Croom Station Signal

"There's A War On the Middle Class"

I'm posting this rousing (& slightly edgy) music video ....

... in honor of the brave citizens of Help Save Maryland who were out on the streets of Monkey County on Saturday June 21, protesting the neo-slave (aka day labor) centers run by the Chavista hate group Central American Solidarity Association (aka CASA) in Silver Spring and Derwood, with subsidies from venal County Executive Ike Leggett.   

Maryland's own Eddie Becker Band and the Immigration Watchdog have captured the wonderful spirit of patriots like Ted Hayes, out on the streets doing the "jobs Americans have to do" to safeguard the land of the free and home of the brave for all citizens. 

Thank you, HSM!  

Currie Scandal: Citizens Need a Maryland False Claims Act

The ongoing news reports about search warrants and subpoenas to obtain documents from the offices of State Senator Ulysses Currie, a long-time protege of Senator for Life Mike 'Puddinhead' Miller, has highlighted a glaring deficiency in Maryland law:  Maryland is one of a dwindling number of states that has failed to enact a state False Claims Act to protect the citizens against politicians and government contractors who steal from taxpayer funds.

The federal False Claims Act was enacted shortly after the Civil War, reacting to public revulsion at the widespread wartime procurment corruption which lead to the deaths of thousands of Union soldiers.  Today whisteblower cases brought under the FCA recover literally billions of dollars in fraudulent claims every year.

The success of the federal FCA has lead states with clean government lobbies to adopt similar state measures. One of the more recent is the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (Virginia Code 8.01-216.1 et seq.) The VFATA creates a cause of action providing for civil penalties, treble damages, and attorney's fees against 'any person' who submits false claims for payment to the Commonwealth.  In just its first year in force, VFATA whistleblowers recovered $117 million for the Virginia state treasury.

Maryland has a very limited FCA-type statute that only covers false claims against the state medicaid system.  The ongoing scandals in our one-party state underline the need for a law to empower the citizens to protect themselves from the waste, fraud and abuse that is far too prevalent in Maryland state and county government.

The Big Trains Roll Thorugh Croom Station...

I've stumbled across a wonderful website that is entirely devoted to the Popes Creek Line railroad that runs through Croom Station (Milepost 17.4).  I know these blue and gold behemoths pretty well, as about 28 coal trains a week rumble through our crossroads, 14 up and 14 down, half going to the Morgantown Power Plant on the Potomac, half to the Chalk Point Plant on the Patuxent.

The URL is http://www.traingod.railfan.net/.  According to its proprietor, this is a shot of one of the boogies from the big derailment in Croom in January 2005. That was quite a mess.  I'm the grandson of a Clinchfield engineer and district superintendent, so I don't mind the trains rolling by. What does annoy me is the way CSX allows its ROW to be used a dumping ground, especially by its Maintenance of Way contractors. 

PG County Police Go PC, Shrug Off Illegal Alien Homicide Wave

NBC4 reported today that Prince George's County saw a sharp spike in homicides involving "Hispanics."  From mid-March to mid-May, "Hispanics" counted for ten of the County's 24 homicides, even though "Hispanics" account for only 12 percent of the population, according to 2006 Census estimates, the most recent figures available.

This year 21 percent of homicides have involved Hispanics, up from a 13 percent average over the past five years, according to NBC4. Most of the slayings occured -- surprise-- in and around Langely Park.

For local crime statistics, "Hispanic" is an official euphemism for illegal aliens from Latin America. The majority of "Hispanic" county residents are in illegal immigration status, although large numbers receive TPS or other amnesty benefits.

Prince George's County States Attorney Glenn F. Ivey confirmed the trend, telling NBC4 its "definitely a problem." However, Mr. Ivey's candor brought an immediate attempt at spin from County Police spokeswoman Sharon Taylor, who warned against "drawing generalizations" from the illegal alien murder wave. Taylor told NBC4 that the killings could just have easily occured among another group.

Sure. And is it equally unfair to point out that her big boss, County Executive Jack "Slumlord" Johnson, has mantained a radical santuary policy throughout his term in office that prohibits County police and officials from reporting illegal aliens discovered during normal police activity to federal immigration authorities?

It should come as no suprise that criminal alien activity is growing dangerously in the County, even as illegal aliens are "self-deporting" from law-abiding jurisdictions in Northern Virginia and northern Maryland.

BBC: Langley Park Home to 'Worlds' Most Dangerous Gang'

A new international report by the British Broadcasting Corporation on “the world’s most dangerous gang” comes from – surprise – Langley Park, Maryland.

BBC News foreign correspondent Piers Schofield writes that “the suburbs of the US are no longer the same as those immortalised in 1950s movies, with white families living in big houses and the father driving off to work in his Buick, past manicured lawns. These days, it is more likely that English will not even be the first language you hear on the streets.” Schofield is reporting from Prince George’s County.

“In Langley Park, Maryland, the kiosks sell Spanish-language newspapers; supermarket shelves are stocked with tortillas and beans. Mexican music plays in the background while the tannoy blares out announcements in Spanish. Outside, groups of men hang out on the street corners and their Spanish is accented - Nicaraguan, Honduran and, most often, Salvadoran. They wait, hoping to be picked up for a day's labouring in the houses and gardens of Washington DC's middle class. But among the day laborers lurks a darker shadow."

The BBC report goes on to describe violent crimes committed by Mara-13. According to U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, the MS-13 gang operations model is “rape, kill, control."

The BBC went to the Steny Hoyer U.S. Courthouse in Greenbelt, where a home video made by the maras in a Salvadoran prison was presented as evidence of the links between immigrants in Prince George’s County and their even more depraved and vicious ‘hermanos’ in El Salvador. In it, maras send greetings to their "homies" in Maryland. They talk of killing and controlling others and display their full-body tattoos in a show of allegiance to MS-13.

Schofield interviewed Aaron Escorza, head of  the FBI National Gang Task Force. Escorz told the BBC that the gangs move freely around the region. "They don't recognise borders," Escorza explained. "They commit crimes in El Salvador and flee to the US, and you have MS-ers who are committing crimes in the US and fleeing down to El Salvador to evade arrest."

In the capital, San Salvador, entire swathes of the city are now virtually under the control of MS-13 and its rival, Mara 18. Local police patrol warily, tending when possible to avoid those parts of the city. The region's homicide rates are among the highest in the world - 58 per 100,000 of population in El Salvador. 

This crime wave was 100% preventable. Most Salvadorans in PG County are illegal aliens, most without papers, but some on a special TPS program that allows them to stay, work and get welfare while still being classified as illegals. Jack Johnson’s sanctuary policy ties the hands of the police, while Jorge Bushs’ pro-amnesty policies have allowed bung-holes like El Salvador to export poverty and mayhem to suburban Mary land, where the taxpayers get to foot the bill and suffer the consequences.

Edited from the April 3rd BBC online report.

Steny Hoyer: Even Liberals Think He's a Beltway Bandit

I just ran across some interesting comments about Steny's pork proclivities, posted by former Democratic spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee David Sirota last fall on the uber-partisan website TheNation.com.

Following an election where stopping rampant corruption was among voters' top concerns, Sirota wrote that Hoyer has liabilities that puts him at odds with the "new" clean up Washington mandate.

"Hoyer spent the last many years bragging to reporters about his efforts to establish a Democratic version of indicted-Rep. Tom DeLay's K Street Project--the operation that trades legislative favors for money from corporate lobbyists. He famously trumpeted an article about his K Street Project on his official congressional Web site at the very same time Democrats were campaigning against Republicans' 'culture of corruption.'"

Hoyer "has parroted much of the rhetoric of the Democratic Leadership Council--the corporate front group that has relentlessly pushed Democrats to provide the crucial congressional votes necessary to pass "free" trade pacts," Sirota explained. "Hoyer has repositioned himself--one can only assume for political purposes -- as the DLC business candidate."

Sirota concluded, "If Democrats are looking for a a person who regurgitates the Beltway's conventional wisdom of the day, no matter how bad for the party and the country--then they have their candidate in Steny Hoyer."

Vallario Lauded as "Hero" by Illegal Alien Extremists

The Friend of the Drunk Driver in Annapolis, our shameless Delegate and Judiary Committee Chairman Joe Vallario, boasts in this video of his contempt for the rule of law and support for the employment of illegal aliens, taxpayer benefits for illegal aliens, drivers licenses for illegal aliens, and voting rights for illegal aliens over American citizens:

A little perspective makes this pandering to lawbreakers smell even worse. Remember, Vallario had just voted to raise your taxes across the board in the December 2007 special session, to patch up a frightening structural deficit in the state budget. (Meaning: Nanny-state Maryland could not pay its existing obligations to citizens.)

Then, at the same time that Vallario was whoring around Annapolis in February to get his illegal alien "constituents" more benefits and illegal job opportunities, paid for from your new "emergency" tax bill, he introduced HB 927, to strip away citizen's rights to appeal zoning decisions of the County Council.

Prince George's law was reformed many years ago so that political deals between unscrupulous developers and the District Council would have to stand up in court. Vallario snuck HB 927 into the House agenda on February 8, 2008. Fortunately, it was killed in committee after the Friends of Croom and other citizen watchdog groups in the South County area smelled a rat and raised a stink with the County Delegation.

Biofuels no magic solution to immigration crisis

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) just announced that a 75 percent rise in worldwide food prices since 2000  has caused new outbreaks of famine in foreign cities, where food is widely available but poor residents can no longer afford the increased prices.  A reported 25,000 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2007 over food shortages and debts, despite India' image as a model for globalist development.

The WFP said that biofuel production could make the situation worse by diverting production and increasing prices. Rising oil prices have caused fertilizer costs, which account for 25 percent of U.S. agricultural costs, to rise more than 150 percent in the past five years. Meanwhile, an area of fertile soil the size of the Ukraine is disappearing each year because of drought, deforestation and sprawl.

Analysts are beginning to recognize that subsidized biofuel production, of ethanol in particular, is THE root cause of higher retail food prices in the US, and  is contributing to “chronic hunger, malnutrition and starvation” in the poverty-stricken nations of Africa and Southeast Asia.

The United States cannot solve the problem of mushrooming overseas DEMAND for energy and foodstocks. The 120 thousand new immigrants who settle in the U.S. EVERY MONTH from overcrowded foreign nations will increasingly impoverish the native working and middle-income citizenry, as food and fuel prices continue to rise.

We cannot invent our way out of this crisis; we have only two realistic options:  Slash immigration to sustainable levels, or slash the standard of living for all Americans except the very rich.  Maryland is tragically taking the second course.

Immigration Fuels U.S. Population Bomb

Last month the Pew Research Center released a study which projects that U.S. population will grow by 48 percent between 2005 and 2050, and that 82 percent of this growth will come from immigration — both legal and illegal — to the United States. The report, authored by Jeffery S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn of the Pew Research Center, predicts that the population of the United States, which was 296 million in 2005, will be 438 million by 2050 if current trends continue.

Of these 142 million additional people, 67 million will be immigrants and 50 million will represent the children or the grandchildren of these immigrants. (Pew Research Center, U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050, February 11, 2008) The findings of the Pew Research Study are similar to that of a 2006 FAIR study which found the U.S. population in 2050 would be a minimum of 445 million. 

Between 2005 and 2050, the foreign-born population will more than double from 36 million to 81 million. As a result, the foreign-born share of the population will rise from 12 percent of the population in 2005 to nearly 19 percent of the population in 2050. Pew Research also estimates that sometime between 2020 and 2025, the foreign-born percentage of the population will exceed its historic peak of 14.8 percent reached in 1890.

Commenting on these findings, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies stated, "we need to ask ourselves if we want the 100 million more people immigration will bring. Do you want 80 million more cars on the road, or 40 million homes occupying what's now open space?" (Washington Post, February 12, 2008).

In Metro Washington and Prince George's County in particular, the growth rates of the foreign born will be even higher, and the damage caused by the population bomb will be much worse.  All of the efforts by well-meaning "progressives" to control growth and protect the environment will be literally steamrolled by waves of humanity who never knew what a sustainable environment or culture was like.  Without restriction of immigration, the rich and the poor will crowd out the middle class, along with the unique American environment and quality of life that the American middle class created on this planet. 

The foolish global warming globalists and the Ayn Rand libertarians will be stopped -- if not by prudent immigration controls, then by "100% natural" rises in human misery and death control.

Dr. Frank Morris on Mass Immigration

I have had the privilege to observe and on occasion work with Dr. Morris, an immigration reform activist and former director of the Black Congressional Caucus, for a number of years. Although I don't know his party registration, I think our worldview on politics is a shared one: A nation of citizens should be governed by a party that puts the national interest of citizens first. 

Dr. Morris has just finished a series of short TV spots on the impact of mass immigration on black citizens for the California environmental group CAPS. Here is a thought-provoking example:

Crime Victims of Illegal Aliens from You Tube

A supporter sent me this disturbing video.

The lost lives of Americans, all unique and different human beings, but all sharing the common thread of being fellow citizens who were murdered or drunkenly snuffed by illegal aliens.

The statistic of 48,000 persons killed by illegal aliens on the video has no source.  In any case, tens of thousands of victims are too great an order of magnitude for the average person like myself to comprehend.  We can begin to understand the extent of the tragedy when we compare it with other losses:  The number of Americans killed by illegal aliens since 9/11 is far greater than the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and is certainly far, far greater than the number of aliens who have died along the southern border while invading the United States.

Revenge is not the point. Hatred is not the point. The immorality and bloodshed that results when Americans fail to take responsibility for our own sovereignty is the point. 

Collision course: Rapid growth and dwindling groundwater in Charles County.

Water and other environmental issues were on a lot of minds during a meeting on February 4th between Charles County commissioners and the mayors and council members of La Plata and Indian Head in Waldorf. Agenda: The drop in groundwater levels in regional aquifers and efforts to conserve the resource.

It is critical that the towns and county work together to conserve groundwater because of the dwindling supply of the resource being pumped out of regional aquifers, said commissioners’ President F. Wayne Cooper (D).

‘‘We have to work together to plan our future,” he said, adding that the use of treated effluent water from local wastewater treatment plants through a closed loop system is a good head start in tackling the problem. We’re all working off the same aquifers. We need to manage the resource together.”

According to the latest data from the U.S. Geological Survey, county residents and businesses are pulling between 12 million and 13 million gallons a day of groundwater from aquifers in the region, said Jason Groth, the county’s program manager for adequate public facilities.

La Plata Town Manager Daniel Mears said water use increases 55 percent in town during the warm months when people are watering lawns, washing cars and filling swimming pools. The town is considering a policy that would impose higher water fees on customers who use more than the average amount of the resource in their homes. La Plata’s water is withdrawn from the lower Patapsco aquifer, which is rapidly being depleted.

Charles County recently formed a water resources advisory committee to formulate recommendations on how to deal with the shrinking supply of groundwater in the region. The county is scheduled to meet with Prince George’s County officials to cement an agreement established about a decade ago that would enable the county to withdraw up to 5 million gallons of Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission water a day to offset use of groundwater in the area.

A new state law — HB 1141 — enacted last year by the Maryland General Assembly also mandates that counties and towns start seriously looking at ways to conserve groundwater, including the incorporation of a water resource element in updates of local comprehensive plans.  The law also mandates that jurisdictions include priority preservation areas and municipal growth projections in comprehensive plans.

Counties and towns also need to assess the amount of groundwater being used by private deep wells and commercial and industrial facilities. ‘‘It’s abundantly clear that we need to develop a water resource element in our comprehensive plans,” said Indian Head Mayor Dennis Scheessele. 

‘‘The state wants a more dedicated assessment so our projected growth is in line with the water supply,” she said. ‘‘Individual wells are in the same aquifers that we’re in. This is a regional problem.”

If a jurisdiction does not comply with the new law by October 2009, officials will not be able to change the zoning of any property in their jurisdiction until it is in compliance with the law.

http://somdnews.com/stories/020808/indytop120048_32091.shtml

Carroll County Takes Local Immigration Reform Action

MARYLAND: Carroll County tells vendors to comply with immigration laws

WESTMINSTER (Associated Press Feb. 8, 2008)— The Carroll County commissioners are requiring that businesses that supply goods and services to the county government comply with federal immigration laws. Failure to comply could result in termination of their contracts.  County Attorney Kim Millender says if a county agency is notified of possible noncompliance, the agency would have to investigate the situation.  Commissioner Michael Zimmer says the resolution is an incentive for vendors who don't win county contracts to monitor their competitor's business practices.

Steny Still A Star At Sleazy Pork Parties

Edited extracts from a January 31, 2008 USA Today story by Ken Dilanian:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-01-31-cover31_N.htm 

In the past decade, lobbying firms and special interests have purchased discreet town houses on Capitol Hill.  Despite a strict new ban on gifts to lawmakers, lobbyists routinely use these prime locations to wine and dine members of Congress while helping them to raise money. The lawmakers get a venue that is often free or low-cost. The lobbyists get the sort of money-fueled proximity the new lobbying law was designed to curtail. The public seldom learns what happens there because the law doesn't always require fundraising details to be reported.

The new law requires disclosure of "bundling" of contributions by lobbyists — long a hidden fixture of fundraising. [Steny Hoyer is the leading practitioner of "leadership PAC bundling" in the House.] But some observers say the new gift and trip restrictions put more emphasis on helping Congress members raise money as a way of gaining access to lawmakers.

The receptions illustrate that lawmakers still are allowed to accept valuable favors from special interests willing to pay for access, despite promises by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [and Steny Hoyer] that the restrictions on gifts and trips would "break the link between lobbyists and legislators." Because some lobbyists charge Congressmen less than $200 for rent , campaigns don't have to itemize those payments — leaving no record connecting the lawmaker to the lobbyist-hosted event.

"These houses are tangible proof of how big a business the pay-to-play system has become," said Meredith McGehee of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center.

Last year through October, Democratic lawmakers outraised Republicans among business interests by $324 million to $253 million, and among registered lobbyists by $6.9 million to $5.3 million, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Asked about lobbyist fundraising last spring, Hoyer said, "If you look at all the convictions and the people who are serving in jail, it's not about campaign money. It's about taking money directly from special interests, in your pocket. The beauty of campaign finance is there is disclosure. People can see."

But two months after the enactment of a bill Hoyer claimed would curb the influence of lobbyists, USA Today spotted House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's black SUV and driver double-parked in front of the town house owned by partners in the lobbying firm Williams & Jensen, while the Maryland Democrat stopped into a fundraiser for Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.

Hoyer declined to answer questions for this story. His spokeswoman, Stacey Bernards, said, "This may be an area where there could be more transparency."

Roscoe Bartlett

The elected official from Maryland whom I respect the most and whose political views I think are most compatible to mine is Rep. Roscoe Bartlett.  Rep. Bartlett represents Western Maryland, from Frederick County west through Garrett County.

Rep. Bartlett has one of the most consistent records in the House on enforcement-first immigration reform.  He is a strong but thoughtful supporter of our military.  He has an excellent ethical record on social values, and federal spending.  Mr Bartlett is also an important advocate for the environment and energy security among his House colleagues. 

I have been surprised and a bit disappointment that mentioning his name at campaign forums has not produced the level of public response I had hoped for. Why is he not well-known throughout the state?  Part of the answer may be Rep. Bartlett's low-key persona.  Although from the same generation, Bartlett and Hoyer seem worlds apart in values and style.

Maryland Dixiecrats Cave On Licenses for Illegals

In addition to its history as the home base for generations of pecksniffers and thimbleriggers like Marvin Mandel and Spiro Agnew, our Maryland also has a tawdry reputation as the most lawless and defiant state on the East Coast when it comes to respect for our immigration laws.

In most states, it is the Democratic party that proposes endless new benefits and privileges for illegal aliens, on the theory that "no human is illegal."  But in Maryland, the cheap labor lobby also supports the Democrats, claiming Maryland is in desperate economic straits because of all the unfilled "jobs Americans won't do."  But even California doesn't raise taxes to pay for public benefits for resentful foreigner invaders like we have.

The moral bankruptcy and clueless politics of the party of  Martin "Lucky Charms" O'Malley, Mike "Puddinhead" Miller, and Steny "Mr. Good Pork" Hoyer may have its limits, which seem to be defined by election year opinion polls showing 55 % of the voters in this bluest of blue states oppose instate tuition for illegal aliens and 75% oppose drivers licenses for illegal aliens.

Last week, O'Malley was calling for special driving certificates for illegals that would be good only in Maryland. This dangerous crackpot scheme brought the public wrath down on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer when he floated same idea last year.  This week, O'Malley caved on REAL ID. Now he says he doesn't want Maryland to be the only state on the East Coast to aid and abett illegal alien driving, although he promises that Maryland citizens will suffer at the DMV because they refused to cave in to the illegal alien invasion.

Senate Boss Miller is equally craven. He is calling for the classic "sweep it under the rug" scam beloved of clueless politicians everywhere: Appoint a state task force to "study" the impact of illegal immigration and then decide if Maryland will respect the law or not. 

In a landmark case, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals compared this kind of pandering on immigration to the passive resistance to federal civil rights laws practiced by die-hard segregationist southern Democrats in the 1950s and 60s. It is astonishing and deeply disturbing to realize that insider politics in border state Maryland have remained closer to their Dixiecrat oligarchic heritage than in any state in the old Deep South.

It is the civic duty of the minority party to complain, complain, and complain about the corruption, cronyism, and folly of the Dixiecrats, for however long it takes for the public to realize that they've had enough of generations of Democratic pandering.

Black Citizens and Illegal Immigration

My job as an attorney advocate for the American immigration reform movement has allowed me to work with black reform activists across the nation.  In Maryland below the political establishment level, the views of Prince George's black voters on immigration are consistently similar to my own. This recent letter to the editor published in the Washington Post expresses the importance of defending the privileges of citizenship:

'Jobs Americans Won't Do'?

Tuesday, November 6, 2007; A18

"I strongly disagree with Henry Gekonde's comments in "I'll Say 'Hola' if You'll Say 'Hello' " asserting that "illegal immigrants are here to do many of the jobs that Americans won't do. [Close to Home, Nov. 4].

"With 18 percent of black men ages 16 to 64 earning no income in 2006, there are many legal residents who are willing to work but have been displaced by these interlopers. For instance, many black men would be willing to take the construction jobs being given to illegal immigrants, but contractors do not want to pay legal wages of about $27 an hour.

"On the matter of assimilation, illegal immigrants arrive here in droves to work for dollars instead of pesos; thus, they should learn English. And as a member of the "get-tough crowd," I think Mr. Gekonde fails to realize that the treatment of illegal immigrants is neither slavery nor segregation, because illegal immigrants made a conscious decision to break the law when they came to the United States. Finally, when Americans continue to neglect the issue of assimilating ex-offenders returning to society, why should anyone entertain an argument about assimilating another country's citizens?

CARLA JENKINS, Washington"

May God bless us, every one

May the joy & the hope of Christmas

Be with you today & in the New Year,

& May its blessings follow you

Throughout the days of your life.

Illegal Aliens--Where the Immigration Crisis and the Subprime Lending Crisis Meet

The nation’s subprime mortgage crisis has a direct link to Steny Hoyer and the Shamnesty lobby he so cravenly supports on Capitol Hill.  Even a casual reader of the metro Washington Spanish-language press knows that a major source of ad income has been sleazy real estate agents offering sub-prime deals to illegal aliens, who unlike American citizens could get loans without proof of income, legal residence, social security number, or any of the other verification procedures demanded of American homebuyers.

Now the housing slump has produced a new corrupt wrinkle in our immigration crisis: Immigrant smugglers are seeing a business opportunity in the nation's mortgage crisis: They are renting vacant new homes in Western cities and using them as stash houses for illegal alien “pollos,” authorities say. Stash houses are stopover points where smugglers holds aliens until they collect their fees and arrange to have the aliens smuggled to their final destination, in police no-go sanctuary zones like Langley Park in suburban Maryland.

The homeowners, often out-of-state residents who bought the houses as investments, get suckered into renting to immigrant smugglers because they are desperate to generate income from properties that aren't selling, authorities say. The Phoenix metropolitan area alone is believed to have about 1,000 immigrant stash houses. Authorities say they are seeing more and more such cases.

Knowingly renting homes to illegal aliens leaves properties open to seizure.  After recently getting a tip that smugglers were holding immigrants for ransom at a house in suburban Phoenix owned by a California schoolteacher, police entered by knocking down a door and punching holes in the ceiling so they could throw in tear gas canisters. Twenty-two illegal immigrants were kept in an upstairs bedroom that had plywood nailed over its windows to prevent escapes and a milk jug that served as a toilet. Flies buzzed amid the empty beer cars and open bags of garbage that littered the house. No smugglers were arrested and were thought to have escaped. The home had $11,000 in damage. The couple who acted as the front for the renters disappeared.   Source: Jacques Billeaud, Associated Press, 12-19-07

Steny's Omnibus Pork Bonanza for 2008

Under Steny Hoyer's leadership, the earmark-driven pork bonanza has been geared up for a veritable tsunami of grease, in preparation for the November 2008 election.  Exhibit A is the 2008 Omnibus Spending Bill. The watchdog Sunlight Foundation commented yesterday: 

"It's fair to say that citizen oversight of Congress (and congressional oversight of Congress, for whatever that's worth) took a shot to the chin today. The Hill's Alex Bolton reports that the bill's 3,565 pages contain somewhere between 8,983 earmarks (according to Taxpayers for Common Sense), 9,200 earmarks (according to a Senate staffer) and 11,402 earmarks (according to Heritage's excellent Ominibuster blog). There are hundreds of new earmarks previously undisclosed--115 worth $117 million in the previously "earmark free" Homeland Security bill--that have been "airdropped" in at the last minute."

It doesn't have to be this way. Whether you are a frugal conservative or a generous liberal, your vision for a better American has been subverted and perverted by the Congressional pork-driven federal appropriations system, masterminded by the Emir of Earmarks, Steny Hoyer. Your vote for change in our Southern Maryland 5th Congressional District is all it takes.