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Health & Fitness

Blog: Forecast--Another Year in the Desert for Carroll County

Carroll Republicans have set their strategy for 2012. Unfortunately for Carroll residents is is the same strategy that has repeatedly failed in past years. The art of compromise is a lost art here.

There has been a whole lot of meetin’ going on among Carroll Republicans in recent weeks as they set their tone and strategy for the forthcoming year in the legislature. As one can imagine, the meetings have had the glum atmosphere of one in which practitioners of Hari Kari have when they lay out their battle plans. Failure being certain, they chat about ways in which they can taunt their Democratic enemies into attack, not unlike Iranian ayatollahs threating the United States with a closure of the Straits of Hormuz. Cutting off one’s nose to spite their face is returning to style again this year.

Unlike the brave Samurais who used Hari Kari to escape dishonor but did so in relative silence to exhibit their bravery, Carroll Republicans will loudly complain all the way to Annapolis and back at the expense of citizens welfare on the home front. Once again the Carroll Delegation will write essays of their brave efforts to thwart the governor and any sustainable plans to preserve our environment. Once again they will come back pork-less and empty handed because of their foolish strategy to bemoan the fate of their (still) poor Carroll County.

The typical meeting the Carroll Delegation attended this winter was one hosted by the Carroll Fuel Oil Dealers Association. They even had the nerve to have their pictures taken at this meeting and sent to the Press. Mind you, this meeting was not held to entertain the concerns of those in Carroll County need to fuel their cars and home heating systems; this meeting was for a special interest group that makes money off of the citizens these delegates are supposedly representing. It reminded me of the time when I asked Delegate Susan Krebs to investigate the relatively unregulated pricing of propane because each dealer can charge whatever they want to whomever they want. She told me to take it up with the propane industry lobbyist in Annapolis, whom she thought very highly of.

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This year the Delegation will be enjoined as never before by County Commissioners carrying bamboo sticks to smite the dragons in the Governor’s mansion and General Assembly halls. To spice up their routine the Commissioners have joined forces with the losers from three other counties and hired Hessians – sometimes referred to these days as lobbyists – to direct them to where the dragons lie. Boy, that was some money well spent! They might as well as hired a pig to find acorns that lie plentiful on a forest floor.

The Carroll brand of Republicans figure it is better to fight a political holy war and lose than play the game called politics, participate constructively in debates on important issues, recognize that Carroll is but one small (and politically feeble) part of the State of Maryland, work with their Democratic counterparts in areas they co-identify with (such as spurning any attempts to dump teachers’ pension costs on the counties) and maybe, just maybe, bring some lean bacon for the taxpayers here.

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Instead, their plan has already begun to unfold as they sharpen their bamboo spears with news commentary which exposes their fool hearty plans and they grab their laptop computers loaded with heavily incensed (and incendiary) Power Point Presentations that are taken seriously only by the few weak minds meeting in Patriots Hall that haven’t the ability to think through a topic critically. Yes, critical thinking is truly our other national deficit.

Hopefully, a few of our Commissioners and a state delegate or two will take up playing chess before they launch their assault on their own citizenry via a replay of their version of Picket’s Charge in Annapolis this year. Surely there are some among these R’s that realize the consequences of their first moves on the board won’t be felt until later in the game. The strategy should be to win one for the broad interests of Carroll Countians, not unrecoverable blunders which result in the usual straggling retreat from the field in disgrace without nary an acorn. 

 

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