We saw this articleand guess what? A study has found that one fifth of human trafficking victims are homeless youth. Please read the article, and remember that our very own Billy Shreve once said there are people for human trafficking as if both sides was a valid arguement. If you don’t remember, it is a good thing we are here and we will #neverforget. Read about it here and here.
Guess what else this research found?
The research also highlights the connection between sex trafficking and online advertising, including Backpage.com, which has recently been shut down by the FBI with federal indictments against the online marketplace. Researchers found that 44 percent of the sex trafficking victims were subjects of an online ad, with half of them reporting that they were advertised on Backpage.
Why is Backpage so familiar??? Have we heard about that website in Frederick for some local reason? Hmmm. Oh, yeah. We read about when abastion scourge of our community was arrested. Human trafficking is a real issue. Neither Frederick, nor Maryland needs leaders who are unwilling and unable to understand there are no pros to this issue.
Use your vote wisely and we can make sure Billy Shreve is not elected. Tell your friends.
You may have seen multiple posts from different sources like Stand Up Frederick and Steve McKay 4 Frederick County about tomorrow night’s County Council meeting. If you haven’t check them out. We are going to share this one.
From Oakdale Tomorrow:
ACTION ALERT ON MITIGATION BILL:
Please attend the TUESDAY MAY 1st hearing at 7 pm at Winchester Hall wearing your Oakdale Tomorrow shirts or any green shirt. If you plan to attend please leave a comment below so we can keep track. We need numbers.
If you cannot attend, please email comments to the County Council prior to that date at: Councilmembers@FrederickCountyMD.gov. Please also copy their Chief of Staff, Ragen Cherney, at RCherney@FrederickCountyMD.gov so he can add all comments to the record and copy jspiegel@frederickcountymd.gov, CE Gardner’s Education Liaison.
WHAT DO YOU SAY? Ask the County Council members to support the Mitigation Fee bill because every kid deserves a seat in school and it’s not their job to subsidize developers but rather to make sure that residential growth takes place at the pace of schools, roads, etc. Tell them you want principled leadership that isn’t influenced by special interests. Tell them this is not a party issue but a common sense one. Tell them that for the 15 developments still affected by this fee, they need to pay what it actually costs the county to build a seat for a child, not some imaginary cost of what they or we think it should be. Tell them that despite others’ best efforts to drag this out, play games, spin this as a “job killer” issue, you’re not stupid and you REFUSE TO BE APATHETIC. That if you can manage your job, your kids, your life, they can get this ONE THING RIGHT. And don’t forget to tell them they you’ll remember how they voted when it’s your turn to vote this November.
If you can make it to Winchester Hall tomorrow night at 7, please do. If not, please send an email to let the council know your thoughts on making sure our schools don’t continue on to be overcrowded. The developer will be self advocating. Let’s make sure we do too!
Local 3 time Board of Education candidate (and 2 on her way to 3 time loser) Cindy Rose has made a declaration about our blog.
Who would like this?
Let’s look at the definition of hate group.
We are continually amazed at the lack of comprehension exhibited by Cindy Rose. The bar just keeps getting lower.
Pointing out logical fallacies does not a hate group make.
Just because we would HATE to see you on the school board does not make us a hate group. How about turning the hyperbole down a notch or two or a million?
Here is an exact transcript of our text messages concerning the first part of the meeting (yawn):
Billy voted against the agenda.
Abstained on the budget adjustments.
Voted for the minutes.
He is such an idiot
Then both he and Kirby gave the same tired old argument about how keeping the tax rate the same is the same as a tax hike.
For the 4th year in a row.
Then there was a magical interlude of professionalism wherein the Retired Military Tax Credit was combed through by county staff before it passed, and we moved on to the circus events.
Billy had proposed legislation requiring that council members receive some minuscule amount of education regarding what the hell they are supposed to be doing there. Presumably this is because Billy is confuzzled. Possibly because he says he took a thing online with a quiz and it took five minutes, so what’s the big deal? How very educational. M.C. Keegan-Ayer proposed some amendments, which Tony Chmelik felt neutered the power of that legislation since it made it a mere suggestion. M.C. was basically like (to paraphrase this as we would have said it), look, don’t get all snippy with me, I was just trying to polish Billy’s turd here. Nobody was into making unnecessary laws, except Billy. Failed 1-6.
Then there was the zoning violation drama, which is naturally a big ol thing to the nincompoop faction, in large part because of the great wedding venue drama of 2016. Billy and Kirby are both very upset that zoning complaints can be filed anonymously and for some weird reason they are allergic to anonymous criticism (neener-neener), and so Jerry Donald had to explain to them that some people may be afraid of their neighbors–and for good reason. (Tangential thought: can you imagine if Billy Shreve or Kirby Delauter were your neighbor? And you had some sort of property dispute? Scary.) At one point M.C. made it clear that she was not even able to try and fix this. Sigh. This failed too, because obviously. Turd status: unpolishable.
Also there was the wood chipping scandal (it’s as if these bills Billy launch begin a listicle of Billy and Kirby’s prior buffoonery and proof that neither of them deserve to hold current office and certainly do not deserve to be entrusted with any additional responsibilities). Their position here, in a nutshell, is that these people have been in violation of the law for ages now, and how is it fair that someone noticed and is going to make them stop? Scandalous indeed! In fact, it becomes rather clear through Kirby’s bellyaching about County Executive Jan Gardner’s role in these zoning violations matters that he still does not understand the different branches of government under the charter. How is he going to be the county executive if he doesn’t know what that is? It will be a lot like the current status of Billy Shreve, who does not know what he is supposed to be doing ever.
This bill failed because the one business it was initially custom tailored by Councildolt Shreve to benefit–until Tony Chmelik took over the turd polishing operation–was likely to be harmed by it, and hardly anyone thought that was a good idea. At one point during the discussion of this (or it could have been the earlier bill, but no matter) Billy was so stuck in oppositional defiant mode that he started opposing his own position. It was really a scene. Billy still remembers to like his own dumb ideas in the end, though. And after all that grandstanding and noise that Kirby made here, he voted against it!
Off-track betting passed unanimously. It now has to go back for public hearing.
Not one but two friends of the Yokel have alerted us to a campaign mailer sent out by our favorite council member who is running for County Executive. If you get what appears to be a tax notice, it might actually be a solicitation for a donation.
Really???
Here is the enclosed letter.
It sounds like he has a plan for Senior Tax Credits. We aren’t going to fixate on that right now. We remember that Kirby and Jerry had dueling bills for senior tax credits and they were supposedly working together to revise their bills into one bill. We aren’t sure what happened with that cooperation. But what about his statement that he will reduce property taxes? The property rate has not been raised! If you saw an increase it was because the value of your home increased. Is he really going to reduce your rate or is he going to ensure that property values all over the county drop if he is elected? So much for straight talk there. He can say he is going to roll back taxes all he wants, but it won’t be to reduce a recent increase.
Next, Kirby is going back to his favorite soapbox of a public-private partnership to build schools. This course of action was not adopted by the current council because in the end it is hugely a more expensive option to build our schools. Remember or remind yourself of the detailshere.
Kirby’s pledge to continue to take a stand against illegal immigrants is just bluster. We are not a sanctuary city or county and he is just fear mongering. What specific harmful and dangerous policies is he talking about? We have tried to figure this out before and we aren’t the onlyones.
We really think Kirby should change his motto. Straight Talk/Straight Answers seems to encompass the opposite of his actions thus far on the council. We have no hope that he will change his ways if elected County Executive.
Grab your agenda and hold onto your liquor cabinet. It’s a short agenda this week so for your ease and ours we are recycling a bingo card for you to enjoy. We predict a whole lot of bingos!
Some of these items aren’t on the agenda. Don’t worry one of the Tweedles will bring something up about them anyway. Our Cristal Ball says so. Drink!
This clip of an interview by WMAL with Frederick’s own High Sheriff Chuck Jenkins is something else. The first thing that jumps out is that WMAL can’t spell Frederick County. It’s not Fredrick. Once we recovered from seeing this error, and managed to listen we were excited concerned to hear his thoughts on school security in the wake of Parkland.
He made it clear that he feels the buck stops with him for any actions/inactions done by deputies whom he had trained and that work for him. Our first thought in hearing this was remembering the death of Ethan Saylor. The sheriff may have publicly commented on his feelings about that, but all we could find was that he said they need to revise the way deputies were trained.
Check out this part from the link we posted:
As the interview continued, Sheriff Jenkins addressed Sheriff Israel’s actions of politicizing the incident:
O’Connor: I think many people are sort of scrutinizing Sheriff Israel right now because it appears as though he knew about those breakdowns last week, but he still did that nationally televised political event where he was basically blaming the NRA, blaming politicians, he was kind of partisan. Do you think that was appropriate for him?
Sheriff Jenkins: No, I don’t. Again, I think we all have our political beliefs and ideologies but you keep them separate from the actual events that you’re addressing. And some of the statements he said, he made, I don’t think were really appropriate. Again, I wasn’t there. I’m not in his shoes. But I can tell you, you don’t turn a situation like that into politics and you don’t blame the NRA because it’s not a gun control issue. The very basic issues are these:
How do you limit access of firearms to individuals that shouldn’t have them in their hands?
How do we harden the security at our schools to eliminate the threats to our students and staff?
There are a number of ways to do it, but again I don’t think you make it political.
How are guns not a political issue? The sheriff is making it political himself when he mentions limiting access. You can’t limit access without changing laws. Of course this is a political issue.
The sheriff announced plans to bring a proposal to the Board of Education to put an armed and trained security force of 5 or 6 into each and every school. This is how he thinks he will keep our kids safe. We reached out to Karl Bickel, democratic candidate for Frederick County Sheriff to see what he thinks of this idea. Karl didn’t want to give a final opinion on it since it is just a thought at the moment, but he did say it felt like a knee-jerk reaction. “It sounds like an ill-conceived idea that is fraught with problems that would put students, staff and any officers (deputies) in even greater danger.” We tend to agree. We’ll stand by to see what the sheriff presents to the board.
Perpetual BOE Candidate You Know Who is planning an “education townhall” on Feb 27th from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the C. Burr Artz public library. Since it’s at the library it’s required to be open to anyone who wants to attend, so please share widely. Surely it will be… uh…educational. It is worth noting that Cindy Rose filed today to run again for the Board of Education. I guess her previous losses left her wanting more of the same so let’s make sure she finally gets the message that we don’t want her on our board.
Topics to discuss are a bullet list of how to feel aggrieved. This means you are in luck if you hate those people who have a great idea that they will volunteer anyone but themselves to do the legwork on. This is an exclusive event for the airing of grievances, entirely free of action items.
– Do you or did you feel left out of your child’s education? (Would you still feel left out of it if you weren’t involved in litigation/exchanging eleventy bazillion emails with the FCPS Administration and BOE during times that other people are at PTA meetings or assisting in classrooms?)
– Are you currently disappointed in what your child is learning? Were you disappointed in what your child was learning? (Do you think it unnecessary and frightening to learn facts about things that have vast geopolitical ramifications, such as the world’s largest religion? Does learning a different way than you were taught 40 years ago frighten and disgust you?)
– Do you or did you feel you were not a partner in your child’s education? (If you did feel that you were a partner in education, on a scale of 1 to 10 how frightened were you of the school restrooms?)
Please come out and share your thoughts and concerns with local community members and education activists, whether or not you received the personalized pitchfork and tiki torch invite.
Local Yokel suggested items to discuss:
How about brainstorming on ideas that will make you a real partner in education instead of an adversary?
What can the community do to help alleviate over-testing?
What can I do to help advocate for more education budget dollars to attract and keep the best teachers in Frederick County?
How can I make sure that all kids have access to the appropriate learning level?
How can I contribute to ensuring we have adequate schools for our growing county?
If you have your own wishlist of items, please plan to attend. We’d love to hear how your feedback at the meeting is received.
Oh, Max is ready to play along. Can we get thinking cats for certain council members? They really need them.
It is sometimes difficult to tell by reading theagenda, but tonight’s meeting looks like it could be a real doozy. So take care of your liver. As always, this game is just for giggles. Actually participating in this to the fullest may result in death. You’ve been warned.
The meeting starts as always with public comments. We aren’t going to hold our breath on anyone actually showing up to speak. Just hold your beer, just in case.
A bunch of budget adjustments on first up on the agenda. Billy will complain about the library grant because everyone knows folks go to Borders instead, Kirby will kvetch about Citizens, blah, blah, blah. Mix yourself akitchen sink.
Next up on the agenda, approval of minutes for 4 meetings. When Billy abstains mix yourself up a flaming asshole.
Now, it’s time to discuss a mutual aid agreement between the Fred Co Sheriff, Wash Co Sheriff and Hagerstown City Police. Where are the Fred City Police? Make yourself a missing in action while you ponder that.
Well, well well, it’s time to take a vote on the Maryland Association of Counties Legislative Committee County Council Representation. What? Didn’t Bud already executive decision this? Things could get snippy. Make yourself a T-bone in anticipation of Bud’s phone ringing with its Bad to the Bone ringtone.
What workshop items are in store for us? We don’t know what these are as they aren’t listed on the agenda. This might be a good time to hydrate with some good old water.
Time to look at a petition to close a portion of Old Frederick Road to improve the safety of Route 15. Pick your favorite drink and stick it in a cone when anyone complains about being inconvenienced by this proposal.
Lots of First Readings on the docket! Including those that Billy decided he better get going on before anyone brought up the fact that he did nothing but ABSTAIN during his entire tenure as a council member. Anyhoo, sip on your Lazy Dazewhile you endure this portion of the evening.
It’s time to vote on the dueling Forest Ordinance bills. With Bud’s voting patterns recently altered, we predict his version will be the one to make it through; Sip on your Forest Funk while you think of all the lost trees.
Before the break, they will vote to pull the Adequate Public Facilities bill, and then Billy will vote against going into closed session. If it isn’t too close to 7:00, we may get treated to Billy complaining about having to waste all his precious time at Winchester Hall.
MDX hearing is the last bit of business this evening. There’s a lot of opposition to this bill because it would theoretically allow a warehouse to go next to a school or a housing development. Mainly, it’s introduction has to do with the fact that the Jefferson Technology Park did not fill up the way the previous BOCC claimed it would. While you listen to the arguments mix up a pitcher of Nuclear Disaster, and think of all the bad things the Young BOCC have brought upon this fine county.
Public and council member comments can get a little dicey, however, you’ve been through enough for one evening.
This continues our ongoing series to share some of our own Yokel family traditions to help you get in the holiday spirit.
Cousin Earl really likes to fish. Well, truth be told, he likes to drink beer in peace, and going fishing provides him with peace and quiet to drink to his content. What does that have to do with the Yokel family Christmas? Well cousin Earl brings his favorite fishing snack to our annual gathering.
Beer pickled eggs are the perfect protein to keep you fortified while fishing and to share while waiting for dinner.
Cousin Earl’s Pickled Eggs
2 dozen hard boiled eggs, peeled
1.5 cans of beer
2 cups vinegar
Red pepper flakes
Boil and peel eggs. Cousin Earl thinks you should already know how to did this, so use the interweb if you can’t boil a damn egg. Mix beer, vinegar and red pepper flakes in a big her. Add eggs. Drink extra half can of beer. Let eggs sit a day or 2. Eat. Repeat.
frederick local yokel 