Blue Ridge Forum

Ann Corcoran has a useful perspective (Potomac Tea Party Report) this morning on Nicolee Ambrose’s winning the post of Republican National Committeewoman yesterday in an unusually hard-fought contest with GOP Establishment veteran Audrey Scott.

Blogger Corcoran titles her post “Vote signals need for MD GOP to ‘get past Ehrlich.’”

Indeed.

 The Audrey Scott Record

Audrey Scott was “the hammer” for the last Ehrlich campaign.  Whatever the former governor’s many political sins (which we have been cataloguing for some time), she carried his banner with fidelity and some grit.  She also held elective executive office as mayor of Bowie, and, in our view, was an efficient Maryland secretary of planning.  We were sad to see her diminish her legacy in public life with a crude attack on conservative Representative Roscoe Bartlett just before his last primary win.  

But that Bartlett attack illustrates her major shortcoming:  if the Maryland GOP Establishment, in this case likely state senator David Brinkley’s campaign, asked Mrs. Scott to make a questionable if not self-defeating political move, she didn’t demur. We believe she knew better.  In recent times, she owed her GOP colleagues her judgment more than her obedience.

The Ambrose Promise

James Bopp: “But, in my view, the national committee’s job is to create the environment in which Republicans can be elected to set policy. . . . The Republican Party was founded to advance a set of principles — most famously, ending slavery. Electing politicians to public office is a means to that end. [Senator Lamar] Alexander, it seems, would reverse this: Let’s just elect public officials and see what public policies they come up with.”

The Baltimore Sun’s Michael Dresser terms Nicolee Ambrose a “conservative activist.”

Young, vigorous, attractive, Nicolee Ambrose does need to tell us at more length what she intends her role on the Republican National Committee to be.

“Growing the Farm Team” is a fine goal, but isn’t it more the job of the state chairman?

Will she join the conservative ranks in the RNC?  Or will she become another voice for the Beltway GOP?

We need more frank discussion, not silence, about the national struggle in the Republican Party between the “country class” and the “ruling class” — a contest well delineated by Angelo Codevilla here and evidenced in the constant stream of posts from, among many other sources, RedState and The Madison Project.

Click, moreover, on the following headline from the Washington Post of last Sunday illustrating the intensity of this struggle: “Book: GOP freshman class turned into ‘a monster’ for Boehner, other House leaders.”

Within Maryland itself, will Nicolee Ambrose use her own “bully pulpit” and her advertised organizational skills as the new Maryland RNC Committeewoman to get behind the drive to petition gay marriage to referendum, and to support the repeal of the so-called Maryland Dream Act on November’s ballot?  These are not just Maryland but national concerns.

Nor are these academic questions for our new Maryland RNC Committeewoman: some very influential Republicans here support gay marriage; some significant national GOP figures here are crafting their own version of a national Dream Act.

 Conservatives and The Maryland GOP

We ourselves didn’t have a vote at the GOP state convention yesterday – - which also elected the following delegates to the Republican National Convention:  Ellen Sauerbrey, Tony O’Donnell, E. J. Pipkin, David Craig, Diana Waterman, Kelly Schultz, Larry Helminiak, Kathy Szeliga, Michael Smigiel, and Ruth Umbel.

(See Monoblogue’s informative text and fine images of the Friday part of the GOP conference here.)

But if we had had a vote and had attended, we would have cast it for Nicolee Ambrose. 

We hope the Ambrose win yesterday (a county-by-county chart of the vote will be posted later as an add-on) signalled an end to “centrist” and statist GOP politics in Maryland, not just a change in the top GOP lineup.

Beyond the run-up to this November’s elections, Maryland conservatives need to organize seriously and do so for the longer haul to guide the GOP and the state in a better direction.

Otherwise an outcome like the one Joel Kotkin describes in “The Great California Exodus” (Allysia Finley in the WSJ) here may also be the outcome awaiting the Old Line State.

“As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California’s politics become even more left-wing. It’s a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, ‘the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees.’”

Will Montgomery County be the first to reflect this scenario if matters are not put right?

* * * * * * * * * *

Muslim Brotherhood: 10-Part Video To Detail Their Threat To U.S.

Tomorrow morning April 24 at the National Press Club (NPC), Frank Gaffney will unveil his video “Course in Ten Parts” on the Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within.

Click here for the video introduction to the 10-part course.

Former Reagan defense appointee Gaffney is now chief of the Center for Security Policy.

The Center asked today in their “Losing the Jihadists’ War on America Frank Gaffney, Top Intelligence Professionals Reveal Who is Responsible — and Why”  –

“Why, despite more than ten years of efforts – involving, among other things, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well-over a trillion dollars spent, countless man-years wasted waiting in airport security lines and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given to seemingly permanently aggrieved Islamist activists – are we no closer to victory in the so-called ‘war on terror’ than we were on 9/11?

In fact, such a prospect is becoming more remote by the day–and no one seems able to explain the reason why. (Bolding in original.)

The missing answer will be revealed tomorrow at the National Press Club at 9:30 a.m. with the unveiling of a new web-based, ten-part video course called ‘The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within,’ presented by Mr. Gaffney.” (Highlighting Forum’s.)

The Center declared the NPC event will be “live-streamed at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com.”

Conservatives should find this painstakingly prepared and in-depth video series invaluable for grass-roots gatherings, and for bringing politicians on both the national, and state and local levels to a more alert mind on Islamist threats and ways to cope with them.

Stay tuned for links to the video course.

“… [Y]ears of liberals running their own private indoctrination camps through the American education system have finally taken their toll and are churning out reliably liberal kids who will inevitably come of age. Not enough of them are conservatives and not enough of them will be mugged by reality to convert to conservatism.” – Zorro (via Mark Steyn and Stanley Kurtz)

One gritty fighter against this indoctrination-under-the-guise-of-education trend is Mary Grabar who offers “intellectual ammunition for dissidents of the anti-Western, anti-American academic regime” and rightly styles herself “Editor and Organizer of the Resistance.”

More on writer Grabar here.

Yesterday we were catching up on Graber’s latest report from Georgia, which included a brief post from National Association of Scholars’ Ashley Thorne who explained –

“NAS member and contributor Mary Grabar, whose nom de blog is ‘Dissident Prof,’ has posted two videos on her website that give a window into the academic-credit-for-activism culture in contemporary higher education.

The first video is of a teach-in held on February 4. The first 40 seconds of the video shows Jennifer Esposito, a professor at Georgia State University pledging to give extra credit to students in her ‘Race, Class, and Gender in Education’ course if they bring in handwritten letters to legislators opposing certain immigration reform bills (HB 87 in Georgia and HB 59 in Arizona).”

National Association for Multicultural Education—Georgia Chapter

Investigator Grabar then pointed out (scroll down) –

“The Georgia Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education [NAME] is working to prevent students from forming their own opinions before college by sponsoring speakers on the topic of ‘Teaching in a Diverse World’ and by linking to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance site that highlights a teacher fired for providing her students with ‘authentic learning opportunities’ in the form of writing essays about the Trayvon Martin case and then holding a fundraiser, complete with hoodie-clad students.  Dissident Prof wonders if any student essays in support of due process would get good grades from this teacher, though.”

Well, we asked ourselves yesterday, what is the Maryland chapter of this fine group of NAME constitutionalists contributing to improving history and civics learning in the Old Line State?

Here is what we found.

Carroll County Schools Host NAME Meeting Next Saturday

A Carroll County school system flyer here announces

“Maryland Multicultural Coalition Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education

2012 Annual Statewide Multicultural Education Conference

Beyond Multiculturalism: The Road Less Traveled.

. . . . . . . . . .

Hosted by: Carroll County Public School System April 28, 2012

Winters Mill High School, 560 Gorsuch Road, Westminster, Maryland 21157”

We are always delighted that Maryland’s own Michelle Shearer, 2011 national teacher of the year, carries her message of accomplishment to this and many other conferences as keynote speaker.

But one fears to imagine what the conference theme “Beyond Multiculturalism: The Road Less Traveled” has in store for the Republic.

A taste of what to expect at the Westminster, Maryland  April 28 conference? 

EdChange here declares they will be there.  Their website urges –

“Check out the Introduction to the new book, Assault on Kids: How Hyper-Accountability, Corporatization, Deficit Ideologies, and Ruby Payne Are Destroying Our Schools, by Roberta Ahlquist, Paul C. Gorski, and Theresa Montaño (Eds.).

Read Complicating White Privilege: Race, Poverty, and the Nature of the Knapsack, Paul’s short essay on limitations in the popular ‘white privilege’ discourse, recently published by the Web site, Counterpunch.”

Conservative readers will be thrilled to learn the public, political positions here of the Maryland Multicultural Coalition Chapter’s parent organization NAME.

• A sample — their position paper here on “undocumented immigrants.”

• Another — their paper here on “NAME Statement of Solidarity with OccupyChicago and the Global Occupy Movement.”

NAME and its Maryland chapter have every right to propagate their views.

They have no right to do so on taxpayer money.

They have no entitlement to the imprimatur of a public school system suggesting that the Maryland NAME chapter is merely a professional association dedicated purely to advancing the art of  teaching as it has been understood throughout the Western tradition.

The parent National Association for Multicultural Education is clearly a left-wing advocacy organization.

Consequently we — and we are sure many readers – will want to know how much Maryland and local taxpayer money supports not just this April 28 political organization’s statewide meeting — but also supports its other Maryland activities throughout the year by providing facilities, or bankrolling any honoraria, travel, and teacher dues.

Clarice Feldman first came to this author’s attention around 1969 when she in her words —

“represented  Joseph A. Yablonski (‘Jock Yablonski’) in his bid for the presidency of the Union in the late 1960′s  and his successor Miners for Democracy, the reform group which took over after he, his wife and daughter were murdered by thugs in the pay of then Union President Tony Boyle.”

Here is a link to that lamentable episode in the history of American labor.

Last Sunday Clarice Feldman weighed in (American Thinker) on the Martin-Zimmerman matter with her ‘A Struggle Ensued’: Lynch Mob Justice In Florida –

“It doesn’t take a great deal of insight to see how the killing of Trayvon Martin, whom the media almost uniformly inaccurately presented as a younger, much smaller child  (sans his tattoos and gold teeth grill) than he was when killed and smaller than George Zimmerman, was the vehicle for another stab at a national race war. Sometime earlier Zimmerman had taken actions to protest that very Police Department’s failure to act when the son of a Sanford police officer had beaten a homeless black man. Others stepped forward to credibly establish he had no racial animus towards blacks whatsoever.

To keep fanning the flames, the media invented a new ethnic/racial category ‘white Hispanic’.  (A Hispanic-Black fight and murder apparently was unacceptable to the story line they wanted.) Despite CNN’s effort to claim to the contrary and the outrageous doctoring of the transcripts of the 911 call transcripts to support such claims, nothing in Zimmerman’s 911 calls preceding the incident indicated he was stalking Martin with an intent to harm him, nor that his suspicions were aroused by anything except Trayvon’s own behavior on that night at the Twin Lakes housing complex, where there had been 18 crimes in the prior year and where Zimmerman served as a volunteer Community Watch captain.”

Readers are encouraged to consider the entire Feldman post.

Andrew McCarthy here and here and Steve Emerson here and here spell out the details of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) visit from Egypt last week which gained that hostile organization $1.5 billion in American taxpayer dollars.

Former Federal prosecutor McCarthy revealed –

“In October 2010, on the eve of the Islamic revolution that the media fancies as ‘the Arab Spring,’ the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood called for jihad against the United States.

You might think that this all but unnoticed bombshell would be of some importance to policymakers in Washington. It was not. It is not. This week, the Obama administration quietly released $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian government, now dominated by a Brotherhood-led coalition in parliament — soon to be joined by an Ikhwan (i.e., Brotherhood) luminary as president.

It is not easy to find the announcement. With the legacy media having joined the Obama reelection campaign, we must turn for such news to outlets like the Kuwait News Agency. There, we learn that, having dug our nation into a $16 trillion debt hole, President Obama has nevertheless decided to borrow more money from unfriendly powers like China so he can give it to an outfit that views the United States as an enemy to be destroyed.”

Last Monday Investigative Project on Terrorism chief Steve Emerson explained–

“They represent the new political power in Cairo, and given their performances in public events in Washington last week, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party has the art of doublespeak nailed.

At two events, four FJP members spoke about dialogue and respect for the West, in comments often at odds with the party line in their home country. They sidestepped controversial issues and tailored their message of dialogue to exclude the party’s extreme positions during an appearance Wednesday at Georgetown University and Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

They stuck to that theme despite aggressive questions which came mostly from Egyptian secularists.

‘We are here to start building bridges with the United States,’ said Sondos Asem, the senior editor of the Brotherhood website Ikhwanweb.com and the editor of the group’s Twitter account. She spoke about the FJP’s embrace of ‘Freedom, Human Dignity, Justice, and Democracy,’ as well as her own experiences of being considered a security risk under the Mubarak regime.

But the website she edits, Ikhwanonline.com, has previously burned those bridges with hateful and anti-Western rhetoric. In a statement condemning Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of American special forces, an article published by Ikhwanonline condoned attacks on foreign forces occupying Muslim lands, including American troops. The article states, ‘so long as occupation remains resistance is legitimate and it [the Muslim Brotherhood] calls on the United States, NATO and the EU to end the occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.’

Other articles on her website hail violence and terrorism. One celebrates the life and death of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, while another claims that America actually creates terrorist states to have reasons to invade the Muslim world.”

The Grandys Sound The Brotherhood Alarm on Talk1200

Sounding the alarm (audio) this morning about the special exemptions from U.S. border inspection given to the MB delegation, however, were Fred Grandy and Mrs. Fred on Talk1200 .

Mrs. Fred asks –

“Where is the outrage in our country”?

Fred Grandy warns listeners about another group in the panoply of creeping shariah: the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America.

Translating Jihad’s post “Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America Cautions Muslims Against Participating in American Legal System; Urges Them to ‘Hate It in Their Hearts’” points out –

“It is important to note that AMJA–whose stated purpose is to ‘clarify the rulings of the sharia which are relevant for those who live in America’–is not just a fringe organization with no influence. The Islamic scholars involved with this group occupy influential positions in universities, Islamic centers, and mosques throughout the United States.”

Readers may wish to see the lists of these Islamic scholars at their various academic and Islamic locations in the U.S. here, and here (Andrew Bostom).

In an ironic development, Islamist-friendly Grover Norquist will be a guest host on WMAL, the Grandys’ old radio station, tomorrow here (scroll to bottom) on WMAL’s Morning on the Mall show.

Last year Fred Grandy and his wife Catherine Mann, aka Mrs. Fred, left their morning show on WMAL.

She declared in “The muzzling of Mrs. Fred” (Daily Caller) –

“So Mrs. Fred Friday began to change. Now, instead of railing against cyclists on Old Georgetown Road, Fred and I were slowly connecting the dots between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that body of 57 Islamic states (Palestinian Authority included) that has since 1993 openly claimed in the UN that human rights policy must be subservient to Sharia law.

For our efforts, Fred and I were sometimes called racists and Islamophobes, but our audience loved our shows. Calls and emails would pour in during and after these reports wanting to learn more about the slow but steady progress of civilization jihad. Why wasn’t Nidal Hassan stopped before he murdered fourteen people at Fort Hood? Why is he still not referred to as an Islamic extremist in the official DOD report on the shootings?

The demand for more information eventually culminated two weeks ago in a large public forum on Capitol Hill co-hosted by the radio station, the Heritage Foundation, The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Westminster Institute. Fred fielded a panel of experts on domestic terrorism who packed the house and left the audience wanting more.

Nevertheless, just a few days after the event, Fred was told to tone down the jihadist talk and make sure I did the same. I didn’t. In my February 25th report on how Christians had been arrested in Dearborn, Michigan, for simply talking about their religion to Muslims, I said something that outraged our management and was dismissed.

I’m not sure exactly what I said that they objected to, but if I had to guess, I’d guess it was how I concluded the show: ‘If I don’t return next Friday to continue this discussion, you’ll know that CAIR has successfully put pressure on WMAL — and the radical Muslims have won.’”

Mrs. Fred asked today about the Obama Administration’s pandering to the Muslim Brotherhood: “Where is the outrage?”

Readers might want to ask their conservative friends in the House and Senate: “Where is your outrage?”

Here is a bright side of the conclusion of the GOP presidential nomination race and its media hype: the conservative base and the Tea Partiers can now pay more attention to the composition of the next Congress and, equally important, to the need to improve its Republican leadership.

Conservatives and Tea Partiers need to develop ways to hold members of the Congress who sail under the conservative flag to account – not just on legislation, but also on oversight, and on failure to act when national concerns are threatened.

Almost all the media reported the GOP nomination contest as a kind of national horse race pivoting on personality and money.  We suspect that this kind of political theater was particularly congenial to the Beltway GOP.

Conservatives – with their grasp of our history and constitution –understand that the November 6, 2012 presidential election is about confronting the grave danger president Barack Obama represents.

Mr. Obama is not just a misguided fellow in ‘over his head’,  but a serious and to-date-effective revolutionary politician.

And this danger comes not just from the president himself, but from the strong, sophisticated movement he represents:  a movement now embedded in our government and in the media, the professions, and in our schools from K through Ph.D.

This movement long ago began its work of ‘transforming America.’ It now continues its long march using the powers and the “bully pulpit” of the presidency, and the skill of the  “permanent government” of the senior civil service.

We don’t know who will win on November 6 partly because that will depend on a number of contingencies.

Consider the bailout of September 2008 –  which arguably took much of the wind out of Senator John McCain’s presidential effort.

Last Friday, Scott Rasmussen wrote –

“The bailouts remain the most hated pieces of legislation in recent American history. They spurred both the tea party and the Occupy movements and convinced millions that a corrupt relationship exists between big government and big business. But both Romney and Obama are supporters of the bailouts. Given the public mood, it is almost beyond comprehension that neither party could come up with a presidential candidate opposed to the bailouts. Looking ahead, most voters hear a lot of rhetoric about deficit reduction but don’t believe either party has proposed a serious plan to stop ever-increasing government spending. Most don’t even believe that the budget cuts agreed to during the debt ceiling debacle will ever be implemented.”

(Whether or not the public is wholly or partly right about the bailouts, the public is certainly on target when they believe there is a far too intimate connection between the interests of favored businesses and powerful Federal politicians.)

Our point is that unexpected events (or manufactured crises) between now and November 6 demanding quick, clear positions from the president and his challenger can decisively shape November’s election outcome in these very dangerous times.

If president Obama edges out reelection, we shall need a strong principled GOP leadership in both houses of the Congress to limit further damage.

If governor Mitt Romney is elected, we shall also need such a strong principled leadership to ensure we begin to roll back the Left’s already-begun “transformation of America.”

As we and many others have written and detailed, the record of the Senate GOP leadership from 2009 onward has been lamentable.  The record of the House GOP leadership in the current Congress has been, charitably put, ineffective and likely will continue on that path.

It won’t do just to finally have 51 GOP senators or to keep the House GOP majority.

If conservatives want conservative outcomes from the next Congress, they will have to do better in finding ways to hold GOP members accountable.

We all saw the many disappointments from the House of Representatives GOP after the November 2, 2010 election gave the Republicans an historic victory in that chamber.

Consequently conservatives should understand they won’t get what they are looking without improving the current GOP Congressional leadership here and here.

And we’ll be looking at some of these essential conservative goals shortly.

But keep in mind, we are aiming to elect a replacement for president Obama.  We are not electing a “Republican Caesar” with plenary powers to set America right. The hard, careful, and detailed work of setting America right must continue from the grass roots informed by the many independent conservative analysts. And it must be accelerated now.

Fred Grandy and Mrs. Fred today told Talk 1200 listeners about further developments in the Islamic Circle of North America’s (ICNA) nationwide campaign to market Shariah to Main Street. Listen here.

Both Grandys built on their warnings of  two weeks ago about the Islamic Circle of North America “Launch[ing A]Nationwide Shariah Education Campaign to Promote Religious Freedom and Combat Islamophobia”

“NEW YORK, March 5, 2012 – Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) announced today a national Shariah education campaign to promote religious freedom and combat Islamophobia. ICNA’s campaign, Defending Religious Freedom, Understanding Shariah, will include a 25 city education tour to introduce the Islamic faith to the American public.”

“The Truth or Taqiyya?”

Just last Monday, Frank Gaffney explained (Center for Security Policy) in his “The Truth or Taqiyya?”  -

“One of the most important challenges we face as a free people is understanding the true nature of – and threat posed by – a totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine its adherents call shariah.  So, it would seem to be good news that a $3 million public education campaign is being launched nationwide to ‘clarify’ what shariah is.

The question is:  Will this campaign be truthful and helpful, or will it amount to an exercise in what is not only permissible under shariah, but obligatory: lying for the faith, or taqiyya in Arabic?

Unfortunately, since the sponsor of this initiative is one of the most virulent Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the United States, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the shariah tour will assuredly be all taqiyya, all the time.  As we are seeing in Egypt at the moment, the Brotherhood is fully prepared to lie about its repressive agenda until it is too late for its opponents to resist.”

Read the entire Gaffney post here.

Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Perception Management Team’

In a closely related development,  Claire M. Lopez in her “Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Perception Management Team’ to Washington, D.C.” yesterday revealed (StopRadicalIslam.org) –

“A Muslim Brotherhood perception management team is coming to Washington, D.C. Georgetown University’s Saudi-funded Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and its Director, John Esposito, will host a delegation of Egyptian members of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party for ‘a discussion’ on April 4, 2012. Then, the group will join fellow Brotherhood-affiliates from Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia the next day at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for a program to be moderated by Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and a senior associate in the Middle East Program at Carnegie.”

Long-time intelligence analyst Lopez concludes –

“If it is possible to attend these sessions at Georgetown University or Carnegie, it is sure to be instructive in the methodology of the influence operation. The words will be perfectly calibrated to resonate with freedom-loving people who cheer to see the oppressed rise up chanting slogans about ‘democracy.’ The reality is otherwise…but because the Brotherhood’s influence within America’s own national security leadership circles, academia, and society as a whole already is so great, it can be difficult to realize that the pre-violent jihad by stealth is far more lethal to the West than the violent jihad. The violence will come anyway (at the end), but now is the time for ‘civilization jihad,’ unless delegations like this one are seen for what they really are and met with some pointed questions.”(Underscoring Forum’s.)

Read the entire Lopez post here.

The back and forth between anchor Jeff Katz and the Grandys reveals in plain words the implications of the Shariah marketing tour. But the word needs to get out to Main Street politicians.

“I am assuming Congress, the Senate, and governors around the country are standing up and saying ‘Oh no, we are fighting back’ ” declared Katz.

“Actually, they’re clueless,” replied Fred Grandy.

Now that the primary dust is settling after yesterday’s voting in the Maryland Sixth Congressional District GOP primary and Roscoe Bartlett has once again won the nomination, it is time for some post-election analysis.

As many readers know, there was a last-minute cascade of campaign material from and about the GOP primary candidates.

Hiding in the Fiscal Closet: Brinkley The Taxer and The Spender

Maryland state senator David Brinkley’s campaign website portrayed him as as a low-tax fiscal watchdog challenger while implying that incumbent United States Representative Roscoe Bartlett was some kind of liberal –

“I know firsthand that there are no shortcuts to a healthy economy and job creation. Congress must lower taxes, reduce spending and eliminate the debt.”

“’C’ DOES NOT STAND FOR CONSERVATIVE

“The Heritage Foundation, the preeminent conservative think tank, gave Roscoe Bartlett a ‘C’ grade this year for all his liberal votes.”

David Brinkley Likes Republican Tax Hikes

In September 2004, the Maryland Taxpayers Association listed here the components of former governor Bob Ehrlich’s tax hikes.  They totaled almost $2 billion dollars.

Mr. Brinkley voted for the statewide tax hikes enacted that year:  BRFA SB508, the Flush Tax SB320 , the “Holding Company” corporate tax hike HB297, and the Car Tax HB 1467.

The National Taxpayers Union here and Americans for Tax Reform here surgically removed whatever legitimacy some these taxes might have had as merely ordinary “fees.”

One of senator Brinkley’s current endorsers for Congress, senator Chris Shank, himself supported (as a delegate) two of the 2004 Ehrlich tax hikes here and here.  In Mr. Shank’s case, the then-delegate was also a no-new-taxes pledge signer.

As we wrote in 2008 – -

“Maryland tax hikes are all to be deplored whether they hit successful small-business entrepreneurs (the so-called millionaires’ tax) or largely hit the poor (the slots tax).”

The Brinkley Senate GOP Leadership Coup

On December 4, 2006,  in a former role as executive vice-president of the Maryland Taxpayers Association,  I wrote Maryland taxpayer advocates and GOP state senators–

“Tomorrow the Republican Caucus of the Maryland Senate will choose its leader at 1:30 PM in Annapolis.

The contest is between Senator Andy Harris, the current Republican whip, and Senator David Brinkley.

In 2004, the Maryland General Assembly and the governor enacted four major tax-hikes:

• • SB508 decoupling Maryland taxes from the then just-enacted Bush Federal estate and business tax relief;
  • HB 1467, the car tax;
  • SB320, the flush tax, and
  • HB297, a corporate tax increase.

Taxpayer advocates should know that Senator Harris, a no-new-taxes pledge signer, stood resolutely against all these measures.

Senator Brinkley, not a pledge signer, voted for all of them.”

The Thousand Pound Maryland Pension Gorilla

Almost exactly two years ago, the Washington Post declared in their “Maryland awakes from its bender on teachers’ pension” that–

“BREAKING THE BANK in Maryland has been a bipartisan, multilateral pursuit for years, backed by both parties at the state and local levels alike. When state lawmakers enacted a big increase in teachers’ pensions four years ago — an increase that freighted Annapolis with huge obligations to cover benefits negotiated by local school systems — the move was pushed by Democrats, signed by a Republican governor, cheered by localities and hailed by then-Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, now the national GOP party chairman.”

Here is the lamentable Maryland senate vote on this measure – no member of the General Assembly opposed it.

But by all accounts, state senator David Brinkley was the leading voice on Republican tax and spending policy in the General Assembly by virtue of his position on the Budget and Taxation Committee.

Why was this key GOP senator mute — instead of calling members of his own party back from the pension brink, not to put too fine a point on it?

Bipartisan Spending

Early in the last full year of governor Bob Ehrlich’s administration, Sam Batkins of the National Taxpayers Union published his Maryland’s Fiscal Folly: The Taxpayer’s View which revealed–

“On January 17, 2006, Governor Ehrlich proposed the largest increase in state spending in at least 25 years. Governor Ehrlich touts ‘Fiscal Responsibility’ as one of the ‘Five Pillars’ of the Ehrlich-Steele Administration, but his record 12 percent budget increase would likely make his predecessor (derisively referred to as ‘Spendening’) blush. Governor Glendening’s largest budget increase was a robust 10.9 percent.”

“Huge, it’s just huge,” Gov. Bob Ehrlich said.

But we were playing catch-up on spending declared Tony O’Donnell — now the GOP nominee for Congress in Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District–

“House Minority Leader Anthony O’Donnell said he would have liked to use more of the state’s $1.2 billion surplus to give money back to taxpayers, but the governor ‘is catching up on some areas where, because of fiscal constraints, we’ve had to make some cuts.’”

NTU analyst Batkins also pointed out –

“Suppose Maryland had restricted its rising expenditures to no more than population growth plus inflation, beginning in Fiscal Year 1995. Under this scenario, spending should have grown by an average of 3.5 percent annually from 1995-2005. If an inflation/population limit were applied (on a compounded year-by-year basis) to Maryland, 2005 expenditures would have been just over $21 billion (about $3,700 per capita). Governor Ehrlich’s proposed FY 2007 budget is nearly $30 billion (about $5,300 per capita). Even after accounting for the 2006 Fiscal Year, a leaner government would mean that close to $9 billion (approximately $1,600 per capita), or almost a third of the current budget request, would still be in the pockets of Maryland taxpayers in 2007. Instead, Governor Ehrlich and Governor Glendening have chosen political expediency over the best interests of taxpayers.”

David Brinkley suggested to Maryland voters that he had some special fiscal and leadership skills warranting his election to Congress in these very dangerous times.

But he didn’t use his Budget and Taxation Committee position to steer the Ehrlich Administration in a better direction. He simply thundered along with the Annapolis herd on making public pension commitments.

These unwarranted promises will likely have to be honored from the family budgets of ordinary home owners.

The Pork-Laced Maryland Capital Budgets

Over the years, we have written about the Maryland capital budget and its spending temptations.

Readers can see the various outrages in recent capital budgets in our Is A New Pork Express Just Leaving the Annapolis Station? and our Local Spending: Ranking Free State Republican Senators (click on foregoing titles).

Mr. Brinkley has voted for every capital budget since he has been in the Maryland Senate right through this year. Here is his vote in his Budget and Taxation Committee for this year’s capital budget.

Roscoe Bartlett’s Real “Score Card” With Heritage Action

As we noted earlier, Mr. Brinkley made a campaign point of Dr. Bartlett’s rating on a conservative congressional scorecard. 

Heritage Action runs, in our view, a take-no-prisoners scorecard of Congressional action. (This is the scorecard to which the Brinkley campaign site apparently referred.)

In Heritage Action’s own words, “Heritage Action’s legislative scorecard isn’t graded on a curve – it is tough and we don’t apologize. After all, we are conservatives, not tenured university professors.”

Dr. Bartlett has a Heritage Action score of 77 percent here.

By way of comparison,  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has 60 per cent. In fact, Dr. Bartlett’s score exceeds that of every Virginia House Republican.

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy has a score of 61 per cent.

Representative Allen West has a score of 74 per cent.

The troubling part of all this is that Mr. Brinkley apparently calculated that so many GOP voters in this closed primary would be unaware of his General Assembly record and that GOP primary voters would carelessly accept his criticisms of the House record of primary victor Roscoe Bartlett.

Even more troubling is the possibility that the good senator Brinkley himself really believes he is a credit to his party in the Maryland General Assembly.  The people of his senatorial district of course will have the last word on this in 2014.

But David Brinkley certainly didn’t show he had the right stuff for the U. S. House of Representatives while America is in such danger.

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