12.08.12 BUH-bye Tiffany Alston. . .

. . . and don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

We first got to know former Maryland Del. Tiffany Alston  after she had won her campaign for office with a pro-marriage-equality position and then — under pressure from bigots in her district — failed to show up for a crucial vote on the measure in 2011 more or less killing it for the year. (Her failure to show up was deliberate: she had changed her position, but wanted to avoid responsibility.)

We got to know her better when she was indicted and convicted for stealing $800 from the General Assembly to pay for an assistant at her private law firm. She is also facing trial for using about $3,000 of campaign money to pay for her wedding.

Alston was kicked out of office — and had her law license suspended — as a result of her being a petty thief. Yet, she has been campaigning to get her delegate seat reinstated. She is not claiming that she didn’t steal the money, but rather that she has a right to the seat based on a legal technicality. That’s right: Alston doesn’t think that being a petty thief is incompatible with public office, nor that holding public office is about anything other than exploiting the perks.

The good news is that a Prince George’s County district court finally laid the issue to rest by denying Alston’s claim to the seat earlier this week. Of course, knowing how much PG County citizens love corrupt politicians, I wouldn’t bet against her running again next year and winning.

©2012 Keith Berner

11.17.10 Legal Corruption in Montgomery County

This is cross-posted with the Washington Post’s All Opinions Are Local.

How delicious it was to read about Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson being carted off in handcuffs the other day. It feels so good to see the arrogant get their comeuppance. I have trouble accepting how shady populists keep getting re-elected (four county-wide victories for Johnson). Even before the cops had enough evidence to arrest this guy, his character was apparent. All I needed to know came a couple of years ago when his high spending of county funds on personal pleasures was being looked at and it was found that he had been jetting around in first- and business-class. He responded: “I think the people of Prince George’s County expect me to. I don’t think they expect me to be riding in a seat with four across, and I’m in the middle.” Nice.

So, what does this have to do with Montgomery County? Only the source of the corrupting influence: the development industry. I’m not about to claim that the leaders of my apparently better-governed county are carrying wads of developer cash in their bras or flushing $100,000 checks down the toilet. Nope, the system in MoCo is far more insidious. Here, it’s not (or doesn’t seem to be) about direct cash to politicians in exchange for specific actions. Rather, it’s about the overwhelming amount of the money for political campaigns’ coming from that one industry.

A study of the 2002 county elections by Neighbors for a Better Montgomery showed that county council candidates on the infamous, hyper-development End Gridlock slate were receiving between 56 percent and 72 percent of their campaign funds from developers. In a state with the 44th worst campaign-finance disclosure laws in the country,  politicians don’t have to tell us where they’re getting their money. But it doesn’t take a PhD to guess that when one industry exerts such dominance over elections, it is getting something in exchange.

The-best-political-system-money-can-buy is hardly a local phenomenon. Nationwide, the ultra-wealthy get special service for their cash, something that now appears to be permanently locked in stone following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. But at least on the national level, it isn’t a single industry – without any competition – calling the tune. In MoCo it is.

And the local problem is exacerbated by two newspapers that never met a paving project they didn’t like. The Post and the Montgomery Gazette (which is also owned by The Washington Post Co.) love to go whole hog after the public employee unions for skewing local politics (have you ever seen so many double-size editorials in a year as the The Post has run against the MoCo teachers’ unions?). At the same time, they ignore entirely candidates who don’t toe the developers’ line (Marc Elrich in 2006, Sharon Dooley this year).

The MoCo political culture is corrupt in its own way, and it is aided and abetted by Democrats in Annapolis who prefer pay-to-play over campaign-finance reform and their allies in what passes for a fourth estate. Make no mistake: MoCo is just as corrupt as Prince George’s. The only difference is how the game is played.

©2010 Keith Berner

04.17.10 Police Violence in Prince George’s County

Prince George’s County, Maryland is a dangerous place.  It is not that this suburb of Washington, DC and home to the University of Maryland is more crime-ridden than any other inner suburban county.  Rather, the danger comes from a culture of impunity that pervades its infamous police department.

Most recently, a video surfaced showing police furiously beating a UM student for the apparent crime of being alive.  The story, which has gotten international attention, reveals the random violence of an out-of-control police state.  Equally chilling is the associated coverup, which makes the county resemble thugocracies like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and (ironically, since PC County is majority black, as its police force) the pre-Civil Rights South.  The coverup includes charging documents against the student claiming that he struck the officers and their horses and was injured by the horses’ kicking him.  The video shows these claims to be outright lies.

It would be one thing if this were a random incident.  But this is business as usual in a place where police murdered a prisoner in his cell two years ago and no one was charged, because not a single officer was willing to come forward with the truth. And then there’s the other headline-grabbing incident of 2008, when PG police swarmed the house of Berwyn Heights’s mayor and killed his two dogs in a drug bust gone awry.

These cases are obviously just the tip of the iceberg.  What about the dozens of other incidents where no video came to light and the murdered dogs didn’t belong to a mayor? How many other innocent people (and some guilty ones too) have been abused at the hands of PG County’s uniformed thugs?  How many police charging documents have buried the truth or even spun fresh lies out of whole cloth?

The bottom line is that PG County is a frightening place, where police serve to protect themselves and policy makers don’t care enough to do a thing about it.  I cannot understand why county residents don’t rise up against their crypto-fascist state.

For my part, I stay away from PG as much as I can. I’m just not comfortable in a place where guilt is presumed, violence is the norm,  and the perps are the folks in charge.

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In other Maryland news, the BOAST bill, which I blogged about previously, finally met its deserved death in the House Ways and Means Committee, 15 minutes before the legislative season came to an end.