P. Kenneth Burns' Blog

Consider this piece to be my no confidence vote in Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson (D). OK, to be fair, I never had confidence in Johnson in the six years he has been county executive. Thankfully for the first two years of his era, I lived on the Anne Arundel side of Laurel.

First let me discuss the main reasons that he was elected. In 2002, he was elected on his campaign to root out police corruption, in addition to being in a very crowded field to succeed Wayne Curry (D). Candidates that year included council member Jim Estepp, former delegate the Rev. C. Anthony Muse and then-delegate Rushern Baker III. Two years ago, Johnson won by running (literally) from Baker.

Perhaps this is one of those situations where there is enough blame to go around.

First here is what we know. We know that Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon (D) is being investigated into whether or not she received gifts for approving city incentives that favor developers. In particular is developer Ronald Lipscomb. Lipscomb and Dixon, who were separated from their respective spouses for quite sometime, acknowledged that they had a personal relationship between 2003 and 2004. During the course of the relationship, they had spent a lot of time traveling and a lot of time shopping. Those shopping strips involved dropping a lot of money in a single store. Also a fact is that Dixon did not make full disclosures when she filed her ethics reports. This is where I begin.

And now for the monthly round up of things you should know about, things you haven’t heard about yet or things you already know but I’m going to tell you what I feel about it anyway, it’s time for Burns-pourri to wrap up June.

Starting up with two things from my blog…

Today (or tonight depending on when you are reading this,) I would like to send a personal message to Del. Patrick McDonough (R) who represents District 7 in Baltimore and Harford Counties…YOU’VE PICKED THE WRONG FIGHT…in regards to Maryland Public Television last year.

In August of last year, MPT decided to use one of its digital sub-channels to broadcast “V-me,” a public television service in Spanish. In response to this, McDonough vowed to write a bill to establish a commission to decide what goes on the digital sub-channels. This was something I could not agree with him on the basis that it is completely un-American to control content of the airwaves, outside of things indecent…make that reasonably indecent. Don’t worry, I still believe that English should be encouraged, immigration laws should be enforced and fencing the border is a waste of time.

This week, I am going to do something different. Have you ever had so many issues you want to talk about, but do not know where to begin? I do on a regular basis (this week, more than anytime and it’s compounded by the fact that I try to keep this a weekly column.) It is that premise that I present to you “Burns-pourri.” This is where I take those topics and condense them. It will either be something I have an opinion on, something you probably should know about… or both.

So what have we learned from the recent Democratic battle royal in Capital City?

For starters, if you break the rules, you have to pay a price. This could not be truer for the states of Florida and Michigan who had moved up their primaries, despite the fact that the rules for both the Democratic and Republican national committees forbid anyone to move their primaries before February 5. New Hampshire was the only exception for the Democrats.

Despite these rules, those two states moved their primaries up. The GOP penalized Michigan and Florida, along with Wyoming, New Hampshire and South Carolina by taking away one half of the delegates in that state. Obviously, there wasn’t a whole fallout about what the GOP handed down and no one seems to be surprised by the action. The Democrats, on the other hand, simply stripped Florida and Michigan of their delegates…all of them, and the candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. The democratic leadership did this to send a message to other states thinking about moving their primaries up, in an attempt to gain control of the schedule again.

I became a registered Republican in 2003. It was because I finally became disappointed with the Democrats over how they were behaving in Annapolis. The more I did research, the more disenchanted I became with the party. From the nitpicking and partisan bickering with Governor Robert Ehrlich (R) to their attempts to raise taxes (which they succeeded in this past November.) Then there was the fact that they took the black vote for granted. They would promise a number of things and not worry about delivering the goods when the time came.

I became a Republican because they were at the very least more honest about what they stood for. Oh, and that whole anti-slavery thing helped as well. The Republicans acknowledge that they were wrong to play racial politics, but the conservative base was honest about their stance on Affirmative Action. Not every person in a political party agrees with each other, but they have core values that unite them. Let me be clear, I DID NOT become Republican because of Ronald Reagan.

In case you were not within an ear shot of the nation’s capital, Governor Martin O’Malley made a couple of radio runs this past week, where he took ample opportunities to take shots at his predecessor, now-former Governor Robert Ehrlich.

It’s no secret that the current governor’s job approval rating is down from a year ago, way down, in the 30s. His reasoning behind that is because he raised taxes. That was what he told WTOP (103.5FM) political analyst Mark Plotkin, but he added that it was a bit more complicated than that. “We were left a $1.7 billion deficit by our predecessor that red ink came crashing on us. We had to make a lot of cuts and we also had to push a lot of unpopular measures and nobody ever stands up and applauds.”

If I am not mistaken, I believe that Ehrlich (R) left O’Malley (D) with a surplus and it was widely reported that the Governor would not face a deficit in his first year however, one would happen down the road. That was a pretty short road wasn’t it? This time last year we were hearing about deficits ranging from $1.3-1.7 billion. It should also be noted that the last democratic governor that was in office, Parris Glendening, left Ehrlich with a $2 billion deficit.

I hope all of you read the story in yesterday’s Washington Post (published May 6) regarding the alleged screws being put to Maryland State Police Superintendent Col. Terrance Sheridan by the office Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Prince George’s Senator Nathaniel Exum (D-Dist. 24) in regards to having an inspection license issued to a garage that in a five month period, gave out more than double the number of inspection certificates when compared to other garages in the same period.

I admittedly did not see the story, which is kind of odd because I glanced over the front page. Turns out that the article was below the fold. I did not hear about the story until I was driving up to Aberdeen for the first of I hope many appearances in studio on the WAMD (970AM) program “Word on the Street with Warren Monks.” (I was listening to the commish, Ed Norris on WHFS (105.7FM))

I do not know what is more appalling in this situation. Is it the fact that despite at least three MSP superintendents (including Norris) backed up the now former commander of the division, Capt. Robert Bambary, in refusing to issue a new license to the Capital Heights garage, O’Malley’s office stepped in at the behest of Exum? How about Exum’s conspiracy theory of the MSP was “acting as the prosecutor, the judge and the jury” in addition to his long shot “jail” comparison? Or, is it the inflammatory possibility that he whipped out the race card to hold up the confirmation of Sheridan, just to help out a business that was not in his district?

As I was driving home Monday night, I decided that I was going to write about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright this week. Sometimes when a story is so big, you cannot ignore it. Something must be said. Then as I was watching ABC, I saw Democratic Presidential Candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) cutting ties with his long time pastor who was in Washington earlier this week.

As I was watching Obama speak, it was like he was eavesdropping on a phone conversation I was having earlier in the day. Obama during his speech in North Carolina said, “The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.” Now, obviously I was not around the Rev. Wright in the late 80s. If you saw “Bill Moyer’s Journal” from over the weekend, you would have seen a different Wright indeed. That program included clips of an interview from “Frontline” in 1987. The clips from two decades ago showed Wright promoting the afro-centric themes that his church would become known for.