If you follow our Facebook or Twitter you are now aware of the horror that is the winner of the Republican nomination for mayor. We’ve read the article at least 4 times, because even for around here it’s a special level of cray cray.
It really begs the question, do the Republicans even care about local races anymore? Or is their party so fractured by the orange menace that this is the best they can be expected to do for a good long while?
Don’t fret though! Because some local Republicans have a really ridiculous Plan B!
We don’t even know where to begin with this shoddy plan. First of all, let’s all step back and remember all the harm he did in this county. Secondly, let’s remember his very poorly worded post in which he said he wasn’t even going to be mayor, he was going to outsource the job!
#neverforget!
And thirdly, he knew he couldn’t win the primary and now we are wondering if this was the plan all along!
Stop embarrassing yourselves folks! Even if we don’t agree with your political philosophies, this is all very hard to watch!
We are so sorry to have to share this with you during a global pandemic, but look what Frederick’s very own Matt Gaetz posted a few days back.
So, let’s see if we have this straight. He wants to run because it would keep things “interesting”? He wants to stir the pot to keep us thinking about what? Him? HARD PASS! We feel ya Mr. Whiskers!
It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? After all he’s done around here he really thinks it’s a good idea to go ahead and attempt to sully our local jurisdiction!
If you are new around here go ahead and scroll on through this link. However, here’s a list just off the top of your Lady Yokel’s heads on why he is no good:
He was arrested for solicitation of prostitution. Tried to tell the judge he was just looking for a foot rub. The judge responded by telling him that even a 12 year old could tell what the ad he answered was for.
Cussed out a teenage referee at a basketball game.
Told a citizen that she wouldn’t have to worry about congestion in her area because she would be dead by then.
Enacted a very xenophobic and unenforceable English Language Ordinance in the county which made us all look like a bunch of backwater ignoramuses.
Attempted to privatize many county services, which has failed miserably in other jurisdictions.
Defunded Head Start.
Sold off the government run nursing home that our poorer citizens rely upon.
And that’s just a start. Feel free, gentle readers, to add your own Blaine stories in the comments.
No way should Blaine be mayor of the fine City of Frederick. We don’t need any more drama or scandal around here!
Seriously though, haven’t recent events taught us we can no longer engage in the fine art of naivete?
We’ve written a few posts lately about Blaine’s very sad attempt to try and weasel his way back into our political sphere. (Click here,here, and here if you need to catch up!) A friend of the Yokel recently sent us what he’s been posting on Facebook, and folks, you are not going to like it! BEHOLD:
Uh, Police Commissioner? This isn’t Gotham City, is it? Blaine sure as hell ain’t Batman. Maybe he’s looking to play the role of the corrupt mayor!
Yeah, every problem we have here in Ole Fredericktowne would be solved by Blaine and his merry band of minions! How else are you going to try to gaslight us? We don’t know anyone he listed under “Team Frederick”, but if they are hitching their wagon to Blaine’s star they are, at the very least, engaging in some super bad judgement. A disgraced former County Executive candidate with a horrible governing record need not be in control of our fine city government. But let’s talk a little more about this graphic:
Where to begin with this super hot mess?
Diversified? Does he think the City of Frederick is a stock portfolio? Even worse, what the hell is going on with those fonts and spacing? His graphic arts department must look a bit like this:
After all his years in politics, you’d think everything he does wouldn’t scream amatuer hour. But alas…
That same friend of the Yokel also sent us this:
Talk about putting the cart before the horse!
City of Frederick residents must spread his story far and wide, never again can he be allowed into public office!
Stay vigilant folks! None of us need any more political scandals in our lifetime. We’re all filled up!
Earlier in the week Blaine Young penned an LTE that was published by the Effin P. It’s his second recently. The first was July 18th with him tooting his horn about picking up trash when he walks to work. He has made it clear that he intends to run for mayor on the innovative theme “Let’s clean up this town.” Improving things is never bad, and with the recent drunks with guns incidents that have occurred during bar fight hours downtown it’s a timely moment to call for better. Then you look at what he selling, judging by the comments on the article, no one is buying. This man is not your run-of-the-mill very stable genius.
First of all he suggests putting in the blue phones like they have on college campuses. Anyone else here “been on multiple campus tours recently” years old? These are regularly pointed at mockingly and referred to as “the old technology.” In order to install the old technology it would cost us boatloads of money. Everyone has a phone with them at all times! They have apps on it to allow someone to monitor your whereabouts, apps to call for help, apps to get a ride. Probably apps to get an…escort…but we digress…Also, with your cell phone you don’t have to stand there in a dangerous situation while making a phone call–oh that’s right you can even make a phone call to 911–which is a point that is made in this article from a higher education publication about how those phones are a waste of good money. One great quote from that piece: …campus police at Ohio University do not remember the last time the phones were used in emergency situations, the campus newspaper, The Post, reported last year.
The other “look at the big brain on Blaine” thing is his call for more police presence. Many people on the social media have observed that there don’t seem to be a lack of police around. You see them pretty much constantly monitoring what one has the impression is a group of people badly in need of mental healthcare and some sort of social safety net. That’s the thing about mental illness. You have the right to destroy your life even if you don’t have the competency to save yourself. It’s a tough issue to figure out (and a good reason that the mental health redirect is kind of a red herring when we stop talking about gun rights, because people have other rights, too). That there is no better way of supervising these individuals and keeping them and everyone safe and healthy than law enforcement attention is indeed problematic, but lack of presence is hardly the issue.
Yeah, this is a total non-sequitur. Deal with it. Remember when we learned he was into “yoga”? ew
If we are looking for police presence to discourage the late night shooting, the problem is that if you are the kind of person who illegally carries a gun/are out drinking and have a gun/irrationally shooting at people on the street, you are already not making the best informed decisions. How much is it really going to influence the behavior of these people if the police are around? Not to argue that the police are not needed. They are needed to enforce the “you can’t carry that/you can’t shoot that” kinds of laws we have and arrest people who violate those laws. If the presence of police kept people from firing weapons, then the police would never be shot at. And as we are all aware, that happens from time to time. It’s almost like that’s the reason the criminals carry the guns around…because someone (whether police or other criminal) might shoot them if they don’t shoot first.
So, that’s all for this edition of Let Us Count the Ways in Which Blaine Young is an Idiot. But…we also want to point out that we read someone else’s intriguing theory. We hate that we are kind of helping him out by giving him attention, if this theory has any basis in reality. Remember when he ran for governor so that he could run for county executive? Maybe he’s just doing that again. Obviously the city is different from the county, and he couldn’t get elected in the county. But maybe he is running for mayor to run for CE. Maybe he has a pathological need for attention. There’s also the fundraising.
This afternoon the county council will have a workshop on dilapidated properties and what the government should do about them. We can already hear the cries of the rights of property owners from our two bookends!
On Wednesday, the council is having another pow wow with the City of Frederick. Shrelauter tends to behave when in the presence of officials from other municipalities. Hopefully they can have a nice meeting.
Since Donald a l’Orange started terrifying some members of the Latino community in Houston, rapes being reported are down more than 40%. Now Occam’s razor that. Did more than 40% of the rapists get magically beamed into prison? Hell to the naw. Those women are more scared of ICE coming and separating them or their spouses from their kids than they are of a rapist, so now they don’t call the terrifying police.
Do you know what happens when a criminal isn’t apprehended because the crime isn’t reported? Do they probably wake up the next day and turn into a nice non-violent person the morning after they raped some rich lady’s undocumented nanny? Or is this a more likely scenario. The rapey person (regardless of country of origin) is maybe going to climb in your window at night and assault someone like you or your daughter (regardless of your citizenship status as well)? NB: There’s absolutely nothing saying the person victimizing these ladies isn’t the head of the household where she works, who knows full well he can get away with it like a common ladycrotch grabbing “modern day presidential” person. Very possible, even though certain people assume the bad people are the scary boogeymen from Mexico described by Trump on the campaign trail. Here is one of about seven bazillion articles explaining that immigrants are less crime prone than the population as a whole.
Police chiefs in six big Texas cities — Arlington, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio — vocally opposed the Senate bill, even as it won support from rural and suburban voters. Major Texan hubs like Dallas and Fort Worth are now torn between continuing policies they say make their cities safer and economically vibrant and enforcing the letter of the law and moving to deport anyone who may have entered the country illegally.
So police chiefs from 3 of the 10 largest cities in America are on that list of people who don’t want to see sanctuary city policies abolished. People with lots of first hand experience here. And then here is Kirby Delauter on the subject, and he is actually paying to spread this message as a Sponsored Facebook post, wherein the subtext is “I am a total simpleton and think nothing through.”
This is a serious issue. This man is seriously unable to handle anything more sophisticated than a party line talking point. Oh la la. 258 likes, though.
Local Yokel’s favorite thing about the super cool ESSL is Frederick County kids getting this lesson: if someone tells you something is true, you must ask, “What is your evidence?” If they have none, they are just talking. Isn’t that brill? Long story short. Be quiet, hashtag.
Not sure Sweetums. Sorry you had to be exposed to this!
So Billy’s wordsmithing again. We know, we know, you don’t want to look. We’ll try to sum it up as nicely as we can. But it is always helpful to see the words first hand. A friend of the Yokel recently told us that the best strategy is to hand the idiot the microphone and let them do their thing.
Before we get into the breakdown, besides Kirby, does any other elected official go around writing terrible things about their co-workers? Seriously folks, is this a thing anywhere else? Or are we just special here in Frederick County? We sure as hell know that in any other workplace situation this type of behavior would be grounds for dismissal. He doesn’t just argue points of disagreement he says things like this:
Frederick County is being ruled, not governed. Is this what you wanted when you voted for Charter Government? One person rules the County? Bud Otis has allowed the County Council to be diminished to vapor. Bud is being lead around like a trained monkey by the Democrats.
You know, we here at the Yokel are feeling generous today so we are going to try and help Billy out. Instead of of saying the county council has been vaporized and Bud is being led around like a trained monkey, perhaps something like this:
“I have some real concerns that the county council has not had enough input on the budget process. I also feel as though President Otis is not listening to my concerns. Perhaps we can set up a time and talk about this like grown men? How about next Tuesday at 1:00?” And then Billy, you listen and communicate like the grown up you are suppose to be!
Isn’t that so much nicer? And maybe, just maybe your fellow council members would be more willing to listen to what you have to say. We can imagine that your co-workers and the County Executive may not want to deal with someone who refers to them as tyrants, monarchs, incompetents and primates. But maybe that’s just us.
Let’s continue with the diatribe. Even though Billy has done this budget thingy for 5 years he still can’t get it. Despite the others talking with the head of every department and the budget director (who seems like a very knowledgeable and friendly fellow who has yet to be jaded by Billy’s antics) offering his help and advice at every step of the way, it’s not enough. So Billy tries to disparage his fellow council members (sans two of course):
Your tax dollars, $550 million of them controlled and approved by a history teacher, music teacher, PTA activist, and former Washington bureaucrat. None of them are qualified to review a $550 million budget, none of them CPA’s, none of them with any previous budget experience.
What do you do exactly Billy? How many people in our U.S. Congress are CPAs? Or what about in the State House? Good Lord, grasping at straws. If he feels, after 5 years of doing this, that he still can’t get it, then maybe, just maybe it’s time to admit this isn’t the job for him.
The end goes like this:
Bud Otis did make one budget request this year…. He wants a security detail for himself. He calls it executive protection. The comments on his Facebook page, your calls and emails.… He wants protection.
We looked through the budget and could find no such request. And if Bud does feel like he needs protection, we bet it’s for good reason. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Bud has been receiving threats and at times may feel unsafe. And IF that is the case, Council Member Shreve, perhaps you share some responsibility in that.
Every few months the County Council sits down with the Frederick Alderman to have a pow wow. We love that our local governmental entities make it a point to sit down and communicate with one another. Two of your Yokels are city residents and we have to say that we are always so impressed with these ladies and gentlemen. The way they work together, know their issues, and just seem so much more functional than some other government body. The main item on the agenda was to discuss school construction. Tony wants the city to pony up for the schools that are being built within the city limits. Thankfully Aldermanic heroes O’Connor and Kuzemchak were not having any of that. As Mr. O’Connor pointed out, city residents already pay county taxes. AND, it’s the county’s job–not the city’s–to build schools. Why should city residents be expected to pay twice? And what kind of precedence would this set if local municipalities were expected to pay for school costs? Would that mean the incorporated areas of our county would be at an advantage when getting a new school? Or that they would be expected to come up with the money every time they needed a new school? Without any support, and all kinds of facts against him, Tony backtracked. There was some discussion of perhaps the city lending the county some money. Or perhaps the city paying for the extra large gym at Butterfly Ridge elementary. We’ll see if this comes up at their May meeting.
Last night our RALE friends went before the Board of Zoning Appeals in another chapter of their long fight against the MTC. Here’s Steve McKay’s report on what happened last night:
RALE was at the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) tonight.
I’d like to tell you that we were successful, but we weren’t. The bottom line is that the BZA, which believes that County Staff is ALWAYS assumed to have acted correctly, decided that we didn’t count, that we didn’t have “standing”, and so they ignored the merits of our argument. I’m going to break this down but let’s first review what this appeal was about.
At the end of last year, AFTER the Council ordered the Monrovia Town Center case to start over again, we learned that an “Outlot” was being processed, based on the old, invalidated BoCC approvals, to accommodate the planned water tower to service Landsdale and MTC. The Planning Commission approved the Outlot plat recordation, and we appealed that Planning Commission approval. The Zoning Administrator (but not really, because it was really Cathy Mitchell acting on behalf of this guy) denied our appeal, saying that it was a “ministerial action” and, therefore, not subject to appeal. We then appealed their denial – because it was wrong – and that’s why we were there tonight.
Now let’s talk about the “standing” issue. First of all, the County didn’t even base their denial on a belief that we lacked standing. They based it entirely on their “ministerial” argument. It was the developer that raised the standing issue, and the County basically said – “oh yeah, we think that, too!” So the developer and the County were working together tonight – again – arguing that we don’t count. Their argument was based on the fact that RALE doesn’t own property. This is true. The much-fabled “RALE warehouse” doesn’t exist. But there is another element of standing that they ignored. You see RALE has “personal interests” in this case, and that should have been sufficient to establish our standing. You see, RALE has invested countless hours, effort and a whole lot of money (donated by all of YOU) to this effort. That’s the basis of our personal interest, our standing … that they ignored.
In the end, the appeals commissioners ignored that element and asked their County attorney whether we had standing or not. Not surprisingly, we lost the argument. On this point, I want to personally thank the people that testified about how RALE represents the community on this issue. The appeals commissioners didn’t hear it or acknowledge the point – but I did, and I thank you.
But now let’s look at the merits of the issue because although the BZA may have ignored this argument, or claimed ignorance to the issues (which was bull___), the County CLEARLY violated the zoning ordinance in submitting the Outlot for approval. Let’s start with the appropriate section of the Ordinance, shown below. The language and its implications are very clear. If an Outlot plat is part of a subdivision in a preliminary plan, then it must go through the final plat process.
In the other image, the preliminary/site plan CLEARLY shows the Outlot as part of the plan. This preliminary/site plan is NOT completed. Is NOT signed. Thus, the Outlot has not completed the final plat process, as required by the ordinance. It never should have been approved!
So you might wonder how the County attorney – Cathy Mitchell – responded to this argument. Basically, she didn’t! First, she said we lied but didn’t explain how. Then she justified the whole thing on the basis that the “County needed this plot of land” for the water tower. Now this pissed me off. We didn’t lie – we just caught them in an error. The language in the ordinance is clear and unambiguous and they violated that language. So I don’t appreciate being called a liar. Next, saying that the “County needed the land” is NOT a justification for violating the zoning ordinance. That’s Bull!
Beyond these points – which should have been enough – our argument boils down to this fundamental premise. This Outlot approval was based on a zoning approval from the BoCC. That approval was based on a record that has now been TWICE invalidated – by the Circuit Court and by the Council. You can NOT have a valid approval based on an invalidated record. Effectively, that record no longer exists. The Council decided to create a new record. The Planning Commission will now go forward, ignoring that past history. The record is null and void and any approvals based on that record are now moot.
So the bottom line is that County staff and Planning Commission should have never even entertained this Outlot plat recordation because it is based on an invalidated, non-existent record. But even so, they still violated the zoning ordinance by approving it! I’ll be real clear now – we will appeal this because it is wrong. It’s more time and money, but sometimes, you have to do what’s right.
Best regards, Steve
If you would like to help RALE with their legal expenses they are holding a raffle. Click herefor more info.
frederick local yokel 