Remember,
only
THE SHADOW
knows for sure!

Dickie-Do
(Stan Laurel)
Voorhaar

Don Purdy
Has announced he will run for Sheriff for the 23rd time in 2028

Dan Raley
This man has a ham sandwich with your name on it.

 

Anchors Aweigh?

St. Mary's Sheriff Richard Voorhaar
ST. MARY'S TODAY photo
Where did Barney Fife get the three stripes on each sleeve?   Did Dickie-do promote himself to the rank of Admiral since the Seafarer's Union has tried to give him a boat to begin establishing his own Navy?
One reader says Dickie-do only has enough stripes for a Commander and lacks a star necessary to be an Admiral.
Only The Shadow
knows for sure!


Babs Thompson, winner of the 1995 Wicked Witch of the West Look-alike Contest.   She will soon throw her hat in the ring for a return bout as commissioner president, leading a GOP Dream Ticket of herself, Shelby Guazzo and Clare Whitbeck, forever more known as "Bab's Biddies".  Two more stoney-faced broads and they will have a five-biddie ticket.  Maybe Jane Sypher will convert to Republican!

DEDICATED TO OUR READERS This material is political commentary and may rot your mind.  Those who are politically correct should run for the nearest exit.   This means you Bluenose! Mudslinging is one of the most interesting parts of politics, phone, e-mail to staff@stmarystoday.com , mail to P. O. Box 689 Calif, Md. 20619  your nominations to this SHRINE OF MUD

The following is a transcript of an illegal tape recording of the regular secret meeting of the St. Mary’s Commissioners. If you read this account you may be breaking Maryland’s wire tap law, which failed to trip up Linda as she let Monica talk about Bill. Therefore, read this at your own risk.

"Okay, lets get on with this damn meeting," said Jumping Julie, "I have a campaign next year to get ready for, I can’t stand running this idiotic Board and I want out of here and get a decent job like being a Delegate. They make more money, do less work and have nobody mad at them!"

"Do you think your special pal Steny is going to custom design a new delegate district and get rid of that blowhard arch-conservative Republican, Tony O’Dinner, just to make room for you?" asked Shakin’ Shelby as she fingered a new position with her right digit.

"I am working the plan and planning the work, just like Voorhaar and Fritz planned their raid on the newspapers in the last election," said Jumpin’ Julie. "I found this plan laying here under a stack of papers left behind after the old Board cleared out and Kachmar found himself another job."

"Perhaps we moved a little too fast in accepting Kachmar’s resignation," said Portly Dan, wringing his hands in the best tradition of J. Frank. "Now I can’t help but wonder if we would have been better off with Kachmar, who really knew what he was doing than ending up with Lacer. Now we are going ahead and undoing what Kachmar and Durkin did to clean up the nursing home and we are letting the fox into the henhouse, with Pappy Wade and Christine Wray taking over the place, making it a branch of the hospital."

"Just one minute, Dan," yelled Taxing Tommy, "If my political gurus, Abell and Kennedy say this is the right thing to do, and if Pat Jarboe likes it, you ought to like it, he’s your brother-in-law."

"But they were keeping out poor black people the way they ran it before, and my golly, putting a truck driver on the board of the nursing home and making him the chairman, how can that be a good thing, we need health care professionals, Pappy Wade is only good at cooking the books," said Dan. "If we want to change management, contract it out to Dr. Shah and they would run it right."

"Will you two stop going on about that damn nursing home, all I want to know is that we don’t have to pay higher wages to those employees, they are so, well, you know, black." said Julie in her ‘Bama drawl. "I just don’t do well around black people, its just so hard to get used to having them around sitting at meetings and running their mouths like that big mouth Mary Washington, the empty-headed twit."

"Hey, now just stop that stuff Julie, just because Mary got the best of you on the school board doesn’t mean you have to carry over that animosity over to this Board," admonished Portly Dan. "Mary is a wonderful person and a strong vote getter, I would want her on my ticket any day."

"Yeah," retorted Julie, "as long as she doesn’t run against you, you don’t care what kind of worthless performance she turns in with her mindless mutterings!"

"Now lets stop talking about personalities in our executive sessions," lectured Gypsy Joe Anderson. "We are only supposed to be here talking about litigation, personnel or ST. MARY’S TODAY or we are in violation of the St. Mary’s County Open Meetings Act."

"You mean its legal to talk about ST. MARY’S TODAY," asked Taxing Tommy in a wondorus child-like manner.

"Who cares," said Julie, smacking Shelby’s hand away from her nose. "The Emptyprize doesn’t care about the Open Meetings Act, The Rag can’t afford to hire a lawyer to challenge us for our many wonderful violations, that we don’t give a crap about, and we bought off the PRA by scrapping the master plan for development of Myrtle Point Park, Vernon Gray’s ACT folded up, so there isn’t anyone around to care or do anything about the damn Open Meetings Act."

"Now let me get back to reviewing how well we are doing with our Manifesto, which we found left behind when we came into office," said Julie. "First, we raised taxes, a lot, all of them, some of them twice, that’s good, it’s first on the list. Now we have to change zoning, our secret Manifesto said raise it from 3 acres to 10 acres but our citizens group we appointed has reccomended raising it to 20 acres, so lets just do it twice as much as what our Manifesto says and we’ll soar in public opinion."

"But Julie, I ran into a buzz-saw of opposition down at Ridge," said Gyspy Joe. "That night I went home and had a dream, a VISION of me being tarred and feathered and run up Interstate 95 back to Connecticut from whence I came and on the way up they dumped Shelby out in New Jersey where she came from, the poor woman broke her finger when she fell on her nose."

"Crap, Anderson, can’t you act like a man, you sissy," said Shelby, "a bunch of old coots grab you in the ass in one silly meeting and you want to back off on the most important land grab we liberals have ever before tried on a backwoods county in America, a county filled with dimwits, down-home dumbells and ignorant peons who aren’t qualified to tend to my horses or my hunting dogs, much less vote on important public policy such as zoning laws. I just wish we could strip them of their vote as easily as we are taking away their land values."

"Well you might be a shoo-in for reelection because you are woman, even if you do spend half your lift digging for gold in your sinus," said Gypsy Joe. "But I have to run and if I vote for this wise zoning plan, a plan which I have participated in formulating for the past 7 years, a plan of which I am dutifully proud and wish to include in my resume in case my current job as a desk jockey for a defense contractor comes grinding to a halt, I just may lose my relection bid and will then be worthless to the contractor without the prestige of this job and not having a paycheck, will have to rely on my lottery winnings. Translated, that means no more new pickups so I can act like one of the boys when I drive through the parking lot at the firehouse or in front of Bean’s Bar."

 

 

"Anderson, they wouldn’t know you if they fell over you at the firehouse and after the way you’ve raised taxes, my yellow dog could have beat Paul Chesser, I wouldn’t recommend going near Bean’s Bar," said Portly Dan. "They would skin you alive if they could get their hands on your scrawny neck, they’d pluck your scraggly beard right off your chin, they’d tar and feather you and run you up Interstate 95 on a rail..."

"Wait, say no more," yelled Anderson, "That was my vision, it all started when I went to Bean’s Bar. It’s true, that was my vision. This is awful, I can’t vote for such a thing."

"Well what are you going to tell your special interest pals, you know, the EcoNazis of the PRA, Witten, Jansson, Clare Witless, the Mother Goose of the radical environmentalists?" asked Julie as she threw another dart at a picture of Mary Washington.

"To hell with them," said Anderson, "I am more concerned about Sonny Burch and the developers, I have to play ball with the big boys in order to keep hooked into their pocket books, I have great political sophistication and I know the only rule that counts: follow the money."

"Lets get back to our list," demanded Julie. "How many more steps must we undertake, those sneaky Republicans had this secret list and all along they planned on destroying people’s farm values, raising taxes and running the nursing home like a private club for the aged affluent."

"You were sure smart in recognizing these worthy and notable goals, my dear friend, Madam President," said Taxing Tommy as he colored in his favorite coloring book. "I just don’t understand why I don’t get to call the shots and buy the Wharf for a park."

"But Tommy, dear," said Julie as she handed him some bright new colors to draw with, "we already have Myrtle Point, it’s 192 acres with two miles of waterfront and we are doing absolutely nothing with it in order to please a bunch of old geezer PRA members who all live next door to the park and don’t want to see blacks fishing and hold family reunions with greasy chicken and ribs cooking at picnics smelling up the place on Sundays. We only have about two dozen political activists in the whole dadblamed county and they all belong to about 15 organizations and they run the whole county, so we had to get them off our backs, so we made peace by making sure no boats would be launched at Myrtle Point, there would be fishing pier at Myrtle Point and no ball fields and picnic pavilions at Myrtle Point. We made a deal and we are sticking to it."

"But, please tell me again how that keeps us from buying the Wharf property at Leonardtown," said Taxing Tommy. "It just isn’t fair, Julie, I have done everything you ask of me and now I don’t seem to have many friends any more, I just think everyone should just get along and be nice."

"Look you moron, I have told you over and over again there won’t be any damn park in Leonardtown, we are committed enough with that golf course at Tudor Hall, and I don’t plan on having The Rag beat me over the head over and over again about why we are spending money on another waterfront park when we won’t let the people boat and fish at Myrtle Point," said Julie. "Just shut up about your stupid park idea, you are just trying to put some real payoff money in the pockets of your friends and I am not going along with it, unless of course, they want to be my friends too."

"But I supported putting money in the pockets of your friends, we took care of Tommy Waring, of Gabe, of Bubby Knott, why not my friends too," asked Taxing Tommy.

"I am the President, I am the boss, I run this damn county, you boob, just go along with my Plan, with my Manifesto, or I will run you out of office, I could get somebody to run against you and make you an ex-commissioner pretty damn quick if you cross me," said Julie. "Now, lets get on with the Plan. Lets see, we raised taxes, we raised them alot, we doubled some. Now we screw everyone with the zoning change to 20 acres, we hire our friends like Robin Guyther, we give him a new piss test when he failed the first one, we purchase land from our campaign supporters, we increase the density of zoning for other pals such as Johnny K and Sonny and now we can just cruise to the next election, we are sure winners."

"What are we going to do about Guyther?" asked Portly Dan.

"What do you mean," said Julie, "that was taken care of, he got another test and this time he stopped puffing weed for awhile and he got a good sample, so he keeps on working."

"But we had a different rule in force for all others on the county payroll, they were not hired if they failed the pre-employment drug screen, why is it different for Guyther?"

"Look Raley," said Julie, "I don’t feel like playing this game with you or The Rag. Guyther is special because of his daddy’s money. Guyther is special because that burn-out brother-in-law of his is the prosecutor and he could have a field day if he ever found out what we have been doing here. So I say, keep the Grand Jury out of our politics and any dope-smoking relative of Fritz’s is a fine county department head for us. This is a very old game and I didn’t write the rules but I know how to scratch a back."

 

---

So why did the St. Mary’s Evil Four de Force need to raise your taxes? Shelby, a New Jersey transplant, lives a life above that of the average citizen even though she is married to real down-to-earth guy. Gypsy Joe was a born wannabe elitist, stuck in some tooth fairy hippie stage for a couple of decades and married to out-dated liberal views of spending the treasury dry in order to cure all ills of mankind. In order to rid itself of Crazy Paul, the county allowed this unusual fellow to have access to the public policy over spending and taxation. Julie? Who knows, she is bright enough to know better but her so-called business experience is simply smoke and mirrors. Defense contractors simply throw together a bunch of figures that their freshly-hired revolving door retired captains tell them will pass muster with the lead bottoms who used to work for them on base and like magic, they get the contract. This should be called the full employment plan for retired Navy lead bottoms or FEPRENLBot. At least it helps the county to keep these meddling egotists the hell out of politics. Between Don Brown and Stu Fitrell trying to be the saviors of the county after making the world safe for democracy, St. Mary’s has been lucky to dodge the bullet.

But back to Julie.

Nah, just kiddin’. Cheap Shots will never again mention her name as she, Anderson, Guazzo and Tommy Mattingly are now dead politically after hiking every tax they could find. They even went out and found a way to impose new taxes on dead people and are giving them 30 days to pay up. Yep, in one month, those dead citizens who defy paying the new death tax will be dug up, exhumed from their coffins and all personal effects that the undertakers didn’t get when they before they were planted will go to be auctioned off so the county commissioners can have even more money to give away.

Old Lanny Lancaster can get a part-time job with the county for another $50,000 a year on top of his job watching the two homeless men check out towels at Three Oaks. Lanny can go out with the public works crews and sift graves, tossing out the bones and keeping the rings, necklaces, pendants and other gems such as gold teeth (that the undertakers didn’t get) and just watch that pile of loot pile up. Voorhaar will have to pay even more deputies overtime to watch Lanny’s grave diggers. Now who is going to watch all of these cats? Not the commissioners.

The following are some of the items that they have spent money on as part of the reason they needed to raise your taxes. REALLY. The following junk is true as opposed to all of the other true stuff in this Rag.

The Board approved $1,400 to Bay Media Network for radio and remote spots. It is merely a coincidence that Brugman was yanked from his talk show and turned into a combined version of Harden and Weaver. With Feather and Boner only a memory on the other station and Brugman dewclawed, neutered and muzzled, at least that is what the powers that be hope they have accomplished, but as always, only The Shadow knows for sure, then the Randall’s Raiders can loot the treasury at will. The Emptyprize likes higher taxes, as it’s editor doesn’t pay real estate taxes as he lives in a tenant house down at Mulberry Fields Plantation where he is a lackey for the PRA, of which the master of the house is president.

A socialist in Park Hall, Bob Lewis, sent a blistering letter to Joe Anderson, decrying his vision of high taxes. Socialists only like it when you raise other people’s taxes and this cat owns old Turkey Bob’s peach orchard on Rt. 5, so the higher real estate taxes are really jacking him up.

Randall’s Raiders like higher impact fees whereas the average folks don’t understand what the hell impact they are having on the county as they have been here, the new people are already here, won’t be applying for any building permits as they already have bought houses and now every time someone goes to get a building permit, thin air will cost $4,500.

It is time everyone storm the Bastille and violently overthrow the government of St. Mary’s County, off with their heads! Let freedom ring, why wait for an election when the commissioners can be lynched, burned at a stake or simply ridden out of town on a rail after being tarred and feathered.

However, making such threats will inevitably just result in more deputies getting overtime guarding the Board. Think about it. Tax money spent to build a guard booth outside of Julie’s home, spending money on an iron fence, posting deputies under her window. Will the deputies assigned to Gypsy Joe keep him from blowing a little weed? Will Tommy’s bodyguards have to help splice cable? Will Shelby’s guard be assigned the collateral duty of keeping her finger away from her nose?

Only the Shadow knows for sure.

But back to the bills.

The county spent $460,693 on Charles County Community College even though it has a new name, a new sign outside the Leonardtown Campus, ads everywhere. So why is the old outfit still getting money?

You taxpayers spent $210 on Wayne's Signs to craft golf tee signs and a banner. Don’t you feel better now?

You also spent $475.43 for a vacuum and didn’t even wait until the great clearance sale when you could have saved 30 percent like everyone did this past week. Your tax money also went for a $149 refrigerator. When life in county government sucks, they can now keep a few cold ones nearby to cheer them up. But wait, the commissioners also spent money from the County Administrator’s fund on a $499 commercial vacuum from So. Md. Vacuum Center.

Think they have a coffee pool like your place of work. Baloney on that one. There were two expenditures for $110 "coffee kits" to Superb Coffee and Snacks. Just super, superb, superfragilistic.....

While many folks have given up on answering machines, the county hasn’t. Why should calls from citizens get answered by a clerk when any one of the four new machines bought at K-Mart for $167 do the trick?

The $554 spent on trophies for the senior Olympics might have been better spent on helping low income seniors buy their prescription drugs.

Now you thought the county was in the computer age, we have been buying computers for years. Pappy Wade used to buy junk and maybe he knew what he was doing as not too many folks knew how to use them. But the county spent $72 getting typewriters repaired. This is not a good sign.

Now, the last time we looked around, the county didn’t own a cemetery. But that little detail didn’t stop the Board from forking over $465 to Lincoln Residential Builders to erect a flagpole in a cemetery. What gives? Will we get to the bottom of this one? Could this be the little cemetery on Chancellors Run Road and someone concocted a reason to have the county buy a permanent attachment to privately owned land? Or, is there a public cemetery somewhere? The county could actually start a cemetery, just like the Seafarer’s Union. It is easy to bury your mistakes when you own the cemetery.

Do you know the electric bill on the Carter building is $13,000 a month and still no one will turn the lights off when everyone goes home?

The Board just spent $6,000 on a scholarship fund at St. Mary’s College but they had to pay $121.50 to rent a hall. Why wouldn’t one of the many meeting rooms and auditoriums in county buildings and schools do for whatever conference required this expenditure?

Can you believe that the county spent $922.50 on an tourism ad in the Boston Globe and $1,400 in the New York Times when the county got all that free publicity from the Washington Post, Good Morning America and 20/20 featuring how law enforcement works here in the mother county in the past year? Spendthrifts.

Now we could never, ever make this one up. The Board spent $393 on 1,000 "Zippy Clips" purchased from the Boomerang Productions. This is for tourism but they could combine it with a public health initiative and include a free condom with each Zippy Clip.

George G. Harris got $974.12 for 637 pewter pens from the county under the guise of tourism. What are tourists going to write down? The names of the county commissioners so they can vote for them by absentee ballot?

Agricultural and Seafood Development staff needed new chairs, two of them, at a price of $670. Wore out the old ones getting folks to buy vegetables and crabs.

Boomerang Productions snared another $215 from the county to pay for 12 t-shirts for Emergency Management Agency, the folks at 911. At $17 they must have all been 4X sizes for Phil Cooper, printed with the words, "I got this here job at 911 and got to keep my retirement as a deputy".

Go suck on a manikin at the 911 center, just do it. Be the first to give it some lip. It cost the county $940 and chest skin was extra at $108. Couldn’t they just do like girls in junior high and stuffed some toilet paper down there? Couldn’t they buy some old manikins from K-Mart? How about buying two steam and dry irons and fake it by hollering "clear" and clamping down on the steam buttons.

Posting notice of a public hearing on the county’s web page won’t do. They have to spend $186 on an ad in the Emptyprize for a public hearing ad.

MIS spent $4,490 on 2 new conference whiteboards, $805 on conference easels and $136,000 on new computers at the same time the county is busy repairing typewriters. This spending spree comes at the same time that the newest MIS director quit to take the same job in Calvert County at more money. Even though she was quitting, it didn’t stop her from going to a conference in Florida at county expense. Everything was already paid for.

Shall we go on or do you still believe that the Commissioners needed to raise taxes?

 

---

A message from Jack Rue

HEAVEN --- On March 9th I will mark an important anniversary in my life, the day I got outa your world and was able to get into Heaven. I had to work hard at beating St. Peter at gin rummy, but just like every other man of the cloth I ever ran into, he was a lousy card player. Those holy-rollers are much better at coning people out of their money when it comes to the collection plate after their long-winded sermons. So I beat St. Pete and got here.

A message to Doc Howard: don’t try to cheat like you did every afternoon at Maxine’s office, St. Pete is on that trick.

Did I ever tell you that I have been screwed by professionals and crapped on by amateurs?

My old friend Steve Uhler has been doing a good job at taking over my space in the paper but the Intellectual in Overalls better get off of his ass, he has been slipping lately and getting lazy. I expect to see some copy soon, and being a senior officer, I damn well mean it Boy.

Gabe is finally getting his road paved in overtop of Rosie’s Place and having the taxpayers pay for it. How nice. Tommy Waring got the new Board to buy his trailer park at the same time that no one can sell a new mobile home due to absolutely no demand. The rules of economics are still alive and well, especially the one about a sucker born every minute, in this case, five suckers sprang forth at the same time.

If the Bozo Board of Commissioners had listened to me they would still be in office. I am still mad at them for taking me off the Parks and Recreation Board because I died and I filed a complaint with the Justice Dept. for being disenfranchised. They won’t let me send in absentee ballots either. Bush would really be in trouble if they’d let us up here vote. We Naval aviators have to stick together, and being war heroes, McCain and I have a lot in common. But then again, I have already voted for a Bush twice, a Roosevelt four times, twice for Ike, for JFK, LBJ and HHH. Then I turned Republican for better or worse. I appreciate Al Gore’s problems as I was raised by the nuns and they always had more money than they let on.

There is nothing wrong with that fat Danny Raley, he has a good brain, he should just listen to his mother instead of those schemers in the Walled City. If you told me that they would hire Al Lacer to run the county I would have croaked five years sooner just to get further away quicker. I hear this guy is just expanding his resume so he can take over Briscoe’s judgeship when Johnnie retires. That law firm hasn’t even existed for five years since Jim Kenney finally got his robes and they are still controlling all judgeships. In the old days we had to spend $50,000 for a judgeship (Joe Weiner), now they invest with J. Frank and the whole damn crew ends up on the public dole making more money than they are worth. In our day when you bought a politician, he stayed bought.

I want to clear up something about the night I died. Never mind.

Vernon Gray, you are still causing trouble, I can tell by your column. I got even with you and died on your birthday three years ago to keep from having to buy you a present. I told you I would get the last laugh. That cheap screw Rossignol needs to give you a raise, as you and Larry Jarboe are the only ones around that rag that makes any sense. The best time I ever had was running for commissioner against you and Sleepy John Lancaster. The good old boys bought off John’s supporters but you should have beat us both. Running against Babs was fun, kinda like mixing Olive Oil and near beer. She should have listened to me and not raised taxes and she might have won, but the race between her and Julie was really Beauty and the Beast. I am sure with her photo not appearing in the paper as often crop failures are down and fertility rates among porcupines are up. She should have voted for me for the parks board, the selfish ingrate. I got her more publicity during the GOP primary than she could have hoped for and helped her beat Sonny Burch, whom I was never in favor of.

Well, I see you all sent Sleepy Joe up here and I want to tell you, nobody has to worry about getting Joe a job. Judges keep getting paid even after they croak and he’s driving a Cadilliac around Heaven, but he does fall asleep at the wheel occasionally and bumps into a cloudbank. I hear Daugherty has tried to get in here and even the Devil won’t take him down there, can’t stand the competition I guess, eh, Dog Daugherty? I told you I would nail the pearly gates shut if I got here first to make up for those high interest rates you charged me, a founder and director of our bank..

I have been back to High Chimneys a few times, I slam a window now and then, rattle some chains out in the barn and walk on the beach but nobody pays any attention. That hippie son of mine who now thinks he is holier than thou keeps throwing my pals off the beach when they show up and I am going to devise a plan to straighten his ass out. Do you hear me Gary? But I am proud of the way Gary has fixed up the old place and I can’t believe he was able to kill all the termites, I knew them all by name. I just wish he had planted my carcas out in the backyard next to Pennie’s horse. When I want to visit my own grave with roses I steal off of other graves in order to make it look like someone is mourning my demise, I have to take the 3 am shuttle all the way down to Valley Lee. At least it is a short walk up to Betty Russell’s bar.

They are letting anyone in this place. Frank Coombs is organizing all the old Leonardtown vote for when they let us vote absentee and Larry Millison has horses in the top races and is opening up a new shopping center.
I heard about that Blankenship guy and I laughed my ass off at how he fooled High Society and especially that gullible Jane Sypher.

Well thats enough for now, I have to meet Penny for lunch. She is still mad at me about something and I am going to try and wine and dine her in order to seduce her. Candy is dandy, but liquor is always quicker.

---

Who is Joe Anderson
Stalking for in Callaway?

Why would anyone feel that Joe Anderson has less than pure motives over his proposed moratorium on commercial activities in the Callaway area? Just because he is a gasbag and an airhead doesn’t mean that the average citizen should feel that the third woman on the Board of Commissioners is playing possum on this issue.

Anderson, who holds down the seat on the Board formerly occupied by Crazy Paul Chesser, is the triangulate of power on this current Board. With Julie Randall, the President, attempting to compete for power with Shelby Guazzo, the liberal Democrat posing as a liberal Republican, it is Anderson who gets right up in the middle of the cat fight to show he is a real sourpuss himself and capable of being as wishy-washy, petty and competitive in a cat fight as the two broads.

With Julie and Shelby playing the role of Babs and Francie on the last Board, it is Anderson who is the most like Chesser on this Board. But don’t forget, like Chesser, Anderson can play mean and dirty politics, he isn’t all airheaded big cheese. Chesser was a calculating and cunning schemer when he wasn’t off in some dementia-induced trance and voting against his own motions. So too is Anderson.

Why, oh why, is Anderson playing games with Callaway and proposing this moratorium? To whom does it benefit. Loyal readers may remember our article in 1994 on Joe Anderson, relating to the uninitiated the fact that the entire time Anderson was on the Planning Commission he spent each and every meeting taking care of the pro-growth and pro-development agenda of the Good Old Boys, the same people who also contributed to his campaign in 1994 and did so again in 1998. While there is nothing wrong or illegal about business growth or developers providing for people to live and work as our economy grows, lets be up front and consistent about philosophy.

Anderson tries to have it both ways, much like a long list of duplicitous politicians before him. But even worse, Anderson is not just a phony but he has proven he is a bully too. In 1994, loyal readers will recall that the article "Who is Joe Anderson?" revealed that the only time Joe Anderson got up on his high-horse to condemn the illegal violations of the zoning ordinance was not to go after big-money developers but amazingly, to beat up on a Korean chap who had the misfortune to buy a large house next to the county run landfill. The man couldn’t live there due to the odors of the landfill, the acid smoke which would envelope the area overnight as small fires would erupt and burn out of control, as stories of medical waste being illegally dumped in the landfill would cause those who may have been interested in his house from buying it; and even when the farm next door was declared a Superfund Clean Up Site by the federal government.

This Korean fellow couldn’t do anything with his house so he put in some apartments. The big bad inspectors from the county came out and clobbered this guy. Then the poor fellow had to appear before the Planning Commission to argue his case for a change in zoning which would allow him to do something profitable with his property other than maintain it as a single family home.

But could Joe Anderson help this little guy with a way out of his dilemma, a situation caused mostly by the county run Landfill on St. Andrew’s Church Road? No, Gypsy Joe Anderson, the guy who claimed he "had a vision" for St. Mary’s County, only had a vision for himself. That vision contained a long list of applicants before the Planning Commission, on cases he sat on as a commissioner, who also bought tickets to $100 per plate breakfast fund-raisers for Joe Anderson.

That isn’t a vision, that’s a bribe.

Quid, pro, quo.

Joe voted for their zoning applications and they bought tickets to Joe’s fundraisers when he ran for office, not once, but twice. As citizens, those applicants, builders, developers, engineers, investors and so on, all had the right to participate in the political process. Every thing was legal.

And Joe had the right to get up and rant and rave about the Korean guy who was illegally renting out an apartment next to the county dump.

Well times change. Joe didn’t win that election in 1994. Chris Brugman did. The Korean guy was able to sell his house to the county and get out from underneath his albatross, but Joe Anderson didn’t help bring that about, it took place under the last Board’s regime.

Now, Joe is a commissioner and now Joe is out to hurt the little guy again on a zoning issue.

Since Joe is against a little guy, it begs the question, which big guy is Joe Anderson stalking for in Callaway? Who has an economic interest in seeing Food Lion kept from opening up in Callaway? It isn’t Commissioner Dan Raley, who has told ST. MARY’S TODAY he will abstain from this vote when it comes up. Raley is in the grocery business and he is avoiding any appearance of a conflict of interest.

But there are some pals of Joe Anderson in the development business and who own other businesses around who would have a possible economic impact if commercial development were held up in Callaway by Anderson’s misuse of the zoning laws.

Not only is this blatant attempt of the Board to sidestep the Planning Commission unprecedented, but it is part of a pattern of conduct on the part of the current Board to find every way possible to fire the Planning Commission, only because they were appointed by the previous Board. Joe Anderson has been in the thick of that battle. When the last Board exercised their right to not reappoint Anderson and Guazzo to the Planning Board, they, the liberal tree-huggers and the Emptyprize were screaming foul from the rafters.

Now there is nary a word from the Big Empty and the liberals are the ones drawing the long knives in the dark of the night, waiting to plunge them into Planning Commissioners John Taylor, William Donaldson and that other bozo, Jim Dexter, who has a bad habit of not showing up at too many meetings.

In 1994 we asked Who is Joe Anderson? Now in 2000, we ask "Who is Joe Anderson Stalking for in Callaway?"

 

---

 

The following is a transcript of a secretly recorded taping, in violation of Maryland law, of a closed door session of the St. Mary's County Press Association.

"Okay, this meeting will come to order, sit down Brugman and no more beer until the intermission, I certainly hope you're not driving," ordered Judy Pederpress, who has enjoyed her new role of being boss to her old boss, when he was a county commissioner.

"Yes, Ma'am," said Brugman as he tripped over a chair on the way to the seat nearest the beer keg. "Hell, our old commissioner board meetings were never this much fun. Does anyone want to come on my radio show and talk about Waco, TWA Flight 800 or UFO's? I have an opening this week...well, everyday for that matter. I would want to invite any fellow member of my press colleagues, except of course for Vicious Vicky, that skinny broad from Piney Point can damn well get her own radio show, she ain't gonna horn in on mine."

"Chris," yelled Pederpress, "we must get started, this is a very important meeting. Come to order everyone, someone wake up Dick Myers, he's snoring so loud I can't hear myself think."

"He's just napping," said Windy Wendy, "he is tired from being up all night planning our wonderful show which will air today from 9 to 11 am on 1690 am, that is the extended band you know, you can't get it too good here but when you are on the New Jersey turnpike it comes in wonderfully!"

"Like who the hell would want to listen to your crap Windy," belched Brugman. "I have the best show on the air anywhere, even better than old Rush, you know he is getting kind of lame, he just doesn't have the cutting edge material that I have, if there is a conspiracy, a deep dark secret of the Clinton White House, a murder or suicide at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. that the mainstream media won't cover, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll have it, I scoop Rush or G. Gordon Liddy any day."

"Yes, but one must drive to the Pennsylvania Turnpike to hear your stupid show," said Vicious Vicky.

"That's the New Jersey Turnpike, Vicky," reminded Windy Wendy.

"Oh go blow it out your ear, Windy," shouted Vicious, "Your stupid show is right there just above Brugman's on the rotten scale. You and Myers are the blind leading the blind. He's lies and you swear to it.!"

"Don't you feel you are being somewhat insensitive to the handicapped," said Windy smartly.

"Don't worry, Myers is so boring he doesn't even know he is eligible for handicapped plates for his car," said Vicious. "He can just keep his bumper sticker on his car that says, 'Honk if I bore you', he doesn't need any special plates."

"Well, you don't have to criticize my show," said Windy, "there is nothing more empty or boring than the Emptyprize. You and Al Daily think you are hot stuff. Well Al isn't going anywhere in that corporate structure and you ain't going to get your husband elected county commissioner either. Al should have stayed at Channel 10 where he had a future. You don't have a chance at beating Gypsy Joe Anderson, he is solid as a rock. Jackie can't beat him, but I know that is what you are scheming at."

"Listen to me you hussy, just keep my husband out of this, he works hard and if he wants to run for office, it's okay with me," said Vicious. "My newspaper can elect my husband, they owe it to me, besides, we haven't had our own commissioner since Babs and Crazy Paul...er...Barbara and Paul lost the election. They used to keep us up to date on everything, they kept us lined up with the legal advertising and we were able to know what was going on, now everything is a disaster. The Post is getting the legal ads and only The Shadow knows what is going on and when things are going to happen. With Dan Raley leaking everything to The Rag and those sickening Post reporters kissing up to Julie Randall, this whole county is going down the tubes. It's time for my husband to come out and run for commissioner and save the county. We have had three commissioners from our end of the county, Sayre, Robert Jarboe and Paul, now it is time for Jackie Russell...don't you just love the ring to his name...now it's time for Jackie to run and beat that mutton head Joe Anderson. Anderson is just a lightweight and an airhead, Jackie is a man of substance and he can waltz right into the next election and whip Joe Anderson easy. And, he'll make sure my paper gets the legal ads back from the Post."

"Are you through with that diatribe on your drippy husband, Vicious Vicky?" asked Pederpress. "We are here to consider that dreadful application to join our press association from The Rag. This is the tenth year in a row he has applied and its time to meet and turn him down again. We can't really have such a disreputable scandal sheet belonging to our esteemed organization, can we now colleagues?"

"Duh, I uh, uh, uh, uh, want to-to-to say something about that Rag," said Stuttering John.

"Oh spit it out, dumbbell," lectured Pederpress, "we don't have all day!"

"The R-R-R-Rag is a tabloid," said Stuttering John.

"Oh what are you gonna say, Stuttering John, like you have some sort of high standards yourself?" queried Brugman. "I heard you were down taking close-up photos of that dead dog the dentist put in the crab pot in Mill Cove Creek, what kind of disgusting moron are you anyway Wharton? The only reason your paper didn't run the photos of the rotted corpse of the dead dog on the front page is that the Rag beat you to the story first. How can you hypocrites point a finger at anyone else?"

"A-A-A-At least we don't do UFO's in our paper like you do on your right wing radio show, you radical," retorted John.

"Your entire Emptyprize is one big UFO, the Emptyprize is the worlds biggest Unidentified Flimsy Object, no one can figure out what the hell it is except for a cash cow for a New York corporation, it just sucks money out of the county and sends it to New York City," said Brugman.

"Your Peapicker Network is nothing but a bunch of hillbillies," said Vicious Vicky, "and I saw you making fun of Wharton, Brugman, you bozo. How can you dare make fun of a person with a speech impediment? How insensitive can you be?"

"Now thay there, thilly, I would like to thay thoming about that," said Boyd. "We must learn how to get along, now everyone stand up and hold hands and we'll thing a thong about the Whole World Getting Along!"

"Kachmar was right about you, you limpwristed fairy, Boyd," said Pederpress. "Brugman, you are the sergeant-at-arms, throw his lightweight ass out the window so we can get on with this meeting."

"Yes, Madame Boss," said an obedient Brugman and he threw the Emptyprize editor out of the window as ordered. As he did so, a flurry of feathers arose from the crumpled form as it hit the dirt below the window.

"I'll get you for this, Pederpress," said a whiny voice from outside the window.

"Now see here, you can't get away with mistreating our management of our esteemed newspaper," said Honest Al, "let me do it instead." Honest Al poured hot coffee out the window on top of the Fairy Prince of Emptiness as a loud shrill erupted.

"Now that did it, who woke me up?" demanded Myers. "I have a early show to do tomorrow and I needed a nap at this meeting, now I am wide awake. That last scream sounded like someone set fire to a gilded parakeet. You people are just incredible, I am glad I am taping this meeting so I can sell the tape to the Rag. Its about the only tape he doesn't have. He got all the secret tapes of the executive sessions of the last Board that Kachmar made, now he'll have this one too."

"Thats illegal," instructed Vicious Vicky. "You just can't tape us without our permission."

"I have your voice saying 'I consent', I'll edit the tape and it will all work naturally," said Myers.

"We are supposed to be talking about The Rag," reminded Pederpress.

"I am sick of hearing about ST. MARY'S TODAY," said Boyd. "Why doesn't anyone ever have me on Good Morning America or write a three-page article in the Post? I am much more interesting and I am a real journalist. I have a degree and a thesis and a class ring, I was sent to Paris on a fellowship from my company...I am the real news editor around here."

"Oh shut up you whining fairy," said Ralph PassaMartini, "I am the publisher and the real power of this newspaper, you are a sniveling wimp Boyd and you don't deserve to represent our newspaper anywhere that counts."

"I'll have your job, you lush," said Boyd, in a sudden burst of assertiveness.

"Wait, all of you," insisted Pederpress, "We have this socialist scumbag Triantos-Tse-Tung who wants to join our group. He is left wing, that ought to help him get in."

"No," yelled Brugman, "we can't let in another left-winger, I am the only conservative in here, if you let that idiot in then I say we let the Rag join."

"Absolutely not," said Stuttering John. "O-o-o-o-o-n this I am firm. No."

"Well it isn't up to you, numb nuts," said the Wizard of Radio, Ron Walton. "We have to be fair and balanced about this, and the truth of the matter is that all of you are merely jealous because the Rag gets the news first and has landed all that national attention. Its the paper good enough to steal, just ask the Gestapo Deputies and Fritz and Voorhaar. If they couldn't beat him, they just scooped up all the papers and the rest is history. Those goons just put The Rag on the map, quite the opposite of what they were trying to do. Rossignol could have never gotten all that national attention if it wasn't for Fritz and his followers. Now that we have the Nazis working overtime trying to put ST. MARY'S TODAY out of business, you idiots want to block him from joining our press association. That paper is the only worthwhile news source around here and your pea-picking brains are too small to know it."

"Sure, thats easy for you to say, you buzz-headed hillbilly," said Roy Robbingstar. "You've got some sort of deal cooking with the Rag, thats why you're taking up for him."

"Yeah," said Feather. "Boner and I hate that silly paper, we don't read it at all. I wouldn't be caught dead reading it. No one of any importance reads that trash. It's all made up."

"Except when he gets secret tapes of meetings such as ours," chimed in Boner.

"Ah shaddup, you old cow," said Brugman, "your insipid radio program gives all of quality broadcasting a bad name. Hmmm, maybe they were thinking of you when they coined the term 'broadcasting', but anyway, my show has a bigger audience than yours, I am up to 118 certified listeners now."

"We have ratings sheets to prove our audience," retorted Robbingstar. "I have the best ratings sheets money can buy."

"See, you just admitted the truth," said Baby Huey Brugman. "Robbingstar, why don't you go dream up a new promo for Nicks of Clinton? We really enjoyed the last time you lit them up on the radio. How much did that cost you?"

"Keep outta my face, Brugman," said Robbingstar. "I'll sick Feather on you and she's so big her rear end has it's own Congressman."

"Order, I say, Order," screamed Pederpress. "we need to take vote now to exclude The Rag again this year, all in favor of saying no, say Aye! Good. Opposed? Okay, the Ayes have it, the Rag stays out but Triantos-Tse-Tung gets in. Gee, the only one who voted in favor of the Rag was my boss. Oh well. Crap happens.

---

(8/31/99)   "Mrs. Randall," called out one of the cowering secretaries in the commissioners's office, "It's former President Thompson on the line."

"Okay, I'll get it, thank you for your promptness in notifying me of my incoming call, dear Judy," said Randall.

"Look here, Julie Jubilee," said Thompson, "What the hell do you think you are doing? You are taking over county government in ways I only dreamed of doing, in just 9 months you have succeeding in putting the gonads of those three simpleton little boys in your purse and have managed to find a way to shut up Shelby. You have done what I dared not even dream about, you have wrapped up county government in a tight little box and not a damn one of those moronic department heads will take a trip to the toilet without first getting a hall pass from you. And no one says a damn thing, not the Emptyprize, not The Rag, no one."

"Sounds like you are jealous, Babs," said Randall, carefull, your face will freeze like a rock in that scowling expression, dear, your mother must have told you about that when you were a litte girl."

"I was never a little girl, you southern-fried parakeet," screamed Babs, "And how did you know I was scowling, do you have a damn camera set up in my kitchen?"

"Dickie-doo's gestapo will do anything I ask as long as I keep the money coming, dear," said Randall. "You ought to know, you had those idiots doing all your dirty work and now they work for me. I all I have to do is assure the arrival of their funds and Dickie and Ricky will do my bidding. I have some special plans for you, my little chickadee, I am going to start on subliminal suggestions during your sleep and soon you will be out campaigning for me, you'll never know what hit you, but you'll be singing my praises and you'll never remember this conversation. "

"You are a warped twisted old woman who is desperately in need of a face lift, your bags are growing under your eyes each week," said Thompson, "I hate you for taking away my job and now you are grabbing for all the power I wanted, this is wrong, I'll get you for this."

"You'll do nothing to me," hissed Randall. "I can handle you with both paws tied behind my back....I mean, er hands....I'll take you out quick, Babs, just like I did in the election. You never saw me coming, you thought you were going to elect your team, what a bunch of sorry asses they were, that Sniveling kid, Crazy Paul, that nutty guy Dalton and that nose-picker. I use that stupid huzzy all I want and the boys will do whatever I tell them, I've got something on each one of them now and I can control them. It didn't take long, but when you go in the back room with these idiots often enough, you find out their secrets. That idiot Anderson was the easiest but Raley was the most difficult, but the important thing is that I've got them and I am going to keep them and use them to run this county."

"You think you are the elected county executive and we don't even have a county executive, I ought to know, I wanted that power," said Thompson.

"Look Babs, I am tired of hearing you bitch, get off my phone and go wail away on your husband, you old shrew," said Randall. "I am not going to worry about your insecurities or your failure as a leader, I am leadership defined, I know how to lead, how to buy land from my friends and supporters. But you only see part of the picture, my plans for this county are yet to be revealed. That stupid Brugman and those idiots on the radio station don' t have a clue. That mindless Myers and Miller are the Dynamic Duo of Dumb, the Champions of Clutz, the Barons of Bore and the Lameest of the Lackluster. You couldn't do anything about Brugman when he was on the Board with you Babs, but don't expect me to keep Brugman around. I have the dirt on him from when he was the party animal in Carolina and I'm gonna use it. He was just like this George W., he partied around alot, I have a picture of him with a pair of panties on his head while he sits on a beer keg outside the girls dorm at the college he went to. I had to work my connections down South but for one of the club, they'll do anything. As you know, I am a daughter of the Confederacy."

"Well, I suppose you had slaves too," said Thompson.

"Look, you were the one kissing Johnny Briscoe's ass over the slave quarters at Sotterly and gave them all that county tax money to fix up the slave quarters, you were the one who wanted to give that has-been Annapolis rooster the judicial palace he wanted. You were the one who did all of the bidding for that old Judge, so don't tell me nothin' about slaves, Babs," said Randall.

"I would do it all over again, I almost won that courthouse battle," said Randall, "It was the sonufabitch Dyson, Larry Jarboe and Chipper Norris that beat us. They had more pull, and don't forget the damn Rag, too. We just couldn't beat all them when they were able to get to the citizens and let them know the real cost, hell I didn't even know the real cost and I didn't care. All I wanted to do was please the Judge and I knew he would make life easy for me any way he could if I named that new courthouse after him, and I promised to do it, too."

"Well, he and J. Frank pulled their support from you when you lost and especially when you couln't control Kachmar," said Randall. "You see what he did when he saw me coming, he ran out of the county as fast as he could get out. He hoppped the first train out of town. And now not a single department head will do a damn thing without talking to me first, and they better not, or I will hand their gonads to them on a sandwich and make them eat it. Watch, I will make an example out of that stupid Grimm. He will get the axe, but then he'll beg for his job and I might give in, as long as every single zoning application that comes in gets run by me first. My friends will get the quick okay and my enemies will go through the buzzsaw, that's the way life works in a well-run county government which has an effective leader. Always remember, I told everyone when I ran for office that you get what you pay for and I meant it."

"Don't thnk I am going to let you get away with all this," snarled Thompson.

"Oh chill out Babs," said Randall, "like who are you going to run to, The Rag, oh it'll crack him up to have you complaining to him, the Emptyprize, hell I have them wrapped up, they are going to kiss my ass to try to get the legal ads back next year after I give them to the Post. This has been the best strategy, I keep the Emptyprize on ice this past 9 months as they sit back and kiss my butt in order to try to keep the legal ads, then I take it away, then I hold it out like a carrot, they'll do anything as long as I dangle it out there. And that hillbilly from Mississippie and Pederpress are spineless. They are easy as hell to scare off, all I have to do is whisper that I am going to make a complaint to the FCC and they take off running with their tails between their legs. The only one I can't find a way to shake up is that jerk at The Rag. Nothing bothers him and he's a crazy man and doesn't care about the legal ads, you all did such a good job of screwing him, Babs, that he just doesnn't care. So maybe I'll just try being nice, I know you never tried that you old battleaxe, you could scare the bulls off a horn with one look and a twitch of your beak, you cross-dressing floozy."

"Look here, Julie Jubilee, I am every bit the respectable professional woman and I don't appreciate your demeaning and derogatory remarks," said Thompson.

"Oh don't give me that crap," said Randall. "I have all the tapes of your secret meetings that Kachmar made to frame you with, he doesn't know it, but when he threw them out I had the gestapo go through the trash and retrieve them for me, I'll always say, that Dickie delivers. Now that I have the secret tapes of all of your executive sessions I will be able to hold you miserable Republicans' feet to the fire and keep you in a state of perpetual checkmate. You are a double-dealing wicked old wench who tried to do everything that I have succeeded in doing and you are merely jealous because it is I who have succeeded, not you. I have the power, I am the County Executive, I am the power, I am the one running this county in a way that the Good Old Boys are really proud of, it is time that women showed men how to run things right. I will make sure the schools are funded but when it comes to determining where zoning gets approved and where sewer lines are going to be run, I will make those decisions and anyone who wants to make any money in this county will have to play ball with me."

"You really have done it, haven't you," said Thompson.

"If you can't beat them, join them, Babs," said Randall. "Who knows, I might even appoint you to some stupid commission or something if you stop running your yap. I just don't like any opposition, I like consensus."

---

(8/10/99)   Don't blame all the St. Mary's Sheriff's deputies for the intolerable acts of those involved with removing newspapers from news stands on election eve last year. There are close to 100 deputies on the department and the vast majority of them had nothing to do with the organized effort which operated with the admitted consent and knowledge of Sheriff Richard Voorhaar and States's Attorney Richard Fritz.

While these officials support, condone, and apparently helped plan and execute the scheme to remove virtually all of the election day edition of this newspaper, the public should not lump in those lower ranking deputies who were not part of the action taken to prevent the public from reading a news story and then making up their own minds prior to voting.

There has been no similar action by law officers known to have taken place in this nation but such actions were the hallmark of the early years of Nazi Germany. Repression of and elimination of newspapers were undertaken in communist and fascist dictatorships in the old Soviet Union, Communist China and Eastern Europe prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 90's.

The younger and newer deputies on the St. Mary's Sheriff's Department have been hard-working and sincere as they begin their careers and in recent years several among the newly-hired officers have quit this department because of the rampant politics in the department and gone to work elsewhere. They have done this partly because they were embarrassed to be part of the St. Mary's Sheriff's Department and they soon learned they had to belong to a certain private fraternal group or be a first class butt kisser of Voorhaar and his minions if they expected to get promoted or different assignments.

There are many citizens who have been making it clear, on a private basis, that they fully support this newspaper but they point out that while they would like to write letters to the commissioners or to the editor, they fear they will become the target of deputies involved with Voorhaar's gestapo who will follow them and harass them with traffic tickets. While such fears may be a little overdone, it doesn't take too much of an imagination to figure out what some of Voorhaar and Fritz's characters are capable of doing. One of the gestapo deputies was indicted by a grand jury just a couple of years ago for manhandling a 15-year-old kid, handcuffing him and knocking him unconscious after his parents asked the deputy to come their home to talk the kid out of experimenting with drugs. This deputy was defended by his pal Fritz who then talked the special prosecutor into dropping the charges. There was something about the deputy being required to take anger management courses, but sources wonder if he ever did attend. Should he be able to provide proof of his attendance at the anger management classes, that information will be supplied to our readers in this space, but don't hold your breath, it may be a long wait for certification of that requirement to be supplied to this column.

Now we have had nationwide publicity about our Gestapo Deputies sweeping the news stands on election eve and the morning of the election, taking papers away so our readers could not read and judge for themselves. Voorhaar and Fritz didn't want you to read the paper that day as they didn't believe you were intelligent enough to handle the information presented. But in this nation they don't get to be the judge of that.

You do.

You, the reader, are the only one who can decide what you will read, not the government, not Richard Fritz or Richard Voorhaar.

They and the Gestapo Deputies didn't like the stories this newspaper had been running last year. Both liked our stories four years earlier when they sought and received this newspaper's endorsement for election. But the actions of the two didn't stand the test of time.

For Fritz it was a matter of his past actions as Deputy States Attorney catching up with him, failing to account for $20,000 in drug funds, letting professional jealousy get to him and admitting he gave admonitions to drug dealers to stay away from bad guys after the State Police had presented their investigation to him regarding those drug dealers, and then the exposure of Fritz's real record in regards to how he failed to make any significant difference as a prosecutor, plea bargaining most cases and lowering distribution cases to simple possession.

As for Voorhaar, support for him was withheld last year because he failed miserably in his first term to aggressively pursue drug dealers. Overtime for his narc detectives was up while drug arrests were down even at the time that the once-upon-a-time hard-worker Lyle Long was in charge. But Lyle sat on his ample butt and did nothing when he was put in charge of narcotics.

The only big drug arrest they got was one when someone turned in the drug dealer Mike Simmons, who runs the Crabknockers Seafood in Leonardtown, for those of you who don't like to patronize convicted drug dealers. Simmons said he was only selling cocaine because his crab business was down, well given the way crabs have been off this year, Simmons must be selling a lot of cocaine, but given the state of the drug cops in this county, he has little to fear of future arrests. Simmons reportedly even sold drugs to people picking up their steamed crabs prior to his arrest and conviction. He only went to prison for a short while as the state wanted to avoid putting their witness on the stand to testify and therefore cut a plea bargain with him.

Why?

Because the people Simmons got his drugs from in Baltimore were more than a little upset at having their drugs which they had given Simmons on consignment, confiscated by the law. It was said they would have come down and killed the witness who turned Simmons in to the state's attorney's office. Now, you have to ask yourself, would those would-be killers be acting on Mike Simmons' part or for themselves? It is logical that since Simmons is the one who would have done serious time in prison, that he would have had as much incentive to kill the witness as the drug dealers in the big city where he obtained the nearly one kilo of cocaine.

When arrested, Simmons said he had only sold cocaine once.

Mike Simmons is not only a convicted drug dealer, he is a liar.

Do we believe in rehabilitation for those who have paid their debt to society and done their time. Sure. But Mike Simmons did neither. He was a long time drug dealer with a drug background that reached back to high school and had nothing to do with his shaky small crab business. The only reason you see that toothy grin behind the counter of his seafood business in Leonardtown right now instead of him being the girlfriend of the worst convicts in Jessup is that if the state's chief witness went on the stand, the prosecutors felt she would be murdered. Mike dealt drugs with the nicest folks in Baltimore and then he brought that poison down here for your children and your neighbor's children to buy and screw up their lives.

Not to digress from Voorhaar, but you have to wonder how many other white drug dealers like Mike Simmons has Dick Voorhaar allowed to run loose while his drug cops only bust the stupid and greedy black street corner dealers in a racist twist of law enforcement. The piddly black dealers go to jail, the big deal white guys have had permanent get out of jail free cards.

While many folks may feel that they don't want to come forward and criticize Voorhaar, Fritz and their Gestapo Deputies, note that no one, except one police groupie, has taken a public stand in favor of them. Now that this has been pointed out, expect that certain bootlickers will now burn up the midnight oil writing letters just to contradict this writing, but up till now, no citizens of St. Mary's County have come out in public favoring the actions of the Gestapo Deputies.

No one has come out publicly and cast aspersions upon Carla Bailey for her startling disclosure that Fritz and two other young men gang raped her. Reports of other incidents back from those days are close to surfacing. If they ever do, they will go off like bombs. But there is plenty on the table for the law of this land to deal with.

Fritz and Voorhaar are not the law of the land. They have to answer to a higher authority.

What exactly is Shelby Guazzo's game? Some say that at the urging of Babs, the President-in-waiting, Guazzo has set about a plan to make the four Democrat commissioners look like asses every chance she gets by trying to provoke them into taking action in secret executive sessions and then leaking word out to her GOP pals about what took place. The two women, who could do battle for the title of Ice Queen, have been meeting since last fall's election when Babs found herself out of office and Shelby in the seat of power.

The interesting dynamics are those which Shelby is leading Joe Anderson. The two commissioners are often at odds, said to really detest each other in many ways, but their liberal ideals seem to unite them in such areas as demanding tax hikes on the poor slobs, you of course, who populate the county.

The next big hit is going to come on the impact fee. Now pay attention to this one. If your son is coming back from the service and is going to build a house on the piece of land that his grandmother gave him he presently will have to pay a $2,000 premium, called an impact fee, to the county with the money going towards schools and parks.

Shelby and Gypsy Joe, along with the naysayers of the Potomac River Association (PRA = Privleged Royal Asses, remember the mean folks who have screwed the citizens on Myrtle Point due to the spineless county commissioners who kiss their PRA butts) all are conspiring to bring about a higher impact fee. They want to raise the impact fee to $10,000. Can you figure this out? The no-growth fanatics are going to punish the people of St. Mary's County who want to build a new house with such an outrageous tax. Ten grand in new taxes just for the privelege of building a house on your own property will mean that many middle income families who are struggling to build their house in the first place, will have to eliminate the garage they planned or leave the upstairs unfinished and work on it as they can afford to lay flooring and put up drywall. These elitist jerks who account for a large part of the GOP and some of the Democratic Party who are promoting this are, for the most part, a bunch of retired federal employees who have nice pensions and moved here from elsewhere. These professional naggers show up at most commissoner meetings, get themselves appointed to boards and commissions by the spineless jerks we keep electing commissioners, and once they are in a position of influence, do their level best to cut the throats of the working class. That old bat Hope Swann was a good example. When she was on the planning commission, she did her best to rid the county of mobile homes. Evidently she thought everyone could live in a comfortable manor house like she did. Shelby is of this mindset, as is Gypsy Joe Anderson. They act like the working poor can all go live in $150,000 townhouses. But that is a hard thing to pull off when one is making $5.15 an hour in a burger joint or K Mart.

Now the elitist/socialist/retired civil service/retired military crowd that is out to strangle this county is closing in for the kill on raising the impact fee. A study will be done by a special committee which the Board of Commissioners will appoint. Then they will make a report justifying the new impact fee. They will point to Charles County which just raised the fee, they will estimate how much money the higher impact fee will bring in for paying more money to the school board which blatantly wastes money. They will say that higher impact fees will take pressure off property taxes. Then, three commissioners, likely Julie Randall joining in with Anderson and Guazzo, will pass the higher impact fee. Just remember how to spell their names.

This current board has already raised your property taxes when they failed to maintain the constant yield to adjust property taxes to make up for the increased state assessments. All former Boards have usually maintained the constant yield but this Board inherited a $13 million surplus and still saw fit to raise taxes. Now they are out to gouge. You may wonder why they don't care.
Just look at how the vote will shake out.
Joe Anderson doesn't have any children and doesn't care about his clan getting larger and needing some extra domiciles. Guazzo could afford to pay for her kid's fee out of her paycheck in order to keep in good standing with the elitists who support her. Randall's kids are too young to worry about building a house. There are three votes to really put the screws to families in St. Mary's County. The newcomers? Who cares, most of them have plenty of money and won't know if this is a higher fee than already exists so they basically don't care. When will this come about? Only The Shadow knows for sure!

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(6/29/99) The St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners, in their infinite wisdom and their desire to spend the last cent earned by hardworking taxpayers, have decided to spend $100,000 on purchasing advertising on WJLA, Channel 7, the bottom-ranked television station in Washington, D. C.

The following is a preview of the ads which will run on Channel 7 to lure tourists to St. Mary’s County.

Ad 1. (As seagulls cry in the background a camera zooms in to Point Lookout Fishing Pier just as a DNR cop dons rubber gloves to his elbow and sticks his hand into a seafood stew being cooked up on a hibachi in the parking lot by a Vietnamese family.)

"Ha, ya got some of them little fellas in this here soup, you little gooks," said the Crab Cop with a Gun. "How about that, I’m gonna write you rice-munching dummies a whole slew of tickets for having undersize crabs and fishes. Your ass is mine. Now let me get your names right for the press release so we can show our brass we is doing our level best to get you foreigners straight on the law, and don’t tell me you don’t know what size they gotta be, ignorance of the law is no excuse."

Ad 2. (As seagulls cry in the background a fish jumps out of the water off of Myrtle Point, Potomac River Association members sail past on their ritzy sailboats with their noses up in the air as sheriff’s deputies run off a crowd of multi-racial, multi-ethnic citizens who dared to use the beach at Myrtle Point Park, which has been turned into a bug farm.)

"Well, Mabel," said Mean Old Geezer #1 to Mean Old Geezer wife, "we certainly took care of that crowd of ‘those people’, we sure can’t have a bunch of ‘those people’ hanging around our own little 192 acre buffer zone, provided for us courtesy of the taxpayers."

"You are right my deah, we just can’t have them hanging around, next thing you know they’ll just bring back more of them with them next week," said Mabel.

Ad 3. (Seagulls cry out as they are one by one, shot out of air by bored kids at a local school yard as an aerial shot of St. Mary’s College comes into view, a night shot as Dickie Do Voorhaar’s deputies show up for a riot.)

"Get down, you scummy college kid," screams Deputy Christopher MadHead as he empties a case of pepper spray on a college student who is under arrest and in the control of a state trooper. "We need to be able to get the word out to parents that when they send their kids to this school, we will take any action needed to grind them into the dirt."

Ad 4. (Seagulls cry out as the camera pans over a meeting of the Good Old Boys at J. Frank Raley’s waterfront house in St. Mary’s City.)

"Hey, we got our people in office and its time to divy up the spoils," said Gypsy Joe Anderson, vice-president-for-life of the county commissioners. "I have a list of 25 people instrumental to our election who have not yet received county jobs, what the hell is taking so long, can’t we get rid of that fat guy in charge of personnel and get someone who will do what we tell them instead of following some ridiculous rules."

Ad 5. (Seagulls cry out as they are gazed upon by Babs as they fly by the Republican’s annual summer picnic being held at Sotterley Plantation.)

"I would suppose they have sufficient darkies to run the big house and still pose for tourists down by the slave quarters," asked former Commissioner President Barbara Thompson. (Seagulls now are dropping from the sky, dead as a doornail.)

"Thank you for standing in for me at functions I cannot attend," said Commissioner Shelby (The Pick) Guazzo. "Babs, it means so much to me to have your advise on every matter, large and small."

"No problem, Pick," said Babs. "And don’t call me Babs. I am beginning my election campaign and I am going to attend everything just as I always did when I was in office, I am not about to let a little thing like an election keep me from doing what I was born to do, to rule this land with an iron fist."

Ad 6. (Seagulls cry out as they are dropped from flight by shots fired by Richard Fritz and his band of deputies as they fly over his waterfront colonial-era estate.)

"Lookie, here Fritz, sit down and shut up, we have another plan for you. Just let us go up to that radio station and we’ll do it in the middle of the night, ya see, we’ll sneak up and climb the radio tower about half way up and while we are up there, we’ll just saw the tower in half, all the while, we’ll video tape the whole thing so we can prove we were just trying to save the airwaves from words that are hurtful to the image of St. Mary’s County," said Sgt. Guile Long.

"Sounds good to me, Guile, but do you really have time, I mean you have a long list of homes to go to help parents with their kids who are experimenting with drugs, you know slap the shit out of the little suckers and teach them it doesn’t pay to mess with officers of the law...and drugs," said Fritz. "Don’t worry, Guile, no one will be prosecuting you this time now that I am running the State’s Attorney’s Office. Now get your boys together and take care of the damn radio station, I want it off the air now. And don’t forget to take special care to run down any fat-ass news men that might run out in the parking lot as you make your escape, the only good reporters are dead reporters. Ah, I love raging hormones in the morning. Where is my 14th wife?"

Ad 7. (Seagulls cry out as they fly over the Sheriff’s Headquarters overlooking Breton Bay as sheriff’s personnel supervise inmates who are cheerfully playing with old evidence being moved from the basement of the courthouse during the renovation process.)

"Well, lookie this," said crackhead #1 to his pal. "They got some fine rock sitting in these little plastic pouches marked ‘evidence’, you know those trials are over with and nobody is gonna need it again, how about if I stick this old gun in my pocket and you bring the crack back to the jail tonight, nobody will care, hell we can sell this stuff to rest of the boys. I can get 50 bucks for the gun."

"This is a fine setting for visitors up here on this hilltop next to the old jail," said crackhead #2 to crackhead #3, "I hear they are filming commercials about what a nice place this county is to put on tv, think we can get jobs as extras?"

"Hell, don’t worry about that, we can just sell rock to the visitors, you know, prowl around the motel parking lots at night, you know its wide open these days, all the narc cops get off work at 5 o’clock and if you take care of Mr. Big, you don’t have nothing to worry about. Only those stupid boys hanging on corners in the trailer park get busted, and not many of them go any more, I guess we all have a friend in Leonardtown."

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Charles Mattingly, of Leonardtown, has been exercising his First Amendment rights via his car signs.

(June 22, 1999) Many years ago a fella named Wayne McLeod had a small trash company he operated under the name of Wayne’s Trash Service. He formerly worked for his daddy, when the McLeod family ran the area’s largest trash company, St. Mary’s Disposal. When the family sold out to the new guys, Wayne’s family did what was best for them, but Wayne didn’t fit in with the new ownership too well and he therefore ventured out on his own. Some say that Wayne was bitter at having had the company sold out from under him and that he was never right again after having been electrocuted while working on some equipment. Wayne was said to have become convinced that there were folks out to persecute him. Whether or not that was true about ten years ago or not is the subject of one’s point of view, but a combination of events soon led Wayne to come under fire from folks wishing to put him out of business.

Tacks and nails were spread on the parking lot of the small garage in the Hollywood Industrial Park where Wayne parked his trucks. Competitors went around to Wayne’s customers and offered trash pickup service to them at half the rate Wayne was charging and almost all of his customer’s left him. His ability to keep up the payments on his trucks soon evaporated and he lost his compactor garbage trucks and soon was picking up trash in pickup trucks with wooden sides erected to retain the refuse.

Wayne was watching his competitors too. He was photographing medical waste which was dumped in the county landfill, calling in the state police and the Maryland Department of the Environment. He took aerial photos of allegedly illegal transfer operations being conducted by his antagonists, St. Mary’s Disposal.

Wayne McLeod stood up at public meetings and made wild accusations about these various activities in the trash heap business, with his detractors saying he was crazy and jealous.

Soon Wayne was out of business, working where he could. The A. W. Stevens family, the people he said were doing illegal things, the people who ran St. Mary’s Disposal, agree with Wayne and pleaded guilty to doing lots of illegal things. They will soon be sentenced and already have been assessed over $3 million in fines. They may be going to prison and Wayne is homeless, living on the streets, maybe sleeping in a car.

But while this story may be at a conclusion for Wayne and the folks he tracked for a long time, it ain’t over for Southern Maryland. Calvert County is losing money on their transfer station. Waste Management, the large firm with the reputed Mafia image hanging over their heads, now owns St. Mary’s Disposal and just about every other commercial hauling firm in the area. With their virtual monopoly on the trash business, with St. Mary’s County out of the landfill business, no one else will be able to compete with the giant firm.

The rest of the story will show up in coming years as garbage bills will become extremely expensive with King Trash calling the shots. No one will be coming around to businesses and offering low rates or better service. Waste Management, the King Trash of the region, will be ruling your life for a long time. Those who aren’t recycling now better start learning how to do it, as getting rid of your garbage will soon be akin to buying fuel oil or paying your electric bill.

There is a guy around that most everyone knows who was the local manager for St. Mary’s Disposal while all the illegal schemes were being carried out that the Steven’s family admitted to last week. His name is Bill Mattingly. Bill hasn’t been charged with anything and still works for Waste Management, directing their affairs in the area.

Bill wanted to be a county commissioner and worked hard to get the nod of the Democratic Central Committee last year, but failed, losing to John William Quade by one vote after a central committee member was flown back to a meeting here from vacation in Ocean City. Quade went on to lose the election to Shelby Guazzo, who may or may not be a nose picker. Bill is a former deputy sheriff and makes no secret of harboring political ambitions. With his background in trash and being close to corruption, he is well suited for the business he hopes to break into one day. One has to admire the way he lands on his feet.

When you see Wayne McLeod wandering into a local store to buy a cup of coffee, you might want to tell Wayne that you wish everyone had listened to him because Wayne wasn’t crazy after all. You just might want to buy Wayne’s coffee for him. While he may have had his own interests at heart, his self-interests coincided with yours.

When you have to go to a guy who runs numbers and books bets on football games to borrow enough money to pay your garbage bill to Waste Management, tell ‘em Guido sent you.

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The St. Mary’s Republicans are getting all hot and bothered about who will replace John Slade as Delegate after he gets the expected tap by Gov. Glendening to be the next District Court Judge.

Why is the GOP in a dither? You would think they would have enough trouble trying to figure out who will replace Voorhaar and Fritz if the two joy-boys go away and cannot serve out their terms. First, the Democratic Central Committee will pick Sal Raspa to be the delegate, as long as Sal wants the job, it’s his, as he led a victorious slate to victory in last year’s central committee election, picking up five out of seven seats. And Sal ain’t a Republican. But the GOP is buzzing that Steny Hoyer will somehow guide the selection to Julie Randall, all part of a big scheme to get her out as commissioner as the Good Old Boys are reportedly disappointed in her. Bullhockey. The Democrats are very pleased with Julie and she ain’t going nowhere. In particular, she ain’t going to Annapolis as delegate. Sal will or whoever the Central Committee picks if Sal says no to driving to Annapolis. Myra certainly wouldn’t let Sal get an apartment up there, so she would have to retire if he wants to be delegate. Watch for pillow talk to prevail on this race.

Francie Eagan, remember her? The blonde bimbo with the two boobs who almost ran the last Board of St. Mary’s Commissioners as the Chairman of the Board but instead demurred and played cheerleader to the 1st National Bank crowd. Francie is back and sorry that she decided not to run for reelection, she misses being commissioner and without the wicked witch of the west, Babs, in office, she envisions being a commissioner again to be quite attractive. Watch for Francie to run in the GOP primary in 2002 and beat Shelby Guazzo, who the Washington Post intimated was picking her nose in the Cheap Shots photo which we only speculated that she was making an adjustment.

Small business folks, watch out as Gypsy Joe Anderson and Guazzo go after your signs. This is collusion between those two dummies and the Emptyprize. You don’t know why? Figure it out. The reason the Emptyprize has always supported stringent sign regulations which will force out all of the old small-business signs in the county is that they will be able to sell more of those high-dollar ads in teh Emptyprize. Pure business. Theirs.

Why is Honest Al and Ralph Martin, of the Emptyprize, so afraid of Ron Walton and Bay Media? Because Bay Media is growing and going to kick Chespapeake Publishing’s butt in this hotly competitive market of Southern Maryland

Big changes are underway in Bay Media which will put their best foot forward in a big way which will please their fans and torment their foes. Will you find out this week? Maybe, but remember, only The Shadow knows for sure.

Rumors of this newspaper being talked about as a prospect for sale to several groups have given great hope to the paper’s non-fans. The very flattering article about The Rag in The Post on Sunday ought to have made more than one of these non-fans choke on their morning coffee, starting at Ralph Martin’s house and working down to Mattaponi Road to Dickie-Do Castle.

With important new support for the newspaper coming like a Phoenix rising from the trail of quarters left behind by Fritz and Dickie-do’s supporters last election, look for an even healthier and more aggressive Rag covering a wider variety of subjects.

The following is an illegally recorded transcript of a phone call between Ralph Martin and Al Dailey:

"Al, what the hell are you doing down there at the Emptyprize to get your paper noticed, how come it’s always ST. MARY’S TODAY that is in the big-city media, what the hell is going on?"

"Mr. Martin, sir, we just won’t run those kind of stories in our proud and venerable institution, we only have room for barns on the front page, perfect barns, barns with color, definition, shadows, character... all of these characteristics exuding from the front page photos of barns," said Al.

"Who the hell cares about stories and photos about barns, I sent you down there to kick that moron Boyd in the ass, I want to get rid of him and bring in someone like myself from Wal Mart to edit simple stories written by Vicious Vicky and that crack reporter...ah...Mike, no, Earl....no....Ted.....oh hell, whatever his damn name is anyway," said Martin.

"John," said Al. "He does barn-like stories for us, he is best pals with Fritz, goes to special meetings together, got a secret handshake, this is good for us."

"Dont’ be a dolt, Al,", said Ralph. "this guy was for real when he was in the know, but without Phil Cooper, he just ain’t much".

"Wrong, John gets the low down from Fritz, himself. We need to keep John on the job so Fritz and Voorhaar can feed stories to us."

"We got that story about the feds, didn’t we?"

"But Ralph", protested Al, "That story wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, all we are doing is kissing up to chumps who are on their way out of office and making ourselves look like monkeys. I am the monkey with the tin cup and you are the organ grinder. We both sing and play whatever tune Voorhaar and Fritz want us to."

"Well, I am getting tired of kissing the butts of these politiicians," said Ralph. "Why are we afraid of those St. Mary’s Commissioners, how come we don’t say something about all of the Open Meetings Law violations, hell they just broke it again meeting in secret with that sawed-off Mikulski. We used to say something about such blatant law breakings, but no more, we need to keep that county legal advertising, so we keep quiet, its an investment in our future."

"Look," Al spoke up. "We do just enough to cover our asses, like Friday, and then go on our merry way. Who will the GOP pick to replace Voorhaar, will it be Haynie?"

"No, it will come down some other way," said Ralph. "We haven’t been able to figure it all out, but lets go walk down to the photos of barns and draw some inspiration."

"Yeah, boy, oh boy, I am getting inspired now, I am going to go right in the office and tell my staff that we want some real stories about real people," said Al.

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Founding Fathers On Calvert Prayer

The following is a secretly tape-recording of a meeting of the Founding Fathers held at St. Mary's City on Memorial Day weekend. This meeting was taped in violation of Maryland's wiretap law.

"Did you read that editorial in the Washington Post about the crowd at the high school graduation in Calvert County where everyone prayed," asked Ben Franklin of the other Fathers.

"Hell no," said George Washington, "ever since I found out that they use my name for their newspaper and don't pay a damn dime to my family in royalties, I stopped reading that rag."

"Well, I read it," answered Thomas Jefferson. "I just don't understand where that paper gets off calling 2,000 people who stand and recite the Lord's Prayer as being uncivil and intolerant. This is a clear-cut case of the rights of the majority being threatened by a dictatorship of a distinct minority."

"Well, I would be more comfortable if the ceremony had gone on without the prayer," said James Madison, "but when you come right down to it, there is nothing uncivil about the Lord's Prayer, we always had the preacher belt out that prayer or another one at every one of our sessions in the Continental Congress, hell they still do it in Congress today. So what is the fuss?"

"Judging from what goes in President Bill Clinton's office as well as those Senate and House offices of the Kennedys, Packwood and Livingstone, I would say that a high school graduation ceremony, which includes a prayer, is very civil indeed," said Franklin. "Didn't we put 'In God We Trust' on the money, don't they still have that on the coins and currency?"

"Hell, yes, they do," shouted Jefferson. "We put our lives, our honor, our fortunes and our trust in God when we decided to break off from the King and start this nation, if God didn't help Gen. Washington's army survive the deep recesses of the cold winter at Valley Forge, who did?"

"What about how the prayer isn't recited in the classrooms," said Franklin. "They banished God from schools and now look, Lucifer has taken over. Kids are killing teachers and fellow students with guns and teachers are molesting kids instead of teaching them to read. It is really disappointing to see that students are graduated from school when they cannot read, simply because they are fine sportsmen."

"But why can't 2,000 people erupt into spontaneous prayer at a graduation ceremony without being condemned by the Washington Post?" said Jefferson.

"Thats what I would like to know," agreed Washington.

"Look fellas," answered Franklin. "The Washington Post is filled with reporters and editors who are what they call liberals, leftists, socialists, with many who think that queer fellows belong in the Army; that queer women can be parents and adopt children; that there is nothing wrong with allowing a woman to come right to the point of childbirth and then insert an object into the womb and into the infant's head, killing it and aborting the birth. How can we expect them to do anything but oppose the Lord's Prayer when they set about the Devil's Work as editorial policy each and every day?"

"But does it offend Muslims and Jews for the Lord's Prayer to be recited at a school event?" asked Washington.

"No, how could it, the Muslims and Jews believe in God and are very holy people. They just don't want their children to feel they must participate in Christian prayers against their beliefs," said Jefferson. "The ones who don't want a non-denominational prayer recited are the atheists. They say they don't believe in God."

"But don't people have a Constitutional right to freely pray at a public event if they choose to?" said Franklin, adjusting his breeches up on his ample rear end.

"Sure," answered Jefferson. "The Post just doesn't get it. Freedom to choose, to speak, to read what one wishes isn't just for an individual, freedom of expression applies to groups as well. Even The Post is a group, which has the right of expression, in fact, they exercised that very right with their editorial on Saturday."

"Its kind of dizzy isn't it," asked Madison. "I mean, well they used the First Amendment right of freedom of the press to condemn a large gathering of individuals to use their First Amendment right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech to express themselves."

"But doesn't the Post support the burning of the U. S. flag as an expression of free speech?"

"Yeah, they see nothing wrong with it," answered Tom Jefferson, "and to tell you the truth, as much as we all hate to see that, they might be right. King George wasn't too happy when we burned the Union Jack and we thought it got the point across to him about how we felt about taxation without representation."

"But back to the subject," insisted Franklin. "How does the Post think we can swallow this crap about one person having a right to stand and disrupt a ceremony by shouting at the top of his lungs some personal belief, such as 'Stop the War in Vietnam' as went on around here 30 years ago, but feel that when more conservative folks who want to say the Lord's Prayer are being disruptive, uncivil and somehow in contempt of the law when they pray?"

"It's all a matter of business," said Madison. "The Post has survived for a long time, they have beat their competition fair and square and give out one hell of a product for two bits, much more than their only competitor in this fine Capital City."

"Are you saying that might makes right?" asked Jefferson. "That because they are big and have a big voice that makes them right? They don't like it when 2,000 God-fearing citizens of Calvert County stand up and express themselves as a group. What do they fear, that citizens all over America will stand up at school functions and pray?"

"Wasn't the President praying with students, teachers and parents out in Littleton a few weeks ago?" asked Jefferson.

"The Post didn't say anything about that," said Washington. "I know one thing, the Judges I appointed to the courts wouldn't allow one atheist to bully an entire school. I have to say I really do read the Post, but my favorite newspaper is ST. MARY'S TODAY. If only they could have been here for this afternoon's discourse."

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Cutbacks on Road Project Match Layoffs at Base

Last week Maryland Governor Ellen Sauerbrey came to St. Mary's County to join the Board of Commissioners and Sen. Sprogle Ladd (R. Calvert, St. Mary's), Del. Anthony O'Donnell (R. Calvert, St. Mary's), Del. Donald O'Neil (R. St. Mary's) and Del. Shane Mattingly (R. St. Mary's) in dedicating the new road construction on Rt. 235.

The Governor flew into Pax River aboard a business jet owned by Crown Petroleum accompanied by former Vice President Dan Quayle, who is running for president. At the site of the new construction on Rt. 235, which the Sauerbrey Administration succeeded in narrowing the original project back down to one favored by local environmentalists, the Governor thanked the local delegation for their cooperation in cutting over $40 million from the road work.

"I know it may have been a hard decision for the Southern Maryland delegation to back my revised capital improvements project in the recent and tumultuous session of the General Assembly, but it was the right thing to do to cut out the outlandish spending associated with the ridiculous spending called for in this bill," said Sauerbrey.

"I only wish Congressman Hoyer was man enough to show up today to see this great ceremony celebrating this adjustment of Maryland's spending priorities," said the Governor. "But obviously he is too chicken to leave D.C. and come down here to his own district, you would think that having won the election by only 50 votes he would want to be here to find out what it is that is making Republicans the majority party in Southern Maryland."

Sauerbrey greeted Commissioners Shelby Guazzo, Jeff Snavely, Dalton Wood, Paul Chesser and Barbara Thompson, who were all elected last year, along with all the GOP candidates for the legislature, including the remarkable defeat of former Senator Roy Dyson.

The revamped road project that the Republican Party endorsed, eliminated the grand scheme to add a third permanent lane, a continuous right turn lane, sidewalks and a raised median strip complete with plantings of shrubs, flowers and trees, and returned the roadway to a simple two-lane configuration in each direction.

"Since the Congress voted to remove more than 50 percent of the activities at Pax River to China Lake in California," said Gov. Sauerbrey, "we obviously didn't need to build the planned expansion of Rt. 235. The Republican majority in the Congress did the right thing in putting many of the functions carried out at Pax River in California where our party enjoys such a large number in that state's congressional delegation."

Sen. Ladd took the podium to thank the governor for her appearance in St. Mary's County.

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate your being here," said the senator, "chiefly because I lost my speech that Commissioner Thompson provided for me, but I was listening to Chris Brugman on the radio on the way here and he was happy as a Junebug over this road project being cut by more than $40 million. So whatever he says, I am in favor of, as he is the talk show host with the most that put us all into office last year. Chris is my guru forever, so the hell with the speech, Babs was probably just setting me up anyway like she has been doing to that idiot Chesser for years."

Delegate Tony O'Donnell was next to speak and he waddled up to the podium after the State Police Executive Protection Service which accompanies the Governor made him take off the three handguns he had concealed on his person, two in holsters and a derringer stuffed in his underwear, the latter which may have not been an armament but more of an enhancer to his manhood.

"I want to thank the Governor for her signing my concealed carry law," said Del. O'Donnell, "When the bill goes into effect on July 1, we will now be able to send our kids to school fully armed and ready to deal with any students or teachers who get out of hand, we won't have any Columbine tragedy here, our kids will be able to defend themselves in the urban warzones we call schools."

Other legislation O'Donnell was able to steer through the GOP majority in the General Assembly was a roll back in the state income tax which will completely remove all taxes paid by corporations and put the burden of taxes on the homeowner where it belongs.

"I have heard some older citizens beefing about our property taxes going up to make up for the elimination of taxes on corporations," said O'Donnell. "Those seniors have to realize that they will be able to get jobs and get out of the house and support themselves, why do they think the country owes them a living? With all the new jobs that will be created by the elimination of the business taxes, they can get good jobs working on their feet and get their exercise at the same time they earn more to pay their real estate taxes. We Republicans get things right, and the Democrats have had their way for far too long. It's time for these crybaby old people to go back to work."

The Governor then introduced the commissioners at the roadside event. Before they were able to speak, passing motorists on Rt. 235, many of whom were driving U-Haul trucks on their way out of the county, began throwing bricks, bottles and at least one pipe bomb at the assembled lawmakers.

"We made some tough decisions but the Potomac River Association, who is now the county's most powerful citizens committee, said that they were going to give us all their highest award at their next banquet," said Commissioner Thompson. "We did our best to keep Myrtle Point from being developed into a park, we got rid of all the traffic on Rt. 235 by telling the Navy to buzz off and we were able to reduce our need for more classrooms and teachers, in fact, we are going to be able to lay off over 800 teachers next year which will be another big savings for St. Mary's County. This is real progress."

That afternoon, Chris Brugman played the speechifying over and over again on his talk show which appears at 1690 am, Brugman on the Bay, at 3 pm. With the massive layoffs at Pax River, Brugman's show has soared in popularity as thousands of people now have time on their hands in afternoons and can hear the ex-commissioner explain the Republican philosophy.

The governor was able to put the money saved from the road project into Baltimore and Montgomery Counties.

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Not All Men Are Created Equal

Lesbians, Retaliation and Walden
Are you being ordered to go to Walden for counseling for drugs, domestic violence or family matters?  What about therapy for dealing with anger? Read on about what happens behind closed doors.

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Sometimes dealing with fantasy about real events is the only way to make sense of them or to bring out the truth about the conduct of those arrogant folks who wish to deal with your government as if it is their own private business. So we get to have a little fun now and then.

Other times you must know that we don't have to make anything up as we would never be able to conjure the outrageous conduct that these cats will accomplish on their own.

Among the so-called sacred cows that exist in the liberal-socialist politically correct network of boards, commissions and agencies deep within the bureaucratic sub-cultures of St. Mary's County is nested the Walden-Sierra center. Born originally as a 24 hour drug and suicide crisis hotline and counseling center the group has branched off into all manner of counseling services and operates a residential center for teenage girls who cannot or will not stay at their homes. Some of the girls are victims of violence and abuse, others are the perpetrators of the hostilities that make living with their families out of the question. Walden imports most of the kids to the center from out of the county and then the administration of the facility greatly misleads the county citizens and county government about how this county-supported facility fails to meet needs of local residents (in the residential segment of the operation). Walden does handle much court-referred and mandated counseling for drunk drivers, druggies and spousal abuse cases. Walden has many great attributes, of that there is no doubt. But honesty about their operation isn't one of them, which is a real shame. The propensity of the management and some members of the board of directors to lie and deceive the public is unfortunate, as ultimately, all of the directors are really big-hearted souls who are out to help people. But they get caught up in their little corner of the world and forget that they have accountability to the citizens who actually own the operation. But with many of these cats being socialists, they don't believe in accountability to the peons of the general public.

Now with all the above disclaimers provided to cover the above described bastards, we shall proceed.

It seems that the Walden Board is in a bit of a jam, having lost a summary judgement on a lawsuit filed by a former male staffer. Not that the organization has too good of a track record at hiring any males to begin with. The residential center was originally designed to help all young people, but in reality, only young girls have been housed there, a situation that is likely practical in order to avoid having to build an addition to the place for a maternity ward.

But the fact remains that the former esteemed director of the center is a lesbian and went on to become director of a prestigious Aids Clinic and program in D. C.

The man who is in litigation with Walden used to date a staffer at the center and became intimate with that female. After a while, the relationship ended. But the man soon became the target of regular abuse from many of the female staffers and even supervisors who had learned intimate details of his physical sexual size from his former lover.

The teasing of the man over his shortcomings became overbearing and he tried to get the women to stop the harassment but his supervisors ignored the situation. So finally he filed a complaint. When it came time to hear the complaint at the Walden Board of Directors meeting, one member of the Board refused to let the man talk and instead began an inquisition in which the man was told he was being fired because he allegedly referred to the current director, Kathy O'Brien, as a lesbian.

In the legal scheme of things, this was not a good move for those arrogant folks like Lanny Lancaster on the Walden Board to have taken that action, but what they heck, it is only tax money that they use in their shenanigans anyway, so what the hell do they care?

While Kathy is very unlikely to be a lesbian and no proof has been offered that the sexually harassed former male staffer ever called her a lesbian, he only missed the mark by one person as the former director openly discusses her lesbianism. There certainly is nothing wrong with Lesbians, just ask Howard Stern, a man who would love to tangle with a couple of lesbians anytime. Lesbians can be a lot of fun, they just ain't much in the procreation department, establishing families and they have a lot of fun emasculating men. You know the type --- Miss Ballbreaker.

But there is a lot wrong with sexually harassing any employee, male or female and the moral of this story is that Walden needs to be held accountable for its actions. Will they? No, the taxpayers will shell out the money and this little insight into the affairs of the Walden Center will only be a peek at what really takes place.

But will the Salt Water Taffy Board of Commissioners dare hold them accountable? Not by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin. But remember, only The Shadow knows for sure!

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What the hell is wrong with this new Board of Commissioners? Are they so thin-skinned that they cannot take some heat from the media? A certain slather-mouthed talk show host has a certain Babs-Plus commissioner fuming over his remarks. Why should she get so upset, just like no one reads this paper, no one listens to his show. Rather than imitate Babs-past, Julie Randall should try providing leadership which doesn't engage in mean-spirited threats and attacks on the media. Tsk, tsk. Pretty tacky for such a nice lady with such a pretty smile. Does that warm exterior shield from public view an inner hostility that would compete with that old witch Babs for being nasty and vindictive? God forbid.

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For the balance of county government that is not hooked up as part of the public school system, be ye forever more known by the very descriptive words used last week by Julie Randall, who called all of yon government agencies "spending units" in the budget process. Randall hit the nail on the head. Most folks long ago stopped thinking of much of government as public servants. Calling them "spending units" is a far more accurate way to describe their most important function and clearly the way Julie thinks of them is quite an insight into her complicated makeup.

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Tax Ho!

St. Mary's Commissioners, l to r, Tom Mattingly, Joe Anderson, (secretary Judy Spalding) Julie Randall, Dan Raley and Shelby Guazzo.       ST. MARY'S TODAY photo

 

Does anyone remember a down-county fellow who has been fairly successful in backroom politics as well as selling insurance? This agreeable chap that figures very prominently in the decisions of the current St. Mary's Commissioners is former Senator J. Frank Raley Jr. There is now widespread evidence that J. Frank is running Julie Randall, who has definitely taken the helm of the unsteady ship of state of St. Mary's.

J. Frank, thru Julie, is not quite sure how things will work, but you peons out there who own property and pay the taxes that keep things going ought to pay strict attention to how this former senator has operated for the past 33 years since the voters tossed him out of office for giving away the Potomac River and outlawing slot machines.

J. Frank specializes in creating harsh restrictive laws that do not affect him personally. For years while he has advocated limited commercial entrances on Rt. 235's business corridor, no one knew he was partners with Wildewood developer Eddie Wettengel on the office building complex which includes the Veda building and Exploration Building, located just north of the North Gate of the Naval Air Station.

When property owners along Rt. 235 were contesting the low balling figures for their property being condemned for the widening of the highway last year, J. Frank took center stage in warning that such action could mean serious delays for road construction. Of course, that was complete hooey on J. Frank's part, he ought to be ashamed for telling such lies, as the final decision on how much the State has to pay property owners for their property taken for road construction depends on the decisions of a Judge and could conceivably be decided years after the road is completed, thus the extra funds granted due to a zoning change wouldn't affect the cost of the road project in the slightest way.

The old game is still being played over how much per square foot certain people get, who are on the A list of the local ruling business elite and those who haven't sold out to the good old boy network and still own property along Rt. 235. Some get as much as 4 or 5 dollars more per square foot. How does stuff like that keep happening here in what the late Senator Paul J. Bailey used to call the land of the Flask, the Fiddle and the Dark Roasted Possum?

While J. Frank was pissing and moaning on the front page of the Emptyprize, he and his partner, Tom Watts, the socialist-businessman who wants more restrictive government rules for Lexington Park because he neither owns property in the town nor lives in the town, had their own new building completed on Rt. 235 in California, north of Town Creek. J. Frank didn't want to see more commercial zoning along Rt. 235 and yet this greedy old coot was making hay hand over fist. Not only was his and Tom's property set up and ready to go on a valuable corner property, but he was hustling off his office building project, coming out ahead by his own personal share of the profit, said to be $ 4 million in his pocket.

Considering that J. Frank has a life estate down at St. Mary's City where the State of Maryland bought his waterfront estate 30 years ago for a pretty penny and let him live there for the rest of his life, they even maintain the place for him --- all maintenance --- he has demonstrated a lot of gall to holler about others trying to better themselves. J. Frank has sat on the Zoning Board while he was a member of the loan committee at a local savings and loan. That put a lot of pressure for folks to deal with him, to pay his institution money as interest on loans if they wanted to get their zoning approved.

J. Frank has had accolades piled on him, even on this page, for guiding the Naval Alliance to support keeping Pax River open and booming during the Pentagon's base closing and reorganization procedures over the past 7 years. While J. Frank did do a good deed, he personally profited from those deeds, which by the way, were partially funded by St. Mary's taxpayers. Watch J. Frank count his $4 million from the sale of the office park. Will he offer to reimburse the taxpayers for the money spent by the commissioners to pay lobbyists hired by the Navy Alliance group? Hell no.

But J. Frank has the St. Mary's government to keep him busy. See him operate Julie Randall like a hand puppet. She is getting quite testy these days as folks beef about violations of the open meetings laws and point out that she is raising taxes even though the last Board left the current Board with a $12 million surplus. Babs was as mean as a snake but Julie ain't exactly Babs-Lite. She can hold her own in a fight with a rattlesnake.

Babs is still skulking around, attending meetings, making snide remarks in a constant undertone at meetings, while Julie barks from the front of the room. Is Julie just Babs-Plus? Only The Shadow knows for sure!
Babs lurks forever.

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Now that Buddy Loffler has sold out his building to NAPA auto parts and auctioned off most of his remaining boat inventory where will he work? See if he pops up working to help lease out the New Colony development.

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What happened to the $6 million for Tudor Hall Convention Center that the state was going to help with? It seems that a St. Mary's Delegate said he WOOD vote for the Governor's pet gay bill inspired by the Governor's gay brother. That delegate helped kill the bill, instead of supporting the bill and the Governor found out and promptly slashed the budget item down to a paltry $80,000. It was hardball all the way.

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Taxes. That is a word you are going to hear a lot more about in St. Mary's County as the current commissioners start to make giant steps in increasing taxes. They are spending money in their first year in office like a bunch of drunken sailors. Who are they saying no to? No one. Gypsy Joe Anderson views the county treasury as a play pen with which to toss out shiny new toys to his campaign supporters and to fulfill his various philosophical beliefs. He and Guazzo are two confirmed liberals willing to tax and spend in the greatest tradition of the far left. But don't look to Mattingly, Raley and Randall to be the balance expected of them. They aren't. In their first year in office, this Board is already raising taxes by not lowering the constant yield to make up for the increase in assessments, thereby increasing the burden on the property owners to pay for the whims of the politicians.

Taxes are going up and they are going up this year. Is there talk about lowering the income tax piggyback, yeah. But talk is cheap. There is likely only one true believer for that proposal and that is Dan Raley.

The Board is rewarding the school system for general incompetence by giving them even more money. Its okay that the kids are dumber than ever despite more money than ever being spent with more teachers than ever, hell, just throw more money at them and sooner or later it will have to stick. It doesn't matter that the people sent to work at NAVAIR either don't have the kids the experts thought they had or they just didn't want to send their kids to school in St. Mary's County, whatever the reason, they didn't show up to school here and more money was added to the budget for three years in a row to provide for them and for three years running, they just ain't here.

The Board has shown that they are incredibly stupid, or are just in a dumb contest with Voorhaar.

Dickie-do says he needs more deputies to fill up the crime-infested courthouse and the Board gives him 15 more deputies. It doesn't matter that he has about 9 vacancies and hasn't filled them, he needs more and they give the positions to him. Maybe Dick has a secret file on each of them or has deputies following their wives home from Leonardtown as happened to one commissioner lately. Or maybe the commissioners are really dumber than the last Board. Impossible? Perhaps, but what else can we think about anyone who honestly believes Dick Voorhaar actually needs more deputies?

Dick says he needs 60 more deputies. Next, he'll need a big building to put them in as the Voorhaar school of police work dictates that all newly funded positions be assigned desk jockeys and specialized units and that never, never, never shall additional deputies ever be assigned to road patrol.

The criminals work outside of the sheriff's headquarters (hopefully) and they basically work nights and weekends. The deputies spend most of their time inside headquarters during the day shift.

Are drugs which are or were evidence in trials being mishandled by the Sheriff's Dept.? Has jewelry, guns, drugs and case files in cases which may be reopened on appeal being handled by jail inmates who are moving this material from the basement storage area of the circuit courthouse to make way for renovations? Would lawyers for some of those seeking appeals like to know what is being hidden from them in some of these files? If drugs are already not being accounted for, what difference does it make who decides to put some drugs in their pockets now in the courthouse basement? What about the sloppy storage of property in the basement of the sheriff's headquarters?

Does it matter if the owners of stolen and recovered property ever are given a chance to identify their property? Other counties lay this stuff out occasionally and advertise the recovered property so folks can have a chance to identify family heirlooms or Johnny's bike. But not here. Why are all of these problems existing? Only The Shadow knows for sure!

(4/13/99)   Taxes. That is a word you are going to hear a lot more about in St. Mary's County as the current commissioners start to make giant steps in increasing taxes. They are spending money in their first year in office like a bunch of drunken sailors. Who are they saying no to? No one. Gypsy Joe Anderson views the county treasury as a play pen with which to toss out shiny new toys to his campaign supporters and to fulfill his various philosophical beliefs. He and Guazzo are two confirmed liberals willing to tax and spend in the greatest tradition of the far left. But don't look to Mattingly, Raley and Randall to be the balance expected of them. They aren't. In their first year in office, this Board is already raising taxes by not lowering the constant yield to make up for the increase in assessments, thereby increasing the burden on the property owners to pay for the whims of the politicians.

Taxes are going up and they are going up this year. Is there talk about lowering the income tax piggyback, yeah. But talk is cheap. There is likely only one true believer for that proposal and that is Dan Raley.

The Board is rewarding the school system for general incompetence by giving them even more money. Its okay that the kids are dumber than ever despite more money than ever being spent with more teachers than ever, hell, just throw more money at them and sooner or later it will have to stick. It doesn't matter that the people sent to work at NAVAIR either don't have the kids the experts thought they had or they just didn't want to send their kids to school in St. Mary's County, whatever the reason, they didn't show up to school here and more money was added to the budget for three years in a row to provide for them and for three years running, they just ain't here.

The Board has shown that they are incredibly stupid, or are just in a dumb contest with Voorhaar.

Dickie-do says he needs more deputies to fill up the crime-infested courthouse and the Board gives him 15 more deputies. It doesn't matter that he has about 9 vacancies and hasn't filled them, he needs more and they give the positions to him. Maybe Dick has a secret file on each of them or has deputies following their wives home from Leonardtown as happened to one commissioner lately. Or maybe the commissioners are really dumber than the last Board. Impossible? Perhaps, but what else can we think about anyone who honestly believes Dick Voorhaar actually needs more deputies?

Dick says he needs 60 more deputies. Next, he'll need a big building to put them in as the Voorhaar school of police work dictates that all newly funded positions be assigned desk jockeys and specialized units and that never, never, never shall additional deputies ever be assigned to road patrol.

The criminals work outside of the sheriff's headquarters (hopefully) and they basically work nights and weekends. The deputies spend most of their time inside headquarters during the day shift.

Are drugs which are or were evidence in trials being mishandled by the Sheriff's Dept.? Has jewelry, guns, drugs and case files in cases which may be reopened on appeal being handled by jail inmates who are moving this material from the basement storage area of the circuit courthouse to make way for renovations? Would lawyers for some of those seeking appeals like to know what is being hidden from them in some of these files? If drugs are already not being accounted for, what difference does it make who decides to put some drugs in their pockets now in the courthouse basement? What about the sloppy storage of property in the basement of the sheriff's headquarters?

Does it matter if the owners of stolen and recovered property ever are given a chance to identify their property? Other counties lay this stuff out occasionally and advertise the recovered property so folks can have a chance to identify family heirlooms or Johnny's bike. But not here. Why are all of these problems existing? Only The Shadow knows for sure!

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It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic

(3/30/99)   Years ago the late Deputy Keith Fretwell earned the rank of corporal but promoted instead were deputies like Kenny Cusic, the current commander of narcotics.

Cusic's next door neighbor was busted by the state police for having a pot farm in his back yard, a crop that Cusic never saw.

Mickey Bailey was promoted, a deputy that never has worked the road in real police work. He never DAREd to be a cop and instead spends all his work hours teaching kids not to do drugs yet the use of drugs by kids continues to grow.

Mike Merican was promoted because he may have done such a good job cutting Jamie Raley's grass, shining his shoes or other technical work. Merican suffered under the previous administration and he is making sure he won't suffer any more. Just his old buddies will...at his hand.

Other deputies were promoted too, a reflection of politics instead of merit. If merit were the rule of law, Fretwell would have been promoted to Corporal about five years ago and to the rank of Sgt. 2 years ago.

But Dick Voorhaar only saw fit to promote him to rank of corporal when he found out Keith was on his last legs and he could use the corporal promotion to grandstand next to the dying deputy's deathbed for his friends and family.

What a cheesy guy, this Voorhaar character. Keith dies quickly and now Voorhaar has another corporal position to pass out to one of his political supporters.

The Board of Commissioners, really getting to be a brain-dead bunch, approved this scheme. They just fall for Voorhaar's bull nearly every time he shows up. Dumb and Dumber. Especially Gypsy Joe Anderson.

They gave him ten new deputy positions two weeks ago and the next week he tells the community he is 60 deputies short because the commissioners won't fund the number of deputies he really needs. They were complete idiots for funding him any extra positions and then he gives it to them in the rear end the next week. Good, they deserve it for being such boneheads. It is easy to mollify Dickie-do when you are passing out tax money.

If Dick Voorhaar makes an ass out of the Board they deserve it for their failure to hold him accountable for the deputies he has been issued already. There are at least ten deputies on duty in the circuit courthouse each day. That crime-infested place is crawling with criminals intent on doing evil in the heart of our courthouse. 2 deputies are at the airplane machine, 4 are sitting in the room to the immediate right of the front door, watching tv monitors which have views of all of the interior of the building. Then there is a deputy in each of four courtrooms. Thats not counting cops who are in the courts to testify.

Voorhaar claims he needed to change the way overtime was calculated in order to keep deputies and the New Brainless Board (except Raley) went along with that farce. Newly hired deputies leave St. Mary's County because they soon learn that either they kiss butt and play politics on the right side or they have no future, thus they quit and get a job with a real police agency instead of being one of Voorhaar's Keystone Cops. Voorhaar says he can't find any qualified blacks for vacancies. Right. There ain't any qualified blacks that can make it pass his racist hiring policies. Them boys just can't add up to the right standards, Yassauh Boss!

Wayne Pettit was sheriff for three terms. To his credit, in his first two terms he professionalized the sheriff's department and convinced the commissioners in office during those years to expand the size and scope of the agency. In his third term, he turned over the control of the department to Laurel and Hardy (Voorhaar and Phil Cooper) and Capt. Chicken (Greg Copado). These three idiots soon began to unravel the good work that Pettit had accomplished and their handiwork was Pettit's lasting legacy.

With Jamie Raley's help, Voorhaar has turned the current sheriff's department into a mire of mediocrity and mean-spirited political mayhem populated by dozens of dozing dopes instead of the proud group of law officers that it could and should be. The talent for a real agency is there, albeit, a smallish core.

Voorhaar's latest top-ranking promotions continue his policy of appointing those who suck up and discourage minority employment rather than those who are qualified as police professionals. The new head of criminal investigations could find a bleeding elephant in a snowstorm. When put in charge of the Claudia Pickeral Murder, John Horne collapsed and the State Police Cold Case Squad had to come in and start from scratch in order to build the case that led to the arrest of the suspect. Horne didn't do it but his reward is to be made the top banana. Another good deed by that monkey Voorhaar.

Sgt. Charles Malone has been promoted to Lieutenant and put in charge of support services but in the plane crash that took one life while he was on what Voorhaar called an "official volunteer mission" he couldn't calculate how much gas to load on board, according to the National Safety Transportation Board final report. The plane ran out of gas with more than 100 miles yet to go and crashed. Malone was seriously injured and his reward for disobeying orders and going off on the flight is now to be promoted to be a division commander. Malone suffered a terrible loss in the tragic crash, that of his own son, but to promote him now is ridiculous.

This Board of Commissioners is giving away the farm when it comes to budget requests. They will soon look around and finding the cupboard bare, will find that they will need to raise taxes and when they do it, the tax hike will be a big hit on property owners. It's just a matter of time the way the free-wheeling dopes Anderson and Guazzo like to spend money and regulate landowners.

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It will be up to Raley, Mattingly and Randall to show that they have common sense and start turning down the more ludicrous spending schemes such as the Three Oaks Homeless Shelter. That joint, which has no overhead, the county supplied the land and the state supplied $150,000 for the building, insisted on hiring a political pal of the board of directors at the rate of $35,000 a year. If they took that same sum of money they could employ three people who would then be able to afford their own housing while working to support themselves picking up trash or some other public works job. They wouldn't be homeless any longer. But no, the liberal do-gooders like Sue Gelrud have put two counselors in the homeless center at $20,000 a year each. This shelter has had to import homeless men from Baltimore in order to have an occupant. The Shelter folks should release an official independent audit of their operations, including a daily head count of their occupancy from the day they opened to date before the county funds their requests. When the Homeless Shelter was started, the proponents said that if the county would fund the building and jump start them with some cash that private charity would sustain them. But when the liberals can get a program going and then find a way to get the taxpayers to take over their big-hearted schemes, these Starched Shorts Crowd then sit back with their toast of wine and bites of cheese and get that warm-all-over feeling from their good works. The Church Folks justified the public expenditure of taking over the housing of the couple of homeless men in Lexington Park by saying that the churches were paying to put up these guys at local motels. They wanted to get out of that duty and turn it over to the taxpayers. Private good deeds now became the responsibility of the taxpayers. But the trouble is, there really weren't that many homeless guys around. But that didn't bother these cats, they solved that problem by reaching out for the homeless of other areas. The duplication of services is incredible. Now that we have the shelter, why can't the homeless guys get alcohol counseling from the Health Department, job counseling from the job services corp. and drug counseling from Walden? Nope, the county now has to provide counseling for the homeless center even though the taxpayers are already keeping a fleet of counselors fully employed from Tri-County Youth Services Bureau down to the Family Services Center.

Why can't they simply have some old retired Navy chief with bad breath and tattoos handing out clean towels and barking orders to keep the noise down at the homeless center. Nope, they created a fancy job for a member of the Board of Directors of Walden and now are reaching into the treasury to pay for the full employment of that good old boy, who by the way, is a former Democratic candidate for county commissioner and part of the old-boy machine.

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How best to describe the potential hiring of Al Lacer as County Attorney? A disaster. Lacer is an arrogant guy who won't work the hours Durkin did. This will be a return to the days when Joe Densford was county attorney.

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Pass The Plan

(3/23/99)   --- The long rambling process of deliberating on a new comprehensive plan for St. Mary's County succeeded in bamboozling the last Board of Commissioners, putting the Zoning Director in the position of lying to that Board about the deliberations at a meeting at which a final vote was allegedly taken, causing another meeting to be held and a new vote taken, punctuated the end of the terms of two planning commissioners, was recommitted to the planning group by the former Board for further revisions and even now is still being debated and criticized for what it does and does not accomplish.

Enough is enough.

The comprehensive plan actually is not intended to be comprehensive. The reality is that the process for creating this plan, which is supposed to be a guide for zoning, not the zoning ordinance itself, has become a tar baby which threatens to engulf this new Board of Commissioners.

Brer Gypsy Joe can't stand not tinkering with the tar baby further, nor can Brer Foxhunting Shelby. Both being former planning commissioner dictators and part-time socialist-elitists, they love the idea of playing monopoly with other people's property and money. They are two superb egotists who love having the opportunity to look down their noses at all manner of citizens and elucidate on their semi-communist philosophy while property owners are forced to hold their tongues and humor these half-witted knaves of silliness.

Gypsy Joe Anderson ran up a voting record of giving all the fat-cat developers what they wanted when they came to the planning commission while he loved to beat down the little guy. And this cat calls himself a Democrat. A limousine liberal type of Democrat perhaps, a haughty, hoity-toity Democrat perhaps, but certainly not a man of principle of the Party of Jefferson and Jackson, not FDR and certainly not Truman or Kennedy. Joe Anderson is a Democrat more in the skanky mold of Bill Clinton and that about tells the story of what we can expect over the next 3 1/2 years as he completes the term of office which was properly prepared by four years of Crazy Paul Chesser.

The only difference between Chesser and Anderson is Anderson is awake. The same silly, empty-headed thought process is there. Anderson has never once created one U.S. Dollar. Not once. Two weeks ago Anderson proclaimed that the giving away of tax dollars to those who want to start up a small business was a great day for economic development in St. Mary's County. He is full of crap. It was a great day for those who cannot succeed in bringing about the investment of private capital to their business proposal and instead are forced to suck at the hind tit of government.

Like most such government programs, this will likely be a flop.

A great day for economic development? Hell no, just another banner day for giving away tax dollars by an empty-headed liberal who doesn't have the brains to come in out of the rain. Joe Anderson has never created a dollar, has always eaten from the plate of government largess, even at his private sector job where he feeds now, the firm is propped up by government contracts which allows empty-headed lobos like Gypsy Joe to leave his "job" and travel around all week to various meetings where professional bureaucrats line up how they want Joe to vote on their pet projects. Nice work if you can get it.

This Board doesn't need to play games with the taxpayer's money in the name of economic development. All they have to do is whatever Steny Hoyer asks them to do as he is the Crown Prince of Economic Development. Between Roy Dyson's ten years in Congress and twelve years in the General Assembly representing this area and Steny's eight in Congress, these two public officials have been a one-two knockout punch for Pax River and Pax River is the engine, the cars and the caboose of our economic development. The private contractors who spin off into other areas of entrepreneurship are the ones who are the only other significant source of economic development and they have been boosting the total economic output of this area by tens of millions of dollars.

What the county government is wasting with this use of tax money to loan out to business start ups is merely a mild case of gas and not even a decent burp for the real body of economic development. But Gypsy Joe sits at the commissioner's table and proclaimed that day a "Great Day for Economic Development". Barf. This guy is just a dope.

The Board of Commissioners will be a complete success in the area of economic development if they just keep from squandering the taxpayer's money and only do what they are told by Hoyer and Dyson. When they are asked to jump they should simply ask how high. Nothing more is needed and we certainly don't have to bore ourselves to tears sitting around saying how smart Gypsy Joe has become since he won the election. He hasn't become smart, he simply has one vote and those who want that vote are now patting him on the back, buying him lunch and telling him what a genius he is. He ain't, he's the same dumbass who does everything that socialist-liberal Merv Hampton tells him. He ought to stick to doing what his wife tells him to do and he'll be a lot more successful.

But back to the tar baby.

It is up to Brer Dan, Brer Tom and Brer Julie to show that common sense can prevail on this Board. The Board needs to get on with the operation of county government. Pass the stupid comprehensive plan, hire a bus to take Eric and his pals to another trip to Chattanooga and hope the whole crowd goes over a cliff somewhere. They could load the tar baby on the bus with them. Or maybe they could loan the tar baby to Eric to help him bulldoze some trees on his waterfront estate to help him gain access to the water for launching his boat even though he doesn't want anyone else to have boat ramps at Myrtle Point. Boat ramps at Marbury Fields are okay, especially when the unwashed masses don't have access to the exclusive estate of the wealthy enviro-whackos. Has Eric been illegally building a boat ramp at his waterfront estate? Some say yes, but only The Shadow knows for sure!

But back to the comprehensive plan.

It is high time to pass the plan and get on with the world.

Shelby Guazzo has been meeting for long, long lunches with Babs, from whom she is taking her marching orders. "Howdy Buddy" Carl Marx Loffler lived on through Babs as she served a term as commissioner after he was forced out of office with the spectre of a State Prosecutor investigation and Babs got her butt beat by Julie after many questionable ethics considerations on her part including a State Prosecutor's investigation. Babs loved beating up MCI while hubby Mike drew payments from Bell Atlantic. Now Babs gives marching orders to Shelby.

If you think officer's wives are a royal pain in the ass, and they are, you ain't seen nothing till you deal with a doctor's wife who thinks she knows everything. This is going to be a rough 3 1/2 years. Now maybe if Shelby would take Gypsy Joe's temperature every Tuesday using a rectal thermometer, people would be able to determine how bad the Potomac Fever has bitten this dope. Then if Gypsy Joe got an enema, he might have a lot less crap with him as he rambles on about government missions.

Gypsy Joe could return the favor and give tick dips to Shelby's foxhounds. Now there is a job for Joe and he could apply for one of them gummit loans to start up a dog grooming business. That would be a great day for economic development as Joe could earn money, he could create a dollar and become a capitalist for the first time in his long liberal-socialist life. Will Gypsy Joe become Grooming Joe? Only The Shadow knows for sure.

Now back to the comprehensive plan. Stop trying to fix a broken-down plan and just pass it and ignore it.

The following is a transcript of the latest meeting of the Republican National Committee which took place in St. Mary's County, with local Republicans hosting the event.

"You know it is high time that we faced up to it," said Phineas T. Blunderbuss, the senior Republican Senator from Idaho. "If we want to win back the presidency we have to scuttle this family values crap and go sex scandal. We need for our candidate that we nominate to have a lively and public sex life, perhaps even having cheated on his wife a few times, even maybe cheating on his girlfriend too. Maybe we can talk Bob Livingstone into running?"

"Oh come on, you don't actually believe we can win the White House by outdoing Bill Clinton's record?" asked Rev. Jerry Feltwell. "We Republicans have built a solid record of achievement, we have had two good presidents in office after Dick Nixon screwed things up for us, now you're telling us that we need to be like the Democrats in order to get back in the White House? That is just disgusting!"

"I'm with Sen. Blunderbuss," said Congressman John Fitzgerald Getsalot, of Rhode Island. "We have to show we are wired in, that we are connected, that we get hooked up at parties and with the librarian, with our personal trainers, with our bellhops, hell, with any old trade show hostess, we can do as good as the Democrats, hell we can unzip faster than they can, we could meet on the street at High Noon and a have a Zipdown. We can show them, we'll run them out of Dodge!"

"Interns too?" asked a female intern.

"Hell yeah," said Congressman Getsalot. "Interns too, baby."

"How about if we just put up a woman who is straight, smart, experienced and articulate?" suggested Sen. Olympia Twin Peaks, of Maine. "I think it's high time this party rewarded the faithful women who have been voting Republican. We don't need to sink to the level of the Democrats, we can take the high road and win, if we nominate a woman."

"Oh come-on, you don't really believe all that crap do you Olympia-baby, do you?" said Sen. John Warned-You of Virginia. "The Democrats are the ones who spout all that baloney for the liberal media, but we promise things like guns and bases, we need a president that is going to restart the Cold War so we can get this economy going again."

"But Sen. Warned-You, the economy is doing great under the Democrats," reminded his press aide.

"Don't spread that propaganda in here," said Sen. Warned-You, "we know that the Democrats have had nothing to do with this boom, this is all what was started by whatever Ronald Reagan did when he was president, it was so long ago, I don't remember exactly what it was, maybe because he broke the air traffic controllers union or something, but I know it started back then."

"Hey Sonny," said Sen. Strum Thurmond, " I was just a young geezer then, a lad of only 80 when Reagan was elected, it seems just like yesterday, I was being fitted for my 5th set of false teeth when the Gipper came into office, he was a good boy, took a lot of naps and he would wink at my young wife, she was sure flattered at that, being ogled by the President, you know the women like that, that's what we need more of, a Republican president that fools around, I agree with Congressman Getsalot, we need to put up someone with the morals of Bill Clinton and we'll take the White House by storm, er, Strum. How about me? I could take 100 Viagras and mix it up with my secretary!"

"Democrats have captured the hearts, the minds and the prurient interests of the voters," said Dick Morris, the former Clinton pollster. "This is the way it is, you either accept it or forget ever getting back the White House. Bill Clinton promised this nation an administration that was a lot like them, and boy, did he deliver. His administration has become just as bad as the country, full of liars, cheats, adulterers, rapists, sexual predators, perjurers, and everything else and people love Bill Clinton for it, because they don't have some pompous ass sitting up there making them look bad, with all his failings, he makes America look good and the people like knowing that no matter how bad they are themselves, the President will always one up them and make them look good. Is this a great country or what?"

 

The following is a transcript of an illegally recorded tape of a meeting of the Mean Old Geezers of St. Mary's:

"Okay, the meeting shall come to order," said Old Goat Extraordinaire. "Who wants to be first to tell about their bowel movement?"

"Do you have to bring that up," said Lillian Tightdrawers. "That is rather crass to be talking about in mixed company."

"Oh clam up you old bat, you know that bowel movements are the only things we talk about at our age," said Elliott Wineglass. "I heard you talking about BM's out in the hallway, so put a lid on it."

Eeeeerapp! went the loud telltale noise of gas in the back of the room as one old guy smiled in relief.

"That does it," said Lillian, "I'm out of here, don't you people have any manners at all?"

"Enough of this flatulence," said Lillian, "We have to get busy planning our next attack on Daugherty and the developers. This works great, we get together, pop the little pills and we can pass gas while we eat lunch."

"Who is staying on top of the Aging Office?" said Lillian. "We have so much to do in that area, all seniors can appreciate how much this consumes our time."

"Yeah, count me in, I have checked the gas level in our public buildings since the time Larry Jarboe was interrupted in his speech by a particularly well-timed expression of the Methane.

"Who is going to the public forum next month?" said David Triantos, "we can line up and dominate the entire meeting as usual or we could tie up the phone lines. Whatever you all want to do is fine with me."

"I say we go for the gas," said Henry Hydeitnottoowell. "Those new pills that they advertise on tv haven't worked for me. I had Navy bean soup and I have been musically inclined for weeks."

"You know we took a big hit in the last election by losing Paul Chesser," said Henry. "Paul could be counted upon, he always was the first to use the restroom and when he was in there about five minutes, you could hear the orchestra blaring all the way here in the commissioner's meeting room. But that didn't faze Paul in the slightest."

"Everyone is way off the subject," declared Ima Gasfactory. "We are all retired and have a lot of time on our hands and it is up to us who are so much more intelligent than everyone else, to go ahead and make Lexington Park safe for democracy."

"How are you gonna do that Ima," said Clarence Bombays. "we were able to really raise hell with them over the Open Meetings violations, but we need a new topic"

Toddy Tootsitloud took to the podium and paused before proceeding.

"I don't like all the signs that businesses have up along the county's main roads," said Toddy. "It is high time we do something about all the signs. I say we form an ad hoc citizens group to examine sign regulations. We need to update our files and bring a specialist from a more enlightened community to give us recommendations on how to fund ways to tear down all these ugly business signs."

Phhhhhhasssaattt!

"Oh, my" said Lillian, "that was a loud one."

"Its high time we do something about all that traffic on Rt. 235," said Jack Witless. "It takes too long to get to the store during rush hour. I think we should close the base down two days a week so all of us old farts can drive around without all that damn traffic. Three weekdays is enough for them, they can work a compressed schedule and everyone will be happy."

"What about making everyone leave the county on those two days," said Frank Foxworthy. "The European-Americans who have taken over this county have no right to be here and we should plan for the day when everyone gets on a ship and leaves North America to return from whence they came. I know, because I talk to the Indians in my tipis and in my sweat lodge on Woodburn Hill Road, which by the way, is now a nuclear-free zone."

"Did anyone watch the way Joe Anderson was holding his hands last week at the commissioner's meeting?" asked Witless.

"Yes, I noticed," answered Foxworthy. "He was always holding his hands up and intertwining his fingers and then would hold both hands interlocked in the shape of a church, it was so blatant, I know what he was doing, he was sending a religious message, you know, here is the church and here are the people, now look and here is the steeple. We need a separation of church and state and these people are in direct violation of our rights."

"I object to those new commissioners saying we have too much time on our hands," said Len Greasypalms. "We are simply committed activists."

---

Where have the county commissioners been for so many years while the past Boards have labored so hard to violate the Open Meetings Act without getting caught? This new Board just acts like the Act ain't there and dosey-dos right into Secret Session with their department heads for a little soiree. What happened in secret is finally getting out. Joe Anderson and Shelby Guazzo traded underwear for the day, Joe really liked wearing pink and feeling good about himself, while Shelby was able to find a new way to express herself with her overabundance of testosterone. Shelby found a good fit with Joe's boxer shorts. Dan Raley was able to fix lunch for all the department heads with mayonnaise sandwiches being his particular favorite to fix. It is reported from the secret session that Dan consumed an entire gallon of mayonnaise himself while Tommy Mattingly and Julie Randall, at the urging of a special facilitator, rolled in a large vat of marshmallow creme and threw chocolate chips at each other, winning ten points for each one they were able to catch with their mouths. The department heads were invited to join in, but all but George Erichsen passed on the underwear exchange, leaving George briefless as he pondered whether to push ahead for a new but unneeded landfill or whether the Transition Team will let him keep his job now that those who want to see the landfill built are calling the shots in the county.

Following are the transcripts of just a brief part of the secret meeting which were captured on tape and illegally recorded in conformance with the long-standing policy of this Rag to catch the commissioners with their pants down.

"Gee, Joe, you sure look good in pink," said Julie. "Now that you are just one of the girls, are you going to have your initials stitched on your drawers or the days of the week."

"I am really getting into my alter ego and one of the personalities that I always knew was lingering beneath my psychic in an delicate but repressed fashion," said Joe. "I never did think it was right for me to be portrayed as Gypsy Joe when perhaps Gypsy Josephine would be more descriptive. I always wanted to wear dresses and put on lipstick and sit in front of the crystal ball wearing loads of pearls with my nails painted purple."

"I don't know about you, Julie, but getting nekid in this marshmallow creme and throw chocolate chips is my idea of fun," said Tommy.

"You mean you are naked," said Julie. "I don't know about this, I wore my swim suit, I think I am getting the hell out of here, don't you dare throw another chocolate chip at me, you pervert."

"Now do you all realize how much this marshmallow creme and chocolate chips are going to cost the taxpayers," said Raley loudly. "This county cannot afford to keep you all in these luxuries and still be able to build an 8 lane highway from Ridge to Point Lookout. I am determined to keep you all from squandering money until Rt. 5 is built to last us until the Third Millennium, cause I figure that when I get through with this county, it will be another 100 years before this county elects another commissioner from Ridge, so I want the road to be able to weather the tests of time....to be up to standards....to have an interchange in front of my store...pass the mayonnaise, I'm getting hungry thinking about all that road construction, those construction workers buying fried chicken and pepperloaf sandwiches and washing it all down with grape soda pop. Yeah, boy, pass the mayonnaise!"

"Get back in here Julie, I am having a grand old time, this marshmallow creme fits in all the right places, if you know what I mean," said Tommy, rolling around in the large vat of creme and chips. "You can eat all you want and won't gain a pound."

"How did we get involved in this secret meeting, look at all of you!" said Randall. "Joe Anderson, this was your idea, you are the one who is always saying that we should plug the leaks and do everything in the back room, now I can see why, you don't want people to find out you are a cross-dressing transvestite at heart. Just look at you wearing Shelby's underwear like you've had it on all your life. And Shelby, you look like all you ever wanted to be was a man, your voice has gotten low and I swear you look like you are growing a beard. My, my, I declare, this has gotten to be a very weird scene. You all are embarrassing yourselves with the department heads. With the exception of George, they are all professional. Clearly, George will do anything, but the rest are just shocked at your behavior. We have this expert here from up the road to lead us at getting in touch with our inner selves in order to better work together as a team, but look at what you have done. Tommy Mattingly, stop throwing those goddanged chocolate chips at me, its not funny any more. I'm not even supposed to be eating any chocolate anyway, it gets me in a dither, I get excited and you never know what I'll say next....maybe that marshmallow creme isn't so bad after all."

Julie hopped back in the vat of marshmallow and stayed there for the rest of the meeting. Public works employees had to heat the vat to get the marshmallow to a liquid consistency and drain it in order to get her out.

"I declare this secret meeting over and I swear that we will never again block the public from the public's business," said Randall.

"Like hell," said Guazzo and Anderson. "We can't wait to get back next week and see what surprises are in store."

"I want to wear a union suit with a flap in the back" said Shelby, make sure you wear a red one, Joe, by then my beard will be growing better than yours."

**************************

Jamie Raley, the chief rat on a sinking ship, is going to be the first one out the door. He is reportedly retiring on April Fool's Day, an appropriate time for him to hit the road after delivering three years of irreparable damage on the St. Mary's Sheriff's Department. As an institution, it may have it's days numbered as the commissioners began the process of changing over to a county police department. Jamie will be replaced by Steve Doolan, who did his best police work sitting at the end of the FOP bar sipping suds when he was the head of the narcotics squad, best remembered as Do-Little Doolan. A regular no-talent, Doolan still won't be able to do as much damage as Raley as he is likely not as mean, vindictive and stupid as Raley. But, what the hey, he can always try.

Richard Voorhaar, the guy that many folks remember as being the nice young deputy grew into being the mean old liar. Dick lied to the former board of commissioners about the K-9 dog in the jail. He lied about the need for more deputies. He lied to this new Board about the need for sworn deputies for guarding the courtrooms. The Judges already allowed the sheriff to provide retired police officers for court room guard duty as long as they were sworn, could make arrests, and were current on their certification by the Maryland Police Training Commission. But Dick, as always, lies about this and is trying to tell the Board they need to fund a full-fledged deputy position for him. That means the taxpayers have to supply a fully equipped police car, with all the bells and whistles, full training and benefits, and all uniforms and equipment for each courtroom guard. Do you realize that deputies that only guard the courtroom have a police car that they use to drive back and forth to work in? Do you realize that these deputies rarely do anything else besides drive when they go back and forth? Why is Dickie-Do lying about this again. The Judges will allow this reasonable move, after all, why would they care if a retired police officer is hired for court security. The retired cop already has full benefits and doesn't need a police car, the county can simply save money. But Dick Voorhaar has never worried about saving money, except when it comes to the junk emergency radio system. Remember, as sheriff and as a top division commander for Pettit, Voorhaar has been in charge of decisions made about police communications for nearly 15 years. One would have to say that the existing junk police radio system is Dick's baby.

*******************

Now instead of the taxpayers funding a redo of the existing courthouse right where it is, with the courts working around the construction work, and the workers working around the courts, which are hardly ever in session anyway, the former Board of commissioners caved in and went ahead with construction of a new office building for the school board to use as it's headquarters. But first, the new school offices will be used for about 2 years as the temporary circuit courthouse. Why in the world would the Judges, specifically John Hanson Briscoe and Marvin Kaminetz, now, at the last minute, start hassling the construction crews about last minute changes in a building in which they were given every opportunity to have a say? First these two crybabies threw a tantrum about not getting their $23 Million Judicial Palace, then they threw a conniption fit about "noise and dust" around the remodeling and expansion of the courthouse, now when they are ready to move into a brand new building that they helped design, they are still acting like sulking, spoiled brats. For such fine jurists as themselves, men who have for their entire lives had the best interests of the county at heart, this behavior is a real low mark. Its time for a little order in the court.

Ricky Fritz has claimed his first two victims. Florence Ballengee was forced out of her job where she has worked for 18 years and a new receptionist and paralegal was bumped so Fritz could use the salaries to spread around to his newly hired assistant prosecutors, all of whom came in making more money than the people they replaced who had been working there for years. The law of Maryland says that there is ONE Deputy State's Attorney, but Rick Fritz has appointed two people with the title and pay. We are going to have to get used to Fritz making the law up as he goes along. But unfortunately, the county commissioners, not that there are that many bright lights in the group, went along with him. They were scared of him, say folks, but then again, only The Shadow knows for sure.

So what will happen with the Pickeral Murder? Fritz went along with the removal from the county of the case to probably Western Maryland or the lower Eastern Shore. Will Fritz get the cooperation of witnesses going out of town to trial. Not likely, unless they hold the trial during next fall's hunting season. Watch Fritz not even try this case. He will arrange a plea bargain and Green will get about 15 years for killing that sweet little 13-year-old child. This is a political settlement. Blacks angry with Christy Chesser exacted their revenge and helped elected Fritz, who promised to fire her. But Christy was never the bad guy in the first place, it always was that lying snake Voorhaar. Christy Chesser is a bright and effective lawyer and now that she is in private practice, watch for her to become the leading defense attorney in the county.

January 12, 1999

A fancy group of folks who call themselves the Lexington Park Focus Group or Task Force or some such banal crap, have recently written to the commissioner's board to educate them on the group effort towards creating a layer of government and elitism on the largely working-class community.

A fellow such as Tom Watts serves on this group and signed their "report" to the commissioners, as well as a letter to the Emptyprize. Tom, like every other member of the "Lexington Park" group does not live in Lexington Park or even work there. Tom lives on an estate in the Daugherty Family Compound on part of the old St. Richard's Manor near the Patuxent River. Tom's nice country estate sports a horse stables and pastures surrounded by white board fences and overlooks one of the most beautiful views of the Patuxent River. His insurance office is a nice sturdy new brick building on Rt. 235. He moved out of Lexington Park a couple of years ago, taking the J. Frank Raley-Watts Insurance firm completely out of the old downtown area where Raley, the former owner, had kept it based for nearly 45 years. So, Tom Watts, as fine a fellow as he is, as sincere a fellow as he is, doesn't live in Lexington Park, doesn't work in Lexington Park, but favors putting big-government restrictions on property owners in Lexington Park and creating new dictates for those who do --- all without their consent or advise! Now Tom isn't a socialist, not normally. He wouldn't want the people in Lexington Park coming out to his horse-country estate and telling him what color to paint his fancy fence or his fancy stables. God forbid if you should tell Tom you don't like his manor or the color of his fine brick office building. You can't even get to Tom's estate as the Bozo Board of Commissioners (the former board) gave away the county road which leads to his family compound. The taxpayer supplied and maintained road was given to a group of Millstone Landing Road property owners on the condition that they maintain it and an old bridge. Now there are No Trespassing signs leading to Tom's house.

But, alas, Tom knows what is best for you pea-pickers in Lexington Park. Why? Because Tom, not a town father, not a citizen activist from a Lexington Park neighborhood, not even the owner of a business in Lexington Park, wants to rule the roost because he is an elitist.

The real irony of this is who Tom is related to. He is Jack Daugherty's son-in-law. Big Daddy Warbucks is about as much a non-elitist that you can get in this country. He was a Marine pilot in WWII and sold furniture, pumped gas and moved furniture to make his way in the post war struggle to build a town here.

Daugherty, Rue, Gabrelcik, J. Frank and others got fed up with small business owners not being able to get bank loans in the fledgling town and they got together and started their own bank forty years ago this year. He is an original town father of Lexington Park and he would choke before he would pass favor on an entirely new set of rules, regulations and government edicts covering property owners. Jack Daugherty had to work or use guile for every cent he ever came up with. He is a blue-collar banker, not a blue-blooded snob who wants to tell others what color to paint their trashcans or what architect to hire to design what prescribed building plan --- at least that is the Big Jack that everyone around here has known for ever and ever. But generations change.

There is no accounting for what his son-in-law, Tom Watts, is up to. Tom is a nice guy, there are few nicer, but why does a man who does not live or work in Lexington Park want to control and dictate to those who do, what to do with their own property? What the hell happened to the concept that those who own property should decide for themselves what their buildings should look like? This is a tough subject for J. Frank and Tom Watts as they got the zoning they needed to build their new office building at the corner of Rt. 235 and Old Patuxent Beach Road (Shady Mile Lane) and then J. Frank Raley turns around this past year and advocates that no one else along that stretch of road be able to get their property's zoning changed. While J. Frank was concerned about the larger issue of how 73 zoning changes would affect the Rt. 235 reconstruction cost, the principle of cost was lost on those property owners who only wanted to be treated equal with Watts and Raley. Watts and Raley got theirs, the others also wanted to get commercial zoning. It is kind of ridiculous to have residential zoning across from Wal Mart, K Mart and First Colony.

Another fellow who has been living in St. Mary's County for at least five years is a card-carrying self-admitted member of the American Socialist Party. He bought old Turkey Bob Thompson's peach orchard and farm a few years back and now he has joined the rowdy group of liberal-socialists who want to stop all growth in the county, to roll back the clock and probably close the Naval Air Station as well. The PRA crowd of environmental whacko nuts and extremists. This fellow is Robert Lewis and he is a greenie from Hell. He doesn't work in Lexington Park and he doesn't live in Lexington Park, as his non-working farm is out in Park Hall. Bob wouldn't likely be caught dead living in Patuxent Park, the Flat Tops or even Essex South, but by God he will tell you folks what your town is going to look like in the future. Lewis hates business, hates capitalism, hates small business owners and their entrepreneurial spirit but he will tell you what to do with your business as he is a manure-brained greenpeace nitwit who must have inherited money from a successful death in the family somewhere along the line.

Just like Tom Watts, Robert Lewis doesn't live in Lexington Park or own a business in Lexington Park.

Elinor Coffer is a nice lady, to be sure. She volunteers her time with many environmental groups to clean up the Chesapeake and so forth. But she doesn't live in Lexington Park either. She doesn't have a business in Lexington Park, she doesn't work in Lexington Park, but she wants to tell those who live and own property what to do with their property.

This is called economic elitism, socialism or just plain totalitarianism. Why don't these misguided bozos just do like Fidel Castro did in 1959 and nationalize the property of those in Lexington Park? There is a good reason why. When Castro confiscated the property of Americans in Havana he couldn't tax them. Imagine how much money he could have gotten in taxes over the years. These local communists are smarter than Castro, they want the people who own property in Lexington Park to keep on paying taxes while these "enlightened ones" tell them what to do with it, how to decorate the outside and to get a damn permit if they want to do so much as to flush a toilet. People should get very angry over this elitist attitude.

What happened the last time some of this bunch had an idea?

They came up with a "vision" and a plan for Tulagi Place. Now mind you that there is only one real thriving business in that old Lexington Park downtown retail district. An Annapolis developer came along and bought the old Lexington Park hotel building and retail stores about 15 years ago and he lost his shirt trying to rehab the joint. It continued to decline and soon became one large crackhouse and center of drug retailing to local white folks who like to snort powder and smoke crack.

The elitists came along and decided to get some state money to buy out the old Skipjack property and raze it. They did. Lots of it. They decided to fix up the street outside of the only thriving business, Linda's Cafe. After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a parking lot that sits empty day after day, the county government decided as part of their plan that they would rip up some of the street across from Linda's and then add lawn along the road.

Now no one comes along much to patrol the area for trash, to repair broken sidewalks or to pick up junk. What the governmental control freaks have succeeded in doing is to reduce the street parking in front of Linda's by half. They were pressuring Linda to give the plan her stamp of approval. But Linda Palchinsky stuck to her guns and said it would hurt her business to loose half her parking. She was right and it did. Now, at least weekly, says Linda, one of her customers backs across out of the front-in parking along her side of the street and directly into cars parked parallel along the other side of the street, where a line of front-in parking formerly provided more spaces. But the government extended out the grass to provide a "green space" and the result is no one sits out along the grass and cars strike each other in the restricted street area.

They were from the Government and they were there to help Linda, they said.

When the Government folks put in the new parking lot, they built very nice light poles but the trouble was that they didn't recess them far enough from parking places, so several of the poles were struck by vehicle bumpers and knocked over. When the Government was through, they then decided to install handicapped parking right in front of Linda's front door. They put in sign poles but the signs were about 20 feet high and nobody really was aware of them. Finally, the signs were lowered to eye level. When the Government was through, they put in new saplings along Linda's side of the street. But they didn't do anything about the old cracked sidewalk, which is public property. They just left that as an eyesore and now the mulch has pretty much blown away from around the little saplings as the county just doesn't maintain the area.

Linda Palchinsky owns a business in the old downtown in Lexington Park. Ask her what she thinks of the blueblood elitists.

None of the other esteemed elitists on the Lexington Park Task Force live in or work in Lexington Park. What they have in common is the character trait to want to tell others what to do with their property. There are also among these folks like Liberal egghead Shelby Guazzo, those who want to close down the Lexington Park Library and move it to some lily-white section of the California area where the hotsy-totsy crowd won't have to rub elbows with the unwashed masses who live in Flat Tops or Patuxent Park. What in the world is wrong with leaving the nice brick library building alone in Lexington Park and just build another branch of the library in the California/Hollywood area so all the teacup balancers will leave the grand old library in Lexington Park the hell alone.

John Chamberlain owns the Flat Tops and one of these days he will find a plan to change the use of his property. But in the meantime, there are many folks within walking distance of the library who can use it, who do use it and if it grates on the nerves of the upper crust to have to drive down to the old library they should just stay home.

The nerve of these pea-brains. We have the U.S. government buying the old Lexington Park hotel property to build a new post office, the state built a new commuter parking lot, the Navy took over the old Frank Knox school and rebuilt it into a new education center, all within walking distance of the library, and now the effete snobs want to close down a facility that is heavily used by citizens in the area.

What the hell is wrong with these nerds who advocate closing this well-used public facility? A lot of them are the liberal Republican and liberal Democrat crowd of kooks, crackpots, burned-out hippie-dopers of the 60's and boneheads who don't have enough sense to come in out of the rain and who don't practice a lot of their preaching when it comes to associating with the minority races.