The Continuing Saga of Derek Fink

Derek Fink's stock seems to be falling faster than Barack Obama's as more discussion goes on regarding his business arrangements with Cookie Kiser.

Below is an image of a letter that is circulating regarding Fink's conduct in the matter, and it does not paint a very pleasant picture of Fink's conduct during this matter.


Bottom line is that Derek Fink does not at all seem like he is on the up and up.....

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 01-30-2010

PS: This is comedy folks. A serious point being made in an unserious way. If you are offended by this......ligthen up.

Where there is Smoke....

If you remember the Derek Fink story from earlier this month, you can conclusively say that there is trouble in paradise for Fink. Just check out the Facebook fan page for Cookie's Kitchen restaurant:

In an attempt to create clarity Cookie Kiser owner of Cookies Kitchen, Cookies City Line Diner & Cookies Bay Meadow Grill would like to make the following announcement: She no longer has any affiliation personally, professionally or politically with DEREK FINK.

I think that settles one aspect of this story. But I can't wait until we really get to the bottom of this one....

Sunshine and Open Government

Again pointing out as I did last month about how certain issues bring the left and the right together, Adam Pagnucco discusses one of the issues on which we agree and how Delegate Heather Mizeur from Montgomery County is leading the push for the Open Government Act which will make public access to the up-to-minute bill tracking service, post agendas online in advance, allow hearings of Committees and the Board of Public Works to be broadcast over the internet, and other good government ideas.

You know, bringing the General Assembly into the 21st Century.

As I stated before, open government is better government no matter what side of the aisle you're on. And as before, I encourage all Republicans, including all members of Republican House and Senate Caucuses who have not already pledged their to support, to support such this legislation and help bring the business of Maryland out into the open.

Judd Legum is Gutless, and other facts of life

I'm going to be straight about it: Judd Legum (D-Soros) has no balls.

Word on the street was that Judd Legum was mad about my post detailing the truth behind his campaign cash haul last week. So instead of manning up and saying so himself on his own blog, his own website, or his own Twitter feed like any normal person would, Legum decided to put the "yellow" in "Yellow-Dog Democrat" and recruited a flunky, Anne Arundel County Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Thibodeau, to do it for him four days after the fact with a post up on Maryland Politics Watch.

Yeah, it's real scintillating stuff too, made more impressive by the fact that Thibodeau in his pathetic defense of the feckless Legum concedes virtually every major point that I was trying to make about Legum being a product of out of state Democratic interests.

The one point that Thibodeau really really wanted to pounce on was this:

Well, it’s only beyond comprehension if one doesn’t realize that the Thayaparans are part of Legum’s family. His in-laws, to be precise. Had Griffiths bothered to do a simple Google search of “Judd Legum Thayaparan”, he would have found several references to Judd Legum and Roshini Thayaparan. Roshini is Judd’s wife. So either Griffiths didn’t bother to check something basic – that the donations in questions were from his family – or Griffiths did in fact know and thought it would make great copy to insinuate something shady was going on. Either way, bad form, Brian.

Apparently, Stephen Thibodeau has a magic Google which some connects the word wife and/or marriage to the two names. Because I searched the names four days ago. I searched them again today. And, of course, there is no connection to the casual observer. I would refer you to the extensive biography of Legum located on Legum's campaign webiste....except one doesn't exist on Legum's website.

So, to summarize Thibodeau's main points:

• Raising money from out of state is OK if it's family.
• Dancing around the fact that a number of small contributions came from a small number of people donating multiple times is OK.
• Rasing 71.2% of your campaign funds for a local race is OK.
• Don't look at us, look at Ron George!
  

I guess we now know why Anne Arundel County has a Republican Majority....

(And as an aside; during this filing period, Delegate Ron George had four donations made from out of state. Four. That means that 98.5% of Ron George's total donations and 98.3% of all dollars raisedwere from Maryland donors)

Again, I point out that Thibodeau concedes every major point that I made. And to boot, he refuses to deny that Legum's campaign, while not taking money from state PACs and lobbyists, is raking in big money from Washington-based, federal lobbyists who are part of the Clinton machine.

The funniest thing about this however, is the fact that poor old Judd Legum is angry because somebody dared to question. And let's not forget here, that Legum is a product of the hypercompetitive political environment from the Clinton Campaign Machine. Apparently, Judd Legum can dish out the heat, but he can't take it when the spotlight is foisted upon himself.

I like to think of it as a football fan who wants to criticize the decision making of the team's quarterback; sure it looks easy when you're watching it on TV. But I can tell you from stepping is as a quarterback for my social league touch football team that it's a whole different animal when it's you scrambling around in the pocket.

And to top it all off, Judd Legum didn't even have the intestinal fortitude to respond himself. He had to find somebody else to do his heavy lifting for him. So, so sad.

Here's some advice Judd; if you want to represent the people of District 30, you're going to have to make the tough decisions on your own. You can't get other people to fight your battles for you in those time when you curl up in the fetal position, suck your thumb, and act like a lily-livered coward. If you don't grow a spine, you're just going to make more of an joke out of yourself than you already have.....

Next time you need to say something....say it yourself.

Deschenaux questions O'Malley Budget

Last week I called Martin O'Malley's budget irresponsible budgeting. Warren Deschenaux, the General Assembly's Chief Budget analyst, seems to agree:

Maryland lawmakers should consider a Plan B in case the roughly $389 million in federal stimulus funds Gov. Martin O'Malley is counting on to balance the state's budget doesn't materialize, the General Assembly's top budget analyst said Monday.

"Some have questioned whether that money is reliably in the bank," Warren G. Deschenaux said at a hearing. "I would say that is not a certainty. The question then is: What to do about it?"

Deschenaux also warned that the roughly $442 million in cash infusions from previously untouchable parts of the budget that O'Malley uses to help close the revenue hole "amounts to an erosion of accounting standards." But he stopped short of ruling the transfers out-of-bounds, saying they had been used during past downturns to keep services going.

"We've been doing this for a long time," he said. "There is very little that is actually new in terms of the thinking underlying the 'found money' aspect of this budget."

"An erosion of accounting standards." Seems like a synonym for irresponsible budgeting for me.

The question, of course, is what the General Assembly is going to be with Deschenaux's assessment, particularly in regards to the $389 million in Monopoly money that O'Malley invented in order to cover this budget shortfall. When the General Assembly's own policy analysts are telling them that a budget seems to be relying on gimmicks, smoke, and mirrors it (should) be incumbent upon them to make appropriate cuts in order to pass a responsible budget.

But I'm not holding my breath...

Why Not Monorail?

There was much consternation when the recommendations came out last year for the construction of the Baltimore Red Line. The line of course would be new 14-mile light rail line being constructed from Woodlawn across the city all of the way to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Campus. The main portion of the line that drew the most opposition was the proposed surfacing of the Red Line on Boston Street in Canton, starting with the American Can Company building. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why this is such a problem; the plan would put two surface lines on a heavily trafficked entryway into the city. Many large trucks that go into Fells Point, Harbor East, and downtown have to use Boston Street as their entryway into the city, for example. And that says nothing of the disruptive effects on the Canton and Highlandtown communities from the surface line, leading to efforts to oppose the Red Line in those communities.

But the Red Line plan has other problems associated with it as well. Even the concept of tunneling major sections of the line will cause a number of disruptions at an enormous cost to taxpayers.

And that leads me to ask one simple question; why not build the Red Line using Monorail?

Monorail tends to be thought of as a more exotic method of transportation that is associated with tourism moreso than transportation. Many people are familiar with the Monorail at Disney World or the one in Seattle that are short lines that do not serve a public transit purpose. Monorail is being used, however, in places such as Las Vegas to provide a relatively short public transit capability for these areas.

But would Monorail have be a practical solution for the Red Line? Perhaps. Using Monorail would not require neither expensive tunneling, nor would it require disruption of traffic on city streets. The idea of an elevated monorail that is elevated above the streets would be no worse of an eyesore than tracks going down the center of the street, and would certainly be less of an eyesore than the elevated Metrorail tracks in Owings Mills. Nor would the creation of a monorail system create delays at at-grade intersections. Intermodal connections between the existing "Blue Line" (Cromwell-Timonium Light Rail) , "Green Line" (Baltimore Metro), bus lines and MARC Trains would be no more onerous and inconvenient than the current Red Line proposal,

Is Monorail a cost-effective alternative? Perhaps, particularly when you consider that the cost of building a monorail system is would be anywhere between $14 million and $93 million a mile depending on the system, and the Red Line project as currently envisioned will cost roughly $114 million a mile. Monorail systems (believe it or not) can also be leased from the providing companies as a more cost effective way of implementing the system. The state could also (as part of my quest for privatization) consider leasing the operating rights for a monorail system to a private vendor, requiring that the Vendor construct and then operate the system at particular price.

Is Monorail the silver bullet to solving problems with the Red Line? Probably not. There are trade-offs as well as benefits to the construction of any of these public transit projects. But certainly, we owe it to ourselves as taxpayers to ask state leaders to consider all alternatives to the current Red Line project. The prohibitive costs and the disruption to communities and traffic flow (particularly in Canton) demand the consideration of alternatives that alleviate these concerns.

Channeling Me

What a wonderful idea!

Maryland should consider legalizing "true casinos" that could include table games like blackjack and craps instead of just slot machines, a member of the state's Video Lottery Facility Location Commission said Friday.

D. Bruce Poole, an attorney from Washington County and former member of the House of Delegates, suggested the idea during a meeting of the panel. To legalize table games like blackjack or craps in Maryland, the state's voters would have to approve a constitutional amendment.

Poole cited not only the state's current fiscal problems due to the recession, but also Maryland's large structural deficit, in which the state is regularly spending more money than it receives in revenues, as reasons why the state should think bigger about expanded gambling.

"We need to talk about how to get ahead of the curve ... because we have a dire need for revenue," Poole said at a commission meeting convened to suggest potential changes to the state's slot machine law.

Poole also noted that neighboring states already have approved table games or have started moving in that direction.

"The other competitors are simply outstripping us," Poole said. "They're ahead of us."

West Virginia already has approved table games.

Poole also said table games are likely to attract wealthier clientele to Maryland facilities, where they could spend money not only on gambling but also on hotels and restaurants.

"I don't want to see the poor milked, but I wouldn't mind milking the wealthy," Poole said.

Why didn't somebody think of this before.....oh that's right. I've been championing the idea of table gaming for years because of the obvious fact that slots would not work to solve the budget problems that they were allegedly going to fix. I'm glad somebody has finally started to listen, even though the legalization of table games will take another constitutional amendment adopted by the voters of the state of Maryland due to the fiasco involved with adopting the slots amendment.

Now, maybe we can stop pretending slots are the solution to our budget woes, and take proactive steps to add gambling options that will actually produce revenue for the state...

The Truth behind Judd Legum's Fundraising

Liberal darling/mudslinger/trial lawyer/factually challenged blogger Judd Legum is telling anybody who will listen that he raised over $65,000 for his campaign for the House of Delegates in District 30. It's on his blog. There was a press release. It was tweeted. It's all over the place like he won an award or something.

Of course, what do the numbers actually mean....

For starters, let's take a look at this claim from Legum:

I was extremely pleased with all the early financial support to my campaign. Eighty-five percent of contributions were $100 or less and we didn’t accept a penny from special interest PACs.

Which of course depends on your definition of contribution. When you talk about the actual number of contributors, then yes of Legum's 538 total contributors, 459 of them made donations of $100.00 or less. That was a total amount, however, of $22,644.32. Of Legum's total dollars raised during the 2009 filing period, only barely one-third (34.6 percent) were raised from these "small" donors.

Except that's not really the case either. For example, an Emily Legum of Annapolis made seven different $50 contributions during the period, for an aggregate total of $350. Debbie Berger Fox of Washington, DC made two seperate $100 contributions. David Cho of New York City made 8 seperate contributions that total $220.47 in addition to a contribution of $250. Nancy Coley of Annapolis made three contributions under the $100 "limit" that aggregated $175. JoAnn Escobosa of Arnold made three $50 contributions. And it goes on like this. So while the number of "contributions" of less than $100 is accurate, the aggregated total comes from a smaller pool than Legum's press release would imply.

And speaking of contributions, where did these contributions come from? Glad you asked:

• Arizona: 3
• California: 38
• Colorado: 1
• District of Columbia: 111
• Florida: 4
• Georgia: 4
• Iowa: 1
• Illinois: 7
• Kansas: 1
• Kentucky: 1
• Louisiana: 2
• Maine: 1
  
• Maryland: 231
• Massachusetts: 13
• Michigan: 1
• Minnesota: 2
• Missouri: 2
• New Jersey: 7
• New York: 37
• North Carolina: 1
• Ohio: 4
• Oregon: 3
• Pennsylvania: 16
• Rhode Island: 1
• South Carolina: 3
• Texas: 5
• Virginia: 26
• Vermont: 1
• Washington: 9
• West Virgnia: 1
• Wisconsin: 1

So to try and make the point for you here, only 42.9% of Legum's contributors live in the state of Maryland. We're not even talking about his district. We're talking about the state of Maryland.

Which now leads the question of how much of Legum's money comes from Maryland and how much comes from out of state. Glad you asked, because of Legum's total amount raised only $18,908 comes from in state donors. That means that only 28.8 percent of Judd Legum's money has been donated by Marylanders. As a matter of fact a nearly equal amount of Legum's funds were raised from residents of the District of Columbia ($18,610).

And that leaves us with the question of the who is giving money to Judd Legum. Well, the list contains a who's who of federal lobbyists with ties to the Clintion Political Machine. You can corraborate the list here. Some of the "dignitaries" include:"

• Disgraced former Annapolis Mayoral Nominee Zina Pierre, whose campaign appartus donated $250 to Legum as the scandal around her campaign exploded, and then gave a personal $100 donation in November.
• Hillary Clinton apparatchik Howard Wolfson maxed out for a $4,000 donation.
  
• Bill Clinton flunky John Podesta, the former White House Chief of Staff who was instrumental in the Marc Rich pardon scandal and now spends qualtiy time as a UFO-truther.
• Patti Solis Doyle, another prominent Clintonista, donated $1,000.
• Former MoveOn.org Director Tom Mattize was another $1,000 donor.
  
• Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe donated $1,000 a few months after blowing his chance to be Governor of Virginia. You may also remember Mr. McAuliffe from his starring role in the Global Crossing scandal.

And our final question leads me to this: why would any out of state resident donate $4,000 to a political hack running for state office. Wjat's in for them. Well, four individuals donated the maximum to Legum's campaign account, accounting for nearly one-quarter of his total amount raised. One of them is Wolfson, but the other three donors have an interesting, albeit out of state connection.

Dr. Rose Thayaparan practices Cytopathology and Anatomic & Clinical Pathologyst St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Her husband, P.W. Tayaparan, also donated $4,000. He used to work at the META Group, an information technology consulting firm in Stamford, Conn that was purchased by the Gartner Group. The only other $4,000 was their daughter Beatrice Wilderman. Why these three individuals would invest $12,000 in a Maryland race is frankly beyond comprehension at this point.

Judd Legum will tell everybody he knows that he has raised $65,000. But elections such as this one cannot be bought. They certainly cannot be bought by funds rasied from out of state donors with no connection to District 30. Maryland Democrats should be ashamed of thesmelves for allowing a candidate with the ego the size of Legum to become the poster child for their fundraising excesses.....and Legum himself should be ashamed that Sam Arora who was lower on the total pole than Legum managed to outrasie him in Montgomery County.

The moral of the story is that Judd Legum is selling himself to the highest bidder, whether or not that bidder is even a resident of Maryland. I hope the people of District 30 truly understand what they are getting if they vote for them this November. They won't be getting a Delegate who is serving them; they will be getting a Delegate beholden to out of state financial interests and the Clinton political machine. That's something the residents of District 30 and the people of Maryland as a whole simply cannot afford...

O'Malley loses The Sun

You have to know that the budgetary mess that Governor O'Malley has created for the people of Maryland is bad when even the Sun attacks his budgetary shenanigans, labeling his budget as one held together by "Chewing gum and bailing wire":

Governor O'Malley's spending plan would, if all goes according to plan, leave $274 million in the state's bank account at the end of fiscal 2011. That's good. It would also leave the rainy day fund alone, also a fine thing. After that, things go south -- and fast.

The Department of Budget and Management predicts that Maryland will be $1.5 billion in the hole in fiscal 2012, followed by shortfalls of $2.1 billion, $2.2 billion and $2.5 billion. Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. complained that his predecessor left him with $4 billion in out-year deficits, and Governor O'Malley complained that Mr. Ehrlich left him with $3 billion in shortfalls. But with this spending plan, Mr. O'Malley saddles himself or his successor with an $8.3 billion problem. The governor said putting together this budget plan was painful, but it's peanuts compared to what's coming in the future if something doesn't change.

The editorial goes on to point out, much like we did earlier, that the O'Malley budget plan is an irresponsible budget saddled with gimmicks instead of solutions:

The answer is that too many of the solutions he has employed are one-time tactics, not long-term fixes. For example, the governor saves $330 million in the fiscal 2011 budget by keeping most aid to local governments funded at the already-reduced level they are at now. But in subsequent years, that aid is expected to grow by 5.9 percent a year. He saves $78 million through continuations of employee furloughs, but that isn't a permanent solution either. He shifts money from special funds, like those dedicated to preserving open space, into the general fund and pays for those programs through the the state's capital budget, effectively borrowing money for them. Because they displace other capital projects, they won't increase the state's debt burden, but nonetheless, Maryland's debt service payments are expected to grow by hundreds of millions of dollars in the future.

Now in fairness, the Sun went on to attack Republicans by saying their criticism "rings a bit hollow, since they have offered few concrete ideas for reducing spending." Of course, there are tons of Republican ideas for cutting spending, none of which get a fair shake in the General Assembly. But the fact that a Sun editorial actually calls out O'Malley for his reckless spending and his inability to get our budgetary situation under control really should give the O'Malley Administration at least a bit of understanding about how far off the reservation that they have truly wandered....

When you look up irresponsible budgeting in the dictionary, you see a picture of Martin O'Malley playing his guitar

Not to take away from the zeitgeist of Scott Brown's epic victory in Massachusetts tonight, but take a look at the latest budget shenanigans from the office of Martin O'Malley:

Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to rely on a billion dollars in one-time accounting maneuvers to help balance next year's $13 billion state operating budget, avoiding deep cuts to services in an election year.

The strategy drew immediate concern from critics, particularly Republicans, who say the Democratic governor is deferring tough decisions.

O'Malley presented a broad outline Tuesday of how he plans to fill a $2 billion gap between revenues and expenditures in the spending plan he is required to submit to the General Assembly today.

And what is going to take the brunt of the Governor's budget axe? Health care and state workers, naturally:

He proposes steep cuts to to hospitals, and wants to continue this year's plan which forced state workers to take up to 10 days off without pay. Counties would receive the same reduced amounts of local aid and highway money they got this year.

And sometimes we joke about politicians trying to play with imaginary money when using their budget protections, but Martin O'Malley is actually budgeting using imaginary money!

O'Malley is also banking on Congress approving a new package of emergency assistance to states grappling with the worst economic downturn since the Depression. The governor allocates $389 million he believes the state would receive from that program if it materializes.

What planet is Governor O'Malley living on? He wants to cut aid to hospitals, but talk about expanding health care. He wants to confiscate two weeks worth of pay from state workers, but continue to expand the state bureaucracy, all while trying to be a "jobs Governor" as he runs for re-election. Most laughably of all, he wants to stick it to unionized state workers by (let me say this again) confiscating their pay but expect that SEIU and AFSCME will gladly and cheerfully give their money and time to his re-election efforts this fall.

You know, we have talked about O'Malleynomics for a long, long time as Martin O'Malley has smoked and mirrored his way through the first three years of his administration. But just when you think his budgeting skills can't get any worse, they do. All while trying to use Monopoly money to make it all work.

The General Assembly needs to force Governor O'Malley to make the tough decisions when it comes to passing a budget. We cannot afford to continue this gimmicked budgeting, and we need real solutions to dealing with our budget woes. And those solutions cannot be created on the backs of Maryland State Workers: regardless of whether or not state government is too big, it is irresponsible to take money out of the pockets of these workers who are serving the state of Maryland.

The O'Malley Budget is just the latest in a round of budgeting decisions that eschew responsibility and take money directly out of the pockets of state workers who make up a sizable chunk of Maryland's middle and working class families. And I have a feeling that voters are getting tired of the O'Malley Charade...

One More for the Road

Spoke again to Maryland U.S. Senate Candidate Eric Wargotz from Massachusetts, and the news sounds promising. Wargotz and Don Murphy door-knocked today in Barney Frank's district, and Wargotz said that a large chunk of voters in the heavily Democratic district said they were voting for Brown. Combine that with an expected turnout around 50%, and things are looking up.

Here's hoping Scott Brown can make the drive over to help Maryland Republicans later this year...

News from the Front

Just got off the phone with Maryland U.S. Senate Candidate Eric Wargotz who is on the ground in Massachusetts helping out the Scott Brown campaign in the final hours of tomorrow's crucial U.S. Senate Special Election.

Wargotz described the mood on the ground as an "excited quiet" due to the snowstorm that hit the Bay State today. Wargotz and his field director, noted former Delegate Don Murphy, traveled up to Massachusetts over the weekend.

“Nothing we can do that is more important than supporting Scott Brown," Wargotz said. A brown victory "helps the country, helps the party, and helps campaigns like mine across the nation.”

Wargotz and Murphy met with the campaign leadership at the campaign headquarters in Needham Heights, went door-to-door in support of the candidate, and attended an impromptu rally in Brown's hometown of Wratham, where over 1,000 supporters gathered and Brown promised to shake everyone's hand before he left the site of the rally.

“The Brown race is a game breaker; it changes races such as Wargotz vs. Mikulski in Maryland," Wargotz said.

“Massachusetts woke up with the health care bill, and the country has woken up to see how important the 41st vote is in the Senate.”

The Forgotten Point

Adam Pagnucco over at Maryland Politics Watch has been jumping up and down screaming about a subsidy for a new Costco in Wheaton and how evil Costco really is.

There is one point that Pagnucco seems to forget is hat this evil corporatist plot to turn make all our base belong to Costco is being schemed by a company whose CEO, Chairman, and CFO are huge contributors to the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for each.

So when you consider that you have a company run by Democrats coming to a county run as a monopoly by Democrats expecting favors from said Democrats.....why should we be surprised?

State needs to help roll film

I just wanted to expand upon something that we discussed yesterday on the Ehrlichs Radio Show about Martin O'Malley's work to eliminate the film production tax credit.

For those of you who don't know, Governor Ehrlich worked with folks in Hollywood during his administration in an effort to procure more film business for the state of Maryland, and established a tax credit for the first $6 million that a production company spent to film television shows and movies here in the state. When you consider the number of productions that have filmed here in Maryland (from the good, to the bad, to the demented) providing more incentives for production companies to do business here in Maryland seems like a pretty good idea.

Except it didn't seem like a good idea to Martin O'Malley, who worked to axe the tax credit.....never mind the fact that the cost to the state, in the grand scheme of things, was relatively minuscule.

Why is a tax credit important? Because it provides one huge incentive for production companies to do business here in Maryland. And when you talk about mid-size to major studio productions, that business provides a sizable impact to the state. I'm not sure how many readers have been on a movie set, but I got the opportunity to be an extra in a terrible Winona Ryder film that was filmed at Camp Fretterd. And there were hundreds of people working on that film at any given time; even David Paulson managed to get a gig with the film. And those hundreds working on the film didn't even include all of the other ancillary business that was attracted by the film; food purchases, hardware purchases, port-a-potty rentals, etc.

And those benefits are even greater if the state can attract an episodic television show to the area. While movies only need to film roughly 90 minutes of footage one time, episodic television creates about 26 hours of programming for every season. That means long-term, stable economic development in the area a film is being shot on location; you can't tell me that city businesses in locations around Baltimore didn't feel a sizable economic uptick that was directly attributal to the production of Homicide or The Wire.

If Governor O'Malley suddenly now wants to become a jobs Governor, why did he work to eliminate a tax credit that created jobs? Skilled labor that works in the film industry cannot survive the reduction in jobs that are available due to the elimination of the tax credit, which hurts union film workers. And the reduction winds up hurting small businesses. A small business owner from Baltimore County who owns a local production company that works on documentaries called into the show yesterday and noted that the elimination of the tax credit hurts his labor pool and his bottom line since so much skilled talent has left to the state. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the small business owners who run the flower shops and the food stores and the port-a-potty companies that would be hired to work on these productions.

Maryland remains attractive as a location for film companies; our state needs to be doing more to attract these large productions and the jobs and economic impact that comes with them...

Listen In

I will be a guest on the Kendel and Bob Ehrlich Show tomorrow morning at 9:30, along with State Senator E.J. Pipkin.

Don't forget to listen in at 1090 on the AM dial, or online at wbal.com.

This guy wants to represent you, too....

Local trial lawyer/house candidate/mudslinger Judd Legum is still doing his trial lawyer bit as he campaigns for the House of Delegates. And let me tell you what, he takes on some odd cases for someone who wants to earn the public's trust:

The Odenton Volunteer Fire Company wrongly rented out its social hall for an event in which two people were shot and a third was hit by a car while fleeing the violence, a lawyer for the injured partygoers said in opening remarks Tuesday to an Anne Arundel County jury.

Judd Legum asked jurors to hold the fire company liable for his clients' injuries.

But Senior Assistant County Attorney Hamilton Tyler said that it was not the fire company's fault that the party organizer lied on her application and that a disgruntled partygoer shot two people....

....Legum said the county liquor board threatened to curb the license at the Odenton facility after other violence, including at an event in March 2005 in which Young applied under her maiden name to hold a party for a nonprofit that was really a for-profit party where a person was stabbed.

The fire company promised to rein in the parties, blackball anyone who lied on an application and have firefighters monitor the events, but that didn't happen, Legum said.

Tyler said the trial will show that Young lied on the application for the September 2005 party because she knew the fire company had changed its rental policy.

So let me get this straight; Judd Legum wants to hold the Odenton Volunteer Fire Department responsible for the misuse of their facility by somebody who committed fraud and decieved the fire company to obtain use of its facility, and he wants Anne Arundel County taxpayers to fork over $7 million in taxpayer dollars in restitution for something neither the county nor the taxpayers were liable for.

Is this really why we pay taxes? Is this really a good use of taxpayer dollars? Of course it isn't.

The fact of the matter is that the trial lawyer who wants Anne Arundel County resident to fork over $7 million for something that the lawyer himself knows that the county could not be responsible for also wants to represent the people of Anne Arundel County in the House of Delegates. Is this the kind of guy we want to be making decisions with our taxpayer dollars in the House of Delgates?

Judd Legum is very good and finding new and creative ways to beclown himself, and new and amazing ways to show that he is not fit to be a member of the House of Delegates...

The Consequences of Failure

We at RedMaryland have taken, of course, a great interest in the appointment process for the vacancy in the House of Delegates in District 3B. And now we see what the consequences of Republicans failure to lead has been.

Governor O'Malley appointed Charles Jenkins to fill the vacancy. And as my friend a colleague Greg Kline noted, Jenkins is on the record as being against tax hikes and for tax increases.

Is it any wonder Governor O'Malley picked Jenkins to fill the vacancy?

And is it any wonder so many average Republicans have no faith in their local Republican Party apparatus?

These are the consequences of failure. Our party needs to pick up the pieces and learn from this mistake....

The Perils of Choosing One

Life's tough when you're the chosen one in a local election. Take, for example, Derek Fink a Republican candidate for County Council in the 3rd District. One of the candidates running to succeed Current Councilman Ron Dillon, Fink has been anointed as the establishment candidate in the race, supported by many local elected officials and by movers and shakers within the area business community.

(Nobody can exactly say why Fink is the chosen one. His career experience is more as a political functionary than as the "restaurant owner" he would like to portray himself as. And I met the guy once, and he seemed relatively aloof and clueless, but that's a story for another time).

What is very interesting however is how every solitary mention of one of Fink's prominent initial backers has completely vanished from his campaign website.

Ruth "Cookie" Kiser is the owner of the famous Cookie's Kitchen restaurant and Pasadena. She has been a longtime instrumental and important figure in the Pasadena business community. She has also been a longtime supporter of Republican candidates and causes here in Anne Arundel County, a financial backer of the candidacies of Bob Ehrlich, Steve Schuh and (curiously) Democrat George Johnson.

Kiser also has played a significant role in Fink's ability to mount a credible campaign. She gave Fink the opportunity to run Cookies Bay Meadow Grille in the Baymeadow Industrial Park. She was Fink's campaign treasurer when he opened his campaign finance committee in 2008, and donated $1,000 to Fink's campaign. She's even listed in property records as co-owner of Fink's home. That's a pretty significant commitment Kiser made to Fink.

However, upon the relaunch of Fink's campaign website, every mention of Kiser on his site has been scrubbed. She has been replaced as Treasurer as of November 5th. Fink's website, which used to mention specifically his employment at the Grille, now says only that "Derek is a small business owner in the County."

What happened? Who knows for sure. There are a number of rumors that are swirling, none of which are substantiated enough to publish.

The reason I mention this story (other than the fact that I am a resident of the 3rd District) is to demonstrate once again the perils of the establishment closing ranks around a candidate without doing their homework. A number of elected Republicans have given Fink their full and unadulterated support in this primary and at the moment it seems that this closing of ranks was predicated more around the fact that Fink was embraced by the business community and Fink's service as Steve Schuh's campaign manager than it was by the idea that Fink is the best candidate to serve the people of the district.

We as Republicans need to make sure that we do our homework in our primary elections, and not let establishment endorsements be the only guide of the candidates we support with donations of time and money....