Maryland Lt Governor Anthony G. Brown was the guest speaker at the Chamber of Commerce's monthly Eggs and Issues event today. Make no mistake. It was a campaign speech. Following the announcement of his candidacy at a picnic in Prince George’s County on May 10, 2013, this was just one stop on his campaign trail.
     I  read that he plans to run on the successes of the O'Malley-Brown administration. As anyone who knows me could imagine,  I am disgusted with the outcome of the 2013 legislative session. For this reason I felt compelled to attend this campaign event. I wanted to hear for myself how he plans to paint the state of our state, our business climate, our many tax increases, and our many state regulations as accomplishments to be celebrated. Those are just the subjects that I thought were relevant to this audience at the Chamber. I personally also would have liked to have  heard how he can make the worst 2nd Amendment infringements in the country besides CA and NY sound like anything but unconstitutional, unnecessary, and oppressive.

It's Barack Obama! Right?!

The Gong Show

   He went on to say, "Government can't solve every problem, but people want leaders to make the difficult decisions even when it's against self interest." 

 This administration was completely driven by O'Malley's self interest in running for president in 2016! 
   "We have fought for our successes. We need continued economic prosperity and a growing economy, and the economy grows when businesses want to come to Maryland and when businesses want to stay in Maryland. 

 Not only do businesses not want to stay in Maryland, but neither do the productive citizens of the state! It is estimated that 40,000 people left the state in 2012.
   "Businesses want to stay in Maryland when we provide the investments in infrastructure." 

    The O'Malley-Brown administration robbed the transportation fund for two terms in order to fraudulently balance the budget! Then they made cuts to the funds given to the municipalities for infrastructure adding to the burdens of already tight budgets.
   "Government needs to provide these investments, but with fiscal responsibility and we have adhered to that..."

 

 "...while maintaining a AAA bond rating with a $1.8B structure deficit that we inherited."  This has to be Barack Obama! When all else fails blame somebody else. 

Barack! Is that you?!

   "We believe in Hagerstown and Washington County...and we are looking to continue a relationship with the business community here."
   The speech was precisely 15 minutes in length followed by a Q&A session.  I give every politician credit for submitting to Q&A. I could tell already that this candidate was pretty safe with this crowd. This audience was polite, gentle, even grateful!

All unicorns and rainbows here!

     The questions were hard to hear and most often comments rather than questions. I will try to paraphrase, but I admit it is pretty boring:

Q.    [inaudible] Is there someone we should tie in with for senior housing? 
A.    We have many programs like tax credit programs and grant programs. Ben on our staff can talk to you and lead you to the different programs and departments.

Q.  [COC host] There is an opportunity to build a stadium and to revitalize Hagerstown. How best can we work with Annapolis?
A.    We already provided $100,000 for a study. Now your challenges are largely local. We will look to your leaders. 

A poke in the eye to the Mayor and City Council!

Perhaps there will be resources from that strategy. The private sector creates, but strategic and public resources may be available...ought to be made available. We will take your lead and bring the resources. 

Q.    Thank you for your support for schools and libraries, but could you add to that support for the arts and museums?
A.    If you look at our budget you will see and increase for the arts. I am a big believer in the arts. 

Q.    How is sequester impacting Maryland now and in the future?
A.    We accounted for it in our budget this year, raising the Rainy Day Fund from 5% to 6% [Wow!] to mitigate the impact on the Headstart Program and furloughs for government employees.  [In other words, there was no impact because it was a gimmick to try to get more spending.] We only account for one budget year at a time. Not sure how it will impact next year's budget. We take each budget year as it comes. [Hagerstown actually got an INCREASE IN CDBG money.] 

Q.    You say we are poised to be more business friendly, but the impression is that it is not so. How can we change that perception?

Candy coating makes everything more palatable.

A.    We have to establish that goal. BTW, we have 15 strategic goals on our website.

One last gong. I promise.

    There were no surprises. It was a campaign stop. The democratic candidate for governor was singularly given a captive audience at a Chamber of Commerce event. They rolled out the red carpet for him. What will surprise me is if a Republican candidate for governor gets the same opportunity and is met with such...glee (some were absolutely giddy).  

Special Legislation Briefing from The Patriot Briefing.  This is a great run down of the bills on Governor Perry's desk.  Read below:

   I attended a meet and greet for gubernatorial candidate David Craig last evening at Bulls & Bears in downtown Hagerstown. The event was well-attended by citizens, elected officials, and community leaders. After Commissioner Terry Baker introduced the candidate, he came to the podium and gave a short speech with all of  the standard Republican candidate content. He said nothing bold or daring, but he had the presence of  a good man who has been serving his country in one form or another for many years. I had no prior knowledge of Mr. Craig and I found him to be a pleasant man who seemed to present himself with a good balance of confidence and humility.
   After his speech he did do something fairly bold by taking a few questions from the audience. I was all ears as he was asked about the recent gun control bill (SB281). He gave a long answer that made me a little impatient because all I wanted to hear is that he is 100 percent against it and that he would do everything in his power to repeal. He did not. He did say that he thinks we just need to enforce the many gun laws already on the books.
  When asked about taxes he was righteously indignant against the "40 new taxes" (that number varies in all of the writings and speeches that I've heard), and stated that he would do everything that he could to lower or repeal many of those taxes. He said that if he is elected the budget for that first year will have already been  in place, but that his first budget would be truly balanced  and not falsely balanced by robbing money from other funds to balance it.
   The crowd seemed to want to be polite, including me, since this was his first visit to the area. The moment that I posted this event on-line I began to receive a lot of negative information about the man and his record on issues such as Agenda 21 and Plan Maryland that may or may not be true. I plan to do my research on this and every candidate. I did not want to ask obnoxious questions at his coming out party...particularly when I don't already know the answers...yet.  I will be ready the next time that our paths cross.

For pics of the event: 
 http://www.liberatedconservativewoman.blogspot.com/2013/06/david-craig-for-governor-visits.html

The strategy for taking out Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona has consisted of a multi-pronged attack.  For years, leftist radicals have protested and screamed that Sheriff Joe is racists, a theme that the mainstream media has not attempted to dispel.  However, Sheriff Joe has a long resume of working in law enforcement on a federal and local level, including time as a federal narcotics officer in Mexico.  There has been a failed attempt by the US Department of Justice to target him criminally.  Additionally, he has been in the crosshairs of committed leftists with a blind obsession for years, like Randy Parraz.  And yet, Joe Arpaio was re-elected as Sheriff of Maricopa County last November, despite the media, federal, and political war being launched against him for years.

And now we have another prong of this attack emerge.  Tea Party groups in Arizona, which have typically supported Sheriff Joe, have been targeted by the IRS.