I observed that the Republicans of Kent County had their kiosk in the Farmers’ Market on Saturday. It was sad to see how enthusiastically our Republican neighbors support a president who has chalked up at least 3000 lies in his 1½ years in office and has surrounded himself with a cabinet made up predominately of people unqualified for the positions they hold. Even our Republican governor has distanced himself from Trump.
According to the local party’s poster Trumps priorities include “America’s First Energy Plan,” ignoring the energy plans of President Obama, not to mention George W. Bush, and virtually every recent administration. Amazingly, the President will institute our first foreign policy. How have our presidents since George Washington been conducting foreign affairs? Other priorities for the administration are making our military strong and standing up for law enforcement. Yet who other than the President has been disparaging the FBI and the CIA for months?
Our local Republicans go on to highlight the administration’s accomplishments, such as dismantling “Obama Era Regulations,” These are the regulations intended to protect our environment, including the Chesapeake Bay, and cleaning up the air by promoting an end to gas-guzzling vehicles. Do you really think that we are better off without these regulations? Will our grandchildren appreciate us when they see the dirty world we have left to them to clean up? Will our beloved Eastern Shore be largely underwater because we have a Republican administration and a Republican-dominated Congress that denies global climate change. Our local Republicans are also proud that Trump gave us Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. This is a man who places his conservative ideology above the interests of the American people. And are we also to be happy that Trump and his Congress have given us a new tax policy, which while granting a few crumbs to the middle class, largely benefits corporations and the super-wealthy upper 10%?
I would like to urge my Republican neighbors to stop being guided either by heritage or by ideology, and to recognize that their party is not what it was two generations ago, when Dwight W. Eisenhower was President. Please remember the words of the preamble of our Constitution and dedicate yourselves to bring about policies that “establish Justice, and promote the general Welfare”.
George R. Shivers
Chestertown
Michael McDowell says
Well said, and it was revealing that the Republican tent at the market last Saturday was its first appearance in over a year and probably 18 months. As for the touting of “successes” by our Tea Party “Freedom” Caucus extremist Republican Congressman, Andy Harris, the lies outlined on a placard at the tent are worthy of Trump, Harris’s hero. Harris himself has avoided public town halls until about two months ago, fleeing from his voters. Harris is only in the last few weeks frantically posting on Facebook after hiding for ages. And for Harris to try and rebrand himself as a carer-for-the-Bay or carer for the working class, is laughable. He needs to be sent packing back to his lucrative private medical practice — he is the doctor who loathes the Affordable Care Act which covers 50,000 people in his district! Then of course we have his continuing financial and voter-list support from the appalling NRA who have nothing to do with gun safety, their original mission but all to do with utter irresponsibility. District One voters who vote for hard right Harris, supporter of Eastern European illiberal autocrats and fascists, are spiting themselves and going against their own economic interests. Harris is an utter ideological zealot and hates the very word “compromise”. Flip the 1st! Now, there is a credible strong Democratic candidate who can beat Harris — Jesse Colvin, a former Army Ranger Captain with four Afghan combat tours. HE is the right centrist for the Shore both Eastern and Western. Harris is indeed running scared as the do-nothing anti-government fool that he is. Time for Harris to go!
vernon miller says
MR SHIVERS had your party chosen an untainted honest [my opinion ] person to run for office you wouldn’t be writing this article. best regards.
Joseph Fick says
Amen to that!!
Michael McDowell says
Than Trump?! Your comment beggars belief. Then we have Trump’s “best picks” – Flynn, Price, Sessions, Carson, DeVos…conflicts abounding. This is the most corrupt self dealing group in generations and we are only 17 months in.
Les Moorhouse says
…..and so the divisiveness continues…….really George, that’s the best you can do?? If it wasn’t for the RoK, we here in the County of Kent would not have a choice. Blasting a non politician who just happened to win the big deal for his methods, and has had a horrible time fighting the “for profit” press, is your right under the First Amendment………just remember that the Second Amendment was put there to protect the First. I would suggest in all fairness that you go and have lunch with the President before you continue your diatribes against the RoK and your neighbors.
Michael McDowell says
Trump has Fox News, WSJ, Breitbart, Alex Jones, Hannity non stop, conservative media and SM galore to help him. So being a multiple bankrupt is “good business”? Hardly. A serial list, serial sexual predator, loudmouthed bully, draft dodger, recent “Christian,” racist and bigot going back decades, none of that matters to you? Sad.
Les Moorhouse says
…..you should go have lunch with him also.
Les Moorhouse says
Mr. Jenkins,
Thank you for that, and your wisdom. Listening is almost a lost attribute.
Les Moorhouse says
…To Mr. Mcdowell,
These stations are all on cable. The majority of TV watchers can only afford the 3 major networks that are free. These being CBS, NBC, and ABC. If you watch these stations each and every morning, one can only surmise that they are extremely biased. Just look at the frown on Major Garrett’s face every time he reports on the White House, or Andrea Mitchell’s…… Hollywood has been running this country for way to long.
Gerry Maynes says
GEE,Your party is loaded with predators, hypocrites, beaters of women , like the now former NY Stste former Atorney General, who spent his days as a leader of woman rights and his evenings, calling his girl friend, my dark colored slave.Then would beat her and rape her. He was a leesder of impeach Trump movement. Now he is under a special prosecutors investigation. So dont act as if your party is pure. It isnt.
Deirdre LaMotte says
I know. Walking past that booth made my skin crawl.
Perhaps they will listen to Senator John McCain? Probably not.
They have hitched a ride with a person who demeans our nation’s institutions, such as the courts, the Intelligence agencies
and our Constitution. He does this because he knows the special
council has plenty of dirt on him. Trump is unable to care for anything other than himself and is happily destroying this
country.
Joseph Fick says
Such hate!
Deirdre LaMotte says
I agree. I absolutely hate what Trump and the Republican lemmings have done. The tide is a turning……
Michael McDowell says
“Such hate”? No, sticking up for American democracy against a would be dictator who envys Putin and other odious strongmen. Luckily we have the Constitution to protect us.
Gren Whitman says
These headlines tell the story:
“Crab crisis: Anti-immigrant hysteria costs Hoopers Island jobs”
—headline, Baltimore Sun
“Crab crisis: Maryland seafood industry loses 40 percent of work force in visa lottery”
—headline, Baltimore Sun
“Shortage of blue crab pickers forces Maryland seafood shops to shut down”
—headline, Delmarva Now
“Many Maryland watermen deny the crab crisis is Trump’s fault. Except it is.”
—headline, Washington Post
Joe Lill says
It’s ironic that in the WP article regarding immigrant crab pickers that one Waterman blamed environmentalists for the inability to have immigrants come to the Eastern Shore to pick crabs. President Trump didn’t have any problem getting 70 visas issued for workers, primarily Haitians, to work at his Mar A Lago resort in Palm Beach.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/12/trump-asked-why-the-us-needs-more-haitians-mar-a-lago-may-hold-the-answer.html
Gren Whitman says
Let me add: Given that 58% of Eastern Shore voters opted for Donald Trump for president and also handily re-elected right-winger Rep. Andy Harris, as the popular saying goes, “they got what they asked for.”
Me? I’ll welcome cheaper steamed crabs. Let’s hear it for supply and demand!
Barbara in den Bosch says
Great letter, George. Thanks
Joseph Fick says
Everybody is entitled to express their opinion, but please don’t lecture your neighbors just because you think your opinion is the correct one.
Thank you!
Michael McDowell says
Same applies to you. What’s sauce for the goose…. Harris is extreme for the majority of people on both shores. He has even boasted about the gerrymander which gets him in. That’s about to change. There is now a strong centrist Democratic candidate in Jesse Colvin, Army Ranger, etc. A real choice at last.
Shawn Poulson says
I believe the author is in error and perhaps needs his eyeglasses checked. Trump released his “America First Energy Plan”, not “America’s First Energy Plan”. I wonder if all the author’s remaining claims are just as dubious.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/281430-trump-outlines-america-first-energy-plan
Deirdre LaMotte says
So, we are worried about an apostrophe and not a
grifter who has probably been laundering Russian money for 20 years? And that laundering is only the beginning…..
Rudolph Jenkins says
Dear Mr. Shivers,
When I was in school I was taught that if you want to discuss any topic, you must not only know why you believe what you believe, but what those who differ from you also believe and why they do so. Instead of demagoguery, why don’t we give each other the benefit of the doubt, that those who have differing opinions from us, on whatever the pet issue is, do so because of honest disagreement, not because we believe they are either naïve, have some intellectual hindrance, or malicious intentions?
Let me respond to just a few of your allegations:
“Yet who other than the President has been disparaging the FBI and the CIA for months?”. Honest people can look at the recent practices of the FBI, from the special treatment of Hillary Clinton to their participation in spying on a Presidential Candidate, and legitimately conclude that those institutions abused their power. Justice is not Justice if it is not equally applied and failure of those agencies to protect the rights of a citizen demands criticism. If you don’t see that, Fine, but it is not unreasonable to conclude otherwise.
“…we have a Republican administration and a Republican-dominated Congress that denies global climate change.” No one denies the climate changes. The disagreement is over the degree to which human activity contributes to the Climate. Most of us learned when we were children that thousands of years ago the Climate drastically cooled and most of the Northern Hemisphere ended up covered with glaciers, and then the Climate warmed, and those self-same glaciers retreated. If you read National Geographic, you would have also learned that just a few thousand years ago the Sahara desert went through drastic climate changes ranging from being a Tropical rainforest to now a desert Climate. It has been reported that during the cretaceous period parts of North America such as Texas and Oklahoma were under a 1000 feet of water and the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were ten times what they are now. Those are all examples of significant “Climate Change”, yet they all occurred prior to the Industrial Revolution. Understanding Climate Science is not as simple as human activity produced Carbon dioxide= bad climate (and there are some who argue that increased carbon dioxide would have an overall positive impact). It is a complex equation involving multiple factors on such large scales that we can barely get a grasp on how everything interacts. From the Solar Wind, to the magnetosphere, to cloud formation, to ocean evaporations rates, to volcanic activity, etc, it is not unreasonable to take a more cautious approach instead of an alarmist approach. Hydrocarbons have provided the most affordable source of energy that has enabled humans to rise out of the kind of grinding poverty that most people lived in prior to the 20th Century. Using the power of government to make it more burdensome on people to live, because the Democrat Party believes they can control the Climate, is something a reasonable person would, and should, oppose.
“This is a man who places his conservative ideology above the interests of the American people.” Conservativism at its root, is the belief in the power of the individual and that government should be limited in its scope, so that each individual is free to pursue their goals/dreams. Conservativism places the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, as pre-eminent examples of what it means to be an American. In fact, the Bill of Rights, may be the biggest example of what makes America different from the rest of the world, and without the Bill of Rights, we are no longer America. It is not unreasonable to want to defend those Rights from groups who would prefer they not exist. In the past 70 years those Rights have been slowly under attack, and promoting judges who would not discard our freedoms is in the best interest of all of us.
“I would like to urge my Republican neighbors to stop being guided by heritage or by ideology, and to recognize that their party is not what it was two generations ago…” As a wise man once said, “Physician heal thyself.” And as another wise man once said, “What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” (C.S.Lewis). Don’t look down on your neighbors for not sharing your political viewpoints, we can all learn a lot from each other if we judged less and listened more.
Keith Thompson says
Comedian George Carlin once said something to the effect that he loves and cherishes the people he associates with on a one on one basis while he despises the labels and institutions they identify with. I tend to have the same outlook with local politicians and political organizations. I’m perfectly capable of talking to, communicating with, and relating to local politicians of both political parties while having disdain for their national party organizations. The reason for this is simple as Tip O’Neill once said, “all politics is local”.
One of the reasons we have such a partisan outlook on politics is that we’re forgetting Tip O’Neill’s advice and both sides seek to use the power of the federal or the state government to enforce their agenda and point of view on everyone. This will never work because we’re a diverse nation and someone from rural Kentucky is not going to take kindly to being told how they should live their lives by someone from the Chicago inner city, and vice versa. Replace the national setting with say Rock Hall and Baltimore and the same applies to the state of Maryland.
Getting back to Tip O’Neill, the most important political decisions that affect the average citizen happens at the county and the municipal level. The decisions made here have a direct affect on the schools your kids go to, the quality of the water you drink, the recreational facilities you enjoy, land use and zoning, and even the local economy and jobs. At the local level, the political affiliation of the elected official is largely irrelevant as doing what is best for the community is far more important than political considerations for the simple reason that the buck stops at the local level. If the federal government can’t act, it can pass the buck down to the states. If the state can’t get its act together, it can pass the buck down to the counties and towns. The county or municipal government doesn’t have the option of passing the buck down to the neighborhoods. If you elect partisan or corrupt local officials, you have a partisan or corrupt local government and your community suffers.
The goal of any political party is to run quality candidates who can win elections. At the local level, it is easy for the voters to have contact with the candidates since they are visible in the community and easily accessible. Someone with questionable character should struggle in a local election because their questionable character is either already known or will eventually be revealed. Also, at the local level, the local politicians have a better grasp of the community concerns because they also live there and deal with them personally. At the national level, the average person is never going to have contact with their President and very limited and controlled contact with their Senator or Representative. These people are going to have limited knowledge of your community unless they happen to be from there. Because we now have the mindset that the federal government’s responsibility is to enforce a political agenda, the best way to achieve this is to demonize the other side. To do this, a politician must become an effective mudslinger and all that becomes important is to make the other person look worse. This is how we come up with a political climate that gives us people of questionable integrity and character as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the party standard bearers.
So in a way, I agree with the letter writer that one shouldn’t be led by your opinions of the national party to judge your local candidates; but I think it’s also instructive to realize that whatever opinion of national politics your local candidates may have, they are largely not applicable at the most local level. Instead of asking a local politician their opinion on Donald Trump reversing Barack Obama’s initiatives, you should be asking them about the local schools, providing recreational facilities or ability to fix potholes. You should base your opinion more on their integrity as a human being and not the party label they are running under. The candidates of both parties who are shaking hands at the Farmer’s Market are far more important to you than Donald Trump.