney general’s office on March 11, according to a letter Nordaas gave to Norman the following day.

The court decision placed tighter restrictions on how signatures should be verified, Nordaas said. Voters now must sign their names on the petition form using the exact name that is on their voter registration; variations on a name will no longer be accepted, she said.

Since the 5,000 signatures needed to be submitted in two 2,500 signature batches (one in January and one in February), the 2,500 signature batch from January has been denied or is in question which puts the whole referendum in peril. Again, I don’t support a referendum in this case but the way in which this went down is not cool.

This whole process, not just the referendum but the whole zoning process, is too easily balled up in technicalities.

What's missing? Just the material facts.

The Baltimore Sun ran an editorial about the Healthy Howard Access Plan. The editorial even opined that the $500,000 program should be renewed for next year. What did it leave out? The fact that HHAP has hardly attracted any qualified enrollees in the program, that's all.

According to the editorial, 3,000 people have applied for health insurance through HHAP. Last I read, fewer than 150 qualified for the program. The benefits that the editorial promoted had nothing to do with HHAP, they had to do with a software program developed by a California company that links the uninsured to government sponsored health insurance programs. The HHAP hasn't actually done anything to justify its existence.

Activity Fees

There is not a better example of a special interest group taking advantage of the rest of society as those parents who support 100% publicly financed schools. I realize that not all parents fall into this category, and I also realize that some childless people support publicly financed schools. But in general, it is parents that are stealing half of our local tax dollars to provide public schools for their children that most of us receive very little direct benefit from.

Ironically, most of these same parents who want no expense spared on public schools would crap bricks the size of the Epcot Center if private schools were subsidized with vouchers. After all, private schools provide the exact same positive externalities to society that publicly financed schools do. I would rather have parents pay for their children's education themselves without any public assistance, but you gotta love the hypocrisy of these private school bashing parents.

I am amazed that some parents who get tens of thousands of dollars in education services for free have the balls to complain about $5 to $50 worth of “activity fees” (fees for workbooks, craft supplies, etc.). Today, Explore Howard reports that public schools in HoCo are no longer allowed to charge activity fees:

“We wanted to be sure there was some consistency, and more importantly, we wanted to be sure we weren’t asking for things the school system should be supplying,” Cousin said in October. “Free and public education is what the state says we should be supplying and that’s what we’ll do.”

I have no problem with schools wanting to be consistent in how these fees are charged, but to eliminate them all together makes no sense.

I am curious to see what sort of unintended consequences fall out of this new policy. We may now have teachers having to pay for some of this crap out of their own pockets, or some activities may be cut all together. How absurd.

Money well wasted

I guess Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon does not read my blog. Despite my warnings to the contrary, she wants city "stimulus" funds to focus on creating jobs. That money will be spent on the most inefficient and wasteful programs she can find.

9A candidate

One of the folks running for a State Delegate seat for 9A, Jon Weinstein, has a campaign blog. Most of it is the standard Democratic nonsense (blah blah blah, let’s throw more money at public schools, blah blah blah). But this is a trip:

Here is how Mr. Weinstein plans to improve access to health care:

Support Howard County’s health care program and enable other counties to build similar programs to set Maryland as a model for the rest of the nation.

That is so uninformed that I really don’t even know how to react. Considering that he did not use the proper name of the program, I seriously wonder if he even knows what he is talking about. By the time the election rolls around in 2010, I’ll be curious to see how the Healthy Howard Access Plan has evolved or if it is even still around. I read that they finally enrolled more than 100 people in HHAP a little while ago, and they have resorted to paying non-profits $20 a head for referrals that are accepted into the program.

He also wants to subsidize home loans for teachers and public safety personnel, because if there is anything we have learned from our current economic crisis it’s that you really can’t go wrong encouraging people to borrow money to buy houses.

I am not a fan of Bates and Miller, but this guy is certainly no better.

Help some horses

Engage in some private charity and help some local Girl Scouts help abused horses. Donate duct tape, office supplies, copy paper and cleaning supplies to them at their drop off location at the Glenwood branch library. All the stuff goes to Days End Farm Horse Rescue, which you may know is a local horse rescue facility.

Your house as seen by...

Someone e-mailed this to me and I got a kick out of it:


Your House As Seen By:

Yourself...

Your Buyer...



Your Lender....

Your Appraiser...


Your County's Tax Assessor...

Screwing the economic pooch

Not surprisingly, it’s getting popular for the crooks in Washington to favor expensive programs that “create” or “save” jobs. If a program that saved jobs was in itself good for our economy, the best program would be one that hires people to dig holes with spoons and fill them up again. Such a plan would not be capital intensive, so nearly all of the cost would go directly to the employees as salary. Who would honestly expect such a plan to be a good thing?

The fact is that number of jobs created is probably the worst single measure of a program's economic impact. The number of jobs created has little or no correlation to how a program will benefit society. As a matter of fact, wages paid are a cost to society, not a benefit. Hopefully, some of the infrastructure produced by that labor will prove to be a benefit, but the wages paid are clearly a cost. Unfortunately, it’s very easy for politicians to support programs that put people back to work regardless of what benefit comes from that labor. This almost certainly means that the wild-ass spend frenzy will result in a high cost for low benefit.

I predict that Obama will be as disastrous for our economy as Bush was for foreign policy.

Fear and Loathing in Columbia

"Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

Local blogger Jack over at The Columbia Blog Project experienced his own bit of Gonzo journalism. Jack had a bit of a dust up with an irritated Robert Tennenbaum. Jack handled himself professionally. Check it out if you feel so inclined.