Pack Shack Foils Howard County at Every Anti-Pornography Turn

Is this the definition of having nothing better to do?

For 11 years, Howard County officials and some residents have fought to close the jurisdiction's only adult bookstore.

They've passed legislation and waged costly legal battles, only to be thwarted time and again.

And now, despite a county law designed to force the Ellicott City store to move away from nearby homes or close, the Pack Shack appears poised to prevail again - maintaining its "Adult Video" sign along a busy stretch of U.S. 40, along with shelves of explicit movies, skimpy lingerie and sex toys.

The store's solution? Filling its basement and other little-used areas with a broad selection of used books that most customers may never see.

"I'm very bitter," said John Baronas, an Ellicott City resident who first protested the store in 1997 and fears that pornography spurs sex crimes. "Why, if [Rudolph W.] Giuliani can clean up Times Square, can't we get rid of an eyesore?"

It doesn't say in the article, but I'm pretty sure John is bitter because he doesn't have a brain. To begin with Ellicott City isn't Times Square. It's Ellicott City...In Howard County, MD. One of the richest, crime-free counties in the Baltimore-Washington area. There isn't a rape epidemic, or any crime epidemic in Howard County because of one porno store called The Pack Shack (which incidentally is a great name). In 2007 there were 19 rapes (yet county police only arrested 6 suspects) in the entire county to go along with 4 murders within a county population that is over 270,000. The rape rate is nearly half of what it is for the rest of Maryland, and homicide rate doesn't even come close to the state average.

And just a reminder for John: It's 2008 and we are blessed with computers and the Internet, both of which allow scumbags like myself to stay up until all hours of the morning watching completely free and completely disgusting porn in my very own home. While I'm sure The Pack Shack gives its customers a helluva' selection you could no more stem the flow of pornography into your county by unlawfully closing one porn shop than you could slow the flow of white yuppies in Howard County by closing down one Starbucks.* However, that isn't an argument for closing The Pack Shack; it's a business that follows the law and clearly has a market, and just because some activists and silly county executives don't like it doesn't mean that's a good enough reason to close it.

More here including how the county blew $187,000 in taxpayer money.

*Disclaimer: I own a very small amount of Starbucks stock that like most everything else in my portfolio has lost me a lot of money in the last 3 months.

Mishap=Gunshots to the Torso and Arm

Two Maryland teens "shot in police mishap" during a drug investigation in Howard County.

Two teenagers were wounded yesterday by a shot apparently fired accidentally by a Howard County police officer during an investigation of suspected drug activity in a Jessup neighborhood, police said.

A 14-year-old boy who was shot in the torso was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, and a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the arm was taken to Howard County General Hospital, police said.

Don't worry, they found drugs:

Llewellyn said illegal drugs were recovered at the scene but did not say whether police suspect that the wounded youths were buying or selling them.

A 'Lean' Budget With an 4% Increase in Spending

Baltimore Sun:

Governor proposes lean operating budget

After a bruising special session to address Maryland's chronic deficits, Gov. Martin O'Malley proposed one of the leanest state budgets in the past two decades, relying on cuts in open space and road maintenance and a slowdown in an education spending initiative to place the state on sound financial footing.

The governor proposed a 4 percent increase in the state's operating budget - the lowest in five years and one of the lowest in the past 25 years. A 7.5 percent increase was approved by the General Assembly last year.

Lean? A 4% increase counts as lean? It might be a modest reduction in the growth of government spending, but certainly it isn't 'lean budget'. Especially during a time when the taxpayers have been told to suck it up and pay more, due to the dismal financial situation of the state.

Full article here.

Republicans With Spines?

I missed this one last week. Maryland GOP is suing to invalidate the tax increases (set to go in effect this week) from the previous special session of the General Assembly on the basis of a procedural error. My wallet wishes them luck.

Pleasantly Ironic

Maryland politics. [emphasis mine]

House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve, who has supported stricter drunken-driving laws, was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol after being arrested in Gaithersburg late Thursday, police said.[...]

Wagner said the delegate failed a field sobriety test and was found to have a 0.10 blood-alcohol level through a preliminary breath test, which is not admissible as evidence in court. The legal limit is 0.08.

Barve was handcuffed and taken to a county police station in Gaithersburg, where he refused a blood-alcohol test.[...]

Barve, a Gaithersburg resident, has been a member of the House since 1991 and majority leader since 2003.

He is a member of the Ways and Means, Joint Technology Oversight, Legislative Policy and Spending Affordability committees.

He was one of the sponsors of a 2001 bill that changed the state's legal blood-alcohol level for drivers from 0.10 to 0.08.

Washington Post, Slots, etc

God bless this introductory paragraph in a Washington Post piece today on the Secretary of Labor, etc (a few other areas fall under him).

Thomas E. Perez's liberal credentials couldn't be more solid: At the Justice Department, he prosecuted a Texas gang of white supremacists who targeted blacks in a deadly crime rampage. On Capitol Hill, he counseled Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) on civil rights and criminal justice issues. And on the Montgomery County Council, Perez annoyed business interests by crusading against predatory lending.

So only a good liberal would prosecute white supremacist who went on a "deadly crime rage"? A conservative, or libertarian for that matter, would what, just look the other way? Unbelievable.

BTW, the article is about Perez and his front-line support for O'Malley's slots machine proposal. It seems that everyone is shocked, shocked I say, that politicians are two-faced, hypocritical scumbags who lack conviction and change their positions on issues at the drop of an opportunistic hat. In this case it is gambling, or more specifically slots. When former Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich tried to pass a bill allowing slots in Maryland he was met with fierce opposition from Democrats who controlled (and still do control) both houses of the legislature. This wasn't some time in the distant past, rather it was in the last 2 years. And no one seemed, or still seems to care how these gutless politicians have simply changed their mind because their guy is advocating slots now.

This is the money quote from the article on the Secretary:

"I certainly hear from many friends in the progressive community who say, 'Tom, how can you support slots?' " Perez said in a recent interview. "I give them a simple answer.

"I'm motivated in large part because I want to address the problems of the uninsured. I want to address the undereducated, and I want to address the challenges confronting people who are living in the shadows of our communities. The reality is we need a funding source to address these challenges."

Who exactly is that funding source? In the case of slots, it's much the same as state lottery's -- poor and elderly people. Don't mistake me, I have no qualms with gambling. None at all. But I do have problems with a state-run gambling monopolies that block out private casinos and limit choices for the player. Most of all I hate that the government supposedly bans gambling to protect the potentially exploited "victims" of the industry, but then turns around and does the exact same thing they said they were trying to prevent. Disgusting.

Full article here.

Christmas in October

BALTIMORE — To discourage contact with children, some registered sex offenders in Maryland will be asked to post signs at their homes that say "No Candy at This Residence," on Halloween.

[...]

In addition to the signs, all such offenders have been advised in a letter to stay home from 6 p.m. on Halloween until the next morning, leave their lights off and refuse to answer their doors.

Offenders can arrange with their parole or probation officers to be elsewhere that night, and accommodations can be made for offenders who abide by the restrictions but don't want to post the signs, Bartholomew said.

"There will be some houses where it's a sex offender's house and there's not a 'No Candy' sign posted, but in all those instances, someone will be going to the house to make sure the right thing is happening at that house," Bartholomew said.

Sure, the "No Candy Here" sign works great...That is until the pedophile writes, "Wink, Wink" at the bottom of it...Full article here.

Top on Three More Tax Hikes

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is rolling out his budget in baby steps. Even in a state like Maryland it can be tough to announce on one day that you want to raise every single tax possible. Who would've known.....The latest has him raising the gas-tax .8 cents per year (I'm assuming indefinitely), the automobile titling tax a full percentage point to 6%, and increase in the corporate income tax a full percentage point to 8%, and some nasty accounting regulations that would make doing business in Maryland even more painful.

This I love:

The governor said the state is facing a $40 billion backlog in transportation projects and that without new money, Maryland's economy would be at risk.

"Marylanders in the Washington area waste a full week of work every year sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic," O'Malley said. "It's a different kind of tax. It's a tax by circumstance. A tax based on our failure to invest."

Different kind of tax...See, I might be old-fashion but I think the worst types of taxes are the ones where the government steals money from me. And O'Malley sure does seem to be a fan of these regressive tax increases -- sales and gas...How do poor people in Maryland feel about this? Full article here.

Friday Links

The next GOP debate will be held in Baltimore, at Morgan State, and will address minority issues. That is if they can actually get any of the legitamite GOP candidates to actually show up. Here's looking forward to a Paul, Hunter, Tancredo debate come Sept 27th!

Who thinks Marylanders don't pay enough taxes? Governor O'Malley, that's who.

Stadium cleaners get what they want, and will be part of the $11.30 living wage bill in Maryland. People who pick up trash for 81 days a year now coming dangerously close to my salary...

The story that I couldn't escape on my last trip abroad takes a predictable, but yet interesting twist, as the British parents of the missing Madeleine McCann are officially named suspects by the Portuguese officials.

Teacher facing 105 years in prison after being convicted of having sex with students in a motel, behind a restaurant and in a park.

Speaking of rape (what a segway), I heard this piece of advice around the worst selection of donuts I've ever seen in the office lunchroom. A middle-age mom telling another middle-age mom--"I tell my daughter, if you have to drink, get shots, that way no one can slip anything in your drink." Brilliant! We -- and by we I mean Cicero and Rob -- need more mothers out there telling their college age daughters to get fucked up and to get fucked up quicker. I love irrational fear!

Don't Go Back to Rockville... Er, Silver Spring... Um, Wheaton

What interests me most about yesterday's arrest of Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon just outside Washington, DC isn't the fact that U.S. drug cops are calling him part of "the largest single drug cash seizure the world has ever seen." Instead, it's this:

When the law caught up with Ye Gon on Monday night, his weeks on the lam ended in an Asian restaurant on Veirs Mill Road in Wheaton -- in P.J. Rice Bistro, in Westfield Wheaton mall, near a Ruby Tuesday and a JCPenney.

So now it's Wheaton Yesterday it was Rockville. Or maybe Silver Spring.

The funny* thing is that this isn't some sort of reporting error. I don't know anyone who knows where one city ends and the next begins**.

Even the phone company doesn't know, as evidenced by the fact that when my girlfriend's mom calls our place, our caller ID identifies her as calling from Silver Spring (even though she pays her taxes in Rockville). Google maps refuses to give Wheaton the time of day (note the search term and the search result), even though the state of Maryland acknowledges it as a place (albeit an unincorporated one).

Don't go back? I'm not sure I've even been.

*Possibly funny, at least to people in the DC area.

**I lived for a brief time in Kensington, Md., which -- if it's even a real place -- somehow manages to fit itself snugly inside the Wheaton/Rockville/Silver Spring trifecta.