Flip over at Suitably Flip has a timely post regarding something you knew was going to happen: scams tied to Katrina. He did a bit of digging into the subject, and there's some shady folks out there looking to cash in. So far I've put in about $25 to the kitty...
- At our office, I gave $20 to the office collection. When my boss matches all of ours, it should come out well over $500. Not bad for 18 people.
- Last night's Shorebird playoff game had $1 of each ticket go to relief. That would be over $2200 since that was the paid attendance. Added to that is another $1700 when they passed the hat during the 7th inning stretch. That's more impressive since probably 1/3 to 1/2 the crowd had left (we were up 12-3 at the time.)
- Also, during my weekend trip to Atlantic City, a group of firefighters were "filling the boot" for Katrina relief. I'm sure they did well.
And that doesn't count my $200 of so slice of the $60 billion and counting in promised aid from the federal government. (Reading the story, I see President Bush waived the prevailing wage law on these related government contracts. Good for him!)
Earlier I was looking for some info on my old hometown's mayoral race when I came across this gem. While some of the provisions make sense, it's quite interesting that this comes up while the Republicans are in charge in Columbus. Where was this in 1980 when the rural area I grew up in after age 11 became part of the Congressional district mostly populated by the city of Toledo? I just think it's funny that 92% of the money to fund the petition drive (and apparently some of the petitioners) are from outside Ohio. Think the Democrats are worried about Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (a black conservative)? Part of the petition is to strip that office of election duty.
I must say, one thing I don't like about Maryland is that the off-year elections are held in the spring. I like fall elections, probably just because it's what I'm used to. When I was a volunteer in the trenches for those many years living in Toledo, Election Day was like my Super Bowl.
On Election Day, I would get up at 4 a.m. for "dawn patrol", when we went out and plastered all the polling places with campaign signs. I'd have 5-7 places to go and a trunk full of signs to plant. Then at 6:30 I would go vote in my precinct and for several years in a row, I was the campaign worker for my precinct. So I would spend most of the next 13 hours trying to get those last-minute decisions for my candidate.
Then 7:30 p.m. would roll around and I'd run home for a quick shower and then to wherever the party was having it's post-election party. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it was more like a wake, but we had our occasional victories.
And, if you're wondering, I took a personal day off work to do this. No UAW contract mandating Election Day off for me. So I used to have good back-and-forth with the union thugs who spent a couple hours at my polling place.
I guess I'll have to get my fix next November (2006) as Maryland cranks up some major races.
Speaking of Maryland, this is not a good sign for public education.
I got my coupon-laden blue junk mail envelope a few days back, and among the stuff in it was something for UMES (for the non-natives, that's University of Maryland Eastern Shore.) To quote Dave Barry, I swear I'm not making this up - it was the "Arts & Entertainment CALENDER OF EVENTS." So, No! UMES is not my "Education Destination."
