Lost On The Shore

PAC-MAN?

In my last post I looked at the individual contributions that each of the candidates in Maryland's First Congressional District had reported and contrasted the source of contributions for Frank Kratovil, which were almost 95 percent from Maryland residents vs. the source of contributions for Andy Harris, which were only 54 percent from Marylanders.  This, of course, raised the question of who would best represent Marylanders - Kratovil who gets almost all his support from within Maryland or Harris who gets almost half his support from wealthy outsiders.

But individual contributions are not the whole story.  Each candidate has also raised significant sums from Political Action Committees (PACs), but Andy Harris has raised much more this way.  As always, lets go to the numbers!

Starting with Frank Kratovil, according to the numbers I have, Frank has received $38 thousand in PAC contributions so far.  The majority of this - $27 thousand, has come from labor union PACs including notably the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), The International Association of Firefighters and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.  Other significant PAC contributions include some Democratic leadership PACs (a PAC established by a member of congress to support other candidates) and the Sierra Club.

Andy Harris has received far more money from PACs - $268,900 so far.  It's interesting to look at who is contributing to him.  By far his largest contributor has been the medical industry, which accounts for $129,100 of his PAC contributions.  That shouldn't be too surprising; Andy Harris is a doctor and the healthcare industry wants one of their own to represent them on the Hill.  Harris has also received $14,000 from the oil industry, apparently impressed by his express desire to drill everywhere.  Other significant contributors include several insurance industry PACs, a couple of construction industry PACs and the Automobile Dealers Association PAC.

So what does all this tell us?  Well, first of all it tells us that Andy Harris is much more succesful at raising money from special interest groups than Frank Kratovil.  Almost all of Kratovil's contributions have come from individuals rather than from special interest groups.

Second, there is a clear difference in the source of PAC contributions to the two candidates.  Labor unions, which generally support Democratic candidates, are supporting Frank Kratovil; that's no surprise.  The medical/healthcare industry, on the other hand, is throwing tons of support to Andy Harris.  I suppose they hope he will represent their interests if he is elected.  He's also received some support from the oil industry, which is not too surprising, they generally tilt Republican anyway. 

So that brings us back to my last post - who will represent Maryland?  It still seems to me that the answer is Frank Kratovil, who received the bulk of his contributions from Marylanders and mostly from individuals.  I think Andy Harris owes too much to outsiders and to the medical industry to be able to effectively represent the people of the first district and I think the numbers show that and they show that Andy Harris is the real PAC-MAN.

[Editor's Note:  They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I guess I should be flattered that Joe Albero over at Salisbury News copied my last post verbatim in his own blog.  He didn't attribute it to me, but he's a busy guy and I assume it was an oversight.  Of course, to get the whole story, he'll have to copy this one too.  I'll wait and see. 

I will be away for a bit, so no posts until late next week - Tom]

Who Will Represent Maryland?

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has reported the results of fundraising by Congressional Candidates in the First District for the quarter ending June 30.  Not surprisingly, Andy Harris continues to lead.  The Republican raised avout $432,000 during the quarter and lent his campaign $100,000 of his personal funds.  He reported about $609,000 in cash on hand at the end of the quarter.

Frank Kratovil didn't do badly, though.  He raised about $376,000 during the quarter and had $454,000 in cash at the end of the quarter.  So, Andy Harris has a lead of about $150,000 in cash at the end of the quarter - about $100,000 of which is his personal loan to the campaign.

But, aside from Harris's loan to his own campaign, where did the money come from?  A look at the details reveals some interesting data.  I looked at all the individual donations to each candidate of $200 or more reported by the FEC.  Then I looked at the source of the money.

Let's start with Frank Kratovil.  Individual contributions of $200 or more to Kratovil's campaign totalled $303,471 through June 30.  Of that, $287,421 or 94.7 percent, came from persons residing in Maryland.  That is a very high percentage and indicates that Frank Kratovil has the support of Marylanders and will represent them when he is elected to Congress.

Now let's look at Andy Harris.  His individual contributions (of $200 or more) total $916,356 - an impressive amount.  But let's look at where they came from.  Of that only $493,191 or 53.8 percent came from person living in Maryland.  Where did this money come from?  It came from all over the country, primarily through the Club for Growth - a very right-wing anti-tax group which is trying to elect Andy Harris so he will do their bidding in Congress.

Andy Harris isn't running to represent Maryland, he's running to represent the Club for Growth and his wealthy buddies in their attempt to avoid paying even a dime in taxes.  Let's look at those numbers one more time.  Frank Kratovil - 94.7 percent of his individual contributions come from Maryland.  Andy Harris 53.8 percent of his individual contributions come from Maryland.

Now I take a special interest in the Eastern Shore, so I took a look at how much each candidate received from Eastern Shore zip codes (216xx, 218xx,219xx).  This time lets look at Frank Kratovil first.  Of his $303,471 in individual contributions, $155,541 of 51.3 percent came from the Shore.

For Andy Harris, the numbers tell a different story.  Of his individual contributions of $916,356, only $91,277 or 10.0 percent came from the Eastern Shore - sad numbers for a man who claims he will represent the Eastern Shore in Congress.

Fortunately, all those wealthy people who live out of state and are funding Andy Harris's campaign can't vote in Maryland.  Marylanders of the First District need vote for Frank Kratovil, who will represent the people of Maryland, not Andy Harris who will represent his wealthy benefactors from Texas, Florida, Ohio and other states.    

Lubyanka on the Severn

The Baltimore Sun, Washington Post and a host of other newspapers report today that the Maryland State Police have repeatedly spied on groups opposed to the death penalty or opposed to the war.  Despite the fact that the police spies reported no plans for illegal activity or any illegal activity itself, the State Police reported the names of some participants to the Federal government to be entered into the national database of people thought to be terrorists or drug traffickers.

This is both stupid and dangerous.  Stupid because it diverts scarce resources from fighting crime to unproductive spying on people who are peaceful and law-abiding.  Dangerous because it erodes popular support for the police and damages their credibility.  Who can trust them?  Many in Maryland oppose the death penalty, the war in Iraq or war in general.  Why would our state police spy on them and report them as, of all things, potential terrorists? 

The right to dissent and protest are important American values - they help keep our democracy strong and have played an important part in the evolution of our country, from the very founding of our country to the abolitionist movement that helped raise public consciousness about slavery to the suffragette movement that won the right to vote for women to the civil rights movement that helped to finally bring equal rights to African-Americans and to the anti-war movement that helped end the fruitless war in Vietnam.  Dissent is important because it helps us examine our assumptions and see others' points of view.

Of course, some of this can be attributed to sheer laziness.  The agents that the Maryland State Police sent to spy on the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of the state repeatedly reported that no illegal activity was planned or had taken place.  Yet they consistently recommended the spying be continued.  Why would they do that?  Well, going to meetings of peace activists and anti-death penalty types is certainly easier and safer than going after criminals!

Governor O'Malley needs to get to the bottom of this.  Those responsible for this fiasco need to be terminated - there's no place in our state government for this kind of nonsense.  Investigating and spying on people simply because they dissent is an affront to our American way of life.  After a full disclosure of what went on, the records of this spying need to be purged to protect the reputations of those who were spied upon.  And our police need to get back to enforcing the law and catching criminals - certainly there is enough crime in Maryland to keep them busy.

The photo above is of the KBG headquarters on Lubyanka Square in Moscow.  Russians used to joke that it was the tallest building in Moscow because 'from its basement you can see Siberia'.  We don't need any secret police in Maryland. 

Blowin' in the Wind?

It seems that the project proposed by Bluewater Wind to place wind turbines off the Delaware coast is heading toward approval and may well be expanded and extended to the Maryland coast off of Ocean City.  Governor Martin O'Malley expressed his support for the Delaware project yesterday and indicated he would not be opposed to extending the project to Maryland.

The project would certainly be good for the Shore, which suffers from a lack of generation and transmission facilities.  The electricity, while costly compared to existing generating facilities might be comparable in cost to that from a new coal plant. 

The one problem with wind energy, which I have referred to before, is the inherent variability of wind energy as a dependable power source.  Most wind turbines generate electricity at full capacity only when the wind is blowing at about 15 mph or more.  Wind itself is highly variable on an hourly, daily and seasonal basis.

  The graph at left shows the actual energy generated by the wind turbine at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Bourne over the last month.  The variability is clear.  You can see real time data for this installation on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis here.  A wind farm of the size proposed would almost certainly require a backup natural gas generation facility at a substantial additional cost to provide power on the days when the wind doesn't blow hard enough.

Another factor, of course, is that the peak electricity demand in Maryland and neighboring states is in the summer while the wind here is stronger and more consistent in the winter.

Despite these issues, though, the proposal is a welcome one and I'm glad to see it getting support from the Governor.  While some might complain that the turbines, which would be barely visible from the beach, are unsightly, They would certainly be better than the sight of oil derricks and the associated environmental problems that President Bush favors.  I look forward to seeing more progress like this.

Maryland Energy Update

I thought, with all the progress being made, it would be a good idea to post an update of the energy/electricity situation in Maryland. 

So what's happened?  Actually, not much.  While there has been some slight progress, we are mostly standing still as demand continues to grow.  Let's take a quick look at some of the data (most of this data comes from a June, 2008 report by the Maryland Public Service Commision).

Maryland continues to be a large importer of electricity, importing about 30% of its needs.  On an absolute basis, Maryland is the fourth largest electric energy importer in the United States, exceeded only by California, New Jersey and Virginia.  Delaware and DC are also large importers meaning that the mid-atlantic area is heavily dependent on imports from other states - primarily to the west.  As I've reported before, due to lack of generating capacity and already congested transmission facilities, the PJM power interconnection has warned of the posssibility of brownouts in the area beginning in 2011 - that's three years away. 

Only 22 percent of Maryland's total generating capacity of about 12,500 megawatts has been built in the past 20 years.  More than two-thirds of our generating capacity is more than 30 years old.  While electricity demand and consumption in the mid-atlantic area is expected to grow, several older plants are scheduled for retirement within the next four years, including the Buzzards Point and Benning Road plants in DC.

There are some bright spots.  The PSC and Constellation Energy appear to have settled their spat and are cooperating in a number of areas.  The Governor is supporting construction of new power plants in Maryland, including the proposed Constellation/Unistar nuclear plant in Calvert County (1640 megawatts) and the Competitive Power Venture natural gas plant in Charles County (645 megawatts).  If all goes well, the latter could be on line by the end of 2010. 

The Baltimore/Washington area continues to be affected by relatively high transmission costs due to lack of adequate transmission facilities.  Three major power lines are being proposed to help address this problem.  The Mid-Atlantic Power Pathway (MAPP) would run from Possum Point in Northern Virginia, across Southern Maryland, under the Chesapeake Bay to Indian River in Delaware and north to New Jersey.  It has recently been approved by the PJM Board.

The second line is the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line (TRAIL) which would run from near Pittsburgh to Loudoun County, Virginia.  It would do much to bring excess power from Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio to the Washington DC region but has faced intense local opposition.  The third is the Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH), which would run from near Charleston WV to near Frederick, MD.  It has been approved by the PJM Board on June 22. 

Together these three would significanlty increase transmission capacity and lower transmission costs in the Baltimore/DC area and to the Eastern Shore.  Given local opposition, it's unlikely that any of them will be completed before 2012, however, in time to affect the predicted power shortage.

In that regard, a statewide coalition of power companies and business groups has formed to press the state to speed up the approval process for new power plants and power lines.  The group, which includes my own supplier - Choptank Electric Cooperative - along with the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative and others is concerned that brownouts will be necessary if nothing is done.

On the positive side, all the investor-owned utilities in Maryland have begun 'Demand-Side Management' initiatives which are a combination of energy efficiency programs which reduce the amount of energy used and demand response programs designed to reduce the electricty demand during times of high usage.  The cooperatives will submit plans during 2008.  Primarily these include CFL lightbulb programs and 'smart meters' which can reduce power usage during high demand.  BGE's program also includes more efficient window air conditioners and appliances for low-income customers. 

In addition, Delmarva Power and Choptank Electric Cooperative have finally signed a contract with Bluewater Power to buy electricity from a proposed wind farm off the Delaware coast.  The project awaits approval by the state of Delaware. 

Finally, I'm happy to report that Worcester County has this week begun generating electricity using methane generated from its landfill.  The project is built and operated by Curtis Engine and generates 1 megawatt of electricity which will be purchased and distributed by Choptank Electric Cooperative.  Two more generators at the site will come on line within the next year.  The project not only generates electricity, but captures the methane - a potent greenhouse gas - that otherwise would end up in the atmosphere.  I'm very pleased that my trash will now generate some of the electricity I use! 

[The photo is of a wind farm near Copenhagen, Denmark]  

       

Performance in Education

Several newspapers and TV stations, including the Daily Times here on the Shore, recently carried an article discussing the increased use of 'performance pay' in Maryland schools.   According to the article, Prince George's County schools are instituting a series of 'performance bonuses' for teachers while Harford and Anne Arundel schools offer modest performance bonuses to principals.

Now, if you believe, as I do, that government has the power to improve people's lives, you must also demand that government, at all levels, perform at the highest levels of effectiveness and be transparently accountable to the taxpayers.  After all, money to run the government is not contributed voluntarily but is taken involuntarily.  If we fail to demand and expect the highest levels of performance from our government then we are playing into the hands of those to whom all taxes are anathema and government is just a wasteful boondoggle.

And in many areas, government is becoming more accountable.  In Maryland, Governor O'Malley has introduced 'statestat' and 'baystat' which, although imperfectly, try to publicly and transparently measure the performance of the various state agencies.  And in many areas of the government, pay has been tied to performance, although the measures are sometimes crude and the system is often not administered in a transparent fashion.

But not in education.  For some reason or other, we don't pay our teachers according to their performance.  The primary reason for this, of course, is the violent opposition of the teachers themselves.  They would have us believe that there is no way to effectively measure the performance of teachers and that, anyway, they're all good. 

Of course, that's absurd.  Anyone who's been a student or anyone who is a parent of a student can tell you that there are good teachers and bad teachers and, quite probably, can tell you, with a fair degree of unanimity, which are good and which are not.

Many of our school systems have salaries based on performance for other staff but not for teachers.  Somerset County schools have performance pay for secretaries, custodians, receptionists, classroom aides, cafeteria workers and administrators - but not for teachers.  Here in Worcester County, there is no thought to performance pay for teachers.  According to the spokeswoman as long as they get enough money, they'll do fine.

And that's the crux of the matter.  For most of our local jurisdictions, schools take the lion's share of the budget.  And they get what they ask for almost always - cut their budget request by even a small fraction of a percent and there will be predictions of doom.

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am a big fan of education.  It's the key to our ability to compete in a global economy and to the relatively high income levels we enjoy in Maryland.  And that's even more reason why we should have the highest expectations of our educational establishments and our teachers and why they should be held to the highest standards of accountability and transparency.

'Fiscal Responsibilty'

As I write this the price of crude oil is somewhere near $145 a barrel - a sum that would be unimaginable a couple of years ago.  As I wrote earlier, it is a classic supply and demand situation - the demand continues to rise, driven by sustained and robust economic growth in China, India and the former soviet union.  Supply, on the other hand, has remained relatively stagnant for the past several years. 

But the price of oil hasn't risen by the same percentage everywhere.  In Europe, the price has still risen substantially over the past several years, but not nearly as much as it has here.  Why is that?  Well, the Europeans (many of them anyway) pay for their oil in Euros, and the value of Euro has been much stronger than the dollar.  In 2004, you could buy a Euro for about $1.10, in 2006 it cost about $1.25, today it costs about $1.57 to buy a Euro.

Oil traders, financial analysts and producers all agree that one of the factors driving up the price of oil for us has been the weakness of the dollar.  If we could strengthen the dollar, it would do much to restrain the price of oil (and other commodities).  And one good way to strengthen the dollar would be to balance the federal budget. 

Now Andy Harris, like most Republican politicians since Reagan runs on a simple mantra of 'lower taxes'.  He also talks about something called fiscal discipline.  Every Republican says they want lower taxes.  They know we all want to pay less and it's an easy thing to say.  And if Harris is elected, you can bet he will vote to lower taxes.  But whose taxes will he lower?  It's safe to say it won't be mine and probably not yours.  He'll push to lower taxes for himself and his rich cronies from the Club for Growth or as conservative Mike Huckabee called it - the 'Club for Greed'.

Let's go back and look at the tax cuts that George W. Bush pushed through a compliant Republican Congress when he became President.  Over the ten-year period of his tax cuts, from 2001 to 2010, an astonishing 52 percent of the total cuts will go to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers! 

Now let's look at the flip side - the 'fiscal discipline' side.  Since George W. Bush became President, with a compliant Republican-controlled Congress, Federal spending has grown at an average of 5 percent per year - faster than the growth of the economy and much faster than the 2 percent growth during the Clinton years.  During this period we've added about $3 Trillion to the national debt, which will be a burden to our children and our country for years and years to come.  So much for Republican fiscal conservatism.

So we know what to expect if Harris is elected - more tax cuts for the rich, more bloated Federal spending and a further decline in the value of the dollar leading to higher and higher commodity prices.  Hold on to your wallet.

[The photo shows the supertanker 'Abqaiq', owned by Saudi Arabia, taking on oil at Iraq's Basrah off-shore oil terminal]