Thoughts on RWAAC-Gate

There was a story in the Capital yesterday about pressure on RWAAC President Joyce Thomann to resign in light of her comments. I don't think Joyce Thomann should resign. Resignation is the honorable way out, and there was absolutely nothing honorable about what she said. The RWAAC Board should refuse her resignation and remove her by their Constitutionally mandated methods.

There has been a lot of harrumphing about Republicans who have failed to defend Joyce's comments. Mike Netherland has been characteristically off the reservation with some of his learned thoughts on the matter:

If no other good can come from the Thomann affair let it be that it has opened the eyes of conservatives in and around Annapolis as to who in the Republican Party are most likely to throw you overboard when the going gets a little rough.

Somehow, Mike has determined that the entire Republican Party does not consist of "conservatives" but of merely "registered Republicans", and that RWAAC's disapproval of Thomann's statement will "forever be an ugly stain and its only lasting legacy." (Coincidentally, Mike considers himself a true Republican conservative. Go figure).

You know it's one thing to defend a Republican when what they do actually merits a defense. Attacking Democrats on an issue, standing up for principle on policy, and those kinds of things are worthy of my defense. Idiotic comparisons that basically wrap the Republican elephant in a box of hand grenades with their pins removed deserve no sort of defense. Joyce in her position as President of a Republican Club should be focused on doing her part to elect Republicans and get the Republican message out to the people. And as anybody who has ever heard of Godwin's Law can tell you, if you have to invoke Hitler in your argument you've already lost. These comments did one hell of a lot of damage to the cause of conservatism and the cause of the Republican Party.

Conservatism is in a tenuous moment here on our country. We do have a situation where we have a number of Republicans trying to masquerade as conservatives in order to obtain and maintain elected office. Of course, that point has nothing to do with comparing Obama to Hitler. This is the time we need to be attacking the policies of this President (which are, in fact, dangerous to our country). This is the time we need to be focused on defending conservatism and the conservatism message. Taking even one minute of time to defend ridiculous outbursts like this takes valuable time away from defending conservative principles and electing conservative candidates.

So no, I cannot be bothered to defend what does not deserve to be defended. And I don't give a damn who questions my conservative bona fides for it.

Fighting Crime with Stupidity

You don't have to be paying too much attention to realize that you go to Arundel Mills these days at your own risk. Crime has become damn near commonplace at the sprawling mall complex that was (theoretically) designed to be a haven for tourists and for local commerce, not a magnet for criminal elements. Well, instead of doing something constructive to combat the crime wave that has overcome the mall, County Councilman Daryl Jones has decided to do something.....else:

Citing a recent robbery and the perception that Arundel Mills mall is unsafe, County Councilman Daryl Jones is considering introducing a bill that would require all malls to install security cameras in their parking lots.

Yeah, that is Jones' total solution to the Arundel Mills crimewave; security cameras at all malls in the county, much like a Baltimore County law I wrote about four years ago. To prove how completely asinine the Councilman's suggestion, chew on this nugget information:

Les Morris, a spokesman for Simon Malls, the parent company of Arundel Mills and Marley Station in Glen Burnie, declined to talk about how the legislation would affect the malls without seeing the specifics.

"We have an extensive (closed-circuit TV) network that covers the property, both inside and out," he said.

So Jones' solution to the crime problem at Arundel Mills is to require all county mall owners to have the same system that is not solving the problem at Arundel Mills. That's brilliant.

As usual, Democrats always try to enact "solutions" that deal with our crime problems in ways that are designed to make the public feel comfortable with their surroundings as opposed to actually dealing with the crime problem. Democrats love the idea of an ever expanding network of surveillance cameras that we have noted in the past will never stop one crime from being committed. Not one. You might get some cool footage of somebody being robbed (or worse) in the parking lot, but it will be the very definition of naivete to think that a street criminal is going to be deterred one bit by a camera (unless we are installing some sort of Transformers).

The prudent solution would be working with the Simon Company in increaisng police patrols and police presence in the are to arrest criminals......but who ever said Maryland Democrats wants to actually implement prudent solutions?

MDE's Abuse of Power, Abuse of Reason

One of the classic arguments that liberals like to put forth is that when disaster strikes, the government should be strong so it can "help," Ronald Reagan's words notwithstanding. However, here in Maryland, it seems like a certain government agency thinks that the when disaster strikes, your first responsibility should be to......the government.

After last weekend's tornado, officials from the State Department of the Environment managed to determine that John Long of Dundalk had "purposefully placed a significant amount of yard waste, debris or items that could have resulted from the recent storm we had" into a nearby creek and a nearby flood plain. Mind you, MDE had exactly no reason to suspect that Mr. Long was responsible for the debris that was in the yard. In fact, trash and refuse has been washing down from nearby locations off of Merritt Blvd for fifty years prior the last weekend's tornado, and a lot of the debris that MDE is trying to ping Long for has been washing up during that entire time period. In fact, I'm hard pressed to figure out a good reason as to why MDE decided to wait until immediately after a natural disaster to start poking their head around this particular area. Butthat doesn't seem to keep the zealots that Martin O'Malley has placed in charge of the Department of the Environment from demanding that Long clean up the mess he didn't make....under the penalty of a $10,000 a day fine if the mess is not cleaned up within thirty days.

We all know that Governor O'Malley and many of Maryland's other leftist Democrats enjoy using the power of government to keep the citizens in check. But even the most adamant liberal has to be able to comprehend that a government that is prepared to use its instruments of power to put the screws to a homeowner who is trying to clean up for a natural disaster is a government that is abusing its power. And you have to think to yourself that it is only a matter of time that a government that is going after the downtrodden is going to come after you.

Perhaps you might want to let MDE Secretarty Shari WIlson or the Governor's Chief of Staff what you think of their ridiculous handling of this matter.....

The Impact of O'Malleynomics

Governor's Martin O'Malley's seemingly neverending quest to destroy Maryland's middle and working class families looks like it is right on schedule:

Unemployment in Maryland climbed to 7.2 percent in May, a more than 25-year-high, as joblessness rose in nearly all states, preliminary government statistics show.

Compared with a year earlier, unemployment rose in every state last month, including Maryland, where the rate has jumped from 4.1 percent in May 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday.

Maryland's unemployment rate has not been 7.2 percent or higher since July 1983, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

During the 12 months through May, Maryland lost more than 64,000 jobs, not adjusted for seasonal changes, preliminary government numbers show.

Of course, as we have noted here time and time again, this is what happens when you enact the economic policies that Governor O'Malley and his Democratic cronies have been pushing for the last three years. When you continue to raise taxes, when you continue to inflate spending to unmanageable levels, and when you continue to make it harder and harder for business to compete, middle and working class workers and their families pay the consequences. Jobs are lost. Businesses are shuttered. Tax revenues plummet. And the economy is destroyed.

I hope Governor O'Malley can sleep well knowing that he put the expansion of government and his own political self interest ahead of average Marylanders by adopting such reckless fiscal policies. O'Malley has cost a lot of people their jobs and a lot of people their livelihoods, and I hope that these people who have been negatively impacted by the Governor's incompetence remember the toll these policies have taken on them and their families...

The End

Well, the Maryland Young Republicans Convention was today. And I lost. But I wanted to share with you my "campaign speech" prior to the vote.....



.....and tomorrow is another day. Thanks for your support.

Double Take

I had to do a double take when I saw this mini-editorial posted on the Sun website:

The Maryland Public Service Commission's order Thursday concluding that it has the right to review Electricite de France's proposed purchase of part of Constellation Energy Group's nuclear business looks like nothing more than an attempt by the state to shake down the company for cash. That wouldn't be so bad, except that the state already shook Constellation down 18 months ago with the promise that it wouldn't do so again. But it seems that when it comes to Constellation and BGE, Gov. Martin O'Malley and his appointees on the Public Service Commission don't know when to leave well enough alone.

Read the whole thing.

If I were in the O'Malley Administration (and, since I have common sense, I'm obviously disqualified there) and the Sun editorial board (who has been at the vanguard of the "stick it to Constellation" movement) started question questioning my appointees decisions as overreaching, maybe I'd start wondering if they were right.....

Eating their Money

Every time Superintendent Kevin Maxwell kvetches about the lack of funding for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, remember this:

Next year, parents won't have to ask. A feature of a new software system coming to county schools will allow parents to look online and see whether their children are really buying a balanced hot lunch or surviving on ice cream and cookies.

"Parents are going to love it," said Jodi Risse, supervisor of food and nutrition services in county schools.

The Board of Education is paying $283,643 for the new system from Georgia-based Horizon Software. It will replace the current system used in county schools, which is more than 20 years old, Risse said.

It works like this: Instead of handing out lunch money every day, parents can log in to an online program and use a Visa, MasterCard or e-check to put money in their child's account. Then students use their student ID in the cafeteria to access the account and pay for lunch.

Meanwhile, parents can go back into the same online system and see an itemized list - just like a credit-card statement - of what their child bought.

"It's usually lunch, lunch, lunch, but then (you see) every a la carte item, ice cream, cookies or chips," said Tina Bennett, a director with Horizon.

I cannot possibly fathom a more ridiculous use of $283,643 from the school budget than this.

Amazingly, a similar system is already in place in county public schools; it's called the "brown bag" program, where parents actually make a meal for their child and send them to school with it. It gives the parent immediate access to foods their child is consuming at lunch, involves parents in the lives of their kids, and (more importantly) it costs nothing to me as a taxpayer.

Anne Arundel Public Schools have absolutely no responsibility to be the food police to parents. While I'm appalled by the waste of money this program is, I'm not surprised given the fiscal irresponsibility shown by Maxwell and our unelected Board of Education, particularly when you consider that this system costs as much as the salaries of several teachers.....

Squeezing for the Last Drops

As if Governor Martin O'Malley hasn't spent enough money, hasn't raised enough taxes, and hasn't bloated the size of the Maryland state government enough, apparently he has decided to double down in advance of his re-election campaign:

Drawing little public attention so far, a small team of aides has developed a list of 15 major goals -- and several dozen smaller ones -- intended to guide the remainder of O'Malley's term, as well as a second one if he wins reelection next year.

Among the targets: Increase public transit ridership by 10 percent a year. (That would require doubling the growth seen last year, when high gas prices led many people to abandon their cars.) Reduce violent crime against women and children by 25 percent by 2012. (That would require recent trends to accelerate and continue for several years.) And end childhood hunger in Maryland by 2015. (No one seems to know exactly how that would be measured.)

Other goals provide aggressive benchmarks for education, the environment and health care.

O'Malley's office is preparing to publicize the efforts in coming days. But the loftiness of the goals and the motives behind them are already sparking debate as O'Malley prepares to stand for reelection.

Yeah, no kidding. Governor O'Malley has already left a trail of broken promises across the state from his first election campaign. Remember lower energy rates? Remember promises not to raise taxes? Remember enforcing the death penalty? Yeah, the Governor hopes you don't remember those promises either. But in typical O'Malleyesque fashion, he decides not to explain his failures as a Governor and instead goes back to his old bag of tricks to criticize......Bob Ehrlich:

In an interview, O'Malley described the goals as "pretty ambitious but not unachievable," and he said that is by design.

"If by putting my political neck on the line we're able to get halfway to these goals, it will be far more progress than the previous administration," O'Malley said. "The politically safe thing to do is never have any goals, because then you can't be judged or measured by them. That's the risk we take."

No Governor, working towards your goals isn't progress. It's a regressive strategy that is designed to increase the size of government at the expense of Maryland's middle and working class families. It's a strategy that is designed to create feel-good talking points for your re-election campaign instead of providing any actual goals to create good public policy. Even those goals that seem reasonable are festooned with your administration's previous failures. Take a look at transit policy; how can the MTA hope to increase ridership when they are so hopelessly mismanaged? Ending childhood hunger? Maybe a good place to start would not to make feeding children so difficult through aggressive tax increases and large increases in government spending. Do you not understand that those policies are what makes it hard for families to make ends meet, harder for individuals to support local charitable efforts, and harder for businesses to stay open to continue to employ Maryland's middle and working class families?

It of course is easy to be cynical of Martin O'Malley's efforts due to his failed administration. But since O'Malley and Co. never seem to learn their lessons, the only way the people of Maryland will notice the administration's new efforts is the continued contraction of Maryland's economy and more and more taxes coming out of their paychecks unless we eneact positive change at the ballot box next November....

On State YR Issues

Yes, the race for State YR Chairman is still going on. Here's a little more about what my priorities will be as Chairman:

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 05-27-2009

The Five in 33

Surprisingly (at least to me) only five candidates applied to fill the State Senate vacancy created by the resignation of Janet Greenip in District 33. The candidates are:

• Tom Angelis: Baltimore City High School Teacher and Republican Candidate for County Executive in 2002 and 2006
  
• Dave Boschert: Former Delegate, Former County Councilman, Republican Candidate for County Executive in 2006 and Currently the Executive Director of the Maryland Classified Employees Association.
  
• Art Ebersberger: Insurance Broker, Member of the Anne Arundel County School Board Nominating Commission, Anne Arundel Medical Center Trustee and founder of Leadership Anne Arundel.
  
• James King: Current Delegate from District 33 A and owner of the Rockfish & Kaufmann's Tavern.
• Big Ed Reilly: Current County Councilman from District 7 and Insurance Agent

I'm somewhat surprised that County Councilwoman Cathy Vitale took a pass.

A special meeting/public hearing of the Anne Arundel Central Committee will be held on Tuesday, June 2 at 6 pm in room 180 of the Lowe House Office Building in Annapolis. The committee intends to conclucde the process on the 2nd but if necessary, the conclusion of the procedure and recording the vote will occur at the regularly scheduled Central Committee meeting on Wednesday, June 3 meeting at 7 pm at 15 West Street in Annapolis.

The Committee is allowing for public comment until June 1 by US mail to the RSCCAAC, ATTN: Chairman Rzepkowski, PO Box 127, Riva, MD 21140 or by e-mail to arzepkowski@aagop.org.

It will be interesting to see who winds up with the seat. Conventional wisdom says it's between King and Reilly, but I have heard rumblings that Boschert may have support on the Committee as well.

Since none of these five candidates come from the small government/low tax wing of the party, I would expect that there will be a challenger from the right in the 2010 Primary regardless of who gets selected.....

Not All Numbers Mean Something

Adam Pagnucco has spent this week trying to bury the State Republican Party due to changes in the voter registration numbers. The basic premise is that because the total number of registered Democrats in Maryland is increasing at a faster rate than the number of registered Republicans that the Republican Party is doomed.

However, the total number of registered party members in the state or in any particularly jurisdiction is relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Take a look, for example, at my home district of District 31. In that district, there are 1.6 Democratic registrants for every Republican registrant. Election results speak to any an entirely different set of circumstances. Last year, John McCain and Andy Harris both carried 58% of the vote in this district during the Presidential Election. And in 2006:

• Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele both won about 60% of the vote in the District.
• AG Candidate Scott Rolle and Comptroller Candidate Anne McCarthy both carried 31.
  
• Bryan Simonaire became the first Republican State Senator in the District;
• Don Dwyer, Nic Kipke, and Steve Schuh were elected as Delegates; the first GOP sweep of Distirct 31
• County Councilman Ron Dillon was re-elected without Democratic Opposition.
  

The point of this exercise is to prove that while voter registration numbers are a cute way to try and say a party is or is not dying, they are in no way the be all and end all of the situation. Maryland has had an overwhelming majority of voters registered as Democrats for a long time in a number of districts. But that has not stopped a lot of those districts from elecitng Republicans to serve in the General Assembly, and it hasn't stopped these voters from supporting Republican candidates over Democrats at the statewide level. You talk to a lot of these voters in districts like the 31st, and you find out that these voters are always voting Republican, they just choose not to change their registration for whatever reason.

Bottom line: a lot of these Democrats that Pagnucco likes to use to prove that the Republican Party is dead are actually supporting Republican candidates. With the continued incompetence of Governor O'Malley and Democratic Leadership, I have a feeling that the number of D's voting R is going to increase substantially in 2010....

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 05-14-2009

For more info on this story, click here.

Where have I heard this before?

Let's just say some of us saw this coming....

One of Maryland's budget-balancing tactics - asking millionaires to pay more money to the state - appears to be backfiring as the number of the highest-earning taxpayers dwindles with the flagging economy....

....But as the state comptroller's office sifts through this year's returns, it is finding that the number of Marylanders with more than $1 million in taxable income who filed by the end of April has fallen by one-third, to about 2,000. Taxes collected from those returns as of last month have declined by roughly $100 million.
- The Baltimore Sun, 5/14/2009

That's because the General Assembly as a whole refuses to act like grown ups and live within their means. Instead of acting responsibly and reducing state spending last year when they had to opportunity, they chose to approval O'Malley's irresponsible tax hikes, and bless his near immoral increase in discretionary state spending. Instead of cutting spending to manageable levels, Democrats railroaded a $2 billion tax increase to cover a $500 million shortfall, and then added $1.5 billion in spending just to break even.

No reasonably intelligent person would think that's a good idea. It's an even worse idea when you considered, as conservatives have noted time and time again, that tax revenues decrease when individuals and businesses change their spending habits or leave the state entirely.
- Brian Griffiths, 9/4/2008

Still, the "substantial decline" in million-dollar earners filing on time was enough for the comptroller's office to announce that it will "be thoroughly analyzing these returns and their implications." And it was enough for opponents of the state's new surcharge to say, in essence, "I told you so."

"I don't think anyone can dispute that some people have left Maryland," said Senate Minority Leader Allan H. Kittleman (R-Howard). "That's what we were trying to explain when we were voting on this."
- Washington Post, 5/14/2009

It's true that the housing and retail sectors being down are going to lead to lower tax revenues. But what the writers do not take into account, naturally, is the decrease in tax revenues due to the increases in taxes. I have noted before that when tax rates are increased, revenues decrease. This is particularly true when you make it a point to pass taxes targeted at those with the means to leave.
- Brian Griffiths, 7/13/2008

"This is not an unexpected development, but it is a very unfortunate development," Schuh said. "It is deja vu all over again."
- The Captial, 5/14/2009

Of course one thing that we noted time and again was the fact that increases in taxes would lead to decrease tax revenues. While a small portion of that can be attributed to the national economy, the bulk of the difference in revenues collected vis-a-vis revenues projected has a lot to do with the impact of this profligate spending and irresponsible tax hikes.
- Brian Griffiths, 7/9/2009

So, we are going to go ahead and try to further fleece those Maryland taxpayers who are simultaneously most able to pay more taxes and able to pick up and move someplace that their tax burden won't be so high? This is what passes for fiscal responsibility in the minds of Maryland Democrats?
- Brian Griffiths, 3/27/2008

Don't Wince.....Act

There is a piece by Dan Balz in the Post today nothing that some Republicans are "wincing" by the statements former Vice-President Dick Cheney has made criticizing the Obama Administration. A lot of the piece goes on to talk about the ever-popular "unnamed Republicans" who believe that Cheney is a distraction to the future of the Republican Party and that his engagement on the issues surrounding the Administration are doing more harm than good.

I would be willing to take a different approach. The fact that Vice-President Cheney is one of the few Republicans who have been willing to stand up and criticize the Administration is more of a condemnation of the Republcian Party than it is anything else. While many Republicans continue to jockey for position within the minority, few prominent Republicans have been willing to stand up in an articulate manner for core conservative principles. The fact that the Vice-President is willing to stand up for this, regardless of public opinion and regardless of those people in the party who have a problem with it, is a positive for the country and for the party, not a negative.

If prominent Republicans truly have a problem with Cheney's prominence on these issues, they need to shut up and talk about issues from a conservative perspective instead of worry about what plays well in Washington. And dumb stuff like the NRSC endorsing Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race isn't going to help shed the label that D.C. Republicans are indiffermt to the plight of the party and the plight of the conservative movement.

Judd Legum: On $ale Now

Well, if you had any preconceived notion that Judd Legum's campaign for the Maryland House of Delegates was about serving the people of District 30, you can forget about that. Looks like the truth-impaired Clintonista needs to go out of state to raise his money. Legum's ActBlue page (curiously and seemingly illegally still lacking an authority line) notes that his campaign is having his next fundraiser in Washington, DC, and it is being headlined by former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.

The "host committee" contains a number of national Clintonistas, including Howard Wolfson and Patti Solis Doyle, plus former MoveOn.org Director Tom Mattize.

So, what we have here is a candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates who is more interested in hobnobbing with Washington Insiders and raising the money from Washington Special Interest Groups than in the people of District 30. Obvious, Judd Legum's political compass is pretty far askew if he thinks that the people of District 30 will be well served by his raising of dirty money from Washington lobbyists (funny considering he claims to be eschewing money from Maryland lobbyists).

Let's face it: Judd Legum is a joke and an embarrassment to the Maryland Democratic Party. The number of Democrats who have privately told me that they wish he would just go away is impressive. And anybody who thinks that the people of District 30 will be well served by a candidate bought and paid for by Washington lobbyists is seriously deluding themselves....

Shameless Plug

Myself and the rest of the Anne Arundel Young Republicans are doing the Relay for Life at Anne Arundel Community College this week.

Please consider visiting my participant page and dropping a few bucks to help fight cancer...

Now it gets Interesting

For a long time I was discussing the likelihood that Comptroller Peter Franchot would challenge Governor O'Malley in next year's Democratic primary. Well, it looks like the Governor is going to get a challenge.....not from the left, but from the right according to the Sun:

George W. Owings III, a former Democratic delegate and party leader from Calvert County, is “actively considering a challenge” to Gov. Martin O’Malley in next year’s election, the former majority leader told The Baltimore Sun.

The 64-year-old Vietnam war hero from Dunkirk, who served on Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s cabinet, said he was “45 to 60 days” away from deciding whether to challenge O’Malley in the 2010 Democratic primary. He acknowledged that the odds of anyone unseating the incumbent governor “are very long.”.....

....After serving in the House of Delegates from 1988 to 2004, Owings was Ehrlich’s secretary of the Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs. A conservative Democrat, Owings said he believes the state party has “strayed from its working class roots” under O’Malley’s leadership.

The former mortgage banker said he began mulling a challenge after the governor pushed unpopular tax hikes through the General Assembly in 2007 in order to confront the massive structural budget deficit he inherited.

“I see a lot of good, solid working-class Democrats with serious concerns about the direction we are taking,” Owings said. He said he has “the mechanics in place” for an organized campaign, including “some guarantees of operating money” from a “loosely knit financing committee.”

This is the best piece of news that opponents of Governor O'Malley could possibly hear. A bruising Democratic primary means there is a pretty good chance that O'Malley will need to waste financial and political capital running against a fellow Democrat, while the Republican candidate will be able to criss-cross the state introducing themselves to voters and stay above the fray......assuming we united behind one candidate (which is an altogether separate problem with all of the competing interests amount the Bob Ehrlich, Charles Lollar, and Mike Pappas camps).

And Owings isn't the only one contemplating a challenge. Former Prince George's County Executive Wayne Curry may jump into the fray too. Even usually reliable Democratic quote machine Matthew Crenson even concedes the following to the Sun:

“Even if they’re not true, the fact that there are so many rumors suggests that O’Malley is perceived as vulnerable,” Crenson said.

This is a good sign, but let's not bet the ranch that this is the be all and end all of the 2010 Election, either. Sure, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend may have been morally wounded when she gave up 20-percent of the priamry vote to grocery store clerk Raymond Fustero in 2002, but remember that incumbent Governor Parris Glendening bowled right through then Harford County Executive Eileen Rehrmann and former Redskin Ray Schoenke in the primary in his 1998 re-election campaign.

This is a positive development that O'Malley is drawing potential primary challengers, but there is a lot of work for Republicans to do over the next 18 months for us to be able to draw any benefit from it...

Bombastic Pomposity

We all know and accept that Dan Rodricks cannot put a logical argument together if he saved his life. But please read his column on gun violence today and try to make some sense of his idiotic conclusions regarding how gun control impacts law abiding citizens.

"REALITY killed the gun control debate," Volensky, the e-mailer from Alabama, went on. "People are finally realizing how foolish 'gun control' is and that they have a RIGHT if not a duty to take responsibility for their own safety. They are finally realizing that criminals are criminals and are not going to obey the laws that hack politicians put in place to appease people such as yourself. They are finally realizing that the only people affected by gun control laws are the law abiding."

There's some truth to that, Bruce.

I'm sure the 13 people who were shot to death at the immigration center in Binghamton were law-abiding, maybe even perfectly peaceful, people. I'm sure the children of Christopher Wood, the Middletown dad who apparently shot them before killing himself, respected the laws, as much as they even had an awareness of them.

Indeed, law-abiding people are profoundly affected by our gun-control laws - the lack of them.

So to recap Rodricks point, the lack of gun control laws are responsibile for senseless killings. The lack of gun control laws, not law-breaking murderers, are responsible for their deaths. And that additional gun control laws would have stopped the Binghamton shootings, shootings that took place in a state with some of the most draconian gun control laws already on the books.

It's not that Rodricks support for gun control offends me so much as his complete lack of logic and a basic understanding of human reasoning. Clearly, in Rodricks elementary view, America needs more of whatever is not working. But taking what isn't working and doing more of it, it will solve the problem.

Riiiiiight.

Then, let's move on to this nugget:

We can keep arguing about this - that it's people, not guns, that cause all the violence. But guns make it easier for disturbed people to kill their spouses or children. Guns are behind most of the gang terror in America, and guns make the mass killings possible.

The following items also make it easier for disturbed people to kill their spouses or children

• Cars
• Knives
• Rope
• Chains
• Cords for Window Blinds
• Icepicks
• Hammers
• Screwdrivers
• Gasoline
• Box Cutters

This would probably be a good time to also point out that the largest mass murders in American history took place because terrorists used boxcutters to hijack planes. The second largest required a nut job who bought fertilizer and rented a truck. Good times Should we have draconian, unconstitutional on all of those items. Of course not, because that would be idiotic. Just like Rodricks suggestion about guns.

Maybe this would be a good time for Rodricks to actually read something other than the Journolist talking points.....such as yesterday's decision on the right to bear arms from the Ninth Circuit!(!) upholding gun ownership as an individual right, and maybe that will educate him a bit as to why we aren't trying to hinder the basic constitutional rights of Americans.

Hell Freezes Over

I read the Baltimore Sun this morning and actually agreed with (most of) a column by Tom Schaller.

The truth about speed cameras is that they are designed to generate revenue. If a driver can admit the violation and pay the fine with no points on his or her license, there's clearly no intent to sort out bad drivers from good ones. Although Maryland will use them only near construction sites and schools, one senses a camel's nose poking inside the tent.

Frankly, what's really happening here is an attempt to tax people who are unfamiliar with the location of the cameras, instead of just raising taxes in a more direct way. As I have argued in this space before, modern voters want more spending but insist on never paying higher income or property taxes (a consequence of the anti-tax revolt that began in California in the mid-1960s, was ratcheted up during Ronald Reagan's presidency and grew to new heights of fiscal irresponsibility during George W. Bush's and, yes, Barack Obama's administrations).

Thus, new and creative forms of taxation must be invented: Sin taxes on junk food, users fees on this or that, new lotteries and slots legalization are all an exercise in deluding ourselves into thinking we can somehow mask taxes or foist them on somebody else. I'm wary of proposals to replace the tax code wholesale with a flat income tax or a universal consumption tax. But when the conservatives who support these alternatives complain that the complexities of the tax code are a form of deceit by politicians and self-deceit by voters, they are right.

As for driving while texting (DWT), there is a heavy whiff of political bullying - not to mention political posturing for the coming 2010 state election cycle - in the new law banning the practice. The target of that bullying is younger drivers.

And frankly, I'm as stunned as you that a liberal Democrat would actually talk sensibly about these issue. Schaller is right in hat Democrats find speed cameras, red-light cameras, and things of this ilk to be nothing more than revenue enhancers. Take a look at this case from Montana:

Yellow times may shorten as the city of Billings, Montana rushes to install red light cameras before the state legislature has a chance to ban them. The Billings City Council voted 8-3 Monday to empower Redflex Traffic Systems, a private company based in Melbourne, Australia, to issue automated traffic citations in return for a cut of the revenue collected. Billings needs to act quickly because the state legislature last Thursday entered into final negotiations on legislation that would ban red light cameras.

After the House had passed legislation banning red light cameras without conditions, state Senator John Brueggeman (R-Polson) added a grandfather clause to the bill that would allow Billings, Bozeman and any other city that enters into a contract before the bill is signed to issue photo tickets without limitation. House members voted 58-42 against this loophole and insisted on convening a conference committee with the Senate to negotiate the final language.

In a memorandum to the city council, Billings Police Chief Rich St. John foresees the prospect of increased revenue from shortened yellow warning phases at intersections equipped with red light cameras.

"Changes in the yellow times after red light camera systems are in place and operational will affect the number of photographed violations, increasing the number of violations when yellow times are shortened and reducing the number of violations when yellow times are lengthened," St. John explained in a memo dated April 8.

So yeah, cameras the Big Brother-esque expansion of traffic cameras are little more than ways to extract a few more bucks from you, the taxpayer. This would be a good time to remind you that you can join the effort to petition the Speed Camera bill to the ballot by joining at www.mdscamera.com.