Langer to coordinate McCain’s Eastern Shore efforts

Langer, who defended prostitution researcher and global warming denier John Berlau is supporting bigamist and elitist John McCain? Why does this not surprise me?

This campaign will come to a halt when McCain's ties to ViaGlobal come out. Blackwater, bribery, theft, FBI investigations, those are just the beginning, and McCain aide Chris Paul was in the middle of it all!

Immoderate:

Frank Kratovil left PG county because he knew he couldn't run for office here. All of us in PG County know it, the PG Democratic Party knows is, and, frankly, we're all happy about it.

The only think Frank Kratovil cares about is moving ever-higher on the ladder of elective office, and he was told that Queen Anne's County would be the place to go.

Having read much of the work on the role of private property rights in protecting the environment, and having been an avid admirer of the work of a number of organizations Mr. Langer has worked for or been allied with in the past (CEI, Cato, Reason, PERC, Pacific Research, etc), I'd probably say that he ascribes to the work of people like RJ Smith, Michael DeAlessi, Dr. Robert Nelson (of the University of Maryland) and a host of other people who have been able to apply these jeffersonain principles to these problems.

Besides the fact that communitarian solutions to these problems are enormously costly, convoluted and complex, they generally don't get us where we need go in terms of actually solving the problems they were designed to address. Generally, because the conditions that are imposed are punitive and create great disincentives.

The Endangered Species Act is but one example that I've read about from some of Mr. Langer's colleagues - RJ Smith, for instance, speaks a great deal of how using property rights can actually help promote species recovery. Michael DeAlessi talks about the role of property rights in bringing back fisheries, something that we could desperately use here.

At the same time, we have to realize that property rights are at the bedrock of a free, civil and prosperous society. Don't take my word for it, or Mr. Langer's. Take a look at the work of Dr. Richard Pipes, who was one of Ronald Reagan's soviet strategy architects. Or if you don't want an American viewpoint, look at Hernando DeSoto from Peru.

The rules on private property rights were laid out by the founding fathers for a good reason - they recognized that without those rights, or that by shortchanging those rights, we would all wind up less free.

I want to see the Chesapeake saved, but I know that we need to look at the real problem, which is largely due to industrial pollution from Pennsylvania from facilities along the Susquehanna. We do something to sharply curtail the runoff from entering the bay at the north end, and we'll go a long way towards solving those problems.

In the interim, if there are people who want restrictions placed along buffer zones along the bay, then perhaps these individuals ought to find a way to work cooperatively with the landowners, to find a way to incentivize the buffer program, or to pay these landowners for the loss of their property, as the constitution demands.

I don’t have anything personal against Mr. Langer, Andy Harris, or anyone else involved in politics; its simply a difference of opinion, another way of reaching what I hope are the same goals: a better America, and a better Maryland.

After taking Immoderate’s advice and Googling Andrew Langer, I find that I disagree with Langer because of his belief that private property rights are the Holy Grail, and that all progressive ideas should either live or die based on their impact on those private property rights.

Smart growth policies that encourage growth at a scale and pace best suited for the community, not just for a few landowners, would have Langer tied in knots. Requirements for riparian buffers, runoff, and living shorelines represent policies that help the Chesapeake immeasurably, but I’d bet Langer would fight them as an attack on the natural rights of landowners.

Langer’s belief in the religion of private property is anti-community; it is every man for himself taken to its logical extreme. How can we solve communal problems, like the health of the Bay, with every individual acting on their own behalf?

I think it is also interesting to note that everyone acting in their own best interests without care for the good of the group is the antithesis of true conservatism.

I was responding to the remarks from Shoreman, about Kratovil being a PG County hack. I urge you to google the name Andrew Langer, or deal with him on a personal basis, and you will soon see that this fellow hasn't met a fact he couldn't dispute. So facts don't mean much with a guy like Langer.

Frank Kratovil, while not an Eastern Shore native, as defined by being born on the Shore, is still closer to being a Shore native than Andy Harris. Up until Dr. Harris decided to run for Congress, the Eastern Shore was nothing more than the land that happened to surround Route 50. It was the corn and beans he swiftly passed by on his way to St. Michaels or Ocean City. Frank Kratovil works, lives, and plays in Queen Anne’s County; he is raising a family in Queen Anne’s county; Andy Harris just wants the Shore’s votes.

The fact is that with folks like this and no new ideas, Obama wins.

Wow - This is great news for the Obama campaign!

Yes, indeed; Andrew Langer can certainly do that. The only problem here, well strike that, there are lots of problems with this selection...one of the biggest problems here, is that Langer is a partisan hack. In a state as blue as Maryland, a Republican partisan hack will make about as much progress as the proverbial molasses in January.

Langer is not a McCain type of guy, and interestingly enough, he isn't a Giuliani kind of guy either; he is a Grover Norquist kind of guy, a Sam Brownback kind of guy. In short, he's a conservative who hasn't read the books. Instead, he just recites the party rhetoric as soon as it arrives in his inbox.

The other McCain apparatus in Maryland (the ones who have been there all along) aren't partisan hacks, they tend to mirror the moderate and maverick views of their candidate. It is those views that will lead to any gains McCain may make in this bluest of blue states, and it is the views of folks like Langer, a carpet-bagging Eastern Shore wannabe, that will keep Maryland Republicans in the wilderness for years to come.