Bizarro Night

Thrilled beyond measure for my Washington Capitals, who are a quarter of the way to a Stanley Cup that they won't win.

Crying for Baltimore. How completely fucking awful. Cops' Tweets (60 percent of them include the words "violent criminals") not helping. People burning down new affordable housing constructed by a church not helping. Governor insulting Mayor not helping. What a horrible fucking night for Baltimore and for my state.

Hans Riemer Ate My Baby

Eye-catching, huh? For the record, he didn't. It's science. I'll report back to you sometime on the results.

So, not long after I posted a screed on Walmart Derangement Syndrome, which led to a very pleasant series of check-ins from bloggyfriends, I got a blast email from Councilmember Hans Riemer, of whom I have spoken variously in these pages, especially whenever I write about things local. That led me to Hans' blog, which is now linked off to the right somewhere, mostly so I remember to keep an eye on him. He's a recovering Californian, you know.

There are those of you who will disdain this personal involvement with the system. I do not begrudge your disdain any more than I begrudge Hans' energy for involving himself in the minutiae of government. Is he ambitious? Yeah, he is. Does he want to be one of our overlords? Hmm, yeah, he does, at least at some level of overlording--I've never asked him what he has in mind, and I've no idea if he knows what he has in mind, and if he does, he's sure not going to fucking tell the likes of me. Is he one of the 1 percent? Probably not. He's probably in about the same ballpark as I am, as far as that's concerned, and I really, really promise you that I'm not one of them. What makes him different?

Well, you're not going to like my answer to this, and I'm not going to contend that you should. The answer is: because I know him a little bit as a human. And I said so. So there.

Obviously, it would really be kinda seriously fucktarded for me to scorn any disagreement you might feel welling up at this point in the discourse.

The point? Right. Hans' blog. But first, also too: it turns out Hans is one of the five co-sponsors of the relatively pointless Walmart legislation. I should've figured that was the case. There's just no substantive political downside in MoCo to aligning yourself against Walmart. Duh on me.

So Hans' blog. I wrote him immediately when I saw it, expressing my hope that he was delegating blog production to some staffer. He replied quickly, telling me he does it himself. I believe him. The blog itself is pretty standard stuff, mostly diary, all designed to pump out Hans-centric stuff, as it should be. It's all Blooger-normal, and the tone is probably about right.

The links are local stuff, but...well, one of his links is Just Up The Pike, which I sometimes like and sometimes think is off its nut (as I did with the Walmart post, which started with a link to JUTP, which seems to think that Rockville Pike should be a walkable fake village from Route 28 to the Beltway; this idea is fucking silly). Another is Greater Greater Washington (both JUTP and GGW are linked from BFF's place, so I've never bothered). I've always read GGW respectfully, without necessarily agreeing with its POV, but I see that its most recent post (10/27/2011, and I'm not linking) is an affirmation of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Holy fucking shit. That's one of the most loathsome pieces of legislation ever. And the only thing GGW thinks is wrong with it is that it wasn't sufficiently funded. Holy fucking shit. GGW takes the farthest detour up its own ass when it talks about NCLB's teacher accountability provisions. Sure, it's good to be able to dismiss bad teachers, but NCLB links accountability to test scores. It has done more to dumb down education and water down critical thinking than any other measure since the advent of public education. It is the point source of teaching to the test. The GGW blogger refers to himself as an "educator," which means he's an administrator, not a teacher (if he were a teacher, he'd say so; if he were an administrator, he'd cloud it; bingo). Further, he weasels the issue by saying that he (as a "taxpayer," and like "lots of teachers") supports NCLB's goals for accountability. You might read that as softening his support for NCLB's approach; I read it as weasel shit, because if didn't support the approach, he wouldn't be sleeping with the enemy. Among the parts of NCLB he explicitly likes: allowing parents to pull their children from their local schools that don't meet AYP (average yearly progress, another loathsome and faux-metrics-driven feature of the law), and especially allowing parents to pull their children from "dangerous" high schools (he cites, stunningly, a high school in Prince Georges County--right, I see where we're going here).

I have never before seen a post this contemptible on GGW. It's so awful I won't link to it.

And I digress. Hans gets a cookie for blogging, and for taking the time to do it himself (it's his clock, what the fuck should I care?). The truth is that sources of information about our local locality are limited--even biased sources like GGW (yeah, okay, or me or BFF or JUTP or Your Fucking Washington Post) require some hunting. While I respect the perspectives of some of my bloggyfriends who have no use for government, I think it's okay for people to have some clue what their local overlords are thinking, and for my part, I trust that what Hans tells me in his blog is true, at least for a given value of truth unrelated to whether or not people vote for him.

Well, shit, all that took a left turn from where I started. Whatever. I think I started the post with the intent of picking out dumb shit Hans blogged and mocking it. Sorry, my assault on NCLB left me too winded to mock. My bad.

Update: Oh, shit, I forgot the actual professional criticism  (I'm an actual Web professional, you know): Hans, your labels suck balls. Get someone to go through them for you. You got librarians down there at the COB, I know you do.

A Promised Discourse on Walmart Derangement Syndrome

So it all started over at BFF's place, my godzillan steps into a likely unpopular speculation that makes even me a tad fluttery as I try to articulate it. He linked to a YFWP story about a Walmart going up on Rockville Pike, on the heels of another over in Aspen Hill, the second and third MoCo Walmart-branded legacies of Old Dead Sam (there's a Sam's Club in Gophershole, and maybe another over in Wee-Tone, or maybe it's the other big club box--beats the willies out of me).

I don't give a flying fuck about Walmart any more than I do about any other ginormous retailer. Sasha weeps of a tragedy in that the proposed Wallyworld outlet will glass over a shithole shopping center that happens to contain her favorite bagel joint. Fuck that, it can move across the street to the abandoned former Hooters.

Comments hilarity ensued, all in good fun, and it took blogquaintance Richard (who is, I posit, as literary and thoughtful as I am snarky and reductionist--and if you think I'm overdrawing my credit for snarky and reductionist, then please do me the favor of extending him my overdraft and then some for literary and thoughtful) to crystalize my point; from the perspective of the loosely affiliated community over at BFF's place, what's the difference between Target and Wallyworld? Richard--like Ilse--frequents Target. I surmise that this is, in part, because Richard has a youngish child. From a complicity perspective, Target is a lesser evil for those of us who have to cover little growing humans in textiles--and I think we can all admit that this level of complicity is probably preferable to alternatives like, say, the Division of Child Welfare. I suspect that many of us will admit that it's even preferable to draping our wee folk in homespun.

The point extends, as it did in BFF's comments; unless you're living a life completely withdrawn from our consumerist culture--including your diet--you're not free of complicity in this nightmare. I suspect few of us in that circle are so completely withdrawn. I know Sasha isn't--one of her plaints about the proposed WallyWorld is that it'll increase traffic on her secret back escape hatch into...a nearby Target.

I'm not trying to throw unreasonable stones here. At rock bottom, "I fucking hate Walmart" is good enough, isn't it? I myself dislike asparagus and Exxon and the Dallas Cowboys while buying into all manner of related corporatey goodness. But let's get real. On the merits, Walmart is no particularly worse than any other big box (I'll concede its hostility to unions, though I'll ask if Target, since we seem to have defaulted to them as the comparison, is a UFCW bastion).

The YFWP story points up some proposed legislation by my local county's governing body:

But after the Aspen Hill announcement, five County Council members sponsored a bill that would require some big-box retail stores to sign, or make a good-faith effort to complete, a public-benefits contract with community groups. After its introduction last Tuesday, the legislation drew ire from developers, big retailers and chambers of commerce.

The bill, which has not been passed, would affect both Wal-Marts because they would be more than 75,000 square feet.

Well. I wonder what the fuck that means. Oh, look:

"If these big box retailers want to move in, they have to sign a binding agreement with the community, and the community has a major say in what that store looks like," [Council President] Ervin said.

Community input could include whether employees are hired from within the county and whether the business uses green technology.

So...ginormous superstores already in place are exempt? Wow. Cuz, uhm, there are a boatload of big boxes round hereabouts that easily exceed that 75,000-foot mark. Ervin, a notorious sack of crap, also seems to be using the issue to drive a wedge between two sizeable unions. One of them is a UFCW local. The other is a UFCW local consisting of county government employees--a constituency that Ervin, as noted in my linked post, despises, reviles, and shits on at every opportunity. I sort of think the proposal is reflexive obstruction. On the other hand, I'm not all that sure how much it matters--I reckon Wallyworld is probably capable of conjuring up enough of some shitstorm of corporate responsibility to outsmart the likes of Valerie Ervin.

Oh, right, the point: Sasha supports this legislation. I'll pass on levying (in detail) the guilt by association, at least here.

A final note: No word yet on what poor Hans Riemer thinks of this. But maybe he'll see his name in Google reader (the point, in fact, of this paragraph), blanch when he sees my blog's name next to it, and let us know. That is, if he thinks anything shareable yet (he's a clever lad, our Hans, and one of my favorite things about him is that he typically shuts the fuck up a whole lot and lets other councilmembers duke it out in the pages of the Gazette). Full disclosure: I once ordered a glass of water for Hans at lunch when he was off taking a phone call. I'm told that doesn't mean I have to register as a lobbyist.

Hump A Teacher

So I accompanied Ilse yesterday to a grade-in at my not-quite local mall (my local mall is busy dying, though brave teachers were grading there, too).

"What the fuck," you might quite rightly ask, "is a grade-in?" 

Well, here's the thing. You probably remember last autumn, when I went briefly insane, currying favor and disfavor (probably, though they're both kind enough not to admit it) with local political figures like Nancy Floreen and Hans Riemer, both of whom have been far more gracious than I have deserved. We're no longer in election mode, and chickens are roosting and suchlike, especially when it comes to money.

Money is coming home to roost in a big way here in MoCo. There isn't enough of it, mostly because shameless huckster fucktard panderer Robin Ficker (whose name, my German-speaking friends assure me, is hilarious) spurred county voters into passing an idiotic charter amendment in 2008 to limit property tax increases to the rate of inflation without a unanimous vote of the County Council. There are competing proposals on raising property taxes within the charter limit--the one I support isn't Phil Andrews', which is a blowjob for the rich fucks in his district (of which I am, technically, one). An attaboy to Hans for publicly trashing The Blowdried Green's gratuitous sex act for his North Potomac and Actual Potomac money. Yeah, Phil. We're onto what green really means for you. Bitch.

First unanswerable question for my friends Nancy and Hans: who's blocking a higher tax increase? Bonus points, of course, for blaming Phil Andrews, though I'd also reward a thorough pummelling of Valerie Ervin.

So, the apostrophe¹. As you found out in the original Val-bashing post, Ilse was surplused at the school at which she's nearly completed her second year of teaching. It's a sad thing, because it's an awesome school and she fits in well there. I'm not telling you which school--if you know me, you already know, and if you don't know me, it would be too much information, and if you know me and you've forgotten, you know how to find me. Lots of teachers were surplused this year because of a dramatic increase in average class size, despite the county's meretricious assurance that that increase equals "one." I'll save you a trip to the Landru English Dictionary: "meretricious" means "lying sacks of fetid shit." The increase was about 16 percent, from an average class size of 29 to an average of 34. A lot of teachers, especially in big academic departments, are moving to other schools involuntarily, and it's not yet clear whether they've all got places to go. I don't have any firm figures on how many--there are 11,000 teachers in the county--but my best educated guess is that something like 5 percent of teachers were involuntarily transferred, and I have no education from which to guess on how many will end up unemployed. Corrections from people with actual data are welcome.

It will cheer you--and, I'm guessing Hans, who can now have lunch with me without fearing my righteous holy overeducated, overcaffeineated (hi, Nancy) MoCo wrath--that Ilse landed at another school, and that the aforementioned possibilities of her remaining at her current school (it's the preference) are not entirely exhausted. So it's slightly less personal now.

But I'm a man of the people, hence the grade-in. Let's talk briefly about MoCo teachers, remembering that Maryland has some of the best schools in the country, and MoCo's are the best in the state, by far:

-MCPS has gone through three years of budget cuts. The BoE has delivered a budget request that cuts per-student spending by about $1K from last year's levels, despite the state's maintenance-of-effort law (which the county has now, it appears, decided to completely ignore--and again, I'll cheerfully accept a cogent and apolitical explanation of how that makes sense, because it's hard for me to understand how the cost of the fines is going to be less than the costs of keeping up with the MOE requirement).

-The county has, for at least two years running, violated its contract with the teachers union.

-Starting teachers in MoCo now make less than starting teachers in DC, an educational cesspool.

-While the Council and the BoE seem to want to pin more sacrifices on teachers by increasing (again) their share of health insurance costs (again breaking the contract), and claim teachers need to sacrifice along with other county employees, the teachers' plan costs the county less per capita than its other union health plans.

-The County is using portions of a $65-million increase in state funding for public education for other purposes.

-Finally, if you dare to speak to me about how teachers are babysitters who get the summer off, I'll punch you in the fucking gob. Ilse busts her ass outside of the school duty day, to her family's detriment, to grade schoolwork and plan lessons for her students. Now, she's a fucking freak, but that's a personal issue and it's mostly between her and me. Almost all teachers work evenings and weekends to keep up, and many (including Ilse) work on professional development in the summer.

People don't get this stuff. So yesterday, the teachers put on a little demonstration of what they do on the weekends. They gathered innocently at local mall food courts, and sat down and graded papers or did planning work. It was actually pretty awesome:

Monkey Mall Food Court, 11:40 AM

 

Monkey Mall Food Court, 11:46 AM--Note Predominantly Purple Overtones

Two Random Teachers Who I've Never Seen Before In My Life, Hard At Work

You might think it's kind of a cheesy stunt, but reality is like this: these are the same kind of people that Scott Walker wants you to believe are union thugs. These people, easily over a hundred of them at one venue for the grade-in, are the people who keep our longstanding covenant to have the best fucking school system in the state. And the county wants to break its covenants with them? Again and again?

Keep pushing. The last school strike was devastating. I believe that the next one will occur during Ilse's career, and sooner rather than later, given the political and budget climate. These are the people behind the Apple Ballot. Duchy Trachtenburg found out what happens when you try to break it off in their asses.

Second unanswerable question for my friends Nancy and Hans: Whatcha gonna do?

¹ I really don't understand how anyone can not get that lyric. But this probably goes back to my whole Hamiltonian democracy thing².
² By which I mean we should find a way to disenfranchise fucktards without other fucktards using that as an excuse to disenfranchise people who've had limited opportunities. But then, that's the apostrophe³, isn't it?  
³ Uh-oh. Recursive loop.

Avenge the Patriotic Gore

RIP Willie Don

We've been gifted with some awesome governors in this state--some only from an entertainment perspective, some from a leadership perspective, and some from a WTF? perspective. Only one combined the best of all three, and that man, William Donald Schaefer, died yesterday.  Melonhead was undisputably the very finest public servant in Maryland history, a four-term mayor of Baltimore (and while we Mocomofos can breed as much as we'd care to, Maryland politics still begin and end in Charm City, and always will), a two-term governor, and a two-term state comptroller (after his terms as governor). For 40 years, he dominated politics in the state, and while many hated him (even those of us who loved him hated him briefly at one time or another), even the haters could not deny that he was a man who moved the state forward after years of moribundity.

I can haz attention?

Thanks to BFF for inspiring my image search with his posted pic of the quintessential Schaefer memory (and for saving me the effort of actually searching for the newspaper link). I chose the pic above, but BFF's black-and-white version would've been the one on the front page of the Sun--and let's not pretend that the Post is relevant to this discussion. He was mayor of Charm City then, and the occasion was the opening of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, one of the centerpieces of the Inner Harbor development, probably the consensus starting point of Baltimore's renaissance (non-yuppie Marylanders prefer other neighborhoods, but money is what money is).

I am the very model of a Maryland major general. Or admiral. Whatever.

The background of the above photo says it all. It's Admiral Willie Don's last day as mayor, his first day as governor. Baltimore's building. Think about all of it¹--the harbor complex, Camden Yards, the revitalization of downtown, the light rail, the righteous ferocity of Melonhead's hatred for the Irsays and fucking twats like Parris Glendening--and then reflect on the words of our current governor (who only serves to boost the enormity of Willie Don:

"I think the legacy he would like the most is that people know that he cared, and there are hundreds of thousands of people all across our state who are remembering today their encounters with Mayor Schaefer or Governor Schaefer when they were looking for a job, when they needed to get a son or daughter into drug treatment, when nobody would come to address the problem of the illegal dumping in their alley or their broken swing sets in the park. And Governor Schaefer cared and he did something about it and he made sure government acted now for the people, government is meant to serve. And I think that is his most enduring legacy, really. I think that will live long after some of the memories of the built environment."

(Emphasis mine.)

Two greats, a convict, a prospective convict, and a twat.

The men who preceded and followed Willie Don, (Harry Hughes, at right above, excepted), only clarified how much the man shone. The exception, who hailed from a part of the state that Melonhead famously (and correctly) called "an outhouse," came on the heels of a pair of convicts, and while Harry is a wonderful man who restored respect for the statehouse, he just didn't have the luster of his successor, and really, I cannot emphasize this enough, his predecessor, immediately to his right above, actually spent time in a Federal prison for crimes committed while governor. It could equally be said that Schaefer benefitted from following a quiet, dignified guy like Harry Hughes, but the fact is that Willie Don had a pretty serious track record for flamboyance even before Harry showed up in Annapolis.

In retirement at Jimmy's

I wouldn't live in any other state in the Union. With Melonhead's passing, a big bit of what makes Marylanders better than you² dies. The man exemplified our state and the notions of leadership and public service and citizen service, notions that politicians of all stripes have left by the wayside in the years since he stepped down as governor. I much prefer to think that, like Louie Goldstein, Willie Don is immortal, and for my own mental health, deep down, I don't really believe he's dead. But I have to nod to the news; rest in peace, Melonhead.

(Pic credit for the two flamboyant Williedon pics.)
¹ Unless you're from Pittsburgh or Kissing Suzy Kolber, in which case you can, at this time, think about going and fucking yourself rather roughly.
² No, I'm not fucking kidding, especially if you're from Pittsburgh or Kissing Suzy Kolber, in which case you can, at this time, think about going and fucking yourself rather roughly.

Imminent Death

It's been inevitable since the man pictured below died, but this sucks. It was, for a time, virtually a city ordinance that teenage Gophershole males work at Roy's; BFF and Elric did, for significant stretches, and I did, for about 20 minutes, before Pappy's Family Pub lured me back to my red-and-white striped shirt and styrofoam boater for a 30-cent raise. Good times, right?

I still eat there, and will until they close the doors. Ilse loves it, Whispers loves it, Databoy loves it, and Bam-Bam tolerates it, in a way he won't tolerate most sit-down places. BFF and Planet went there with us a year or two ago, for the hell of it, but I think BFF was too skeeved out to enjoy it. That's just my thought--he'll speak his piece, here or there, I'm sure.

The Late Great Roy Passin

(picture stolen from, and copyrighted by, The Gazette)

News is Fun

Outside our local nation:

Opposition Brings Down Canadian Government

Huh? That sounds really impolite. But here's my favorite part of the story:

Canadian opposition parties brought down the Conservative government in a no confidence vote Friday, triggering an election that polls show the Conservatives will win.

Oh, wait. This is one of those square wheels things, right?

Not actually; I was being selective. While the Conservatives will likely win a plurality, they likely will not have a majority, and will be even more reliant on opposition parties for votes in their little minority government. Which could lead the Liberals to form their own coalition government with other opposition parties.

It's good that Canadians are emulating our success with minority government, eh?

In other news, My Local Locality's County Council President (oh, Christ...see here and in the same chronological area, if you can fucking stand it, for more background), whose name is Valerie Ervin, went on My Local Shove News Up Your Ass Until You Explode station today and bitched about the school system's increasing budget compared to the rest of the county's budget. What a genius of misrepresentation. For one thing, as noted ad infinitum here and elsewhere, the student population's increasing, and for another, there's a state law that requires the county not to reduce per-student spending on education.

Ervin crawled out on her astonishing slim limb three days after something like 8 to 10 percent of the county's teachers got involuntary transfer notices, meaning that their jobs at their present schools won't be there next year.

I read this, and immediately logged onto my secret Gmail account, figuring I had some chance of catching my very close personal friend Hans Riemer¹ on Gmail chat. I got lucky, and Hans found out about two hours ago what you're finding out now: that the county teachers who got involuntary transfer notices, and whose jobs are threatened, includes a treasured constituent of his, who also happens to be my wife.

It seems that, as a result of planning decisions made by people who are not Hans Riemer (or Valerie Ervin, for that matter), average class size in our schools for next year will increase from 29 students to 34. That's a 17-percent increase, and Newtonian math leads to a 17-percent reduction in teachers. Reality intercedes there--the relationship isn't a straight line (and fractions are harder to deal with in lightly staffed departments--sadly for Ilse, she's in a large department). Hence the 8-10 percent estimate.

It's possible that I protest too much, at least on Ilse's behalf. For one thing, her principal is a seriously greasy operator, and he seems to like her, which is unusual for him and teachers generically. There's a fair chance that he'll manage to slime her back into his budget. For another, most of the teachers cut are lightly experienced. So's Ilse, who is in her fourth year of teaching for real. However, she's got experience at three schools (this isn't the first time she's been surplused), and glowing recommendations from all three. And I mean they glow like Fukushima No. 4--she's a young teaching rockstar. This also means that she's relatively inexpensive. All in all, an attractive prospect for any job for which she applies; the trick is whether there will be jobs that she wants. Or jobs at all.

Anyway, I ripped Hans a little in Gmail chat, and he's a good human, so his response was primarily concern for Ilse (who also did a little work for him during the campaign, and who looks damn good at receptions and suchlike). I mostly ripped Ervin, and Hans is a smart human and didn't explicitly agree with me. Well played, Hans. My white cat and I will make another run at you sometime soon.

For extra giggles, see the comments section of the WTOP article I cited above, where one genius asserted that there are 250,000 "illegal immigrants" in Montgomery County. That would be a quarter of the county's population. I'll tell you what, people who think illegal immigration is an actual problem: I'll support checking peoples' immigration status before they receive government benefits, if you support disenfranchising fucktards.


¹ I have this mental picture of what Hans must look like every time he thinks of the day he called me on the telephone to solicit my vote, and of every email he innocently replied to in the days shortly thereafter, which is probably every time I reach out to him by phone or email. Hans seems to be gracious enough to believe that any publicity is good publicity, and of course he gets beaucoup points for that, as a human and as a pol. But I've got at least 3-4 more years to teach him an awful lot about that little bit of folk wisdom, hmm?

You Can't Disappear the Intertubez

I know I promised to STFU about local politics, but this is effing hilarious. Y'all were probably sick of both my ranting and my constant links to Maryland Politics Watch during the runup to the recent Democratic primaries. MPW is a pretty good site, chock full of local political color, operated by Adam Pagnucco and David Lublin, both of whom seem to be okay guys.

Of course, it was a hotly contested primary season here in MoCo, and there were a lot losers. Some of them whine a lot, others don't (Credit where due: Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, object of Minions' maximum revulsion during this election, popped off an exceedingly gracious and inoffensive thank-you note to her supporters; thanks, Councilwoman Trachtenberg, for bowing out without snivelling, and Minions wishes you all the best for the future, as long as you're not running for office in the state of Maryland.).

So yesterday, Pagnucco posted on MPW about the campaign manager for the aforelinked Dr. Dana Beyer, a candidate for Delegate in District 18. What? You say that link doesn't work? Hmm.

Maybe he took it down. But it's not like the post was offensive. It seems that Jena Grosser, the aforementioned campaign manager, was an unhappy soul while she was working for Dr. Beyer. How do we know? Well, she (or, it must be reckoned possible, someone purporting to be her) tweeted pretty incessantly during the campaign season about how miserable she was. Is there anything special or damning about it? Not really. It's the usual tweetie-twaddle about the frequency of one's bowel movements. I mean, she was pretty miserable, and it doesn't appear that her employer was giving her much in the way of logistics support for, say, living in the DC area (Ms. Grosser is a native of Indiana). Certainly her judgment is pretty suspect, putting that much personal stuff on the Intertubez. I wouldn't want her as my campaign manager. But then again, I'm not running for office, so WTF do I know?

But back to our friends at MPW. Taking stuff down, that's a pretty serious allegation, there. And utterly unsubstantiated, just like you'd expect from a potty-mouthed anonymous blooger like me, right?

Oops. And if that doesn't do it for you, Google-search "Maryland Politics Watch Jena Beyer" and you should be able to find your own cached version. Lookee:

So why, oh why, would MPW pull such a wonderful bit of political reporting? Well, I can tell you that there was a bit of a comments battle over this post, though if someone wanted to be snarky and vicious they could deny it, because it doesn't appear in the cached version, at least the one I found. There were, as of noonish today (about 22 hours after the post), 12 comments, about half attacking Pagnucco and the blog for being such meanies as to attack this Jena person so viciously over the private information she spread all over the freaking Web (and most of those were from someone who spends a lot of time scolding Pagnucco and other commenters over some pretty insignificant stuff). Most of the rest were by Pagnucco and Lublin, defending the post. One was by a blog supporter pointing out that what Pagnucco did is called "reporting." To be clear, my position is mostly in line with that last comment. None of the comments I saw really explained MPW pulling the post. Except maybe the last one I saw.

Now, I got only suspicions here. That last comment chided Pagnucco, advancing the theory that the post made his team (the winning District 18 Democratic team) look bad for trashing his team's opponent Beyer. There are a number of possibilities stemming from that. Did Beyer threaten some sort of action? Did Pagnucco's D18 team rip into him for the post? Did Pagnucco decide he couldn't afford for the post to be out there? Did the scold's taunt about the MoCo Dems' Kiss and Make Up Party (sadly, unattended by Dr. Beyer, according to Pagnucco's reporting) cause a little tiny tear to fall from Adam Pagnucco's eye?

Beats me. The previous paragraph, except for the factual statement about the last comment (that I saw), is all speculative. And for now, it'll remain so, because MPW pulled the post without explanation (at least up to this moment--I will update if that changes).

So, seriously, Adam, WTF?

In other political news, BFF bDr implicitly outs me as an agent of the global Takoma Park conspiracy. I have to say that, while this accusation staggers me, the prosecution has sufficient evidence to secure a conviction. No lo contendere.

That's right. Suck on Spiro Agnew, bitchez.

Mostly Woot

So you've been forced, at gunpoint, to read a boatload of crap from me of late, all of it about local politics, and I've promised you an end to it, but it's the morning after and I wanted to gloat share the results of the races I've been yammering about. Okay, fine, I wanted to gloat.

I hear tell that Saqib Ali conceded his District 39 Senate race to Nancy King. If it's true...well, good on you, Saqib. It's about time you did something classy in that race. I want to hope that Saqib learned something from his missteps in this filthy campaign. In fact, I'm sure he probably did. On the other hand, I suspect that, while he's young, he's also well enough set in his ways that the legacy of this race, and his term in the General Assembly, will haunt him. Saqib is a tendentious motherfucker. I'm not going to say that's always a bad thing; in fact, if I did say that, I should immediately be struck by lightning. But there's a time and a place for that, and those places are fewer and farther between when you're representing a constituency. I really do hope that Saqib has figured that out.

In the MoCo at-large County Council races, it appears that three of my four candidates won (the top four advance to the General Election and, most likely, to the Council), though if there are a lot of absentee ballots (I don't think so) and none of them voted for George Leventhal, he might be in trouble. Mancrush Hans Riemer (*sniff*...the post that started it all) appears to have finished second, and Nancy Floreen appears to have finished third. Much-reviled Duchy Trachtenberg (it's "Dutchy," by the way) appears to be done, at least for this cycle. Apple Ballot candidate Becky Wagner appears to have finished sixth, and Marc Elrich, for whom I didn't vote, but whom I no longer characterize intemperately, was the top vote-getter.

What does this say? As usual in MoCo, it says we're schizophrenic, both in the actual sense of meaning dissociated from reality, and in the common usage of meaning we have split personalities. The top vote-getter has a green streak the size of a cornfield in July; Hans is a tad green for my taste, but an okay guy; and Floreen and Leventhal are relatively moderate (compared to green folk, and compared to a number of the district-based probable electees, especially the one for my district).

As a science experiment, it says that Minions' intemperance has a mixed effect. So it's really not much of a science experiment.

Minions' intemperance paid off big-time in the BoE races, though the magnitude of the whomping taken by the Parents' Coalition candidates, and the margin of victory for the Apple candidates--every one of them--suggests that it's still a crappy science experiment. Every Apple candidate won, big; every Coalition candidate finished last.

This is especially pleasurable today, because I reported to you the other day on the increase in MCPS SAT scores. Scroll down to the comments for Sasha's prophecy, which was, of course, fulfilled, because she's often pretty smart that way. The whinging is that fewer Hispanic and African-American students took the SAT in 2010 than did so in 2009. If you go back to 2006 (the MCPS report covered 2006-2010), you'll find that more Hispanic and African-American students took the test in 2010 than did so in 2006. Fewer white kids did so. Hmm. There's some effect of the ACT here; a lot of students took it as an alternative.

So, how does the Parents' Coalition view this? With a jaundiced, paranoid, and wackaloon eye, of course. Oh, and let's not forget the cherry-picking. In a post authored by a BoE candidate recently called out by Minions (actually, he begged for attention and I responded), the Coalition's blog cites to a few critical lines in a story in a notoriously right-leaning newspaper, claiming that MCPS (according to anonymous sources) is "not telling the truth." The only numbers cited in the story are those for 2009 and 2010, and much is made over some guy from some "National Center" for whatever its special interest is wanking on about the need for an investigation and speculating about the sources of cherry-picked numbers from a study he may or may not have read. And yet the Coalition, as it does, highlights this nonsense approvingly as if it's the focus of the story.

Awesome. Break out the tinfoil hats for the Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County. While their BoE candidates were, quite rightly, soundly embarrassed at the polls, these people remain noisy, meddlesome, ignorant, misfocused, and potentially dangerous. I'll keep an eye on their ravings and entertain you with the best of it.

But not any time soon, I hope. It's time to get back to doing what this blog does best* (I hope); self-indulgent snarking about football, futbol, entropy, and life. And, of course, about you.

*There are those who claim that what this blog does best is shut up, for weeks at a time. I will not dispute that contention.

Broken Promises

Uhm...sadly, they're mine. I'll take the karma hit, because lookee here, it's an interesting little news item about my local locality's school system!

SAT scores up, you say? Outpaced other Maryland school systems by 150 points? Cool. Here's what I say to that, and what someone who helped your kids achieve that way says: Vote the Apple for BoE.

Oh yeah, and vote for Hans. And Nancy. Please.

And stay away from strangers in the Alps.

More on the MoCo BoE Races

I've spent an awful lot of time and energy on politics of late, and frankly, it's making me pretty tired. And yet, I've still got more to say. I spent many vertical pixels yesterday on one BoE candidate, and it sucked my day away. I'm going to keep this post more brief. I hope.

In the District BoE 5 race, I endorsed Mike Durso, an incumbent Board member and a former teacher and principal. Mr. Durso also won a spot on the Apple Ballot and an impassioned endorsement from Laura Berthiaume, another Board incumbent (who represents my district). I have likewise endorsed incumbents in the BoE races in Districts 1 (Judy Docca) and 3 (Patricia O'Neill), and in the at-large race (Shirley Brandman).

I spent a lot of thought on what to write about today. I thought about working on the two candidates in District 5 that I haven't discussed, but as I started to research another issue I found that I was in serious danger of breaching my promise of brevity (I won't bullshit you; I'm going to breach it, though I'll try to limit the damage). So today I'm going to talk about the Parents Coalition.

Then, I'm absolutely done with politics in this blog for a while. Unless I see a shiny butterfly. The primaries are Tuesday, and that's going to settle everything but the BoE races, because the Democratic candidates will win in the general election, Robin Ficker's rich and no-doubt detailed fantasy life aside, and the BoE races are nonpartisan, at least in a party sense. I may re-engage on the BoE races later in the process, but that'll be easy, because the choices are pretty stark and unambiguous. So I'm about done with this.

Also: I want to get back to irresponsible, foul-mouthed comedy.

The Parents Coalition is an advocacy organization here in the County that has advanced a candidates' slate. A quick word about the Parents Coalition candidates in general: I'm opposed to them. That's partly because I'm a teacher's spouse. It's true that parents are a pain in the ass. That doesn't give MCPS license to ignore them; it also doesn't mean that activist parents know best. They certainly know best for their own children, whether or not they do, and that's right and proper. Their pretense that they know best for mine, for anyone elses', or for everyone's, is nonsense. It's well-known that, when your child doesn't fit a mold, you sometimes have to fight MCPS for your child. You don't do that by getting elected to the BoE. Caring about a narrow spectrum of issues doesn't make you any smarter, and the experience of fighting MCPS for your kids doesn't qualify you to administer the school system for the rest of us.

There's another thing to say here; there's a very close link between parental involvement and childrens' success. That means understanding what's going on in your child's daily school life, helping with challenges (including homework and social challenges), and simply knowing what your child is supposed to be doing. That's parental involvement. Yeah, sometimes you have to go fight the power for the benefit of your kid. But parental involvement does not require turning over MCPS to parents. That's what the Coalition wants, and the tenor of their rhetoric makes clear that they're not going to settle for anything less.

Transparency is a complex issue; of course, citizens have the right to visibility into government proceedings and processes. What citizens do with that information has a tendency to slow down necessary government actions. You can't debate every decision endlessly, and that's exactly what happens in a place like Montgomery County. No one here thinks there's any such thing as losing, no one thinks they have to take "no" for an answer. And that renders government pretty dysfunctional. There is a balance between transparency and responsiveness, and striking it requires understanding that there's an inverse relationship between the two. The Coalition's mission statement articulates this group's utter lack of understanding of that relationship.

The Coalition's blather about Promethean Boards sort of epitomizes how far their heads are buried in an unfortunate place. I've talked about this before, including yesterday; these devices are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They're not just interactive whiteboards; they're a revolution in teachers' ability to engage students in classroom activities. The Coalition has repeatedly suggested that an equivalent product can be fashioned with less than $100 in readily available parts. This is utter bullshit. It doesn't include the tools required for each student in the room to interact, and the Coalition's feeble nonsense doesn't say anything about who should install this product. Teachers? Yeah, right. That's the way to ensure a comparable experience for each and every student. The Mimio product that the Coalition touts doesn't match the Prometheans' functionality. These people simply don't have any idea what they're talking about. They claim to want to improve education, and they haven't the slightest clue how a modern classroom can or should work.

The Coalition approvingly cites a story that claims that Prometheans "add to excessive screen time." Let's fisk this a bit. The story comes from Churchill High School's student newspaper. OMFG, these people are actually justifying their bullshit position on this with an opinion piece by a high school student? Let's look at that byline: the student in question is named Spencer Easterbrook. Why, oh why, does that name sound familiar?

Really? The Coalition is evidencing its position on Promethean Boards with a high school newspaper editorial, from one of the richest and best-off schools in the county, written by the son of one of the most notoriously batshit crazy writers in America? A global warming denialist and creationist? A man who has written exactly the same plug-in-the-blanks football column every week of the NFL season for the last 12 or 14 years?

Y'know, I'm just about done with this, because these people are over the top. First off, the suggestion that Promethean screen time is somehow equivalent to other screen time (home computers, video games, television, etc.) is utterly fucking insane, irresponsibly so. Next, let's look at a statement by Wackaloon, Jr. in his editorial that the Coalition seems to especially approve of (they highlighted in their block quote):

"A good teacher, however, can keep their students interested and engaged without technology. The excitement of a teacher who is passionate about their subject will never be replaced by a piece of new technology."

You jest. A good teacher doesn't need technology? A teacher who can't keep every student interested and engaged is a bad teacher, because there's nothing wrong with the fucking precious little darlings who inhabit MoCo's classrooms? A Promethean Board "stands between the students and the teacher as a third party in the room"? Holy shit, this is nuts.

Honestly, I don't even know why I'm writing about this. These people are insane. The throwback reactionary approach to education (they seriously want the MCPS to be less focused on college prep and more on vocational education), their incessant carping about audit reports and an accompanying focus on pennies, their complete failure to recognize that the county isn't homogenous, their bitching about every single thing the BoE and Superintendent and school administrators do, coupled with the expectation that parents could or would do better...these are the people you walk away from at PTSA meetings, friends. And they hate teachers. 

Yes, they do. Lookee here: a link from the Coalition's blog to this screed in YFWP over MCEA endorsements. Coalition candidates didn't earn places on the Apple Ballot for a reason, and as candidates, they have to do what they can to campaign; on the other hand, it's clear that Coalition electees would bring a substantial anti-MCEA element to the BoE. Several Coalition candidates try to pay lip service to their support for teachers; their other answers show the lip service for what it is. Teachers make this county's school system. Screw them over at your peril.

This isn't going to get any nicer. I'm done. Don't vote for these people. Vote for the incumbents, listed and linked below:

At-Large: Shirley Brandman

District 1: Judy Docca

District 5: Mike Durso

A Deep, Heaving Sigh

A commenter who is, it appears, who he says he is (and it's only fair to admit and remind that my suspicion about another commenter on this topic was, in that case, unjustified) seems to lament that I didn't discuss the MoCo BoE races in my epic rant on the upcoming MoCo primaries. Sadly, the commenter does not appear to be the most effective of readers:

The other important primaries are for the Board of Education; there's no reason for me (or, by extension, any right-thinking MoCovian) not to obey the Apple on the BoE races.

Okay, BoE candidate Louis Wilen, I answered this briefly with a comment of my own, but let's discuss the District 5 BoE race, where I endorsed (by extension) one of your opponents, Mike Durso (to be fair and get everyone in the first sentence of the paragraph, the other candidate is Lou August, who's getting no attention in this post other than a mention of his name). Perhaps I'm being presumptuous when I suspect that this is the race that you'd prefer that I discuss (while there are districted seats on the BoE, everyone votes for the candidates in all districts, as well as for the at-large candidates, which I seem to recall is an artifact of some long-ago legal matter), but I'm thinking it's probably a good guess. And you begged for it.

Let's start with the obvious: Durso was endorsed by MCEA. I admitted my bias toward MCEA-endorsed candidates in the original endorsement post, and from a quick perusal of items linked to Mr. Wilen's Blogger profile, it appears that he has a little problem with the MCEA and the Apple Ballot. By the way, thanks, Mr. Wilen, for giving me the means to track down additional reasons why I didn't and won't support your candidacy. Ever.

The blog linked above is a treasure trove. Mr. Wilen whines on his blog that MCEA produces the Apple Ballot before the candidate registration process closes. He misleadingly states here that "...most of the Apple Ballot candidates paid a $6000 fee to the MCEA to appear on their ballot." Uhm, hold up, there, sir. MCEA asks endorsed candidates to pay $6000 to help cover publishing costs for the ballots. They ask after they give their endorsement. MCEA doesn't withdraw the endorsement if the candidate doesn't pay. As you pretty obviously know, since you do say "most." (Update: Mr. Wilen has removed the quoted statement from his blog. Kudos to him.)

That post alone is worth two strikes against Mr. Wilen. He also says there that "The Apple Ballot folks even paid Google to display a diversionary link to the Apple Ballot when the search words "Louis Wilen" are entered." Wow. Y'know, Mr. Wilen, I understand that you're running for public office, and that you have a need to bend the truth a bit, but that's really kind of outrageous for a self-described "computer guy."¹

Here are the front-page results of a Google search for "Louis Wilen." (click to enlarge):

The MCEA link is clearly highlighted as a sponsored link. There's nothing diversionary about it. It's Google's practice. It's not targeting Mr. Wilen personally; while it is a paid link, it comes up whenever a search string is entered that's related to the MoCo BoE races. Nice job of trying to make it look like they're out to get you, Mr. Wilen. Maybe if you gave a fig about the union, or about teachers, you'd have actually done something to try to obtain MCEA's endorsement, instead of making up paranoid shit when you didn't get it.

What's that? Three strikes on the same blog post? Uhm, yeah: "My name may be the last on the ballot, but no candidate in Board of Education District 5 is more supportive of teachers or more committed to the success of all students."

That's a flat-out lie. I'll concede the possibility that Mr. Wilen doesn't hate teachers--the reason we have one of the best school systems in the country--as much as his opponent Lou August, but to claim that he's more supportive of teachers than Mike Durso, a former teacher and principal, is pretty outlandish. Especially when Wilen is on record as saying--apparently in response to his endorsement questionnaire for the Municipal & County Goverment Employees Organization, a public employee union that would (probably rightly) sell its own children to avoid budget cuts affecting its employees--that he "would have supported MCPS employee furloughs as a way to reduce costs." Mr. Wilen lamely protests that he would want the furloughs to occur on professional days, of which he claims that, "According to teachers, many of the professional days are little more than Weast indoctrination sessions, and many teachers would appreciate a break from those sessions."

Not the one I'm married to, Mr. Wilen. For her, they're days when she does the administrative work required because there's not enough time in a teacher's day to plan (my wife has to prepare for three different curriculae scattered over 5 of the 7 class periods in her work day), grade, and record for the 150 students that our growing class sizes require her to teach. Honestly, it would be in our self-interest for her not to work the professional days--we have to get child care for those days, for our middle school son and our special-needs child (an issue to which Mr. Wilen has zero apparent sensitivity, since he doesn't mention it in his Gazette responses or his issues page on his Web site). Oh yeah. Except for that she gets paid for those days. And would have to do the work even if she got furloughed on professional days. Could you possibly talk out your ass a little more, sir?

Had enough, yet, Mr. Wilen? I haven't.

Mr. Wilen sure wants to spend money on a lot of stuff; improved maintenance, capital construction, supplementary curricular materials (more on this in a bit), more teachers and support staff. He spends a lot of time and effort whinging about stuff like gift cards for teachers (they're given as rewards or as tokens of appreciation for efforts above and beyond, Mr. I Support Teachers), and even more time whinging about taxes (Mr. Wilen claims to be a Democrat, though in fairness his claim is irrelevant, since BoE elections are nonpartisan--but if you're a Democrat, shut the fuck up about taxes, sir; I pay mine, and thanks to busybodies with too much time on their hands, like you, I pay even more, while much larger-scale, intentional offenders go unchallenged by "unassuming" people like you¹). Mr. Wilen seems to think that we can spend money on all this stuff without spending more. We can't. That's why class sizes are too big, facilities are dilapidated, textbooks are old and scarce, and teachers have to spend money out of their pockets for classroom supplies and materials.

Is there waste through insufficient financial controls? Yeah. Does it exceed the amount spent auditing it? Beats the hell out of me. I'm guessing Louis Wilen couldn't tell you either (and, Mr. Wilen, if my guess is wrong--and I'll be perfectly happy and impressed if it is, though not enough to vote for you--and you can provide some sort of comparative aggregate figures on this, I'd be delighted and grateful, though again--not much point to you doing that, since I didn't vote for you in the primary and I doubt that I'll vote for you in the general election).

Mr. Wilen also flatly and explicitly hates MCEA. In fact, he hates unions in general, as he details here. He bitches about MCPS being a closed shop; of course it is. All teachers are paid under the union contract, and they should all pay union dues. He snidely uses "ostensibly" to describe the union's representation of teachers. He proudly cites to a union-bashing editorial in Your Fucking Washington Post (thank God for the liberal media, eh?). "The Apple Ballot has -- unfortunately -- proven to be an effective way for the union bosses to control the outcome of elections," snarks Mr. Wilen. Yeah, they're out there holding a gun to everyone's head to make them vote the Apple, right Mr. Wilen? Sure, it's a strong endorsement, and for good reasons (among them that Robin Ficker hates the Apple, as you'll see if you scroll to the comments on that last link). But union bosses controlling the outcome of elections? Are you positive you're a Democrat, Mr. Wilen?

Mr. Wilen is also a Weast-hater. That's all well and good. There are a lot of us, from many walks of life. Superintendent Weast has made a lot of enemies, with a lot of different axes to grind. On the other hand, Superintendent Weast announced well before the closing of the Apple Ballot process (nudge, nudge) that he wasn't seeking a contract extension or a new contract, and subsequently (well after the closing of the Apple Ballot process, nudge nudge) announced his retirement. Why are we bothering to run against Jerry Weast, Mr. Wilen?

Mr. Wilen also has a stance on curricular fees. To be fair, he's technically right. They're illegal, and there are enough economically disadvantaged students in this county that such fees should not be mandatory. There are also enough comparatively well-off students in this county that they shouldn't be illegal. Mr. Wilen is not responsible for state law, and he's not wrong to observe that MCPS should comply with the law. The issue is more nuanced than he or a group for which he blogs is willing to admit. This comes from the same place as Mr. Wilen's stance on taxes: they're not fair to him.

Hey, guess who makes up the difference between what's not allowed and what's needed? My wife, that's who. She gets an allowance of $150 annually for classroom supplies (I'm sure Mr. Wilen needs to see the fucking receipts). To his credit, Mr. Wilen wants to double that allowance (or more). Y'know, from one dollar per student to two dollars (or even three, woo-hoo!). Let's perspectivize here, huh?

Hey, guess what else Louis Wilen and his NIMBY parents group hate? Promethean Boards (sorry, you have to scroll down through a hockey rant to get to the relevance)! Yay! We love teachers!

Here's a fucking clue: every single teacher in MCPS will tell you that they'd love to have a Promethean Board. You know the real problem with Promethean Boards here in MoCo? There's not one in every single classroom in the county. I'll say this for Louis Wilen's diamond-shitting over gift cards; if he's right, and the savings resulting from audits far exceed the amount spent, maybe the BoE can spend more on Prometheans.

Louis Wilen! He's a Democrat who hates unions and taxes, he hates teachers, he hates spending except where he thinks it should be spent (his views on parent input are nuts--he essentially wants the BoE to be controlled by parent input, which is just an utterly wackaloon concept in a county of overcaffeinated, overeducated² lawyers and tendentious pricks), he hates paying teachers, he hates that the BoE threatened to sue the County Council when the County Council threatened to break the law, he hates that MCPS spent money on the best classroom teaching technology in existence, he's a computer guy who doesn't understand how Google's search algorithm works (friendly advice, sir: learn to optimize, there's no reason your campaign site shouldn't be listed first after the paid links), he's an unassuming guy who thinks it's more lucrative to punish me for a county tax records error than to go after real money (yes, I'm bitching about it--no, the amount wasn't all that great for me, like in the $800 range), he hates a superintendent who's retiring (the relevance is searing), and he loves Your Fucking Washington Post. Yeah, what's that, like strike 19?

Now, let me say this: I have no reason to believe that Louis Wilen is a bad person. I clearly disagree with him on many levels, to a degree where I actively disrespect a number of his points of view. He's certainly not trying to nanny-state me (as far as I can tell), and I certainly don't have any dirt on the man. It's abundantly possible that Louis Wilen and I could be in the same room without exploding. I think that much of what I have complained about in this post is purely political behavior, and I understand it as such. I bear him no particular malice as a human being. However.

To reiterate, I endorse the Apple Ballot in all MoCo BoE primary races. I support Mike Durso in District 5. And I recommend that you do not, ever, under any circumstances, vote for Louis Wilen.

And I apologize, because I really should have said this bit earlier: thank you, Mr. Wilen, for reading and commenting on this utterly insignificant blog, regardless of my opinion on your comment. Which I think I've articulated pretty thoroughly.

¹ Hey, speaking of that article, thanks a lot for the escrow hit on my properly licensed and reported rental property a few years back, Mr. Wilen. See what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?

²With a respectful tip of the hat to MoCo Council President Nancy Floreen...

Attention MoCovians!

Le jour de gloire est arrive!¹ It's time for Minions election-year extravaganza of primary minutiae.

Let's start with some basic MoCo political principles. There are three things that are important in this here county: jobs, education, and traffic. Everything else is noise, including the alarming percentage of fucktard treehuggers who insist that we can pack a million people into this county without building things that create jobs and without building stores to buy stuff and without building roads to carry these million people from one place to another, since the vast fucking majority of them aren't going to get on our formerly sleek subway train to ride to another jurisdiction to spend whatever money they have.

And they have varying amounts of it. It's true that we're a pretty fucking affluent county. It's also true that there's a huge wealth disparity here, although not nearly as huge as many less fortunate places. So to the extent that what I just characterized as "noise" includes social services for a lot of those who haven't got much, I'll have to elaborate a bit. We face a staggering budget deficit in this county. Unfortunately, something like 80 percent of the budget goes to education, and our school system (MCPS) faces some interesting restrictions. For one thing, there is a powerful teachers union here (MCEA), and they've negotiated a binding contract with the county. For another, there's a state requirement called maintenance of effort that requires the county to keep spending at least level (in honesty, I don't know if it's a flat number or a per capita number), or face financial consequences in the form of withdrawn state funding.

Now, punishing a failure to spend money with fines seems a little backwards and fucktarded. But it's the law, and it was enacted in the wake of national education changes that modified the way the state gets money from the Feds. It is what it is, and backwards and fucktarded pretty much describes what the Bush administration did to education. But Congress went along, and...well, it is what it is.

We were discussing the budget deficit. With 80 percent of the budget spent on education, and another fair-sized chunk sucked up by public safety (which also involves union contracts, as does just about any form of county employment), there's not much left to spread cuts. So earlier this year, the County Council took the wood to the MCPS budget and begged the state's forgiveness. It worked. Sadly, that involved violating its negotiated contracts with MCEA, among other unions.

MCEA tells us who to vote for, and I obey about 90 percent of the time. I did so even before my wife became a teacher in MCPS. It's been my habit for 32 years. MCPS is why people live here. Period. The MCEA ballot is called the Apple Ballot, and has been for at least 32 years.

I'm focusing this post on the County Council at-large races. There are contested state legislative primaries about which I know little (and I posted about mine yesterday, leaving no doubt about where I stand). There's one other state senate race about which I care, in District 17, and that's only because the incumbent is an old family friend. Her opponent is okay, and it's unfortunate that they're having a contested primary. The other important primaries are for the Board of Education; there's no reason for me (or, by extension, any right-thinking MoCovian) not to obey the Apple on the BoE races. There are primary contests in some of the other Council districts, but not in mine--sadly, my fucktard treehugger Councilman is running unopposed, a situation I would've cheerfully rectified if not for my history of drug use, failed marriages, colorful expressions, poor anger management, gratuitous misogyny, board and video gaming, illicit sex, gluttonous eating, college abandonment, sinful pride, and occasional body odor. Other than Ilse, 32-Ounce, and possibly Whispers, the only people who'd vote for me live outside of the district (even 32-Ounce's wife Sil, my only other living relative in this district, would rather vote for a syphilitic homeless person, or a fucktard treehugger, than for me, for anything other than a lengthy prison term).

So, the at-large races, then. The incumbents are Marc Elrich, Duchy Trachtenberg (it is unknown to me whether she prefers "Douchey," "Dutchy," or "Ducky," though my preference will be clear to you long before the end of this ride), George Leventhal, and Nancy Floreen, who is so evil that she peels the paint off of Sasha's walls (but not mine). The realistic challengers are Becky Wagner and Hans Riemer; a semi-realistic challenger is Jane de Winter; and there are two wackaloon challengers who haven't got a prayer. de Winter is easily disposed of; her entire campaign seems to consist of a smug assertion that she's an economist. Wow. Enjoy the couple hundred votes you get riding that pony, Jane (and those only because we have an unusually dense concentration of economists hereabouts).

In this year's 4 at-large races, MCEA quite understandably tends to favor candidates who didn't vote to rape a union contract, or failing that, expressed deep remorse and misgivings about doing so. The Apple Ballot endorses Elrich, Leventhal, Wagner, and Riemer. Leventhal is so secure on this issue that Your Fucking Washington Post (his intellectual property) unendorsed him, because this bastion of liberal media despises unions with every fiber of its being. And Leventhal has actually expressed a willingness to violate the union contracts if there's no other choice.

MCEA despises Duchy Trachtenberg, and rightfully so. She's fucking despicable. She hates the unions and led the charge to violate negotiated union contracts. This makes her an opponent of the rule of law, (cf. Sadaam Hussein), and a disrespecter of property rights, (i.e. a Communist, cf. Karl Marx), and since they're public union contracts, her intent to violate them also makes her a Republican, (cf. Ronald Reagan, and seriously? this is the most realistic accusation I've made so far). She's a fucktard treehugger to boot, a gypsy artist shitbird from the wallow of Potomac, where horses go to mate with rich people, the only village in the world that produces fucktard treehugger Republicans masquerading as Democrats. She's such an ignorant sack of fucking shit that we're done with her. Good thing we settled the pronunciation issue.

No, we're not done with her. It is actually my understanding that Sasha does not hate Duchy Trachtenburg. I'm a big Sasha fan, and have been for a long time. Sasha's wrong, wrong, wrong about Duchy. I don't understand this. Sasha is not a fucktard treehugger. Sasha understands how brutally stupid and amoral Duchy is. Sasha is not a fan of rich people who mate with horses, or the village from which they come. Sasha is not opposed to our public employee unions. I can thus only conclude that Sasha likes Duchy because...Duchy is a gypsy artist shitbird. If Sasha liked this because she wanted to buy sheep parts from Duchy, this would be unobjectionable. However, Sasha has proclaimed an intent to vote for Duchy. This is reprehensible, and I call upon Sasha to choose her weapons. Even if she's only kidding, and I'm pretty sure she's not. Fuck you, Sasha. I'm a kick your ass on this one.

Now we're done with Duchy.

Since I've done this number, I'm leaving Nancy Floreen to Sasha, who hates Floreen with a passion that makes my distaste for Duchy Trachtenberg look like a romantic evening with rose petals scattered on black silk sheets. I think Floreen's not horrible. Sasha has her reasons, and did even before she started getting nightly Floreen robocalls from out of state. I have decided that, in the interest of peace, I'm pulling Floreen from my ballot and only voting for three candidates out of four.

Because I won't vote for Marc Elrich, of Takoma Park, the bastion of the Peoples Republic of MoCo, a place where they build fucking U-boat pens for fucktard treehuggery, a place where the nanny state puts on a leather corset and carries a whip. I've previously told you that Tacky Park is one of two nuclear-free zones in MoCo, and honestly? I can't wait to succeed to the presidency so I can be the one to recite the launch codes. Elrich is a crapass nanny-stater who championed fucking transfat legislation in the county (a tremendous waste of legislative effort that could've instead been devoted to, oh, I don't know, not breaking fucking employee contracts?) , a fucking idiot who thinks that "transit" means "buses." It doesn't. Want less traffic? Build more roads, and build a decent rail system, because we're rich here. We don't ride buses. Our maids ride buses. I am not trying to be unkind here; I'm simply pointing out an inescapable psychoeconomic truth.² Elrich fell into the "deep remorse" category of contract violators and thus escaped MCEA's wrath. Not mine.

That leaves us with Riemer and Wagner, who are, happily, on the Apple Ballot. And it brings us to traffic.

Actually, I lie, it brings us to jobs, because it's easy. We're Montgomery Fucking County. We are adjacent to the richest job bank in the motherfucking universe, that being Washington, DC. Unless the place is run by complete motherfucking idiots (and it has, at times, been so), jobs make themselves. They grow on fucking trees. That is to say, they grow on trees for people with some level of...education. Duh. Even those without much education benefit, because the fucking gajillions of us who earn our dinner from the Federal government need stuff, and services. And given our quite nice education system, which includes a pretty reasonable community college accessible from everywhere in the fucking county, people need not be stranded in the lower rungs of a service economy, as long as the local fascists don't put too much effort into suppressing them. Capitalism: It Works. Assuming, of course, that you've got some strategic advantage like being located next to the seat of government.

Traffic, then. Traffic and transit issues tend to be dominated by several groups hereabouts. Foremost are fucktard treehuggers. Roads, they say, lead to development. Guess what? Development's here, you fucking mongoloids. Now let's build some roads to fucking serve it. If you are an elected official hereabouts and you ever try to tell me that duck you're fucking is more important than my dinner, I will do my best not to rest until I am safely assured that you are going down, down, down, you slimy Green sack of shit. Yes, say hello to my Councilman.

Close behind treehuggers are assholes who bought property near Master Plan highway alignments that have been in place for over 50 years. Bite me, dumbshits. Property's expensive, and you ought to fucking pay attention before you sink for it.

Closely related to them are rich people. Rich people hate for their maids to be able to get to work, and are opposed to the Purple Line, which is a long-needed transit line originally planned as a Metro line. Since we all think the Metro is completed, that's evolved into a light rail line connecting the spokes of the Metro, Beltway-fashion. That rail line crosses some valuable property owned and used by rich people, and some property used by some rich people who don't think they're rich, to ride their little bicycles and walk their poopy dogs. They're afraid that the Purple Line will destroy a tree their dog once pissed on, or a tree that creates the very oxygen they wanted to breathe on their next bike ride from one rich neighborhood through the Enchanted Forest of Rich Fucks to another rich neighborhood and back, so that they can be less fat and pretend they're not driving their fucking German-engineered cars and angering ducks.

The other dominant discussive force in the transit debate is people who are opposed to "development," which is, as far as I can tell, building anything, anywhere, that might add one more person to our county and break the camel's back of the upper-middle-class paradise we all enjoyed, unsullied as it is by maids and poolboys and landscapers and...oh...migrant workers? Really? Here? Holy shit.
These fucking freaks actually want to take away roads. Cycling and walking are necessary elements of a liveable community, they say. Bullshit, you fucking Commies. Go back to fucking Europe.

Now, this bit leaves us in an unfortunate place on my new best friend, Hans Riemer. Because Hans seems to be a liveable communities guy. Making lower Rockville liveable, for instance, appears to involve converting a traffic lane on a big stretch of Rockville Pike (not far from the home of by actual BFF) into bike lanes, rendering White Flint, a mile-square ploppage of giant condos and retail development, a walkable and therefore liveable community. Huh?

Not to worry. Hans told me it'll only add 30 seconds to my average trip through the hood. That's right, he told me. You see, the other day, I was minding my own business, and the phone rang. The caller ID said "Hans Riemer." I plodded over and picked up the phone. A guy says, "Hi, my name's Hans Riemer. May I please speak to [Landru or Ilse]?"

It took me a moment to admit that I was Landru, and then to say, "Uhm, wait a minute. You're actually Hans Riemer, not the disembodied voice of Hans Riemer?" Hans himself reassured me that he was actually himself. We had a lovely chat in which I told him that he had wormed his way onto my ballot, so he could be on his way to convert the other 39,000 souls or so he needs to finish no lower than fourth place. But Hans is a smart guy, and he wanted to know why he was no more to me than a person who isn't Duchy Fucking Trachtenberg (and don't think I've forgotten you, Sasha).
Yes, Hans is a smart guy. And because Hans, despite some apparent political naivete and the unfortunate fact that he appears to be a carpetbagger, nailed down my vote like a coffin lid, just by making politics local. After our chat, I sent Hans an email explaining a couple of the finer points of my progressive apostasy. He replied. And replied to my reply. Rinse and repeat, 4-5 times. Hans and I are having lunch sometime after the primary, because I'm completely batshit crazy, but I'm articulate about it, and because Hans made politics local. Is Hans a little goofy, a little too infused with positive Young American energy, a little too eager for my vote? You fucking betcha. Do I care? No, because Hans took the trouble to make himself human.

I've told the story of Louis Goldstein, longtime Comptroller of Maryland, and I do mean longtime, like 40-50 years. Really. Louie was the most fucking awesome politician in history. His politics were lurid and corrupt; his family owned land on both sides of the Chesapeake, at the proposed endpoints for a second Bay Bridge. He spend decades as a machine politician in one of the most corrupt states in the union. I met Louie when I was about 14, at the fair, or at a school newspaper convention, or some fucking place where Louie was probably looking for votes as well as for teenage girls or boys (or their mothers) to molest, or for kickbacks, or for loose change. I saw Louie again at least 10 years later, maybe more. He remembered my name. He asked how my parents were, naming them by name and correctly remembering their occupations.

That's making politics local, bitches. And that's why Ilse stopped by Hans' headquarters today and picked up the first yard sign I've ever placed in my yard. Least we could do, for a guy who has, by my conservative estimate, spent about an hour of his time in a hotly contested primary in which he's running very close, to not just get my vote but to (at least seem to) try understand why.

It's late, and I don't have a lot to say about Becky Wagner, except that she seems to pass the tests I've outlined above. Especially that whole Apple Ballot thing.

So my ballot will include Hans Riemer, Becky Wagner, and George Leventhal. I've decided to forgo a fourth, rather than cast a vote that might interfere with the success of one of my preferred choices (Leventhal seems to be doing well, Riemer appears to be in the thick of it, and Wagner is thought to be lining up to get crushed).
¹Minions is proud to acknowledge its new policy of using bad and/or cliched French in as many posts as possible. There is absolutely non reason for this policy.

²And our landscapers, and our food servers, and our grocery workers, and some bless-their-pointed-little-heads intrepid souls who believe (and who don't mind being vomited upon once in a while), and also our children, who used to ride the buses for free until The Grinch Stole The Economy. In fact, pretty much anybody of the working or workerbee classes is likely, at some point, to need to ride the fucking bus. For this reason, it is actually incredibly important to preserve our pretty darned fine bus system as an affordable transit option. This does not mean that all transit should be buses, but you knew that because you're smart. Marc Elrich isn't.

Schadenfrood Is Really Good

I live in a state legislative district where the going has gotten nasty as we count down to a September 14 primary election. In short, our state senator retired in 2008, not long after the last election cycle was completed. A state delegate (Nancy King), one of three from our district, was appointed to replace him. She was a reasonable choice. Another state delegate (Saqib Ali), who lives in my neighborhood, was chagrined--he had wanted the appointment, despite having, at that point, no legislative experience (he had just been elected).


Saqib filed early in the election season to challenge Nancy for the Senate seat. He then started a flurry of negative campaigning (to be fair, Nancy had been unkind to Saqib in several previous public confrontations). The campaign has since been marked by an increasing volume of nastiness, which for me peaked a few weeks ago when Saqib's campaign sent me an email accusing Nancy's people of stealing Saqib's yard signs. At that point my mind was made up. Saqib had no proof of the King campaign's involvement, and he took the whole thing like a petulant fifth-grader. I sent an email to Saqib personally asking him to take me off his mailing list (he's an accessible guy, and knocks on doors in the neighborhood with some regularity).


I started out neutral on this election. I am a courtly, old-style Maryland Democrat, and I thought Saqib's attempt to get appointed to the Senate seat two years ago was pretty poor form. One waits one's turn, unless that turn has been 10 years forthcoming. One garners a little experience rather than slapping one's uberambitious johnson on the table and demanding to play with the big boys. I think Saqib is an okay guy, but he's pretty much the literal embodiment of raw ambition. The yard signs thing just completely settled the issue.


Of what is all this in aid? Well, Saqib appears to be punching out of his weight class (King has the backing of the state Democratic establishment, for reasons that become more obvious each day). Maryland Politics Watch reports that...well, just click the link. It's beyond awesome.


Full disclosure: Landru and Ilse are voting for Nancy King. They have met Saqib Ali personally, more than once, think he's an okay guy and a perfectly fine neighbor, would've voted for him as an incumbent Delegate, and will vote for him if he wins the primary. Landru, who does not like referring to himself in the third person, will endorse, in detail, his full slate of MoCoLocal candidates by Labor Day, at least for Council, BoE (like the five of us don't know who to vote for there), and Sheriff (Jeebus, a freaking contested primary for Sheriff. Oy.). The state offices are all uncontested contested primaries, and Landru will vote for a pair of moldy sweat socks in the primary over Martin O'Malley, Chris Van Hollen, and Babs. In fact, he's considering writing in Robin Ficker for all three offices (Robin Ficker, for those of you who aren't the five locals, is a pseudolibertarian professional gadfly and perennial local office-seeker, who would be ineligible to run for anything as a Democrat, since he's...uhm...a Republican).

Pissing and Moaning

I don't want to make light of the suffering of my compadres who have been (I presume) without power for over 30 hours after yesterday's near-tornadic-force event took a big cheesy dump all over my local locality's utility infrastructure (although my friends who live in walled-off high-security enclosures where electricity never fails can, with all love, go fuck themselves, at least right at this moment, and even that's totally unfair, because I live in a neighborhood with buried utility lines, and it's not really supposed to happen here, either).

So it is not in the spirit of demeaning the longer-suffering that I lodge this plaint. Consider, though, the pathos of those of us who barely suffered during a 90-minute loss of power after yesterday's storms, emerging fully powered for last night and this day--then watched the lights die at about 9 PM this evening, on a perfectly calm, clear night, probably because my local electric power company flipped a switch somewhere. I'm posting this on my netbook, with my cellular modem, because I'm really pissed off, and this brief connection to something that operates on electricity is making me feel, for a few minutes, slightly more sane. This will not operate the machine that keeps me from snoring (and allows me to sleep in the same room as my beloved wife--in fact, that allows me to sleep at all, because I'm so fucking pampered that I sleep very poorly, if at all, when I can't use the machine). It will not...well, fuck it, that's really all I care about right now, actually. Never mind.

Fuck you, Pepco.

Update (7/27, 6:55 AM): I got up at 6:25 after sleeping poorly, but at least I had, thanks to the grace of Ilse, the bed; she was kind enough to take the couch. The power came on at 6:45.

Fuck you, Pepco.