Hands off our Bud. Stop crashing Frederick County’s party. Here we have been celebrating the newer, saner county style brought in with our reasonable and thoughtful County Council President, and these hateful creeps come in from out of town and harsh our mellow.
Frederick County has plenty of trouble sticking to doing sensible stuff all by itself (and here we thought being open for business meant something–like also being abierto para negocios–but apparently nothing counts if you have a compulsive need to express your xenophobic message through legislation). We don’t need any unwanted interlopers bringing their outside influence on this.
ProEnglish is afraid our beloved Bud Otis is going to vote in favor of repealing an ordinance that is in a position to adversely affect the business climate in Frederick County. We have no idea what Bud is scheming, but he could be *thinking* along these lines, because it seems like a solid, sensible Republican thing to think, in light of the buying power of Spanish speakers in America. Oh, how we most fervently dream that their nightmares are true.
Eeeeee!!! Please let this be true! We want this nonsense repealed. Stop making our county look gross. Go away ProEnglish, anti-sense people.
Free advice: Before you insult those who cannot speak English perchance you should make sure you are using it at least a 5th grade level. And I really hope the ill eagles are receiving proper veterinary care.
We have heard from our good friends at Stand Up Frederick that a group called ProEnglish has descended upon our fair county. First the Scientologists, and now this?! It’s hard to believe that a group even exists that makes it their mission to remove bilingual education from schools and to ensure that English is the only language spoken anywhere in this fair land of ours. On their website they even have a handy link all about our county’s ordinance. Take a peek and make sure you look at the end especially:
” Thank you for defending our English langage heritage in Maryland”?! Is this for real? This group’s mission is to advocate for the sole use of English and they cannot even spell the word language correctly? (Honestly, the whole post is a hot mess, but spelling the word language incorrectly is especially egregious.) And according to this Huffington Post article, this isn’t the first time they are guilty of misusing the language.
Let us tell you carpetbaggers something about heritage in our Great State of Maryland. Our heritage consists of ripping apart crustaceans on a warm summer day, shouting the “O” extra loud while singing our Nation’s Anthem, and telling people our state is like a “mini” America. Our heritage does not consist of cutting our newest citizens off from information just because they didn’t spontaneously learn English while crossing the border. So please, rational citizens of Frederick County let your voice be heard on July 21 and let’s repeal this thing.
Is this guy for real? Apparently the bar for logical thinking has been set so low that we are now being treated to a host of writers digging down to go underneath it. Congratulations, Farrell Keough, for being less rational than Billy Shreve. We weren’t given a single day to recover. I believe Cliff Cumber was on the Twitter recently saying everyone was going to get all riled up with the stuff to come. He was not even kidding.
TLDR version: totalitarianism is expecting your elected representative to represent you. Good to know. We’re all guilty of totalitarianism here. If we can help with clarifying this, there is a short educational post you may be interested in.
Fun with hyperbole!
Keough is probably confused because he read a book by someone who thinks that if you insult a Supreme Court justice who wrote a dissenting opinion that you don’t like, that’s the new totalitarianism. Silly, silly. That’s the first amendment freedom we especially like. We are so totalitarianish lately.
We’ve already taken a positionabout this language ordinance. To get redundant, the federal government does not have an official language because it is thought to be a violation of free expression. People into civil liberties think that “It’s Unnecessary, Unconstitutional, and Unsafe.”
Communities far more diverse than Frederick function without announcing their intent to discriminate. Montgomery County’s website basically says go use Google translate and they aren’t responsible if you mess it up. See how onerous that is?
Billy, he has reasons, and it’s not really worth thinking too much about them, but here’s one that’s funny because now we are going to think about the U.N. and hold them up as an example of how to conform. It’s the New World Order, folks–let’s do this thing! Welcome, Kofi Annan. Tell us what language to speak.
The United Nations, the largest inclusive governing body in the world, with 193 of the 206 countries in the world represented, has six official languages: Arabic (Literary), Chinese (standard Chinese, simplified Chinese characters), English (British spelling), French, Russian and Spanish. In 2001, the United Nations mostly used English, not all six languages, because of budget constraints and the cost of producing official documents in all six languages. At the time, the U.N. was led by Ghanaian Kofi Annan. I’m sure he would be more than happy to discuss English as the official language. He lived with the costs of translating documents when he was in charge of the U.N. in 2001. Instead of interpreting U.N. documents into six languages, he decided to use mostly English. (per Billy, Frederick News Post July 12, 2015)
We will make space on our calendars to attend the English-only seminar when Kofi Annan visits.
How funny! They have 6 languages, made no official policy changes, but they just mostly used English. What if we just mostly use English? We could be just like that. We already were just like that, as a matter of fact, before small-government-minded people started making unnecessary legislation.
P.S. A whole ‘nuther post could be made wringing him out for insinuating that this type of legislation has something to do with being pawns for Jan Gardner, because that literally makes no sense. Is she going to profit somehow from Spanish. Just…what?
Handy ain’t it? In schools where moms and dads have an extra $125 (on top of the $90 required for all sports), not to mention all the junk you have to buy to keep kids safe and the athletic physicals and the stuff they need if they get jock itch (or Bast forbid, a concussion) and all that jazz…those kids can have a freshman sports program. We wonder what will happen at the schools with lots of FARM kids–that’s free and reduced meals, not Mathilda the cow’s 4H friends. And who will have the stronger athletic programs with their sophomores, juniors and seniors? What a WINNING idea!
Furthermore, the PS in FCPS is the “public school” part. And this comment from rpkrauss on the FNP article announcing this novel plan kinda cuts to the quick.
Soooooo… If it’s budget neutral can parents at certain schools agree to pay extra for say a music teacher or a Latin teacher? How about they pay for a couple of instructional assistants for special needs students. Heck if we work this right each school could become a pay as you go budget neutral facility and we could stop having to pay those pesky taxes for other people’s kids. I think the BOE could be onto something here.
We are all for public schools. Some of us are not using FCPS, and we still don’t begrudge the public school one cent of our tax money. We respect FCPS and the educators working there and we believe in the promise of public education. Having school sports emulate club sports by charging extra fees to some kids, not so much.
We here at the Local Yokel get a lot of helpful tidbits from Jen Fifield’s Political Notes column, and today was no exception. However, after reading today’s column in the paper edition I was not able to find the link for our faithful readers. So until that issue is addressed here’s a screenshot:
Does he now?
Today’s tidbit is that Billy prefers a Mac to the ultra books every other council person was offered. There was a nice price breakdown in the article. The two Mac Books (we are not sure whom is the recipient of the second one) plus all the accessories, the warranty, the telephone support and Microsoft Office came to the nice little sum of $6,724.99. The ultra book cost is $1,477.10 and the desktop computer that both Shreve and Delauter rejected (they were placed elsewhere), totaled $700. That’s $2,177.10 that should have been spent. But good ole Shreve needed something special (surprise) and raised the cost by $4,547.89!
So Billy, and whomever else received the second Mac Book, cost the county an additional $4,547.89. And normally such a thing would not even bother us. We know that good technology costs money. And we are all for our county officials having the proper tools to do the job. The problem is with Billy. He balks at recycling requirements, wants in county residents to pay the out-of-state rate at FCC, and is on some abstention mission from Zeus on every single budget issue. But when it comes to him getting the computer of his choice, well that’s all right then. Good Poseidon, Billy, could you at least have some consistency in your belief system?
As usual, we will begin with last week’s results. Hopefully this poll wasn’t a self fulfilling prophesy and everyone’s fingers and toes are still intact.
It was a close one between Billy and Kirby, but Billy you are the winner! Congratulations?
If you were just pulled out of the pool and needed CPR, who would you consider telling to just walk away?
Many times tonight we felt as though we were trapped inside an episode of “The Leftovers”. For the first twenty minutes of the meeting all we saw was this:
Now how are we supposed to know whether or not to drink our Purple Jesus? Or how many shots of Jackass to shoot back?! Oh well, such is life in the technical age. We do finally get to join in the fun at the end of County Executive appointees. Billy is still suffering from his oppositional defiance disorder, that or some kind of speech impediment that prevents him from saying the word aye. We really hope that he addresses this problem sooner rather than later.
Plumbing Code amendment passed 7-0. Amendment to Moderately Priced Dwelling Units-passed 6-1. Can you guess who voted in the negative? It’s not even fun to play this guessing game anymore.
Off to the public hearings we go. It’s all about the sale of 115 and 117 Church Street to Ausherman for $1.45 million. It’s a chance to sell a property that’s just been sitting there for quite a while. Kirby decides to say a few words. He’s for the sale, of course, but is upset that 118 Church Street isn’t up for sale as well. Not that this really has anything to do with the conversation at hand, but hey, anytime is a good time to talk about something bad that Jan is doing. But still he votes for it. So do five others. Therefore Kirby + 5= What the hell Billy? He did not comment, did not ask any questions but is still going to abstain!
Yes Billy they do!
This is money coming into the county not going out! Why is he still abstaining? What is the meaning of all this? And why do we ask, we all know there is no answer.
The next public hearing about amendments to water and sewage goes off without a hitch. Then it’s Public Comment time and where is everyone?! Not one person spoke tonight! Carl? Stan? Patrick? See what we mean about being trapped in an episode of “The Leftovers?” But since you guys weren’t there, Tony’s having a Town Hall Meeting at Urbana Library July 16th from 6-8 p.m. Be there or be square.
Billy has to go out on a sour note. There has to be a vote on whether or not to go into closed session to talk about a recent court filing (Trout Run we suspect) and to interview a County Executive appointee. Billy is the only one to say no. We won’t even ask why this time.
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