Education in Maryland: why I trust Republicans more than Democrats

The postman delivered an attack mailer to me two days ago. It was from Oz Bengur, a Democrat in Baltimore County, District 42.

Bengur says that Republicans such as Bill Frank -- a man I know and trust -- are going to "ruin" Maryland’s top rated education system.

That got me so steamed, I had to write this.

I’m tired of Democrats – from state delegates to Martin O’Malley -- crowing about Maryland’s “top rated” education system.”

I’m a ten-year BCPS parent. When I look at our schools, I don’t see a top rated system. I see problems. And things are getting worse. And by the way, the schools my kids have gone to are supposedly among the best. Blue ribbons all over the place.

If you don’t believe me, talk to any BCPS parent whose child is a little bit different, whether a special needs child or a gifted one. Ask them about their experience dealing with the school bureaucracy. Ask if they got a good response to a complaint. Ask if they got any response.

And if you think this is limited to Baltimore County, ask the folks in PG County about Andre Hornsby.

Our superintendent in Baltimore County is a genius at self-promotion. He loves to talk about accolades. But here’s one “accolade” he doesn’t mention. Forbes magazine looked at 100 or so of the largest public school districts and ranked them on bang for the buck-- the value we get for school spending. Baltimore County was in the bottom 10 percent.

If you want details for other problems, look in the upper right hand corner of this blog and click on some of the education topics.

Click on curriculum, or Race to the Top, or service learning.

But most of all, click on AIM. A – I – M. The Articulated Instruction Module. To understand the huge problems in the Baltimore County Public Schools, all you have to do is look at last year’s AIM fiasco:

• Lack of transparency
• Insulation from criticism
• Ignoring complaints

That’s the big thing about AIM. They ignored everyone. They ignored teachers. They ignored parents. [See below for actual video of them ignoring a parent. The superintendent does shift uneasily at the 2:00 minute mark. But that's about the only response you can expect to get, other than stony silence.] Just the other day in the Sun, they were ignoring Democratic legislators Steve Lafferty (D-42) and Jim Brochin (D-42). The superintendent is refusing to cooperate with an ethics probe relating to AIM.

During the AIM hearings last year, Brochin got so frustrated with Dr. Hairston and the two school board members, he compared them to Bill Clinton splitting hairs about the definition of "is." A few months later, Lafferty told me with disgust that Joe Hairston was a “master manipulator.”

But these Democrats haven't fixed the problem.

With few exceptions, Democrats have been in control at every level of government for 40 plus years in Maryland. Our schools are in decline and they’re bragging about our ratings?

Isn’t it about time we gave someone else a chance? Someone who will give us more than happy talk?

In his attack piece, the Democrat says about Republicans, “You just don’t get it.”

No, Oz Bengur. No, Martin O’Malley. You don’t get it.

Please don’t talk to me about Maryland's #1 schools. School administrators and the Democrats who put them there have heard me and others like me for years. They’ve heard us and they’ve ignored us.

But after November 2nd, they will ignore us no more.

We have an especially strong ticket of Republicans this year in Baltimore County, from the top of the ballot to the bottom. Please vote Bob Ehrlich for governor. I trust him on education. I don’t trust Martin O’Malley. Please vote Ken Holt for County Executive and Steve Bailey for State’s Attorney. Please vote Republican for state senator, state delegate and county council.

It’s time for government to start listening in Maryland. It’s time for some change.

A significant majority of key environmental legislation since WWII was passed during Republican administrations (Part 6 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Matt Dernoga writes:

Four more years of O’Malley will allow advocates in the state the opportunity to pass environmental laws […] Electing Ehrlich will mean no opportunity for progress

He is flat out wrong here.

He’s wrong at the federal level and Bob Ehrlich proved him wrong at the state level with the Bay Restoration Act, which the Chesapeake Bay Foundation described as one of the best things to happen for the bay in decades.

Significant environmental legislation happens more often when control is split and the two parties must confer and compromise.

When Democrats control all the levers of power, landmark environmental legislation is less likely to pass. Sometimes it’s because Democrats take environmentalists for granted and sometimes it’s because they push legislation that oversteps and fails to pass.

This is the last post in a series of six.

Dave Greene has worked as energy/environmental policy analyst in DC, helped build a large waste treatment plan in Boston, sat on a Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategies Team and served on the board of a local watershed group in Baltimore County. He also supports Bob Ehrlich for governor of Maryland.

Republicans look more closely at the effects of environmental legislation on business and the economy (Part 5 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

I don’t think many will argue with me on this one.

But there is some subtlety here that most people don’t consider.

Tom Horton used to write a column in the Baltimore Sun called On the Bay. About five or six years ago he wrote a piece about the legislative scorecards put out by business groups and environmental groups.

He concluded that it is virtually impossible for a legislator to score highly on both types of scorecards.

As a voter and free-market environmentalist, I want my legislators to consider both business issues and environmental issues and find a reasonable balance. Any legislator who scores 90% to 100% on either type of scorecard is probably not getting that balance right.

And they probably won’t get my vote.

In Maryland, too many Democratic legislators seem to vote for any bill with an environment-friendly title without considering how much it will cost or how effective it will be.

From what I can see, legislators who consider both business and environmental concerns -- and find a sensible balance between the two -- are just as likely to be Republicans as Democrats.

Republicans are less likely to impose technology mandates because they know government has a terrible track record (Part 4 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Two examples of ill-considered tech mandates come from the Carter administration: the failed Synfuels Corporation initiative (a big waste of money) and corn-based ethanol subsidies (harmful to the environment and a big waste of money).

The difference between the parties is this: when Republicans impose technology mandates –as George W. Bush unfortunately did when he increased Carter's ethanol subsidy – they are swimming upstream against their core principles. But when Democrats do it they’re going with the flow of their party, which is biased toward government intervention.

Dernoga cites several technology mandates enthusiastically supported by Martin O’Malley. Here’s one:

the Renewable Electricity Standard - [in] which [O'Malley] pledged that 20 percent of the state's energy would come from renewable energy sources by 2022.

“Renewable energy” sounds at first like a wonderful, win-win kind of thing. I would bet my 401(k) that voter focus groups love the term.

Nevertheless, many people are beginning to point out problems with renewable energy. Matt Ridley writes in his recent book, The Rational Optimist:

It is an undeniable if surprising fact, often overlooked, that fossil fuels have spared much of the landscape from industrialization. . . To get an idea of just how landscape-eating the renewable alternatives are, consider that to supply just the current 300 million inhabitants of the United states with their current power demand of roughly 10,000 watts each would require:

• solar panels the size of Spain
• or wind farms the size of Kazaakhstan . . .

To label the land-devouring monsters of renewable energy ‘green’, virtuous or clean strikes me as bizarre.

Here we go again with the unintended consequences.

This is one of the biggest sins of green Democrats: using peer pressure and faith-based marketing techniques to hurry us into supporting poorly thought-out technology mandates.

Such mandates are strait-jackets. They don’t encourage innovation. They strap down the innovators.

Republicans are more skeptical of the environmentalist agenda. Democrats often accept it as an article of faith (part 3 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series, and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Matt Dernoga writes approvingly of a long list of concepts and programs touted by Martin O’Malley such as “clean energy jobs” and Smart Growth.

In my view, the concept of clean energy jobs (a.k.a. “green jobs”) is useful to Democratic speechwriters and hardly anyone else. PERC makes this case convincingly in its pamphlet The 7 myths about green jobs. If anyone can poke holes in their work, I’d love to hear about it.

As for Smart Growth, I’ve found that when you question these folks about their programs, they talk hazily about fighting “sprawl.” It soon becomes clear that they can’t define sprawl except to say that they know it when they see it. Nor are they clear about the practical details of their “smart” solutions.

So they can’t explain, but they sure do believe.

Which is why people like Michael Crichton, Joel Garreau and Alfonzo Rachel keep talking about “environmentalism as religion.”

Republicans are right to be skeptical. Environmental policy should be based on facts, not faith.

Research, analysis and reporting done by green Democrats is often shallow and misleading (part 2 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Matt Dernoga exemplifies my charge of "shallow and misleading" when he writes:

Ehrlich … appointed inexperienced industry insiders […] An auto-industry lawyer was head of the state Department of the Environment!

First, Lynn Buhl (the “auto-industry lawyer”) was never confirmed as head of MDE. Second, Buhl spent years working for both the US EPA and Michigan’s version of MDE. But green Democrats like Dernoga didn’t seem to consider her job description or accomplishments at Chrysler. They just clobbered her because she worked there.

When progressives take career paths like Buhl’s, they are often lionized by fellow Democrats as noble “sector switchers.” But conservatives with long records of public service are commonly demonized by the left as evil corporate tools.

My experience contradicts this stereotype. I’ve worked in all three sectors, and know that you can find good, ethical people in all of them. But when I think about the most talented and ethical people I’ve worked with, the list is dominated by folks from the private sector.

Many of them have worked at places like Chrysler.

John McPhee illustrates this in his environmental classic Encounters with the Archdruid. In it, the most competent, likable and ethical person was not the environmentalist David Brower but the corporate mineral engineer Charles Park. As I remember the book, Park had logged more time in the wilderness and understood it better. He revered nature as much or more than Brower, and was meticulous about protecting it.

Brower, on the other hand, was abrasive and admittedly dishonest.

I think it’s about time green Democrats like Matt Dernoga stop auto-dumping on people just because they’ve worked in private industry.

5 reasons why a green Democrat's endorsement of Martin O’Malley is off-base

I recently published a piece on why environmentalists should vote Republican. Shortly after I wrote it, Matt Dernoga of the Diamondback endorsed O’Malley in an article titled, Voting green: the choice is obvious.

His article, though short, supports almost all of my points very nicely. Thanks Matt!

And by the way, it’s not as obvious as you think. Here are five reasons why:

1. Research, analysis and reporting done by green Democrats is often shallow and misleading.

2. Republicans are more skeptical of the environmentalist agenda. Democrats often accept it as an article of faith.

3. Republicans are less likely to impose technology mandates because they know government has a terrible track record.

4. Republicans look more closely at the effects of environmental legislation on business and the economy.

5. A significant majority of key environmental legislation since WWII was passed during Republican administrations.


Dave Greene has worked as energy/environmental policy analyst in DC, helped build a large waste treatment plan in Boston, sat on a Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategies Team and served on the board of a local watershed group in Baltimore County. He also supports Bob Ehrlich for governor of Maryland.

A question for Martin O'Malley

When you talk about working families, who are you leaving out?

If he were honest about it, O'Malley's answer would be "no one."

Almost everyone who hears these words thinks O'Malley is talking about their family. In my view, the phrase is meaningless. Every time I hear it, I think the speaker is trying to pull something over on me.

6 reasons why Maryland Democrats and Martin O'Malley are overrated on the environment

1. The Maryland League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is wildly biased.
2. Democrats often take environmentalists for granted.
3. BayStat doesn’t have many environmental stats.
4. Neither did CityStat.
5. Democrats like to create complex programs which need enforcement resources that don’t exist.
6. The environmental agenda of Democrats tends to be a "hero sandwich of good intentions." But their results are often mediocre-to-poor.

Ehrlich supporters massively outnumber O'Malley fans at Towson 4th of July parade

When Martin O'Malley took his first steps at the beginning of the July 4th parade in Towson today, the crowd was mostly quiet.

An hour or so later, the crowd welcomed Bob Ehrlich with smiles, noisy applause and cheers. Parade-watchers stopped him often to have pictures taken with him. His reception seemed to match the one he got in Dundalk earlier in the day:

People all along the parade route were holding and waving Ehrlich signs. At one spot on Liberty Parkway, a dozen people were waving signs and chanting “Bob, Bob, Bob.”

...

But O’Malley signs were rare, and his supporters mostly quiet except for a few boos they gave Ehrlich at the Shipping Place shopping center.

Ehrlich signs in Towson outnumbered O'Malley signs by a huge margin -- perhaps 100 to 1 or more. The bumper stickers handed out by Ehrlich volunteers* went fast too, including plenty of the ones that said "Another Democrat for Ehrlich."

If these Baltimore-area parades are any indication, O'Malley is in for a long uphill slog of a gubernatorial campaign.

More bad news for O'Malley:

O’Malley’s day may not have started out on the best note. Before the parade got underway, his aides were reading a Washington Post editorial that blasted his radio ads against Ehrlich, calling them “distortions” and “low-brow name-calling.” The Baltimore Sun had already criticized the ads.

*Including yours truly

Another reason to vote Ehrlich over O'Malley

The mainstream left, which O'Malley personifies, tends to flunk Econ 101.

Partly because their rhetoric on jobs, unemployment, regulation and so tends to fly in the face of basic economic principles.

The gaping chasm on jobs policy between Ehrlich and O'Malley

If this bit from Len Lazarick at MarylandReporter.com isn't a clear and significant difference between Bob Ehrlich and Martin O'Malley, I don't know what is:

Republican Ehrlich favors an approach that calls for government to get out of the way of business, cutting taxes and reducing regulations – or at least making them more consistent and business-friendly.

Democrat O’Malley seeks to show what government has done to foster job and business growth by getting involved. He talks about tax credits, spending on education, cracking down on predatory business practices and overcoming the state’s “pathological modesty” about its positive business environment.

The proper role of government in job creation has only two steps:

1. Make the tax structure and regulatory environment as simple, minimal and predictable as possible while still accomplishing the basic/core/necessary tasks of government.
2. Step aside and let the private sector create the jobs.
   

If you care about the economy, employment and job creation, please vote for Ehrlich. To donate or volunteer for his campaign, go here.