On Sunday morning I was shocked to find an official city email in my inbox that started out like this:
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Lester Davis
Sunday, October 07, 2012
410-396-4804 (office)
443-835-0784 (mobile)
CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT SAYS GOVERNOR O’MALLEY’S PRIORITIES ARE MISGUIDED
Op-ed as published in the Sunday, October 07, 2012 edition of The Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-youth-jail-20121007,0,5531559.story
Teens need programs, not jail cells ”
The city council president is really going out of his way to publicly oppose the governor. Even though it is a calculated move (he knows his base constituency is also opposed to the governor on this issue so it will not cost him any future votes) it still is pretty surprising to see a citywide elected official take such a proactive public stand opposing the leader of his party in this one party town. It reminds us of a slight split in the local Democratic political machine. There are the O’Malley Democrats like the mayor who strictly follow the party line the governor established as mayor (dealing with developers, being somewhat economically sane at times, giving a darn about the upper middle class and higher) and then there is the random somewhat unorganized opposition that is against developers (who do not give them political contributions) and takes up every single poverty related issue even if it is not really an issue. The unorganized opposition’s biggest weaknesses is that its members seem to latch on the opposing side of every single so-called “social justice” issue for the sake of publicity and potential votes and that they seem to lack the ability to understand even the rudimentary basics of mathematics and simple economics.
So in Baltimore of you want to be a blind Democrat you can either stick with ambitious machine Democrats who seem to attain higher office with ease or jump on the random somewhat unorganized opposition’s bandwagon and occasionally cause a stir on headline grabbing issues. In the end of the day it’s still a very unhealthy one party system. The results speak for themselves.
BaltimoreHourly.com 