Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Democrat Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, running for his sixth term from Maryland’s Second Congressional District, and his Republican challenger, Maryland State Senator Nancy Jacobs, debated each other Monday night at a Baltimore County elementary school. What with all those titles, and everything that’s at stake, you’d think it would have been a bigger deal.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
First things first. If you’re wondering about the featured image, those are “Incumbent Hogs,” so named by animal scientists for their addiction to green colored feed donated by the same especially interested parties who intend to eat them (the hogs) later.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Does the title of this piece seem just a tad overly dramatic? “Addicted.” “Taking… money.” Maybe a bit, but it’s true.
Consider the following table, based on Federal Election Commission data for the September 30, 2012 campaign financing reports for Second District incumbent Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger and his Republican challenger, Maryland State Senator Nancy Jacobs. (You can click on the table to make it larger.)
Saturday, October 13, 2012
There are lots of reasons not to re-elect an incumbent. The good reasons have to do with differences of opinion. You believe in this. He/she believes in that, and the difference is a deal breaker.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
…and what do those special interest contributors expect in return? That is, of course, “the money question.” Take a look at the table below. You can click on it to make it larger.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Pandering is what many politicians do for a living. When you don’t understand or know how to solve a problem, when you don’t really care enough to do anything substantive about it or have the balls do be honest with your constituents, you pander.
And so the headline from Reuters read.
It may not have made as much news, what with the Olympics starting up, and the media making way to much of Mitt Romney’s technical, honest answer to a question about those games, but it is big news, as important, maybe more so, than jobs and unemployment data.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The table on the left appeared in Monday’s Washington Times.
As my title indicates, it is a dubious distinction, to say the least, that Maryland, a relatively small, generally successful state, would have lost any jobs at all during the first 6 months of this year, let alone lead the nation in that negative statistic.
In fact, as the table indicates, only 12 states of the 50 have net job losses over the first half of this year.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
The following table is too large to insert into this article without the type being too small to read easily. Instead of making you squint to see the numbers, just click on the link below to see – and print, if you like – the PDF version of the table.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Today’s story in The Baltimore Sun wasn’t good news. Take a look at the screenshot of the article’s headline and first few sentences.