Western Native Trout Adventures

I hope you all will check out this cool video put together by the Director of TRCP's Center for Western Lands, my friend Joel Webster. All across the nation, indicator species are serving as the proverbial canaries in the coalmine for our conservation efforts. Here in Maryland, species like the eastern brook trout and native oyster are telling us we have to do more. Check out the video!

Izaak Walton League * National Wildlife Federation
Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership * Trout Unlimited

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 12, 2011

House of Representatives Strikes Double Blow Against Clean Water Protections

Washington, DC – The U.S. House of Representatives today struck a double blow against efforts to restore Clean Water Act protections for streams that supply drinking water to 117 million Americans and wetlands that provide flood protection and critical fish and wildlife habitat. The full House rejected an amendment to allow the Army Corps to proceed with Clean Water Act guidance and rulemaking, while the Appropriations Committee approved a fiscal year (FY) 2012 Interior Appropriations bill that bars EPA from taking similar action.

The House rejected an amendment by Representative Jim Moran (D-VA) to the FY 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations bill that would have allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to revise guidance and proceed with a rulemaking to clarify the waters protected by the Clean Water Act. The bill includes a provision (Section 109) barring the Corps from taking any steps next year or in future years to revise the proposed guidance or regulations. By voting against this amendment, the House would maintain the status quo of wetlands loss, stream impairment, and regulatory confusion.

“The vote today represented a clear choice between restoring Clean Water Act protections to important streams and wetlands and postponing those protections indefinitely,” said Scott Kovarovics, Conservation Programs Director for the Izaak Walton League of America. “Congressman Moran’s amendment provided a balanced path forward for clean water. Unfortunately, opponents of the amendment chose not to take that path.”

“Clean water must be a bipartisan national priority,” said Steve Kline, Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s Center for Agricultural and Private Lands. “Since 1972, the Clean Water Act has made significant progress in restoring our nation’s rivers, lakes, and wetlands. The job is not done, but votes like today’s are an ill-advised step in exactly the wrong direction.”

The Interior Appropriations bill includes a nearly identical provision (Section 435) blocking EPA action on Clean Water Act guidance or future rulemaking. It blocks such actions not only in FY 2012 but in future years as well.

“These provisions leave us with an intolerable status quo that threatens wetlands and tributaries that provide clean water for iconic systems like the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes, recharge aquifers, help retain floodwaters, and provide important fish and wildlife habitat,” said Jan Goldman-Carter, National Wildlife Federation Wetlands and Water Resources Counsel.

Loss of Clean Water Act protections for small streams and wetlands could affect more than our drinking water supplies and wildlife habitat – it could hurt the nation’s economy. Hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation contribute billions to the economy, but these activities could be sharply curtailed by water pollution and loss of wetland habitat critical for ducks, trout, and other wildlife.

“American sportsmen greatly appreciate the efforts of Representative Moran and others as they reminded the House what it seems to have forgotten: You can’t have fishable and swimable waters if substantial amounts of wetlands and headwater streams go unprotected by the Clean Water Act,” said Steve Moyer, Vice President for Government Affairs for Trout Unlimited. “Sportsmen will not forget these votes and will continue to do all in our power to defeat similar provisions that threaten clean water.”

For more information please contact:
Scott Kovarovics, Izaak Walton League, 301-548-0150 x 223, skovarovics@iwla.org
Jan Goldman-Carter, National Wildlife Federation, 202-797-6894, goldmancarterj@nwf.org
Steve Kline, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, 202-639-8727, skline@trcp.org
Steve Moyer, Trout Unlimited, 703-284-9406, smoyer@tu.org

BACKGROUND
The damaging House provisions would prevent the Corps of Engineers and EPA from finalizing administrative guidance that has been developed with an unprecedented level of public input. The Corps and EPA are collecting public comments on the proposed guidance for 90 days, through July 31. As written, the guidance increases clarity and efficiency for agencies, farmers, and businesses without expanding the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. Exemptions already in the Clean Water Act for common farming, ranching, forestry, and other land use activities would not be affected by the proposed guidance. As an administrative document, the guidance cannot – and does not – limit provisions of the Clean Water Act that specifically exempt these activities from the law’s wetland and pollution discharge permit requirements. It is ironic that these provisions also prohibit a formal rulemaking process. Stakeholders on all sides seem to agree on the need for a formal rulemaking as part of a long-term solution, yet the bills prohibit rulemaking not only in fiscal year 2012, but indefinitely.

Queen Anne's Cronies

Last week, the Queen Anne's County Board of Commissioners appointed Jim Moran to the county's Planning Commission. The vote was 3-2. Commissioners Arentz, Dumenil and Olds voted to appoint Mr. Moran. Commissioners Dunmyer and Simmons opposed the appointment.

Jim Moran is the owner of Increte of Maryland (you can check them out here: http://www.increteofmaryland.com/index.html). Increte is a decorative concrete company out of Crofton. Jim and I served together on the Task Force on Government Sustainability this Winter and early Spring; he was always professional, thorough and well-prepared. He also had a clear agenda: the promotion of growth as the solution to the county's problems. It was by no means a secret that Jim Moran saw more roads, more houses, and more business parks as the solution to what ails Queen Anne's County. But we'll come back to that.

The County Commissioners had received several applications for appointment to the Planning Commission. This is where the problems start. Included in the packet of applications, was a professional architect with experience working in Queen Anne's County. Another application for appointment was from a professional planner, that's right, a professional planner, with an impeccable resume.

But neither of those two candidates, qualified as they might have been, were going to do much good for the likes of Arentz, Dumenil and Olds. No, they needed a known quantity, someone they could count on to be a solid vote for growth on the Planning Commission. So they turned down a certified planner, for Jim Moran.

This is a fairly predictable state of affairs; Arentz and his followers on the Board vote blindly for their friends without considering what's best for Queen Anne's County. They make no attempt to get Jim Moran's opinions on the Comprehensive Plan (which as a member of the Planning Commission he will be expected to implement) nor did they ask any questions of Jim about his vision for the county. At least not that the public knows of. In fact, the public doesn't know what the county commissioners asked any of the applicants, because over the objection of Commissioners Dunmyer and Simmons, the board's deliberation over the Planning Commission appointment was done in closed session.

Public appointments to public commissions should be made in public. But Arentz, Dumenil and Olds wanted to be able to discuss the applicants "candidly," without the glare of the public. It seems likely that Arentz knew the public would never stand for such an obvious and odious case of cronyism, so he made the anointment, err, appointment, behind closed doors. As far as I am concerned, this is a blatant abuse of powers, I prefer that a real estate agent, an insurance salesman and a retired firefighter not have the right to determine which discussions the public can be a part of, and which they should be excluded from. This is an outrage. Who are Steve Arentz, Phil Dumenil and Dave Olds to decide what the public needs to know?

Of course, Arentz and his cohorts are well aware of Moran's vision for the County, he couldn't have been any more clear about that during the Task Force. They also likely know that Moran shares their dim view of the comprehensive plan. This is the whole purpose for his appointment, he will be a rubber stamp for growth in any form.

If this keeps up, this appointing cronies to various commissions, it won't be long before these commissions cease to function properly. The Planning Commission serves an important role in Queen Anne's County, namely to make sure that proposed development meets the needs of all of our citizens, both now and in the future. The Planning Commission must serve as a backstop for landowner and developer desires, can Jim Moran be expected to fill this role?

All through the campaign of last summer, I had to sit through candidate forums and listen to Steve Arentz, Phil Dumenil, and Dave Olds say that they didn't want to pave the county. When a website called Pave Our County cropped up, Arentz, Dumenil and Olds were indignant that anyone would claim that was indeed their intention. Yet what better way to pave the county, than to appoint a paver to the Planning Commission?

A Board of One

This statement was prepared and delivered today (June 14, 2011) by Commissioner David Dunmyer during a round table meeting of the Queen Anne's County Board of Commissioners. It is re-posted below without edit or commentary:

"Almost two weeks ago a meeting took place between Commissioners Arentz, Dumenil, County Administrator Todd and members of the governor's staff. The purpose of this meeting was to find areas of common ground, where we could work together. This meeting was requested by the governor's staff through contact with Administrator Todd. "

"Sounds great, right? I would have thought so too, had I known about it."

"Commissioner Arentz chose to hijack the process for his own political agenda by instructing Administrator Todd to withhold this meeting request from the other commissioners, namely Commissioners Simmons, myself, and maybe Commissioner Olds. I'm not certain if he knew of this, or played a part."

"I consider this action serious misconduct on the part of Commissioner Arentz and Administrator Todd. Are these actions of a commission working together to come up with solutions to move the county forward or are they sneaky, backhanded ways of push a developer-driven agenda?"

"When the state government contacts the County Administrator and requests a meeting with the commission, the commissioners who attend the meeting are now bound to represent the commission as a whole. Commissioner Simmons and I, and maybe Commissioner Olds, were deliberately left out of this process. Two commissioner representing the entire board illegally."

"I request that we have our county attorney come in at a future meeting and instruct the commission, in public, on the do's and don'ts of commissioner conduct and also to address the duties of the president of the commission versus the rest of the commissioners. I will not stand for being marginalized as a commissioner."

Why Wye? Part II: The Biotech Bust

Biotechnology. Anyone who has doubts about the development of Wye Mills is meant to be placated by that little-understood, but much-used word. Like a sweet lullaby, the mere mention of biotechnology is supposed to make Wye Mills skeptics sleep easy.

You see, the commercial development in Wye Mills is going to look different from the development every place else; it is going to be innocuous, barely noticeable, one might even say it will be additive to the rural landscape. Where the growth on Kent Island is offensive to the eye (and much else besides), development around Wye Mills is going to be bucolic.

Like a slick advertising campaign, the Wye Mills development plan comes across just a little too good to be true. But the sales pitch isn't being given by slick advertisers, but rather the same old 'any growth is good growth' crowd that now seems to have the ear of a majority of the Queen Anne's County Board of Commissioners. It's the folks that stand to make a buck or two when the bulldozers throttle up, and who tend not to concern themselves much beyond their own bottom lines.

They know their growth for growth's sake vision for the county won't sell to the general public, so they wrap it in buzzwords like "sustainable," "campus-setting," "the right kind of growth," even biotechnology has become a buzzword, offered up as a sort of fail proof economic savior for the county. There is a sporting chance that these advocates for growth at any cost don't even know what biotechnology means, they just know it sounds better, sounds higher-paying, sounds more fundamentally agreeable than just plain old growth.

The only problem is, the biotechnology idea requires an uncomfortably high level of faith. Queen Anne's County is not a biotechnology hot spot; in fact, there are several biotech centers on the Western Shore and in Delaware that Queen Anne's County's nascent biotech industry will have to compete with as it gets started. It is unlikely that Queen Anne's County currently has the human resources that such a facility would require, making the county something less than attractive to prospective biotech start-ups, who will not be interested in paying for employee relocation.

There is also the little matter that the biotech bubble, to which Queen Anne's County is not the first to hook it's Pollyannish economic dreams , has largely burst. An article from just a few months ago (link at the end of the blog) details the investment that the state of Florida put into a biotech center in a rural part of the state, to the tune of a billion and a half dollars. The biotech facility created 1100 jobs, or more than a million bucks per employee. Hardly the economic engine anyone predicted, rather a wasteful taxpayer funded jobs program. $1.5 billion is more than a decade of Queen Anne's County's total spending, and no one from the state government seems inclined to invest in this biotech pipe dream.

As good intentioned as the County Commissioners might be, and that is perhaps a debate for another blog post, they will not be the ones developing the Wye Mills parcels. All that the commissioners can realistically do is rezone the acres from agriculture to a more commercial designation; once that is done, the commissioners role in the development is largely over. And despite all the flowery language and "sustainable" growth talking points, it will quickly become apparent that biotechnology was the spoonful of sugar meant to help get the Castor oil of growth down the public throat.

The result of all this is that the development of still-rural Wye Mills will look just like the development of once-rural Kent Island. Fast food, gas stations, and other quick stop retail establishments for the reach-the-beach traffic will dominate; the kind of growth whose benefits to the citizens of Queen Anne's County never seem to catch up to the costs. By the time we realize we've had the wool pulled over our eyes, it will be decidedly too late, and Wye Mills will be nothing more than a congested intersection of redundant commercialism.


Link to the Florida biotech article:
http://palmbeachscripps.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/scripps-cant-justify-states-investment-in-its-biotech-research/

Why Wye?

In 1998, President Bill Clinton hosted leaders from the Middle East in Wye Mills, Maryland, a small and historic village that takes its name from the river that flows not far away, south and west to the Chesapeake Bay. It was a summit meant like so many before it, and indeed after it, to broker peace in a region of the world where that word was little more than an abstraction.

In Wye Mills, peace is anything but an abstraction. A community that straddles the border of Queen Anne's and Talbot counties, it is not a difficult place to miss. Like so many Eastern Shore towns, it appears at first glance to be little more than a place where the speed limit abruptly slows, and then gradually rises again to accomodate the pace of life of those just passing through.

Wye Mills has been a quaint hub of rural industry little changed in three centuries. When Washington took his troops across the Delaware, the mill turned. When 600,000 Americans lay dead or dying on homegrown battlefields north and south, the mill turned. When American boys stormed the beaches of Normandy, thousands of miles away the mill quietly turned. As Richard Nixon prepared to give his resignation speech in front of an unforgiving camera in the Oval Office, just across Chesapeake Bay from Washington the mill, as always, turned. When terrorists brought our world to a halt in 2001, Wye Mills turned still. For more than three hundred years, the mill has turned, marking the passage of time; serving as a symbol to the world at large that the river of life runs on. Perhaps the reason it has remained virtually unchanged is because change is not always necessary.

Nothing is sacred.

Drastic change may be headed for sleepy Wye Mills. Predictably, the effort comes from nearby landowners; they'd like to disregard the county comprehensive plan and take advantage of a generally pro-growth board of county commissioners by having their agricultural land rezoned for commerical use. What are now fields of crops would assuredly become seas of concrete; towers of brick and mortar would rise to meet the sun and the rain, in a place where, for as long as anyone can or cares to remember, only corn, wheat and beans greeted the weather. The character of Wye Mills, unashamedly rural for time immemorial, would be forever altered.

Little makes sense in this plan, except possibly the thinly veiled personal greed. It is contemptable to listen to land speculators carry on about the county's need for jobs and commerical revenue as they attempt to justify their own real estate conniving. Let's not pretend anyone is offering their land for sacrifice to the great consumptive commercial machine for the sake of Queen Anne's County and her citizens; that demeans everyone. No, the landowners are simply in the money making business, and there is nothing wrong with that, so long as we call it what it truly is.

The trouble with this plan is that its tough to see how it does anything but cost Queen Anne's County in both the short run, and the long. There is no sewer capacity in Wye Mills for extensive new development, which means that a wastewater treatment facility would have to be built and sewer lines run to the properities in question, costing the county millions. The development would take place on diagonal corners of Routes 50 and 213, further tying up an already jammed stop light that forces drivers to slow and stop quickly from high cruising speeds, often on their way to the beaches. The traffic situation would surely devolve further, eventually requiring an expensive overpass that would mean years of construction and further millions of state and county road dollars, dollars that neither the state nor the county currently have.

But the more serious problem for the people of Queen Anne's County is a little more difficult to see. It was, however, explicitly stated in the June 2nd Record Observer, by the attorney for one of the landowners in question. His logic made the rezoning seem as natural and inevitable as the Wye River tide itself. You see, the reason we need to rezone and develop these two agricultural parcels is simple in his estimation: the other two corners of 50/213 are already developed. This is obviously true, one corner boasts a gas station, the other the campus of Chesapeake College. Following this logic a little further however, one finds doom for the rural Eastern Shore. For it is the very definition of sprawl, a growth begets growth recipe for lining the Route 50 corridor with endless commercial development, from Wye Mills west to the Bay Bridge, and eventually north up Route 213 to Centreville. In the article the attorney says that his client is not trying to develop the rural hinterlands, but this is a damnable step in that very direction.

From the pages of the NY Times

Friedman hits the nail on the head:

"In America, President George W. Bush used the post-9/11 economic dip to push through a second tax cut we could not afford. He followed that with a Medicare prescription drug entitlement we cannot afford and started two wars in the wake of 9/11 without raising taxes to pay for them — all at a time when we should have been saving money in anticipation of the baby boomers’ imminent retirement. As such, our nation’s fiscal hole is deeper than ever and Republicans and Democrats — rather than coming together and generating the political authority needed for us to take our castor oil to compensate for our binge — are just demonizing one another."

Find the full article here: http://http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Memorial Blight

I snapped this picture early this morning at the Kent Narrows commuter bus stop under the Route 50 bridge. This should be a picturesque location, or I suppose about as pictureseque as a parking lot under a bridge can possibly be. But with litter strewn for fifty yards in any direction from those overflowing trashcans, the place resembles a dump more than a waterfront park. It is a visual symbol of our throw-away society.

A few things come to mind when you look at that picture, which is essentially the same scene after any reasonably fair weather weekend: Two trash cans are not enough for the location, and more likely need to be added; people need to consider taking their trash home with them; or what might be even better: try making less trash altogether.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Guess who is the co-chair of the newly minted Chesapeake Bay Watershed Congressional Caucus? That's right! Our very own member of Congress, the honorable Andy Harris! Andy seems to think this is a great opportunity to come together with his "colleagues on both sides of the aisle on finding common-sense solutions to protect our Bay." Brings to mind a quote from George Carlin: "kinda makes you want to puke in your suit, doesn't it?"

You'll remember in my last blog that Andy voted to defund the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) during the FY2011 budget process. These were the plans that would have set real benchmarks for pollution reduction in each of the watershed states, and would have fostered meaningful cooperation between the states and the feds. It was exactly what Andy proposed on his campaign website, yet he still voted, lemming-like, with his Party. He sold out the Chesapeake Bay in the name of Republican solidarity. Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican who, like Andy is a member of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Congressional Caucus, took a principled stand against his Party and for the Bay by voting against the funding limitation.

Not long after that vote, Andy signed a letter along with many Congressional colleagues that asked the EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers to cease and desist from issuing Clean Water Act administrative guidance, a perfectly legal and appropriate Executive action. The guidance will restore federal protection to important waters and wetlands that are crucial to water quality in places like the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes. From 1972 to 2001, these waters had been protected by the Clean Water Act; Congress knew that you can't protect iconic systems like the Bay without safeguarding the upstream wetlands and tributaries that feed them. But a series of judicial decisions, and Bush-era guidance eroded the act in the name of polluting streams and filling wetlands. The Obama Administration moved forward with guidance (released for public comment on April 27) over the objection of clean water opponents like Andy Harris.

Then, Andy again voted against the Chesapeake Bay by voting to not only allow, but to mandate, drilling for oil off the coast of Maryland and Virginia. Barely a year after Deepwater Horizon crippled the Gulf seafood and tourism industry, and cost billions to clean up (a process that will be ongoing for a decade), Andy Harris decided that the chimera of cheaper gas was more valuable than the Chesapeake Bay and Maryland's coastal bays which would be hammered by any kind of spill. The Bush administration's own Energy Information Agency stated unequivocally in 2008 that no amount of drilling that the United States could possibly engage in would ever succeed in lowering gas prices in a meaningful way. Andy Harris sold out the Bay for a talking point.

And after all this, Andy Harris has the audacity, the gall, to join the the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Congressional Caucus. I would be frustrated, if I weren't so damn angry. We should all be so angry.

Andy's Follies

The Chesapeake Bay is a shadow of its former self. Oyster and menhaden stocks are depleted, nutrients from front lawns and farm fields choke the life from the bay in the summer, and wetlands have been degraded across the watershed. The Chesapeake once supported local economies; but these days a new cottage industry has cropped up, one that threatens the future of the Chesapeake Bay as surely as pollution and overfishing: the business of blame shifting and finger pointing.

Developers blame farmers, farmers blame developers. Maryland blames Virginia's lax crabbing restrictions and runoff from the Susquehanna. Septic owners blame wastewater treatment plants, and recreational fishermen blame commercial fishermen. Everyone spends a lot of energy blaming someone else. Truth be known, no one in the Chesapeake watershed, stretching across six states and 64,000 square miles escapes blame for the current state of the bay.

A problem to which everyone contributes requires a solution to which everyone contributes. But given the pervasive culture of buck passing, this type of shared resolution eludes us. Various states, having all mostly failed in their individual efforts to clean up the bay, formed multistate alliances to achieve cleanup goals; those goals have gone unmet. There have been regional consortiums of federal, state, and local governments, stakeholder groups and non-profits working in concert to restore the Chesapeake, but again the results failed to materialize. What is clear is that no single state or any loose affiliation of states and stakeholders can achieve meaningful restoration of the bay.

What is needed now more than ever is forceful leadership. Leadership that does not incessantly redefine success, that does not sit back idly and watch deadlines come and go, and that understands the importance of accountability.

On May 12, 2009, President Obama decided that only the federal government could provide that leadership. With the signing of the Chesapeake Bay executive order a process was put into motion that had never been attempted before: an entire-watershed approach to cleaning up the Chesapeake. Each state in the watershed would be mandated to draft a Watershed Implementation Plan, requiring the establishment of clean water benchmarks, and a systematic review of the actions necessary to achieve those goals.

The federal government pledged to make a sensible financial investment in the cleanup effort, and to ensure that an independent evaluator was reviewing the progress made to make certain that dollars were being spent wisely, in ways that furthered overall restoration goals. Those evaluations were to be made at regular intervals and the data upon which they were based was to be made public.

Final phase 1 implementation plans were submitted by each of the states to the Environmental Protection Agency beginning in November of 2010. Maryland's plan, at 234 pages, is impressive in its scope and comprehensiveness; boasting aggressive reduction goals for nutrient runoff and sedimentation. But identifying problems is the easy part; solving them is the true challenge.

As so often has happened on the Chesapeake, however, politics got in the way. At about 10pm on a Friday night in February, the US House of Representatives voted on an amendment to a 2012 omnibus appropriations bill that sought to restrict the federal government from using any funds to “develop, evaluate, or implement watershed implementation plans for the Chesapeake Bay.” Eastern Shore Congressman, Andy Harris voted to cut off funding.

Harris’ campaign website states that protecting the Chesapeake is a priority which requires a “multi-faceted approach, dealing with urban runoff, sewage treatment plants, and agriculture runoff.” He goes on to say that since the watershed is made up of multiple states, there is an “important federal role in bay restoration.”

The watershed implementation plans are exactly what Mr. Harris said was needed to achieve restoration goals on the Chesapeake, and still he voted to cut the plans off at the knees. There are countless communities in Maryland’s First Congressional District that are counting on bay’s improvement for their very existence. Thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in economic impact, not to mention a centuries-old way of life, are at stake. Cleaning up the bay will require shared sacrifice and inspired political leadership. Regrettably, Mr. Harris’ does not appear poised to provide that leadership.

I've taken the liberty...

Recently, the Maryland General Assembly was debating a few new legal provisions that have nothing to do with one another. One bans the reading of text messages while driving. The other would legalize gay marriage. Completely unrelated, right? One has to do with the safety of our streets and highways. The other ensures that the state will recognize the right of two taxpaying and consenting adults to enter into a contract with one another.

Far too many accidents, fatal and otherwise, are the product of distracted driving: putting on makeup, eating, trying to find your favorite CD on the floor behind you, yelling at misbehaved children in the backseat, trying to hide narcotics from the cops. Your eyes leave the road for a second or two, and suddenly you find yourself rather uncomfortably positioned underneath a tractor trailer. Or maybe you veer over the double yellow line momentarily. When it comes right down to it, there isn't much difference between driving impaired and driving distracted, especially when one considers the often grisly end result.

There is no text message worth my life. I'll let you decide about yours. This new law will no doubt save lives and make our roads safer; opposition to the bill would seem counterintuitive and perhaps downright irresponsible. Be that as it may, my senator, EJ Pipkin, and a lot of other GOP state senators have decided to oppose the text message ban as an unmitigated attack on civil liberties. A sweeping intrusion of the nanny state government brought to you personally by that notable bete noire, Martin O'Malley. The audacity! I do know this: checking a text message while you are driving is many things, it is not a liberty.

Which brings us to gay marriage. One might reasonably expect good ol' EJ to support gay marriage, you know, as a reaffirmation of civil liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility. The ability of two consenting adults to do what they like, provided it causes no harm to anyone else. Heck, it's practically what George Washington fought for at Yorktown, right?! Who needs more laws telling people what they can't do, right?

No?

It appears that liberty has its limits, which happen to extend to just this side of the GOP's collective comfort level. EJ and the vast majority of the GOP state senate caucus are opposed to gay marriage. They, along with their religious right accomplices, cite scripture, "God's law," and the ability to procreate as foundational principles in the definition of marriage.

First of all, God's law has no place in the laws of the United States, or the several states. Perhaps that is sacrilege to some, but your God might not be my God, and if a few Qur'an toting fundamentalist came to Annapolis and started firebreathing a lot of rhetoric about God's law, you bet that EJ would be apoplectic; spewing Jefferson quotes about the separation of church and state. It's a slippery slope.

Secondly, 'marriage' as defined by the state has nothing to do with God, love, sex, kids, bridal veils, garter belts, plastic cake toppers or apron dances. A marriage is simply a state-recognized contractual bond between two people. Pretty easy to get into, a little tougher to get out of.

Legalizing gay marriage will have virtually zero impact on anyone who isn't gay. But lots of politicians tell us that gay marriage undermines traditional marriage, or that a gay couple raising a child means that child will be prone to interior decorating and tend to use overly expressive hand motions. It's all hogwash, undeserving of a response. And do Republicans really have a problem undermining anything, anyway? The tax policies they advocate undermine the state's fiscal health, and the natural resources policies they espouse undermine the state's environmental health.

So let's throw the theory that Republicans are truly concerned about the future of traditional marriage out the window. The real issue is that gays give Republicans the heebie jeebies. The idea that two people who have the same anatomy get together and have fun with one another behind several sets of closed doors makes people like EJ Pipkin supremely uncomfortable.

The two positions that Pipkin has taken are woefully untenable. They are irreconcilable. They represent the starkest of contradictions. But no one seems to notice; the Republicans can keep on pretending to be the party of personal freedom while they deny personal freedoms to a significant portion of the American population.

Go West Young Man!

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for Emigrant, Montana about 90 miles outside of Bozeman for a week of team building and communications workshops at the B-Bar Ranch. Politically it's a tough time to leave Capitol Hill, as the GOP brings an appropriations package (some are wrongly calling it a 'continuing resolution') for the rest of 2011 to the House floor this week. There are bound to be lots of environmental shenanigans, but I will miss them as I will be mired in the technology void that is the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. To be sure, there are fewer places I'd rather be than in the Rocky Mountains, but perfect timing, this ain't.

While I'm gone, keep an eye out for my letter to the editor on Ordinance 11-02 in this week's Queen Anne's Record Observer and Kent Island Bay Times.

Keep it Rural.

Can We Afford Democracy?

The following was submitted as a Letter to the Editor to the Queen Anne's Record-Observer.

At their meeting on February 22, the Queen Anne’s County Commissioners will be considering ordnance 11-02, which changes the way commissioners who have vacated their office prior to the completion of their term will be replaced. Current law requires a special election, providing registered voters in Queen Anne’s County the opportunity to properly elect their representation in Centreville.

In the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’ ordnance 11-02 turns good democracy on its head. It usurps the power of the people, and places that power with a small group of partisans whose names most voters wouldn’t recognize. Under ordnance 11-02, special elections would be eliminated, and instead the respective Central Committee would have the power to replace a vacant commissioners’ seat. In the 2010 elections, a scant 10% of the registered voters in Queen Anne’s County voted to elect members of the Central Committees; these should not be the people tasked with choosing our representation in Centreville.

What’s more, as of this writing, the Queen Anne’s County Board of Elections has no available estimate of what a special election might cost the county; which means that the commissioners are not aware of what it might save the county.

There are many programs and projects that our county could reduce or eliminate to save taxpayer dollars. But cutting elections to save money is an untenable and undemocratic idea that must be rejected.

Steven Kline lives in Centreville and serves on the Queen Anne’s County Task Force on Government Sustainability.

Everyone Loves a List!

1. Favorite childhood book?
Does childhood include my time in high school? If so, the book I found most enjoyable back then was Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. If I have to go back further than that, I would probably say those "choose your own ending" books, I can't remember specific titles.

2. What are you reading right now?
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate by James Rosen.

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
I haven't been into a library (aside from Election Day) since I was in college. I buy most of my books on Amazon, or at local bookstores. I am trying to build a library; and I want my kids to grow up surrounded by books and, more importantly, to have the curiousity to find out what is in them.

4. Bad book habit?
I am obnoxious about taking care of my books, which might be considered a bad habit.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
As stated above, not a thing.


6. Do you have an e-reader?
I'm sorry, a what? There is something timeless and essential about holding a book in your hands, feeling it's weight, the finality of turning each page. I am anti-gadget, and anti e-reader, for sure.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
I am constitutionally unable to read more than one book at a time.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
I cannot say that they have.

9. Least favorite book you read this year (so far?)
It is early yet, so I will go back to last year. The least favorite book I read last year was probably Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. I can't stand when so-called historians tackle a subject with an academic air, and yet bring their unadulterated bias to the party. Perlstein blamed Nixon for every problem of the last 60 or so years, and I find that kind of hubris silly and amatuerish. (You can read more about my thoughts on The Nixon Dilemma in the post by that name below).

10. Favorite book you've read this year?
Again going back to 2010 one more time, I will give those honors to Conrad Black's Richard Nixon: A Life. It is everything Perlstein's book isn't, although at a thousand pages it is a bit of a bear. Honorable mentions go to Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior, and On the Run: An Angler's Journey Down the Striper Coast by David Dibenedetto.

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
Essentially never, my backlog of books inside my comfort zone is so extensive that I will probably never get out.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?
US political history with a particular focus on the nation's founding and the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon; please don't mistake this for thinking I read partisan drivel, which these days seems to be a dime a dozen. I won't touch it, I don't have time for someone else's invective.

13. Can you read on the bus?
I ride a bus from the Eastern Shore to Washington most days of the week. If I couldn't read on the bus, I am not sure I could get much reading done.

14. Favorite place to read?
In our living room, with a fire blazing in the woodstove.

15. What is your policy on book lending?
It is a strict no-lending policy. And in turn, I don't borrow books from others. Two of my favorite books of all time, The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (in first edition hardback, mind you) have not been seen in years since they were "borrowed."

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
When I was writing my masters thesis I did, but I don't make a habit of it. And if I do dog-ear the pages, it is a small fold, not half the page.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
No.

18. Not even with text books?
That would require reading the text books in the first place, now wouldn't it?

19. What is your favorite language to read in?
The only language I know how to read in, Engrish.

20. What makes you love a book?
A unique perspective on a familiar topic that uncovers new information and presents the story in a refreshing way. I also like when a book covers something thoroughly, and comes across as well-researched and detail-oriented. In history often times the smallest things can make the largest impact. A good book will do the research on the small things, not just on the big things that have already been covered a million ways.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
I don't often run up to someone, even someone I know, and tell them what I think they ought to be reading. Mainly because I don't want them to do that to me, and also because I I realize that most of what I read does not have broad general appeal. But if I know something about you, and think something might appeal to you based on your interests, I'll recommend something I thought was good.

22. Favorite genre?
Strictly non-fiction US history

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)
This is a diffcult question, becasue generally if I like something, I'll read it. I wish I had more time to read classic American literature, guys like Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut.

24. Favorite biography?
Oh boy. I read, and have read, a lot of biographies, including some great ones like Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton and Edmund Morris' The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Those two rise to the top of a long list.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
To parahrase a master, George Carlin: Why do I need to read a book on self-help, written by someone else? That's not self-help, that's just help. What the hell is self help, anyway? If you did it yourself, you didn't need help.

26. Favorite cookbook?
I usually get my recipies from the food network website; can't say I make a point of buying cookbooks.

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
Probably Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior. A lot of those folks who were conservation leaders in the early 20th century were inventing the movement by themselves, and they laid a great foundation for future conservation successes.

28. Favorite reading snack?
Coffee.

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
I am trying to think of the last time I read a book that was hyped in any way, and am drawing a blank.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
I will look at the most recent reader reviews on Amazon before I make a purchase, but that is about the extent of my effort to see what others think. Some of those readers have halfway intelligent things to say, most of them don't...it's kind of like life like that.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
Generally speaking I don't write reviews, because I just assume that most people don't (and shouldn't) care much what I think; but yet here I am writing this blog post.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose?
French, I suppose.

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, a thousand page tome about Korea during the Kim Dynasty (Kim Il-Sung, and his son, Kim Jong-Il). It was long, the font was small, the names were tough, and like Communist logic, it was hard to follow. But I got through it.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
I have two massive biographies on my bookshelf, one about Winston Churchill and the other FDR. "Intimidated" probably isn't the right word, but procastination might be.

35. Favorite Poet?
Thomas Lynch. Check out Still Life in Milford. You don't hear much about good American poets these days, but Lynch is one of them.

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
Zero. Not a fan of libraries.

37. How often have you returned book to the library unread?
I believe we've worn the library line of questioning out.

38. Favorite fictional character?
I read very little fiction, but I do like the Connecticut Yankee of Mark Twain.

39. Favorite fictional villain?
Again, not much fiction in my repertoire, but Captain Ahab has to be up there, right?

40. Books you're most likely to bring on vacation?
Vacation is where I will do my lightest reading, because the book has to travel well (i.e. be light enough to throw in a small bag or backpack. I will generally read books about travel, social histories (think Mark Kurlansky's Salt) and other things of that nature. This is when most of my Bill Bryson gets read. Bryson is just a fanastic writer, with a great sense of humor.

41. The longest you’ve gone without reading.
A few hours is usually about as long as I go without at least reading a page or two.

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
A book would have to be pretty awful for me not to finish it, because that would leave me with a gnawing feeling forever, every time I saw it on my shelf I would get pissed. Although I once got a manuscript from an aspriring writer, and it was dreadful. This might be why I don't read fiction. Pulling off good fiction is tough, and so much of it is bad.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
I start to think about what I just read, and I wander off in to space...

44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
Not a novel, but without question, not even close...All the President's Men. By Woodward and Bernstein, of course.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Not sure I have one, we don't see many movies.

46. The most money you’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
I will frequently spend $50 at Amazon.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Skimming seems pointless. I have no expectation of flipping to a random page, and finding some passage so profound that I must buy the book. I read the publisher's summary on Amazon, and go from there.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Death? I don't know, if I don't think I can finish a book, I don't start it.

49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
Not really.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
You can't build a library to be proud of if you go giving your books away, can you?

51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
The aforementioned Churchill and FDR biographies.

52. Name a book that made you angry.
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
What on earth? If I don't think I will like a book, why would I start it?

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House.

55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?
Hmm, David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. Those fellas make me laugh.

The Lessons of Tucson

It has been nearly a month since Jared Loughner opened fire at a Tucson Safeway, targeting Representative Gabrielle Giffords and anyone who had the misfortune to be standing nearby. Like everything else that happens in the world, we have moved on from this tragedy with all deliberate speed; Giffords is rehabilitating in Houston much faster than expected; Loughner is now in the hands of the criminal justice system; the news cycle must now progress to the next crisis du jour.

As a writer I have not commented on the attack that left six people dead, including a nine year old girl. After having watched the reaction of the news media and the opinionated masses rise, crest, and recede over the intervening several weeks, I thought that there might be a few relevant observations that had yet to be made, and perhaps it is well time someone made them before this tragedy, like so many others, passes completely from the harried American psyche.

Every major news outlet got the story terribly wrong as they announced that Giffords had succumbed to her gunshot wounds, when she was still very much alive. In their rush to "scoop" the competition, journalists forewent any notion of integrity and instead went with the story that was the most tragically enticing. Once one news outlet falsely reported Giffords death (the supposedly august NPR), the rest fell in line quickly. The press were essentially fumbling over themselves to be the first ones to report that a member of Congress had been shot and killed, so focused in fact that they missed the obvious: the tragedy didn't need to be fictionalized, didn't need to be sensationalized.

It seems there was an unspoken hope in the media that a story could progress something like this: Congresswoman Giffords (a fairly moderate Democrat from a generally Republican state) gets killed by a crazed right wing lunatic, whose apartment would ideally be plastered with Tea Party paraphernalia, NRA magazines, and maniacal rantings about Obamacare and the Constitution. That story would practically write itself, and permit the media to declare open season on perennial whipping posts like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. But that narcissistic bubble burst when Giffords pulled through the worst of the worst, and Loughner turned out only to be seriously mentally ill. The sense of letdown one got from the media was nearly palpable.

As it went, many talking heads started to simply assume that Loughner was driven by a political agenda. Even when the facts started to become clear about just what it was that inspired this 22 year troubled soul to kill, they stuck with the implication that somehow, somewhere, Sarah Palin's fingerprints were on this attack. The media was chomping at the bit to make associations that simply were not there, and had no basis in reality.

Ownership of this tragedy belongs to Jared Lee Loughner alone.

As the media made us all aware, Sarah Palin's political operation put out a map that had a rifle scope's cross hairs on Gifford's district, symbolically targeting her for defeat in this past November's election. Sarah Palin did not command her disciples to start shooting members of Congress. She didn't purchase a pistol and a box of ammunition, nor scheme and plot with Loughner to pull off this dirty deed. In fact, no meaningful connection has been made between anything that Palin has ever done and anything Loughner has ever done, including this killing. It is not even clear that Loughner ever even saw Palin's 'target map.'

Sarah Palin and Glenn beck have done much to perpetuate the erosion of civility in this nation. They are by no means alone, nor are they pioneers in that field. However, that erosion was more evident in the actions of the bloodthirsty media than it was in the twisted mind of the accused killer.

I sincerely hope that Gabrielle Giffords continues her miraculous recovery. I hope that those who lost their lives in this catastrophe rest in tranquility, and that their surviving family and friends can get at least a modicum of peace as the tremendous pain loosens its grip over time. I hope that we can get those with mental illness the treatment they need before they arrive at the doorstep of violence towards others, and I hope that justice is served on behalf of Christina Taylor-Green, John Roll, Dorothy Morris, Dorwan Stoddard, Gabe Zimmerman, and Phyllis Schneck.

The Failure of the Free Market

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has long been gone from the front pages. It isn't mentioned in the crawl at the bottom of the television screen during whatever monotonous cable news programming you watch. Given our collective attention spans, this is by no means a surprising outcome. Even the Obama administration has moved on, set to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in short order. But there is one outcome of the Deepwater Horizon spill that bears remembering that I do not think I've heard put precisely into words, namely that the free market failed all of us in the Gulf.

Now many will say that the former Minerals Management Service (MMS) at the Department of Interior had regulatory responsibility over BP's Gulf exploration program. This in theory is accurate, but as has been proven time and again, MMS was at best an absentee landowner, and at worst a willing conspirator with the oil companies. In Alaska, the former Director of the MMS had to issue a formal apology for ordering a cake for an office party adorned with the catchphrase Drill Baby Drill. Needless to say, effective oversight wasn't a priority for MMS in Alaska, in the Gulf, or anyplace else.

In the Gulf, after the Horizon spill, we learned that BP's oil spill response plan was a house of cards, prioritizing of all things the protection of the Gulf walrus population. If MMS was doing it's job they could have pointed out that a plan to protect a species that does not occur within a thousand miles of the Gulf of Mexico isn't bound to meet with much success. And while each individual oil company is required by law to submit an oil spill response plan to MMS for approval, it has now become clear that the plans were all the same baloney, only the corporate logos had been changed. Alas, the Gulf walrus, much like the unicorn and the abominable snowman, has nothing to fear.

So the Gulf of Mexico was turned into a libertarian play ground. A perfect workshop for testing one of the main tenets of free market economic theory, namely that the corporate disincentive for making mistakes negates the need for government oversight and that word that keeps Libertarians up at night: regulation. The logic being that mistakes cost money, and that is incentive enough to avoid them.

But the Gulf spill proves that the pull of profit is a much stronger force than avoiding costly mistakes. Profits are easily quantifiable, and they are the indisputable yardstick for corporate success; on the other hand, an avoided mistake is something almost theoretical, and certainly intangible, a deadly combination for the profit driven corporate decision making model.

BP was left by the federal Minerals Management Service to police itself in the Gulf of Mexico. Free market advocates would have us believe that this was an ideal situation, that the assumed costs of a spill like Deepwater Horizon would assure that the unregulated corporations would do everything they could to avoid a disasterous oil spill. But the the free market model failed us in the Gulf. Corners were cut, laws were ignored, mistakes were made, all in the name of profit. Mistakes were little more than an accepted risk.

Every free market anti-regulator that you can shake a stick at will spout endlessly about the high cost of government regulation, like horses adorned with blinders, they fail to see the high cost of no regulation. Now, BP, the Gulf fishing and tourism industries, and human and environmental health are left to pay the piper. The free market failed the Gulf of Mexico, and proved once again that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure.

Today's Generosity: Tomorrow's Unfunded Mandate

Not too long ago, the American people were asked to bail out a bevy of large financial institutions whose names we all recognize. Shortly after that, our wallets were raided once again, this time in the name of large American automotive manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler. We were told by talking heads that these giants of the global economy were simply too big to fail, and that if they did fail, large scale economic ruin would surely follow. Many people now think the 'too big to fail' moniker was spurious; that there is no business deserving an eternal guarantee of solvency pledged on the back of American taxpayers.

These days, another heir to the too big to fail throne has appeared, with a much more legitimate claim to that dubious honor. It has become clear that state and local governments across the country are dangerously in the red. We have become accustomed to hearing elected officials bemoan tight government budgets, all the while increasing government expenditures with a devil may care attitude. These budgets, however, aren't just tight; they are downright frightening. The very financial future of state and local jurisdictions is in serious doubt, and business as usual is a surefire recipe for fiscal failure.

One of the major culprits for this impending financial disaster is the extravagant benefit packages offered to many public sector employees, such as teachers and agency bureaucrats. The company-funded pension system is well nigh extinct in the private sector. Companies long ago determined that funding pensions was far too costly over the long run, and instead opted for making much smaller contributions to retirement investment accounts such as a 401k or a 403b, that are mostly employee funded. The critical hang up of pension systems if of course that companies remain responsible for pension payments long after, sometimes decades after, that employee was last engaged in gainful work on behalf of the company.

Many American manufacturers, such as Bethlehem Steel, and the aforementioned GM and Chrysler, were led nearly to financial ruin thanks in large part to benefits package that seemed like a good idea at the time, but that proved utterly unsustinable over the long term.

It is safe to say that the retirement paradigm has shifted. Individuals now bear the responsibility for saving enough money for their own retirement. The options for acheiving this are seemingly endless. While you can certainly bemoan the fact that pension benefits have evaporated, you better be saving for retirement while you whine; it's just a fact of life.

A fact of life for everyone except public sector employees, it seems. The state of Maryland currently has $33 billion in unfunded liabilities related to it's pension system for state employees. To put that in perspective, the entire operating budget for the state in 2011 totals $32.1 billion.

Unlike businesses, those who hold the purse strings of taxpayer funds don't have to worry about profitable bottom lines or even fret much about accountability, because while today's generosity is tomorrow's unfunded mandate, the challenges of the future will fall to someone else. And generally speaking, a local government jurisdiction probably isn't going to go out of business or go bankrupt; but as the bills for these extravagant pension plans come due, the likelihood of that unthinkable scenario, namely massive government defaults, increases dramatically.

Now in Maryland, there is a movement afoot to transfer responsibility for these pension benefits to local county school boards; a wildly irresponsible passing of the fiscal buck. If this were to happen in already cash strapped Queen Anne's County, it would more than likely put the county out of business.

Public employee unions like AFSCME, SEIU, and the NEA have made these benefit packages an untouchable 'third rail' issue for elected officials. This simply cannot continue to be the case, politicians must stand up to public sector employee unions and take back control of state budgets.

The Nixon Dilemma

The summer and fall of 2010 have been, in terms of my literary tendencies, devoted to the life of Richard Milhous Nixon. The 37th President of the United States, of course, and a man unfortunately but unavoidably known best for his resignation under intense fire for a host of scandals and cover-ups commonly lumped together under the term Watergate.


The grade school history we all know doesn't tell the story of Richard Nixon. For a full four decades historians, scholars, politicians and the general public have approached the presidency of Richard Nixon, and the man himself, as utterly devoid of principle or accomplishment. "Corrupt" is as much of a fundamental descriptor of Nixon as saying he is a Duke Law graduate, or a Californian. The words Nixon and unethical have become virtually synoynmous. This is a grossly naive oversimplification of a complicated man serving his country in complicated times.



We judge the entirety of Nixon's body of work in the harsh light of Watergate. I am not prepared to argue that this is avoidable, or even unfair, but rather that it limits our perspective and paints a woefully incomplete picture of a man who was a intregral part of American political thought for half a century.



Most of Nixon's public life occured long before Watergate became front page news in the Washington Post. Of course, nearly the entirety of the scholarship dealing with the Nixon life and presidency was done after Watergate. As a result his life before Watergate is judged using an ethical standard guaranteed to fit the scholars' idea of Nixon as completely corrupt and without moral compass or core beliefs.

With Nixon we assume the worst, always. If he compromised on a policy issue, it was because he lacked a principled positon on the issue. If he took some action that Democratic politicians supported, it was a callous attempt at preemption and stealing votes from the opposition. Reading the collected library of Nixon biographies, one quickly determines that Nixon was not devoid of fundamental core beliefs. He believed strongly that the United States could be a tremendous force for good in the world. He gets little credit for his robust commitment to civil rights, including school desegregation. He rejected the conventional wisdom of the Republican "China lobby" by forging ahead with relationship building with communist Peking. Civil Rights and normalized relations with communist China weren't exactly vote-getters in the early Seventies. Nixon did these things because he thought they needed doing.

But moreover, historians judge Nixon's entire career using a rubric that no politician could ever meet. Because of the stain of Watergate, every other accomplishment of his long public career must be proven beyond reproach; an impossibly high bar even for those politicians we tend to deify. Nixon's biographers are some of the most unapologetically biased scholars one can study, mostly because they believe themselves to simply be reinterpreting a well-established part of the Nixon story, as fundamental as his birth and death. No Nixon biography should ignore Watergate, but none should ignore Nixon, either.

The Harsh Glare of the Voting Machine

The "final ballot review" screen on the Electronic Voting Machine gave me an interesting moment of pause yesterday. As anyone who knows me well knows, it isn't very often that technology does anything but frustrate me. But in the voting booth at the Centreville Free Library, the better part of a decade involved in politics came sweeping back to me.

I went door to door in St. Mary's County for George W. Bush in 2000. Was a proud member of the College Republicans when it seemed liked me and my roommate were the only GOPhers on campus. I was selected by my peers both Democrat and Republican to defend the War in Iraq at a well attended campus forum.

I went door to door in St. Mary's County for Bob Ehrlich in 2002, and again in 2006. In 2004 I was heavily involved in Sportsmen for George Bush and Young Professionals for Bush. And the coup de grace? I served as an environmental advisor to John McCain's presidential campaign of 2008, and went to St. Paul, MN as an elected delegate to the Republican National Convention.

After the Convention, I became an alternate member of the Baltimore County Republican Central Committee, and President of the East Baltimore County Republican Club. I was an unofficial candidate for Maryland's House of Delegates...as a Republican.

To say the least, my GOP bona fides were in good order.

Until yesterday.

I looked at a completed ballot that was overwhelmingly Democratic. For the first time in my life I had voted for a Democrat for Governor, Congress, and Comptroller. For County Commissioner, my ballot was 3-2 in favor of Democrats. For State Senate, Democrat. Two out of three votes for the House of Delegates went to Democrats (and the other was more than likely wasted on a write-in).

When someone used to ask me, "Who are you going to vote for?" The answer was always easy: Republicans. This time around, it is easier to list the Republicans I voted for individually, because the list is so short. Eric Wargotz for US Senate, David Dunmyer and Bob Simmons for QA County Commissioners, a write-in for Dick Sossi for House of Delegates, and a vote for Gary Hofmann for Queen Anne's Sheriff. That's the long and (rather) short of it.

I found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with not only the Republican talking points, but with the way they were being delivered. It seemed that anyone who disagreed was looked at with a tinge of hatred. As if 235 years of American democracy had come to this: we couldn't disagree with one another in a civilized way. Which is pretty scary, since it is the fundamental basis of the American system of government. We do not run into the streets (with a few exceptions) with pipes and torches. We instead run into the voting booth.

One ballot does not a Democrat make. But certainly now more than ever, I sit at the crossroads of politics with no clear direction.

Comprehensive (?) Plan

Queen Anne's County boasts one of the lowest tax structures in the state of Maryland. Many wrongly believe that without large-scale new residential and commercial growth, our favorable tax structure is in danger. History, experience and economics indicate otherwise. To infer as many do, that the County has been exclusively anti-growth, or that economic activity has suffered a real contraction as a result of an anti-growth mentality, is misleading at best, and downright fraudulent, at worst.

We are, along with the rest of the nation, suffering from a general economic downswing, caused in some measure, by exactly the kind of spastic development that some are currently seeking to jumpstart again in Queen Anne's County. As the cliche goes, those who fail to remember history, are doomed to repeat it; and this history doesn't require one to look back too far. Of course many who advocate for a policy of unfettered growth and development do so for political or personal pecuniary reasons that should not have a role in the development of planning policy.

There is absolutely no more short-sighted public policy than to attempt to meet the challenges associated with past growth (and they are manifold) with more growth. This is akin to the proverbial dog chasing his tail. All this ensures is that our quality of life will suffer, our favorable tax structure will erode as new demands on County services become unavoidable, and our County will slowly but surely come to mimic the Western Shore and much of the Eastern Seaboard, with the problems inherent in those locales. Problems that each Queen Anne's County citizen is attempting to avoid, on some level, by choosing to live in the County.

The Citizens Advisory Committee on the Comprehensive Plan made five recommendations that I believe speak to the desires of our County's populace to direct growth to where it is most appopriate, and protect the rural character and the quality of life of Queen Anne's County. I believe that it would be unwise to trump those citizen recommendations at this juncture, and would encourage the planning commission to include those recommendations (pasted below) in the Comprehensive Plan.

1. No more major subdivision development on Kent Island until transportation issues are resolved and until affects of rising water levels are understood.2. No more major subdivision development permitted in AG zoned land. (The visioning report identified "loss of farmland" and "rural sprawl" as a primary county threat or weakness.)3. Direct Growth to Existing Population Centers / Towns, where there is infrastructure to support growth.4. No New Business Parks or Commercial Centers until existing commercial areas are built out.5. Establish policies that protect streams, waterways, forests and sensitive areas from development by establishing a county wide Priority Preservation Area.