WBA Blog

Baltimore City To Start Non-Profit Car-Sharing Service

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:49:00 +0000

Baltimore Sun, November 29, 2008:

Baltimore officials are preparing to launch a nonprofit car-sharing service, hoping that the initiative will reduce the overall number of cars used in the city.

The idea is to create a service similar to that provided by the for-profit firm ZipCar, which allows subscribers to reserve a car via a Web site for a short time. Subscribers pay a monthly fee for the service, in addition to a per-mile or per-hour usage fee.

...

In 2006, Little had hoped that ZipCar or Flexcar - then the country's two largest car-sharing companies - would expand in Baltimore. Flexcar initially showed interest, but when the two firms merged last fall, the resulting company decided not to commit more cars to Baltimore. ZipCar, the merged company, still has a handful of vehicles at the Johns Hopkins University.

A few points.

1) Baltimore's public transit system is quite weak and parking is pretty plentiful in almost every neighborhood, at least compared with Washington where many residents simply view occasional parking tickets as a condition, not a problem to solve or avoid. Very good public transit is what makes DC livable as a car-free city; even the maligned bus service here is "Swiss-run" compared with Baltimore's MTA.

2) DC is a wealthier city with a lot of single-occupant households who like to go out to eat and travel a lot. Baltimore had one of the lowest frequencies of dining out in the country recently and is generally a poorer city. A ZipCar can act as a cab substitute on dates, out of town travel and the like. If you have ever held two preschoolers' hands on a moving bus, you understand the appeal of the car. I would go so far to say that a public transit system that can figure out how to handle the preschool problem deserved the Nobel Prize.

3) Washington is much more of a residential college town; unlike Baltimore with its many regional schools, Catholic, GWU, Georgetown and American are all national or international in scope. It is, after all, the nation's capital; people come here to go to school from every time zone. Baltimore's college students are more likely to live with Mom and Dad in the suburbs, and have no need for a ZipCar or its municipally branded equivalent.

That said, maybe this is a situation where the City can do the market some good by treating this program as a broad-based market test, ideally to be supplanted later by private market players for new pump-primed market. I don't generally favor the use of public resources for market catalyzing purposes but in this case, there may be positive externalities to come from this as an experiment. Particularly if the City is smart about how it marks its vehicles both to discourage theft AND to encourage visibility of the vehicles in hipster nodes like Canton and Fells Point, this could be a winner for getting folks to own 1.2 cars, so to speak, rather than 2. For something as daunting as giving up a vehicle and going car-less, nothing short of live proof of concept will get people to give up the vehicle mode that they know (if dislike) and replace it with a ZipCar style vehicle.

Soccer Dad on the Death Penalty

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:17:00 +0000

Soccer Dad has a good post on the state of Maryland's death penalty. I don't know that his piece makes the sale for me for the death penalty itself, but it does a great job of debunking a lot of the theoretical, practical and political opposition to it in Maryland.

I am not sold that the death penalty is administered in a racially discriminatory manner in Maryland; like Soccer Dad, I don't see a large enough sample size. It appears to be the case that the racial balance of the jury pool correlates to the frequency of the pursuit of the death penalty in Maryland's different jurisdictions. In my view, the quality of evidence may also come into play; the "stop snitching" culture of Baltimore crime makes it a lot harder than elsewhere to pursue all criminal prosecutions both at trial and on appeal. Add in the extreme cost of a death penalty case, and it's easier to respect the Baltimore City State's Attorney's choice never (or nearly never) to pursue the death penalty.

Turkey Bowl: Loyola Pounds Calvert Hall 35-0

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 02:28:00 +0000

Baltimore Sun, November 26, 2008:

A recent transplant from North Dakota, Loyola quarterback Connor Bruns didn't know quite what to expect in his first start against archrival Calvert Hall in today's 89th Turkey Bowl.

...

The strong-armed junior threw fourth-down touchdown passes on his team's first two possessions, and teammate Terence Garvin added a career-high 190 rushing yards as the No. 2 Dons polished off a perfect season with a 35-0 win before an announced 12,347 at M&T Bank Stadium.

...

Loyola (11-0) has won six straight and 20 of 24 in the series, which it leads 48-33-8. It was the largest margin of victory for either team since Calvert Hall won by the same score in 1976.

Roll, Dons, Roll. Ah, to spend a day again in the spring of 1987....

Pikesville McDonald's Goes All Starbucks On Us??

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:57:00 +0000

Dining@Large Blog, Baltimore Sun, November 19, 2008:

McDonald's seems to have turned into a -- gasp -- stylish coffee house with cozy nooks, custom furniture, limestone countertops, limited edition artwork, wi-fi and flat screen TVs. (OK, a coffee house wouldn't have flat screen TVs.) ...

Check out the pictures in the original.

For non-locals, the 500 block of Reisterstown Road in Pikesville is not where I would expect a McDonald's to "go Gucci" with a flat screen TV, dark paneling and comfy-butt couches. Pikesville is a diverse community; this part of Pikesville is maybe 3/4 mile north of the city line at Milford Mill Road. There are some wealthy families in Pikesville but for the most part this end of Pikesville/Milford Mill is pretty much middle class, with a fairly nearby Orthodox Jewish community that would not be particularly likely to patronize a non-kosher restaurant. It's not near a college or particularly near a morning transit node, though there's a Metro station maybe 1 mile away or less. There's a kosher bagel shop perhaps 3 blocks north of it, probably aiming at a different market segment, and to my knowledge no Starbucks or Caribou Coffee within 1 mile (though a struggling Seattle's Best is less than a mile away.)

I have eaten quite a few times in that McDonald's, back when I lived in NW Baltimore and would sneak a newspaper and a greasy meal on a Sunday during a nearby Jiffy Lube run or whatnot. Now it's McLatte? McSpresso? How about just McNuggets?

Longer portion of post goes here.

Half of Baltimore Light Rail Service Halted

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Baltimore Sun, November 18, 2008:

Thousands of Baltimore-area commuters were forced to abandon trains and board buses yesterday, the first workday disrupted by a light rail shutdown that closed the northern half of the system. State officials were unable to say how long service would be curtailed by a problem caused in part by the fall of autumn leaves.

Commuters attempting to take light rail between North Avenue and Hunt Valley were diverted to shuttle buses, which passengers said added as much as 90 minutes to the trip.

Of course. It's Baltimore. What the heck did you expect from public transit - administratie competence or efficiency?

Longer portion of post goes here.

Quadruple Shooting Kills 2 in Odenton

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:35:00 +0000

Baltimore Sun, November 16, 2008:

Two men were killed during a quadruple shooting in the parking lot of an Odenton shopping center early this morning, according to Anne Arundel County police.

Police responded to the North Odenton Plaza, in the 1600 block of Annapolis road, about 1:30 a.m. to find the two men dead, apparently of gun shot wounds.

Odenton is a strange sort of suburb in a lot of ways. It stretches NW-SE along Annapolis Road at almost the exact midpoint between downtown Baltimore and downtown DC. The MARC trains passing through and stopping at Odenton reach Baltimore and Washington in almost exactly 30 minutes in each case.

In and near Odenton lies an amazing mix of housing stock, from upper-income ego palaces to blue-collar off-base housing for adjacent Ft. Meade to section 8 nastiness in Pioneer City. My ex and I lived at the very edge of Pioneer City for about a year when I had a law practice in Upper Marlboro and she worked north of Baltimore City. It was not as bad where we were as its reputation but the police presence was pretty thick, and the local pizza parlors would NOT deliver to us even though they would deliver to points further away.

The shopping center at 1600 Annapolis Road is not one that I remember very well. I think I recall an Asian restaurant, maybe Chinese, one with a liquor license. But that's all I remember.

I do not ordinarily post about local crime reports, but this area is scheduled for massive BRAC development over the next 10 years. It would be great if BRAC could result in the clean-up of this area's crime problem, ideally through increased attention to the area as a population center, rather than as a distant "no-man's land" 15 miles from Anne Arundel's county seat.

Odenton and the surrounding communities have a lot of history, and some measure of local pride, but the political dynamics of the area are a little weird. NSA is next door, so there are a lot of people who "work with computers" or "work near the airport" but won't say where they get their paychecks. The military presence puts an element of transience or of focus outside of local dynamics. Odenton is a long-distance call from Baltimore and Washington both; while in the age of cell phones this probably matters less, it's indicative of the ambiguous identity of the region. There are multiple county borders quite nearby, especially if one counts nearby Laurel that sits essentially in four different counties.

In short, it's harder for this area to produce political influence than some others; the political geography and demographics make political power harder to organize and focus.

UPDATE: many thanks to sharp-eyed reader RCH again for his editorial acumen.

MD Court of Appeals Overturns 1st Degree Murder Conviction

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:17:00 +0000

Daily Record, November 12, 2008:

A unanimous Court of Appeals has overturned a first-degree murder conviction, saying the prosecutor violated the defendant’s attorney-client privilege by asking him about the timing and content of his pre-trial discussions with defense counsel.

...

"The state has every right to challenge a criminal defendant’s credibility through vigorous cross-examination," [Judge Mary Ellen] Barbera wrote. "The state has no right, however, to effect that goal through improper means. In this case, the state undermined petitioner’s credibility by the improper means of invading his attorney-client privilege."

...

On cross-examination, the prosecutor sought to undermine [Defendant] Blanks’ credibility by asking when he and his attorney had first discussed his testimony that he had had an affair with the victim.

After the defense attorney’s objection was overruled, Blanks responded that he had discussed his testimony only briefly with his lawyer.

The Court of Appeals said the objection should have been sustained.

No Mercy from the Ravens

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:51:00 +0000

Good. I think we need to inflict a good old-fashioned beat-down another team. We are doing that now with I think 6 minutes to go, ~~three~~ four touchdowns up. Poor Texans, they look like last year's Ravens.

Longer portion of post goes here.

Combined Tax Reporting for Maryland Corporations

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Per the Daily Record's business blog, Senator Paul Pinsky (D-21) seeks combined reporting for Maryland corporations on their Maryland-based income.

I am not an expert on the comibined reporting debate, but I am familiar with two tools for moving profits into low/no-tax states while moving expenses into higher-tax states on paper for tax efficiency. One common way to do this is to set up a holding company in Delaware, a low-tax jurisdiction, to hold intellectual property that the parent company then pays out of high-tax state profits for licenses for trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, etc. Another method is to set up a "captive REIT" or real estate investment trust in a low-tax state to receive rent paid from high-tax state operations. Others probably exist.

I would like to know more about the precise nature, the details, of the combined reporting regime sought by the famously progressive (and friend of fair ballot access laws) Senator Pinsky.

Longer portion of post goes here.

Adam Pagnucco: Marylanders Vote Strongly Against Tax Increases

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:28:00 +0000

Check out the analysis by Adam Pagnucco of Maryland Politics Watch of the multiple anti-tax referenda and initiatives that prevailed even in the more liberal parts of the state. No quote here would do justice to Pagnucco's systematic analysis of the entire results.

Even Robin Ficker got his (first) Montgomery County anti-tax charter amendment, though barely. This bespeaks some ill tidings for Governor O'Malley reelection prospects, in my view; while Montgomery is almost certainly the most liberal jurisdiction in the state both politically and culturally, a move by Montgomery's wealthy taxpayers to the center (even the center measured by blue Maryland's liberal median and mean) on taxes could inflict serious damage on his reelection efforts against possible (my hunch: quite likely) GOP gubernatorial nominee former governor Bob Ehrlich.

Ehrlich paid lip service to social conservative agenda items but in his heart and habits Ehrlich was largely a GOPAC-style cost-cutter and advocate of restrained government. O'Malley is no Kathleen Kennedy Townsend but his approval ratings are way down into the "gonorrhea/kidney stone" level, in part due to modest but real tax increases on sales, excises and incomes. And Democrats should not get overconfident about Maryland after the twenty-point Obama win; Ehrlich got a much larger share of the vote in both 2002 and 2006 than McCain got in Maryland this past week - before Marylanders got their taxes increased.

UPDATE: I pretty much agree with the analysis by Brian Griffiths on these general points.

Longer portion of post goes here.

CityPaper: Baltimore Red Line Alternatives and Limitations

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:58:00 +0000

Michael Byrne of the Baltimore City Paper, November 4, 2008:

IF YOU GO THE WEB SITE OF the Transit Riders Action Council (TRAC), you will find an online petition "for heavy rail (Metro Subway) and an alternative alignment temporarily routing the red line along the Yellow Line alignment through Camden Station and north through Penn Station to the Baltimore Museum of Art." As of last week, it had 248 signatures.

Notably, the options outlined in September's Red Line alternatives analysis don't include an option for heavy rail. Heavy rail, a vague term that encompasses a lot of rail transit styles, means in this case transit in the style of the existing Metro--longer and faster (theoretically) trains that are powered by a ground level "third rail," as opposed to the overhead wires that power light rail trains. Because of that third rail, and because of the longer trains, heavy rail always needs its own right-of-way--it can't share roads or most existing trackway. Hence, it's the most expensive.

More below the fold.

Well done to Mr. Byrne for noting that both light and heavy rail are rough terms, nor precisely defined. Overhead catenary wire power as opposed to ground-based third rail power are rough guidelines for the differences between the two broad categories, but neither is definitive. For example, diesel powered "light rail" needs no power wires at all for core thrust; diesel-powered transit is fairly common in Europe and is the method of power for South Jersey's RIVER LINE connecting Trenton to Camden circumferentially around Philadelphia immediately east of the Delaware River.

While most would probably call such service "light rail" due to its modest speed and lack of a grade-separated right-of-way, there is nothing "light" about the experience of the trains blasting through the towns along its path. Due to federal regulations regarding the passenger use of freight rail tracks, the trains must make a full horn blast at most at-grade crossings - an annoyance to many residents and businesses according to reports.

Baltimore as an older city is cursed with narrow streets in much of its residential core. It is very difficult to send overhead rail or even at-grade rail through much of the city because of the narrow streets, at least without major cost-exploding takings under eminent domain of the homes of many of the residents who are to be well-served, not rendered homeless by legal force, through transit improvements.

I had the chance to speak informally with TRAC's manager informally some months ago on a MARC commute northbound. While it was more of a chat than an interview, his comments to me reflected the possibility of using currently available AMTRAK rights of way and a portal out of the Eutaw Street tunnel. I also learned from him that the Baltimore and Washington Metro trains use identical power systems and can run interchangeably on each other's tracks, subject to the short length of the Baltimore Metro platforms. It would be good if the two systems could someday link, once population densities justify it. Since Fort Meade is growing through BRAC, perhaps a heavy rail connection of both systems (heavily expanded) would make sense, as suggested recently in Greater Greater Washington. If that happens, I hope that someone will wheel me out of the retirement community to see it.

Good Sun Article on Lightning Speed of Local Government Re: Slots Vote

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:21:00 +0000

Local governments in Maryland have wasted no time getting ready for the arrival of "video lottery terminals" aka video slot machines - in Anne Arundel, Baltimore City and elsewhere. Good Sun article - a noun clause I don't use often.

MD-1 - Kratovil Ahead by <1000 Votes, Counting Continues

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:17:00 +0000

Baltimore Sun, November 6, 2008:

With tens of thousands of ballots yet to be counted, the bitterly fought House race between Democrat Frank M. Kratovil Jr. and Republican Andy Harris is unlikely to be settled before the end of next week, state officials said yesterday.

Kratovil, the state's attorney for Queen Anne's County, led Harris, a state senator from Cockeysville, by fewer than 1,000 of the more than 329,000 votes cast Tuesday in the contest for the seat now held by longtime Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest.

We shall see....

I Continue to Disagree with Brian Griffiths re Palin

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:26:00 +0000

I respect Brian Griffiths. He and I disagreed earlier this year about whether Sarah Palin would be a net plus or a net minus to the GOP ticket. Today, on his personal blog, Griffiths maintains that "Anybody who thinks that Sarah Palin lost this election is out of their mind."

I think that's a pretty rude way of dealing with people you disagree with. But since I am sometimes rude, I am "equitably estopped" from making any complaint on that basis.

The issue is whether Palin killed McCain's campaign. I say "probably"; Griffiths says "no are you nuts?" in substance. I have read that as many as one in seven Obama voters is a former McCain supporter who ditched him in disgust at Palin. I do not currently have a link to that claim, however, so I cannot stand behind its methodology or its sourcing. My hunch - and that's all I have, a hunch - is that the drop off of the cliff that happened right around Palin's disastrous interview with Couric that made her a topic of mockery was fatal, and McCain's apparent terror about sending her to the Sunday morning talking heads shows where Biden has lived and chatted since the administration of Hammurabi came from her blatantly apparent weakness. Palin could not be sent to win for Team ~~Blue~~ Red on Sunday morning in front of an audience of millions; she was too much of a winking train wreck.

He could have sent Minnesota governor Pawlenty or especially the brilliant Bobby Jindal - both strongly pro-life, both likable - into that lion's den; Palin was too delicate a flower, apparently. He could have sent Linda Lingle - a two-term Republican governor of the moderate-to-liberal state of Hawai'i, though pro-choice - into that environment. Lingle is Jewish; while Jews certainly don't automatically vote for a Jewish candidate by any stretch, Lingle might have provided Team McCain a new set of fora in which to address Jewish voters, who went for Obama almost 4-1. Florida, Ohio and Nevada went for Obama but ugly close; all of those states have sizable Jewish communities.

I have heard this claim about "turning out the base" as if Republicans en masse would fail to vote in the absence of theocratic red meat on the ticket. Without some hard figures, I do not buy it. I do not think that "the base" is both that brittle (or what economists call "elastic") in its Republican reliability at the polls AND present in enough numbers in swing states to "out-thrill" the "out-puke" effect of chamber of commerce Republicans and independents nauseated at Palin's corruption, her incompetence and her hideous mischaracterization of blue states as less American than her party's base. I think that the stories of fundamentalist Bible Christians staying home in pecksniff resentment are mostly a myth. Furthermore, to match the effect of one McCain-to-Obama switch, there would have to be two marginal McCain votes that no-show (since the hard-core theocratic vote WON'T vote Obama, period, with or without a Palin.) I don't see them marginally outnumbering the marginal "Palin pukers" two to one where and when it counts.

Marcy Wheeler - a liberal battle blogger who made some of her bones hounding Scooter Libby not too long ago - is closer to Brian's position. She thinks that McCain's pick of Palin kept this race from being a total blowout. I am not convinced she is right; her link to one set of stats on Indiana's increase in the share of the evangelical electorate ignores too many variables, such as the growth in megachurch evangelical Christianity during the last four years and possible racist animus against Obama that would not have abated with a more qualified GOP VP pick, and did not apply to Kerry. I suspect there are more suburban Jews, Catholics (who barely went net for Obama) and moderate Protestants who pulled away in revulsion from Team McCain right after the Couric interview and stayed away in the face of Palin's "divide America" strategy than there are evangelical Protestants who voted for McCain AND would not have voted had McCain picked someone else. But go read Wheeler's piece and make your own judgment.

Palin brought another set of problems according to recent reports: vicious infighting between "her" people and those of her running mate McCain. I suspect that Lingle would have squashed that beef. I suspect that Jindal would not have tolerated that sort of stupidity. Once the memoirs come out, we might see more clearly how catastrophically bad this pick was on the in-house efficacy of Team McCain, and how poorly the choice reflected on McCain's ability to hire talent, command respect and delegate tasks. I think it's more likely than not that I am right about Palin being a total disaster and ticket killer, but I don't think I have proof beyond a reasonable doubt, right now.

Long Lines for Obama - Worth It

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:48:00 +0000

Last night, I got to slog through nasty, long traffic lines out to Manassas by car and on foot to see Barack Obama's final official rally. Getting both in and out of Manassas, parking almost 2 miles away and walking each way, getting "penned in" for a long time at the Prince William County Fairgrounds when they would not let 20,000 of us in the back out for quite a while - all gave me a more direct appreciation of what folks in New Orleans went through at Katrina in terms of the evacuation logistics alone. We didn't get a very good view of Senator Obama; his face and torso were blocked by the teleprompter from our angle. And Obama arrived quite late due to a late arrival at Dulles.

Today I voted. I stood in line in Northeast DC for about an hour. They could have done a better job of dividing up the voter rolls; A-B had one clerk looking bored with nothing to do while for my bad luck F-I had one very slow-moving clerk and a larger pool. But in the end, I got my scantron sheet and voted. My precinct is probably 99% African-American and appeared today to reflect that demographic proportion in terms of my fellow voters in line. A lot of senior citizens, some with canes, wheelchairs, walkers or O2 tanks. Nobody complained about the lines, at all. People looked happy and relaxed to vote.

Never before in my ENTIRE life have I been prouder of my country, not even the day we beat the Soviet Union in Olympic hockey when I was 10.

Longer portion of post goes here.

Election Night Scoreboard: Talkingpointsmemo.com

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:30:00 +0000

I am in awe of the work done by my Princeton classmate Josh Marshall's talkingpointsmemo.com re: the district by district election data for tomorrow night. TPM's map of Maryland looks great; because of Maryland's brutal gerrymandering, the boundaries of the Congressional races are a little off, as a comprimise between the M. C. Escher-like districts and the vector requirements of, I suspect, Java programming for images and boundaries. But you can easily track any Maryland race there.

The Maryland race that most people are likely to watch for is MD-1, the Eastern Shore/Annapolis/Timonium district pitting Queen Anne's County State's Attorney Frank Kratovil (D) against Senator Andy Harris (R) of Timonium. Harris' Senate District is on the extreme northwest edge of the Congressional district, while Kratovil's Centreville office is probably fairly near the geographic and population-weight midpoints. I encourage any and all readers of WBA Blog to follow this race closely at TPM; that race and the slots and early voting "referenda" are the meaningfully contested issues for Maryland tomorrow night. (Unfortunately but understandably, TPM's tracker does not cover non-federal races or issues, including the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California.)

Longer portion of post goes here.

Slots in Maryland - Why can't I get fired up about this?

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:22:00 +0000

I don't have a strong analysis of slots in Maryland one way or another. I am familiar with the general range of opinions on the policy merits and demerits of the industry, the side effects, the likely revenue, the fact that Marylanders are already using slots venues in Delaware, West Virginia and Pennsylvania (and would in many cases choose to play in Maryland instead.)

I can respect both libertarian support (in that it legalizes and makes available an activity in which players want to participate) and opposition (because it increases the size and funding of the state, i.e. the apparatus of force.) I get conservative support (because it raises government revenue without direct taxation) and opposition (because it tends to undercut morals and promote crime in some instances.) I get liberal support (because the revenues will fund useful projects for society at large) and opposition (because its incidence of gambling's costs may be characterized as regressive against income levels and/or exacerbate the costs of already strained government services.)

I have played slots in Delaware a few times, and enjoy video blackjack in Vegas a few years ago. Speaking only about my subjective feelings (not my analysis of policy), I would dislike local slots parlors, whether run by the government directly or under contract to a gaming company. This is not an argument against them, just a subjective opinion. I just find them annoying. On the other hand, I would enjoy bona fide table games including Texas Hold'em poker tables.

A close friend has described to be his frustrations with his parents' frequent trips to a casino near their home in a mid-Atlantic state. They are middle-class folks, not of great or poor means, and have thrown a lot of money down the hole in the slots parlor. Now grown-ups get to make decisions for themselves, including poor ones; that's almost the technical definition of an adult: someone free to make a bad decision. But purely subjectively, I would view a slots parlor the same way that I would view a carnival freak show: something negative that a free society permits to exist without interference.

Doesn't mean I will like it if it happens.

I have not been following any polling on this topic; it's not a high-valence issue for me re: my home state, since I don't plan to play there if it happens. I wish I had something stronger to say about it; having an opinion and voicing it is not generally a problem for a "battle blogger." But I guess I am "meh" about the whole topic.

Longer portion of post goes here.

Welcome to WB&A Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:18:00 +0000

Welcome to WB&A Blog.

The look of this blog may be pretty familiar if you have been around awhile in the Maryland blogosphere. It is the successor-in-snark to the Maryland-based (now technically DC-based) Crablaw Maryland Weekly and its spin-offs.

The "Weekly" term came from the says when I would only commit to publishing once a week, though I often did more. I never dumped the name.

It's not named "Crablaw" any more because the term "Crab" had unintended marketing consequences and "law" is not the primary focus of the blog, more politics, culture, economics and local events including, but not predominantly, law. For old times' sake, we are keeping the crablaw.com domain.

This blog is not neutral on the "moving train" of politics; we take sides here and we don't apologize for hitting hard. In general, this blog favors left-center politics with emphases on public efficiency, human dignity, human autonomy, equal protection of the laws and due process. It is explicitly counter-theocratic, i.e. maintains that religious claims are not a valid basis for the use of public resources, public power or special pleading for religion in the specific, the generic, the singular or the plural in public life.

Longer portion of post goes here.

Red Maryland Advances Republican "Democratic Violence" Frauds

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:15:00 +0000

Red Maryland is engaged in a fraud, as of now. If they stop the fraud and apologize for it, I will update this post.

Red Maryland has two posts up on "violence" and "still more Democrat [sic] Election Violence.

Now I am ashamed of myself for having believed the first story until I got the actual facts - you know, the Pittsburgh B on the cheek, the complete buncombe story? Well, I got reamed - REAMED - on DailyKos for believing this story before I got all the facts yesterday. I got, I think, 18 Troll/Hide Rates on a tip jar. Believing that Red Maryland would not push buncombe on me lost me my own credibility and "trusted user" status.

I have been exceptionally diplomatic over the last 12 months with Red Maryland. But being reasonable with them cost me my reputation with people on my side of the line. So to paraphrase Chuck D, "damn if I believe them you can slap me RIGHT HERE."

It's now twenty-four hours since the first story was debunked. It had been debunked by 6:34 PM EST on the 23rd, though I didn't know it. But I put a comment on that post, urging Streiff to fix it. He didn't, and has a second "story" with a false headline: "MORE ... violence" published this morning. The headline is a lie, and I will bet that the story itself is buncombe too until I get iron proof that this isn't another scam by desperate Republican operatives.

Let this serve notice that diplomatic relations between any activity of mine and with Red Maryland are hereby cut off. It's going to be open season on every one on that site, until Streiff, Newgent, Griffiths, Burns or another editor apologizes for the continuation of a buncombe story and officially retracts it. I got conned; there will be no fool me twice.

P.S.: in case you had been living in a cave like I literally have been for the past 5 days during daylight hours - working absolutely alone with no human interaction, no radio, no TV and no 'net, this link to a series of diaries at Daily Kos will explain how the con was designed to work, how Red Maryland succeeded in conning me and why I am calling them out so severely.

P.P.S. Now after 8 PM on the 24th and no fix from any of the dozen-odd editors over at Red Maryland to these deceptive headlines and posts. They can't all be getting drunk.

P.P.P.S. Streiff apparently thinks that "oh well" constitute a retraction of a fraudulent story. It isn't a retraction at the New York Times. Nor at the Washington Times. You can judge a man by how he handles the truth, especially when it's awkward.

Blob's Park is Back

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:39:00 +0000

Annapolis Capital, October 20, 2008:

Way back on the last Sunday of September 1947, when American soldiers were returning from occupied Germany with a taste for suds, schnitzel and song, the first Oktoberfest ever held in this country was at the beer garden in Jessup.

...

Now the historical treasure and others like it are getting a reprieve. Ten months after the Eggrel family decided to close Blob's Park's Bavarian Biergarten, Mr. Eggrel is pouring money into a massive renovation that will end with a reopening at the end of the year.

Blob's Park opened in 1933, when German immigrant Max Blob settled in Jessup and started a farm. A decade later, he added a bowling alley and a few tables to his farm and opened it the public.

Mr. Blob's niece, Katherine Eggrel Peters, began helping her uncle with the business in 1942, and ran it with her husband, John, and children until her death in April 2007.

One of the most disastrous sociological results of European immigration into the U.S. was the dissolution of European cultural identity in favor of "whiteness." In time, European immigrants became "white people," losing their cultural heritages in favor of a "white" identity. It did not happen evenly at all times in all places, but with very few exceptions, Euro-Americans learned to call themselves "white people" or "white Americans" and to enjoy the racial privileges of whiteness.

Had their been some meaningful content to "whiteness" that unified most or all "white people", distinguished them from "non-white people" and did not merely constitute the structure of white privilege itself, this might not have been so bad. But culturally, the purpose and effect of the white melting pot was caste consolidation at the price of bleaching "white people" of their prior cultural heritage. I hesitate to use the clumsy vocabulary of modern philosophy but whiteness has no distinguishing content other than its contrast to the non-white "other."

Now certainly some cultural artifacts are "whiter" than others. But most of what one can identify as "white" is not distinctively "white," i.e. reasonably exclusively white AND reasonably common to all or almost all people who are "white." Example: country music is overwhelmingly white, but the overwhelming majority of white people outside of the U.S. South don't listen to it, and New York City - the largest radio market in the country - has no country music stations. Hockey likewise; few black people or white people play it or follow it south of Washington, DC. What IS common to essentially all "white people" is white privilege and its post-modern aftermath.

I suppose there are a few white people who don't fit this pattern. Arguably the Amish are not culturally "white" in a certain sense, but they specifically did not integrate into general non-Amish "English" or "Fancy Dutch [German]" culture in Pennsylvania, were and are severe critics of the enslavements practices of this country and essentially do not employ white sociological privilege for any purpose. Maybe a similar case could be made for some Orthodox Jewish communities in upstate New York. But even these groups are still included as "white" nominally.

For a while, some European groups did not get the full benefits of whiteness, specifically immigrant groups that were engaged in the lousiest of unskilled and semi-skilled labor. Hungarians, Irish, some Southern Europeans, even counter-intuitively Swedes in some times and locations were distinguished from the "white caste." Jews likewise encountered uneven acceptance into the white caste, sufficiently such that the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan not only would not admit Jews but would actively persecute them, notwithstanding the personal example of the Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin. But in time, to be European-American was to enjoy white caste privilege. Much of the social pressure to "assimilate" was, in reality, pressure to join the white caste at its entrance fee. To the extent that Euro-Americans don't enjoy white caste privilege, one can often notice the failure to pay the cultural price: faukyre ir refusal to assimilate into the culture of privilege, casting away the prior European identity. Conversely, one can often see the remnants of the painful awareness of the price of this white caste admission fee in the children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of such immigrants - a zeal for the common (i.e. white) symbols of national identity rarely found in their European counterparts today or 100 years ago, a jingoist chest-beating emphasis on American identity, and mild or deep racism against or antipathy towards African-Americans. In other words: the core of the "white ethnic" Reagan Democrat voting bloc.

I happen to be German-American, along with a great many Marylanders whose ancestors came over from Germany or its prior constituent states into Baltimore City or northern Anne Arundel County. I am very happy that Blob's Park will come back, at least until BRAC presses it out of the neighborhood. The liquidation of regional cultural identity was not good for Euro-Americans. Those who know of the growth of German nationalism and centralization of power in the sixty-odd years from Bismarck through the end of the Weimar Republic will recall that it was no good whatsoever for Germany either.

Parkville Man Guilty of Threat Against Governor O'Malley

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:53:00 +0000

Baltimore Sun, October 20, 2008:

A 44-year-old Parkville man accused of sending a threatening e-mail to the governor declined this morning to accept a plea offer of probation before judgment and instead went to trial on the charges. He was found guilty by a jury this afternoon.

Walter C. Abbott Jr., a construction worker, asked the judge to sentence him immediately after the jury returned its verdict. Abbott received a suspended sentenced of six months in prison and two years of unsupervised probation. In addition, Abbott will have to pay a $500 fine and was ordered to stay away from Gov. Martin O'Malley and his family.

...

He added [in his e-mail], "If I ever get close enough to you, I will rap [sic] my hands around your throat and strangle the life from you. This will solve many problems for true AMERICAN'S. Maybe you can send your MEXICAN army after me, you no good AMERICAN SELL OUT [expletive]," according to a copy of the message introduced as evidence at trial.

Abbott signed the letter with his full name, address and phone number. [Emphasis WB&A]

The Lex Luthors of the world are not responsible for most of the crime. It's Dumb and Dumber, around the moment where Jim Carrey gets his tongue stuck to a frozen pole.

Threats against public officials are no laughing matter. Bona fide homicidal threats and angry homicidal ideation and venting look the same. Law enforcement has to investigate all of the above.

I am five years younger than this fool. It just makes me bang my head against the table. This man literally hated both the Governor and, apparently, Mexican-Americans or Mexican immigrants, illegal or legal, more than he loved his own wife. You make a threat against a public official, you run the risk of an real confrontation with his security detail, some of whom are presumably better trained than others.

Washington Post: PG County Business Attempts Suicide By McCain Sign

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 05:56:00 +0000

Washington Post, October 12, 2008:

The sign went up Sunday evening, bold black letters against the stark white background of the marquee at the Colony South Hotel & Conference Center in Clinton: "Country First. McCain/Palin."

By daybreak, pandemonium had broken loose all across heavily Democratic Prince George's County. Many local supporters of Democrat Barack Obama, jolted by the message as they headed down Branch Avenue on their Monday morning commutes, grabbed cellphones and BlackBerrys to notify friends. Operators of neighborhood e-mail group lists cried foul to their memberships. The NAACP logged calls. Community leaders demanded boycotts of the hotel, a common venue for Democratic events.

"For a business to display a huge McCain-Palin sign in the middle of such a pro-Democratic and pro-Obama area is business suicide," Franklin said.

...

The hotel's owner, Francis P. Chiaramonte, could not be reached at the hotel or at his home. His son, Michael Chiaramonte, chairman of the board of the Prince George's County Business Roundtable, did not return a call to his office or to the roundtable office yesterday.

It is difficult for me to imagine a more aggressive thumb into the eye of Prince George's County's spending decision-makers than to oppose Barack Obama's candidacy. It is breathtakingly stupid marketing.

As the article notes, Prince George's County is 2/3 African-American and over 3/4 Democratic. Furthermore, a large number of voters are "Other" or "Unaffiliated" rather than Republican, perhaps because of the large military presence and the career-related desire to remain politically neutral. Even Charles County to the south of Clinton is majority Democratic, as is almost every jurisdiction that borders Prince George's County (Calvert Democrats hold a plurality, not a majority, of the registrations there.) Unless your clientele is exclusively, I don't know, Mormons or maybe big-game hunters, why choose to antagonize not only a local Democratic customer base but also a group of voters with an unprecedented sense of loyalty and enthusiasm both politically and PERSONALLY for Senator Obama?

Does the owner know where his business is? Is he trying to build up a base of white conservative customers from out of state or from Northern Anne Arundel County 35 miles away? Especially now at the end of the campaign? I don't mean to be cruel here, but I don't get it.

Baltimore Sun: Wide Variances in Life Expectancy Between City Neigborhoods

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:38:00 +0000

Baltimore Sun, October 16, 200b:

In West Baltimore's impoverished Hollins Market neighborhood, where the average life expectancy is about 63 years, residents shared beers and cigarettes on their front steps at midday yesterday while pedestrians using canes gingerly avoided two dead rats on the street.

Across town in wealthy Roland Park, where residents live on average to be 83, the scene predicably changed. One gray-haired woman rushed to swimming lessons, while a family rode past on bikes and a man with an iPod jogged nearby.

Life expectancy tends to rise with median income, the data show. For every increase of $10,000 in a neighborhood's median household income, residents lived 3.4 years longer, according to Sharfstein. But he noted that even among neighborhoods with similar incomes there are ranges of up to 10 years in life expectancies.

Though the city's poorer neighborhoods tend to be predominantly African-American, the data did not show as strong a relationship between density of black residents and lower life expectancy as other factors such as income, said Caroline Fichtenberg, the Health Department's chief epidemiologist and the project leader.

But since the city is 64 percent African-American, Sharfstein said that all health issues in the city can be viewed through a racial lens.

A number of factors play here.

One of the first is the likelihood of death by homicide. Many who die, die young and die violently, hundreds per year. And the killings are not happening in wealthy, white neighborhoods. HIV/AIDS ditto, for analogous if not identical reasons.

Another major issue is access to basic routine care. If you work a blue collar job, you are increasingly likely to be unable to afford routine health visits for yourself and your family, especially if you work construction and your insurance lapses with seasonal layoffs (and so you don't work long enough to opt in), or you are on COBRA that you can barely afford and then you lose it. While one Republican fool advising John McCain has noted that public emergency rooms must treat everyone regardless of ability to pay so there in a pedantically stupid sense no "uninsured", often it's when the diseases get to their most severe (read: expensive to treat and intractable) state that a patient goes to the ER.

Another is diet. One of the inconveniences of being a low-income urban single parent is that shopping for groceries is a major pain in the ass. If you don't own a car, you can either bus across town with toddlers and then bus back and hoof it holding groceries, toddlers in tow, or you can try to have groceries delivered into the neighborhood through the internet, if you have access and a computer. I am not per se "low income" but am aware of the challenge of shopping with two autistic pre-schoolers, and I only have them two out of twelve days. My ex and I each own cars free and clear, and have internet access and computers in our home. You want a balanced diet of healthy, fresh food? Even if you can afford it, just laying hands on it with no car and no internet is a pain.

No doubt the miserable quality of education in the City at all levels plays a role. If they cannot get basic reading down, I would have no high expectations of balanced nutrition or basic health getting covered at any level.

Archive of Crablaw Maryland Weekly, Blogger Format

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:01:00 +0000

This is the final post of Crablaw Maryland Weekly, Blogger format.

You may explore the archives of the prior format, now discontinued, through the links in the sidebar. In addition, you may enjoy the NEW Drupal-based Maryland Weekly at http://www.crablaw.com/weekly.

Many thanks!

1,389 - A very enjoyable run

noreply@blogger.com (Bruce Godfrey) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 02:40:00 +0000

Crablaw Maryland Weekly has published 1,389 posts net of "kills" and "duplicates," including this final post. Other Crab Media projects have contributed another hundred or so, perhaps.

For the foreseeable future, this post will be the last post of Crablaw Maryland Weekly. For a number of reasons, I am shuttering the windows and putting out the "closed for business" sign here and on most of Crab Media's projects. The shuttering will including the demolition of most of Crab Media's content and form out of www.crablaw.com and most of its subdomains, save one.

Careful readers may have noted a drop in both quality and quantity of production of late here. I myself have noticed the quality drop more than that of the quantity. My old sense of humor is hitting a little flat, and I struggle to make myself read the Baltimore Sun daily to scrounge for news on which to comment. One very regular reader of CMW once commented that there was (for him) an inverse relationship between happiness and blogging. While I would not personally go that far, I don't have the spirit I once did for the hobby as a hobby. That's a sign of which a reasonably cautious person should take heed. But it's more about business issues than personal burnout; a vacation could (and partially did recently, for me) cure the latter.

I have been more focused on career and financial matters for my family in recent months. As some readers may know, both of our boys have a diagnosis of autism. Sam, 4, has made remarkable progress in language development of late; he now nags and connives for additional "Baby Einstein" playings and chocolate chip cookies far closer to chronological age level than before, and he is a model pupil at his special ed school to which he has this week happily returned. Noah, 2, has a "profoundly autistic" diagnosis which means little, since his high-functioning brother had the same diagnosis at the same age. In practical terms, this means that I am the sole paycheck since daycare for two autistic kids is not really practical or economical.

Due to my age and unusual career path, it is not a simple matter to transition back into the traditional feudal career model which big firm attorneys typically follow. I have been a solo practitioner in the past which fact makes me look like a flight risk at my age. BCG Attorney Search, a well-known search firm, drove this home to me in a form email they sent to me explaining that solos like me could not get jobs with their clients. Never mind the fact that those jokers at BCG cannot read or choose not to read English; while I have the escrow accounts and tax ID numbers needed for a solo practice, I have made less than 1% of my gross income as a solo since Bill Clinton was impeached in late 1998-early 99, right before we got married. The word "solo", like the words "disbarred" or "molester", appears to evoke an allergic reaction in much of the market, even the term is a decade old at the bottom of the resume. (To clarify for any readers as snarky as myself, only the first of those words applies to any part of my history....)

But from their perspective, who would rather work hard and long for someone else rather than for himself, especially if one is half a generation older than some of the junior associates ranked higher in the firm's structure? They would fear that I would walk off with a small piece of their clientele or at least that I would walk off before they recouped their investment in training me for their type of work. Government work remains a possibility as does, on the extreme opposite end, reopening my own practice, using the professional and personal advantages that the nine years after mothballing full-time solo practice have given me. Those skills and traits include successful first-chair jury trial experience, pre-trial motions and discovery practice, tax audit representation, business entity transactional work, fighting the State of Maryland in administrative hearing: the basic "eggs and coffee" work of a working full-service attorney with individual and small business clients. Along with those professional skills and experiences come cynicism about the legal profession, occasional bitterness, the recollection of past mistakes of youth and inexperience and some greater improvements in physical endurance and personal discipline than I would have thought likely at another time.

The work I am doing now in DC I actually like, both in itself and for the interesting people I get to meet. From multi-lingual pressure-deadline litigation document review, one can draw a very good income, but not build an asset or a fund fully a retirement plan. Plus I am rarely home during sunlight, due to the commute. This cannot stand; the portal-to-portal time distance needs to shrink drastically both for my family life and for the elimination of the economic non-billable dead-weight losses.

When I do a search for "Bruce Godfrey" on Google, I find Crab Media's content at the top. And that's fine for me personally, especially since other "Bruce Godfreys" are out there elsewhere. But Crab Media pays me only in personal satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, not in shampoo or mortgage payments or diapers (!!??) or payments to Sallie Mae. I made a decision to blog in my own name and I do not apologize for that choice or regret it at all. But if I am going to make the most of my resources, I need to make some painful decisions about both my time and my web presence for marketing the one product I need to sell the most: myself.

I cannot allow my current Crab Media projects to be the first sites that people see when/if they Google me professionally. Not because I am ashamed of my work but because I am trying to achieve professional goals based on the delivery of a consistent message. Artemia jokes and tagging some politician's behavior as "aggressively stupid" are funny to me but they don't harmonize with making me better known professionally, whether as an employee or as a solo attorney. They don't help the customer/employer make the decision that is in their professional interest. While I don't know how common it is to Google an attorney before sending an employment offer letter or signing a retainer, I would Google someone under those circumstances and most decision-makers don't think or act like bloggers when reading a blogger's snark.

Anyway, enough "Rhapsody in Blue Funk." Here's what's going to happen.

1. Effective quite soon, perhaps within 72 hours, Crablaw Maryland Weekly is going down. All of the content of Crablaw Maryland Weekly on crablaw.com will be stripped and trashed, with the exceptions of a few very high profile posts (e.g. Take Back the Blog will stay up, as will some or all posts requested for preservation by readers). The original content will remain in Blogger's database unharmed as an archive, but crablaw.com will not host any of it; links to most such pages will mostly or completely become dead links. None of this will "scrub" my presence from the Internet's caches, Wayback Machine, etc., and "scrubbing" is not the goal. Striking Crab Media's current content will allow me to move beyond Crab Media's current projects in search engines towards professional goals and exposure to be described below; it's an issue of positioning, not sterilization.

2. The foregoing will be mostly repeated for Crabernet and the Disbarment blogs, though they don't amount to much. I will keep Crab's List up for a longer period because people are pretty actively using that site to find jobs through my RSS feed there, and I don't want to hinder somebody's access to getting a job.

3. Crabopedia is in limbo. I have some ideas on how to preserve Crabopedia off site but don't want to engage those ideas here without talking to some good folks about these ideas first. I do not have the time to purge Crabopedia routinely of the content generously offered by spammers originating from Taiwan and the PRC (or elsewhere.)

4. On the index pages of each stripped subdomain and on CMW's home page, I will put up a "thanks and all the best" page that will stay up for a short while. Thereafter, the subdomains will be destroyed (again, the blog content will remain within Blogger as an archive.) CMW's main page will redirect to www.crablaw.com/index.html.

5. The RSS feeds that feed the sidebars of some pages will not be disturbed initially but will no longer feed into Crablaw.com. If there is interest in the feeds, I will provide a means for those who wish to get those feeds to get them or their functional equivalent.

6. After the stripping of Crab Media is complete and a suitable short period of the "thanks, gang" pages has passed, Crablaw.com's index page will become the locus of my professional activities within the legal profession. It will revert to its old roots: a page and site dedicated to the practice of law in Maryland, with a strong possibility of forming the professional page of my new practice or practice environment. Crablaw.com will probably contain a blog but if so it will reflect far less political snark and more professional content. At some suitable point, I will probably redirect the new content to a new web domain altogether, one with a less ambiguous name for me as a professional, though that's a difficult decision to make and I don't need to make it today.

To my regular commenters - MBA members of course, Mr. X, Alon Levy and others whom I may be overlooking in my whirlwind of distraction, thanks very much, you have made this a lot more worthwhile and, frankly, enjoyable. A special thanks to commenter David Kyle, whom I predict we will see rising quickly in the Maryland blogosphere at his site The Candid Truth. While his politics are about 150-179 degrees opposite mine, I enjoy his blog and his sense of snarky humor. He is a smart, wily, tough-minded sparring partner (as are others noted above.) Besides, any man that chooses to dress both himself and his site in the style of the late Johnny Cash merits respect.

I consider myself a proud alumnus of the Maryland Bloggers' Alliance and will still be a regular reader, though less often a commenter. Those who would like me to keep specific post pages up for discussion or other purposes (e.g. recent links to Carnivals, etc.), please let me know and I will try in good faith to accommodate that request. Otherwise, to all readers and fellow bloggers, all the best.