The FDR of Frederick County, Billy Shreve (hahahahahaha, poor FDR, rolling in his grave…) was having a regular Fireside Chat on WFMD again this morning. At first we thought we might not listen and just make up what he said, since it was likely to be so predictable. And, yes, we could have nailed it to the wall without the 20 minutes wasted. Jan’s a dictator without a plan who lost money and yaddayaddayadda. We’ve already been through all those counterpoints.

The true surprise is that Bob Miller pushes back about Jan’s dictatorship. He also calls copious attention to the fact that the people who wanted a charter government were insistent upon a County Executive who had the power to make decisions and act on them, and that “those people” got what they wanted. Wonder which people Mr. Miller is referring to…Does anyone recall Billy expressing any concern about how easily a C.E. might become a “dictator” before it was Jan Gardner’s job?

There was a clip with Jan Gardner from MidMaryland Live saying that she couldn’t understand how a fiscal conservative would have supported the deal made by the BOCC that got us into all this mess, and it’s a question many, many other people wonder about as well, but Bob went to a commercial break and we then came back to some surrealist nonsense about how if you take your car to the government to fix instead of Jiffy Lube then you have to live at the government’s auto repair shop now. This may be a slight paraphrasing, but it did not make a lot more sense. And remember we talked about this back in April.

To make bad worse, Kirby called in from the netherworld and said the worst thing about private enterprise is that you have to go to work every dang day, and insinuated that other people don’t, as though you can’t be fired for doing a bad job if you work at a county run nursing home. He also fails miserably at making the point he wants to make, since if you go out of business as a private facility, you cease to exist. In the case of indigent elderly patients that would necessarily be a worse outcome than the county accepting a loss during that fiscal year.

Numerous people on numerous issues need to recognize that doing the cheapest thing is not always the best (even if and when the premise of said argument isn’t necessarily cheaper anyway). I don’t shop at Kmart. I don’t want anyone receiving Kmart quality healthcare, and I don’t want any kids in this county at Kmart quality schools. As a private business, in the immortal words of Dustin Hoffman, “Kmart sucks.” They aren’t even particularly successful at selling low quality junk. Let’s stop trying to make everything Kmart.

Also, BS looked into his BS crystal ball and decided that in 2 years the whole thing will be run into the ground and losing money. We may need a hashtag to keep updated on the doomsday scenario. #brokein2years ? Open to suggestions, locals!