Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

In the British Parliament, Labour has agreed to a backbench Bill that could turn every household and business into a small-scale power plant, using miniature solar, wind and biomass-driven generators.

Green MSP Shiona Baird is bringing forward a similar Bill in the Scottish Parliament and is hopeful that MSPs of all parties will now support her move. The Greens hope the Scottish Parliament could go one step further and make it compulsory to install microgeneration machines on all new buildings.

Ms Baird calims;

Climate change and meeting our energy needs are critical to our economy and communities. A second Commons Bill, which would have made it compulsory to install micropower on all new buildings and made it easier to get planning permission for micropower devices, was talked out by the Tories, but these measures are still in my Bill and the Scottish Parliament will be able to pass them.

This is an excellent example of decentralized, community based economics. U.S. Greens should jump on this proposal and make it their own.

To Protest Ban on Gay Unions, Arlington Pastor Refuses to Conduct Marriages
Now here’s a bold fellow with guts…

Clarendon Presbyterian Church Pastor David Ensign has an alternative air about him. He wears an earring and has been known to pick up his guitar to play a few hymns during Sunday services.

But he surprised even some of Arlington’s die-hard progressives Nov. 3 at the county’s annual human rights awards ceremony, where his church was honored. He used the occasion to announce the church’s new wedding policy:

Click here for link.

Opponents Fear Drainage System Will Allow Development on Preserved Land

They are nothing more than mounds of earth, often camouflaged by grass. But in the fight to stave off suburban sprawl in northwestern Montgomery County, sand mounds have taken on unusual prominence.

Twenty-five years ago, county planners created one of the nation’s most ambitious land preservation programs, setting aside 93,000 acres for farmland and open space. To deter residential development, they kept public water and sewer service out of most of this agricultural reserve, forcing property owners to use wells for water and septic systems to filter sewage into the ground for absorption.
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The mechanics of sewage disposal are well-known to residents of Montgomery’s “upcounty.” In a conventional septic system, waste flows into a storage tank, then into a drain field where the soil soaks up most of it. In a sand mound system, a pump carries the sewage up into a man-made mound of sand and gravel, bypassing the unsuitable soil. A pipeline then lets the waste drain down through the soil.

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Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Mark McClellan voiced strong doubts about a proposal to make the “morning after pill” more easily accessible months before the agency overrode the advice of its staff and an expert panel and rejected the application, government investigators reported today.

The Government Accountability Office report said the apparent involvement of McClellan and other top officials was one of four unusual aspects of FDA’s handling of the politically sensitive decision. The investigators reported that several key FDA officials told colleagues that the application to allow over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive would be rejected months before the decision was announced.

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Two months ago, in his prime-time address from New Orleans, President Bush called upon the nation to “rise above the legacy of inequality.” He was joking, obviously. The president’s congressional allies now propose to cut Medicaid, food stamps, free school lunches and child-care subsides. They do not propose to save money by undoing the tax cuts that have handed an average of $103,000 a year to people making over $1 million.
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So here’s a plea to Democrats. I know you’re better on inequality than the other guys. I know you don’t like to be accused of class warfare, so you shy away from attacking inequality head-on and prefer to dream up trendy policies that address middle-class concerns in an era of globalization. But this trendy stuff is a mistake. Let individuals navigate the shift from sunset industries to sunrise ones, which they can do mainly on their own. The core problem is class, which increasingly is destiny.

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Property Taxes Soar Based on Scenery
This just goes to show you what will happen when you don’t have a progressive income tax…

Now, landowners with high-value views are livid about their tax bills, and they have started pressing officials to explain just how, exactly, they managed to distill the ineffable majesty of nature into dollar values.

Turns out, it is not a totally exact science.

“It’s more of an ‘I know it when I see it’ kind of thing,” said Thomas Holmes, the assessor for the town of Conway, N.H.

The problem in New Hampshire is not simply that “view factors” are being used in property appraisal — that is by no means unique to the Granite State. In most places, experts say, if a property’s view is good enough to make a buyer pay something extra for it, an assessor will try to estimate that something extra and include it in the property’s assessed value.

In the Washington area, for instance, an Annapolis home with a view of the Severn River might be worth 15 percent more than a similar house with a view of a cul-de-sac.

But New Hampshire is different, because the state’s views have become so sky-high valuable, and so fast. Statewide, one assessor said the maximum value added because of a view has jumped from a maximum of around $20,000 about 10 years ago to $200,000 or more now.

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Have you ever been in a really tough spot with no where to turn and not a familiar face in sight? Try a military academy. You’ve just graduated from high school and missed your graduation because you had to be at the Academy the next day. You live in NY and fly out to CO, leaving your friends and family behind. You have your clothes you are wearing and a toothbrush. But not for long. All new military clothes issued to you right down to your socks. Improssing is your induction into the military. Multiple shots in the arms, severe haircuts, 1950s eyeglasses, standing at attention, marching, memorizing things from famous sayings to names (including initials) to the bar code on hershey syrup. And no sleep. Ok maybe 4 hours a night for days on end. Strange faces, no oxygen, running, marching, standing, marching, standing. Did I say marching? 6 weeks of basic. It’s no wonder 10% of the cadets leave during this time. Where can they find some relief and a friendly face? Where they can relax and not sit at attention? Where they can speak freely? At Spire. Religion at the Academy has been a Godsend for my son (pun intended). It’s helped him get to his 3rd year and gives him a refuge from the demands and rigors of military life. I am deeply indebted to what Spire has done for my son. At a time I know I can’t be there for him, I know he is taken care of. He has the support of friends and adults to help him with his concerns and problems. Is this a bad thing? Or just a reporter trying to make life more difficult for cadets who are still marching and studying on Friday nights and ironing their sheets for Saturday morning inspection?

Yet more proof that the Developer Lobby controls the plannning process…

Traffic is so bad along the eastern rim of Los Angeles’ suburban ring that regional planners are considering the once unthinkable _ an 11-mile tunnel through a mountain range in earthquake country.

Critics question the logic of building a multibillion-dollar project in a region so prone to earthquakes that an alternate proposal for a double-decker highway was deemed too dangerous. The tunnel would begin barely a mile from a fault that produced a 6.0-magnitude earthquake about a century ago.

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Officials’ Careers May Be Affected

Its 200-plus pages are written in pure bureaucratese. And it avoids identifying any major player by name.

But this week’s report from the Montgomery County Council’s investigative arm still manages to make clear that the county’s planning system is ailing and that three officials watched as it grew weaker: Planning Board Chairman Derick P. Berlage, County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) and County Council member Steven A. Silverman, who heads a key committee with oversight of the planning process.

Berlage, Duncan and Silverman (D-At Large) face career crossroads as they try to shake the stigma of Clarksburg. Duncan is seeking the 2006 Democratic nomination for governor, Silverman hopes to become the next county executive and Berlage is fighting to keep his $129,000-a-year job as board chairman.

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Delegates from around the world will gather next week in Tunisia for what is known as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Few people are aware of WSIS’s existence, its mission or the purpose of this conference. That is unfortunate, since the principal agenda item calls for a wholesale change in governance of the Internet that could lead to a significant setback for global freedom of information.

Click here for link.