Category: Politics

Time to Reform County Office of Sheriff

By Gary Bennett

Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry would be appalled at that has happened to the office of sheriff.

This article appeared in the Frederick News Post, November 24, 2021

Ongoing political sniping in this newspaper between current sheriff Chuck Jenkins and previous and probable future candidate Karl Bickel should remind us all that it doesn’t have to be this way in Frederick County.

It is clear to me, and I hope to you, too, that Frederick County has outgrown the increasingly outdated policing model of county sheriff.

In Maryland, the office of sheriff is an elected one required by the state constitution. There are 23 counties and Baltimore City, and 24 politician/sheriffs serve each one.

And therein lies the problem. Do we really want elective politics playing a day-to-day role in professional law enforcement? That is what we have here in Frederick County and I submit it does not serve us well.

Sheriff Jenkins has made it clear he is not shy about pushing back forcefully at his critics at any time. It is chilling to listen to him rail against fellow politicians Karl Bickel and Kai Hagan, who are in fact Frederick County citizens he swore an oath to protect.

Karl Bickel seems to think that an honest discussion of the merits of a county police force is a red herring at this time. He sounds more like a politician who thinks he has a pretty good shot at becoming sheriff in 2022 but would have very little shot at winning a nationwide search for county police chief. He is probably very right about that.

As a constitutional officer, there are relatively few checks on the power of a sheriff. The popularly elected county executive and county council have no authority whatsoever over the sheriff. They do have some say in setting the sheriff’s overall budget but it is severely limited and can not be itemized to, for example, defund our county’s participation in ICE’s 287(g) program.

If he or she wishes, a sheriff can publicly denounce any law they disagree with and pledge not to enforce it. This is done all over the country particularly with gun laws, and there is very little anyone can do about it. This is an extraordinary amount of power to be placed in one person, and it must end.

While the Maryland constitution requires each county to have a sheriff, state statutes allow counties and municipalities to form local police departments. This is the path Frederick County needs to start down.

The five largest Maryland counties – Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince Georges – have all created professional county police departments that report directly to the county executive or county council, much like the Frederick city police chief reports to the mayor. They are the primary law enforcement agencies in these jurisdictions, charged with enforcing all laws and investigating all crimes. In these counties, the office of sheriff remains but is limited to enforcing orders of the court such as evictions, seizing property, serving subpoenas, summonses, and warrants and running the county jail.

Frederick County ranks right below these top five in population. We are not the sleepy backwater we used to be. We are a metropolitan county that demands good government. We are the largest, most diverse Maryland county without its own police force. We’ve seen fit to join other large Maryland counties in establishing a county executive and county council. A county police force is the next natural progression.

A professional Frederick County police force would have several benefits: 

  • Political sniping and grandstanding would no longer have an effect on day-to-day law enforcement policy.
  • We can be secure in the fact that law enforcement policy would be in tune with the overall political wishes of a majority of Frederick County citizens who vote for the county executive and county council who, in turn, campaign on their public safety stance and hire the county police chief.
  • With a likely nationwide search for the best possible candidate, the overall quality of the county’s chief law enforcement officer would surely increase.
  • Frederick County policing would be subject to better accountability and oversight. The chief of a county police department would serve at the pleasure of the country executive and county council with appropriate oversight especially in budgetary and big-picture matters such as 287(g).
  • Training and professionalism would increase. In Maryland counties with their own police force, money spent on training has more than doubled over what was spent by the respective sheriff’s office.

Creating a professional county police force won’t be cheap, of course. New officers will be needed along with new cars, equipment, and office space to name a few. Some of these items can reasonably be drawn from the existing sheriff’s office, but not all. Funding of the sheriff’s office must continue, too, albeit at a lower level. But Frederick County is in excellent financial shape and can afford to take this bold and necessary step.

A change such as I am proposing would take an extraordinary amount of political will and courage. The hue and cry from the incumbent sheriff and his backers and sheriff wannabes would be debilitating. But progressive Maryland can get it done.

This change in policing model could and should be timed to not adversely harm any incumbent, challenger, or upcoming election. The election for sheriff should and will go off as planned with other county office holders in 2022. After appropriate study, the legislative request to create a county police force and reform the office of sheriff in Frederick County could then go to the General Assembly in 2023 with a target date of enactment in 2026. Even for government, this timetable should be doable.

Progressives, like conservatives, want safe communities and the laws to be enforced. The difference comes in the policies to make this happen. Politics should not play an overt role in such an important endeavor.

Current Frederick County (MD) sheriff Chuck Jenkins (2021)

The Difference Between Democrats and GOP

By Gary Bennett


This article appeared in the October 9th, 2021, edition of the Frederick News-Post.

If you are not paying close attention and wonder what really is the difference between the two political parties, I offer this: Democrats want to govern, come to consensus, negotiate, and try to do something positive for the American people while the Republicans are more interested in the raw accumulation of power and have a continuing unhealthy interest in what goes on in our bedrooms.

Don’t think so? How then do we explain the fact, not opinion, that Democrats are on board with investigating what went wrong in Afghanistan while Republicans cannot even be bothered to want to investigate the attempted overthrow of our government on Jan. 6? How is it that Democrats voted to raise the debt limit seven times under Donald Trump, even though he ran up record deficits, while Republican refused to raise the debt limit under Joe Biden and risked government default?

These are just two examples and I could go on and on beginning with the brazen appointment by the Republicans of a ultra-conservative Supreme Court justice during the last election while a Barack Obama appointment was not even provided a hearing an entire year before the 2016 election. The power-hungry desperation of the Republican Party is maddingly there for all to see and I hope independents will remember that when they next go to the polls.

Where Does All This Selfishness Come From?

By Gary Bennett

Protesters against a COVID-19 mandate gesture as they are escorted out of the Clark County School Board meeting at the Clark County Government Center, in Las Vegas.


I’ve been thinking a lot about selfishness lately. It’s been in the news.

The refusal of many people to get the Covid vaccine or to even do the bare minimum and wear a mask to protect themselves, their children, and the rest of us has certainly brought this ugly trait forward.

But it’s always been there. Unfortunately. Maybe without such deadly consequences, but still there.

One only has to consider what we see every day: trash littering our highways, parking in fire lanes when perfectly good parking spaces are only yards away, playing music too loudly in public, taking a basketful of groceries through the express line, not using turn signals, cutting in line during merges, and billionaires going off to space but not paying their employees a living wage. I could go on.

Those of us who care about others and actively work to improve their lot look on in disgust at the depths others are willing to sink to satisfy their own needs. Under the guise of patriotically battling government tyranny, a certain segment of our population has proven they don’t give a blip about the rest of us. I’m not buying their crocodile grievances and faux patriotism. Actions speak louder than words. Recurring tantrums at school board meetings, on airplanes, and in convenience stores roar with selfishness. Don’t think so? When’s the last time you heard an anti-vaxxer or anti-masker talk about the legitimate concerns of others?

Where does all this selfishness come from?

It is tempting to write off all these selfish people as simply toddlers in adult clothing. Not so, say most scientists. Contrary to conventional wisdom, they don’t believe we are born inherently selfish. Selfishness appears to be mostly learned behavior, not instinctive. The implication is that our rational mind makes selfish decisions consciously. We see it working for some people, at least in the short term, and decide we want some of that.

Happily, the same learning process holds for altruism. Scientists have learned that kids display altruistic behaviors from a very young age. At first, children learn to care only for their needs with little empathy or consideration for others. We see this all the time. But gradually, children begin to learn that other people have emotions too and develop empathy. What’s more, other research suggests altruistic behavior may be the default option in our brains.

So, if selflessness is rooted in the brain, why do some people have such a hard time with it? The answer lies in emotional intelligence or lack thereof. Most psychologists agree that emotional intelligence exists on a spectrum, and some individuals are simply higher on it than others. One symptom of low emotional intelligence is the tendency to be self-absorbed, or exclusively concerned about what you’re thinking, feeling, needing and wanting, instead of the thoughts, feelings and needs of others.

After stumbling in the beginning, science quickly reached consensus that masks help. Even if the science wasn’t clear, wouldn’t common sense tell you that covering your face will provide some modicum of protection to both you and others from this airborne and highly contagious disease? If I were wavering, that would be enough to convince me. Even harrowing accounts of packed ICUs and exhausted doctors and nurses pleading with us to do the right thing fail to move some people. This infuriating ignorance is another form of selfishness.

Businesses are beginning to once again post signs that highly recommend masks. Some even require them. Even though this should be common sense in any small, enclosed space, I applaud their courage to make such a call anyway. But this doesn’t stop a sizable segment from thumbing their noses. “Don’t tread on my rights” and “government can’t tell me what to do” are the usual tired refrains ignoring the social compact that we each have a responsibility to look after one another.

The most jarring excuse, though, is the one that insists we must not hide our faces because we are made in God’s image. This would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. The Jesus I know would be the first to put on a mask to help protect others and urge others to do the same.

When it comes to the vaccine, I let out a sad, knowing sigh when I read in the Frederick News-Post about many local schools recently receiving STEM grants. I believe one of the great dichotomies of today is why so many of us want our children to pursue careers in STEM but then ignore—or worse, disparage—them when they grow up and provide their expert opinion. Anyway, where did all these lay people get their medical and scientific knowledge to know better than scientists who’ve been studying infectious diseases for years? That smugness and unreasonableness is another form of selfishness. 

The typical responses used to discredit the vaccine is that it was rushed, there is not enough data available yet for me to commit to it, or (inexplicably) it doesn’t work.

The vaccine was not rushed. To its credit, the former administration put the vaccine on a very fast track because we needed it to be. What people don’t understand is that the infrastructure to get the vaccine out quickly was already in place. The world is bedeviled by infectious diseases every single year and science has become good at responding. AIDS, SARS, smallpox, polio and countless other communicable diseases have been highly eradicated or wiped off the face of the earth because of vaccines.

The efficacy of the Covid vaccine cannot be disputed by any reasonable person. There are millions of us who have been vaccinated with few or no side effects and have avoided severe disease. What more proof do you need? It’s sad but I’ll admit it’s becoming increasingly difficult to feel bad for wantonly unvaccinated people who are now dying of Covid and are begging for the vaccine.

We should have conquered Covid by now but the selfish, inconsiderate, and yes, under-educated portion of our citizenry—the very ones who complain the loudest about masks and vaccines—have prolonged this crisis with their recalcitrance. At this point, as the virus mutates, it’s hard to see how we’ll ever put it in our rear-view mirror until, as in 1918, the virus simply runs out of viable hosts to infect. That could take years and mountains of sorrow because of our fellow selfish citizens.

Wilson Should Go

By Gary Bennett

{Editors Note: Roger Wilson is a democratic member of Frederick’s Board of Alderman. He has been accused of sexual misconduct by several female acquaintances.}

Alderman Roger Wilson (D) Frederick

This article appeared in the Frederick News Post, May 21, 2021.

A couple of years ago, I ran into Alderman Roger Wilson in the audience at a Frederick County Council meeting.  He noticed my Virginia Commonwealth University-logoed hoodie and explained that he attended that Richmond, VA school, too.  He was there in his then role as the director of government affairs and public policy for the county. The exchange was pleasant enough but mostly unremarkable. 

Fast forward two years and now Alderman Wilson finds himself in political turmoil for what he terms “flirting” and the independent investigation calls “unwelcomed sexual advances.” I do not know if the charges against Alderman Wilson warrant his expulsion from the city council.  I do know, however, that we must demand his resignation from the council. Not because he necessarily did anything illegal, but because he should be ashamed of his lack of judgement and self-control when he should have known better.

Politicians must know, even in a small town, the spotlight is always on them. When they accept public office, their lives to a large extent become public, too. Shame used to be a powerful motivator but now, unfortunately, it seems to be a quaint relic of days gone by. Now, politicians only leave if they have no other choice, kicking and screaming “political hit job” as they go even after the charges have been proven. See Anthony Weiner, Denis Hastert, Tim Murphy, John Conyers and now, possibly, Florida republican Matt Gaetz.

As a lifelong democrat, I applaud the many democrats and the Frederick County Democratic State Central Committee who are calling for Mr. Wilson to resign from the city council. Mr. Wilson may indeed be innocent of any serious wrongdoing, but that doesn’t mean he is entitled to be a public figure. Serving in office should be a temporary honor, not a long-term career goal. Just as with Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) of New York, we must expect a higher standard of behavior from our leaders, not just enough to stay out of jail. We should demand better.

Gary Bennett
Frederick

Maryland’s Quiet Senators

By Gary Bennett

Maryland’s two mostly reticent U.S. senators, Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen.

Quick, can you name Maryland’s two democratic U.S. senators?  If you came up with Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen without much effort, then you have better recall than me. And I’m a lifelong democrat who voted for both of them—and in Cardin’s case, multiple times.

There can be no doubt that neither Maryland U.S. senator goes out of his way to seek the limelight. It is difficult to recall the last time either was interviewed on the network news or even prime time cable news, which has hours of content to fill. Van Hollen has been a bit more vocal than Cardin, especially lately, but not by much. Even a search of this newspaper, the respected daily that covers the second largest city in Maryland, yields very little news coverage of either. And surprisingly, despite Frederick County slowly turning blue, neither Cardin nor Van Hollen currently has a Frederick office. 

While Maryland’s other statewide office holder, Governor Larry Hogan, has dominated the local airwaves and print media with his management of Maryland’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Senators Cardin and Van Hollen seem to be satisfied to stay in the background. Indeed, the pandemic and opposition to former President Trump has raised the visibility of Governor Hogan to levels not seen for a Maryland governor since Spiro Agnew in 1968 who was on his way to becoming Richard Nixon’s vice president.

Certainly U.S. senators are not responsible for administering policy at the state level like the governor, but it is perplexing that neither have provided a more vocal public stance in helping to convince Marylanders to do the right thing with masks, social distancing and vaccinations. 

And, there hasn’t been much of an opportunity for either senator to shine during the last two years of the Trump presidency. During that time, not much got accomplished in the Senate except the nomination and approval of federal judges. A look at Cardin’s and Van Hollen’s 2019 and 2020 day-by-day voting records shows a series of no votes for almost all federal judges nominated by Trump and not much else. With a new democratic president and a democrat-led Senate in place now, there should be more opportunity to legislate and lead, but we’ll have to see.

With his unobtrusive and low-key persona, it is surprising to find that Ben Cardin is rated as a very effective U.S. senator. According to research conducted by the Center for Effective Lawmaking at Vanderbilt University in 2018, Ben Cardin was ranked as the sixth most effective democratic senator out of 45. At the other end of the spectrum, Chris Van Hollen ranked forty-second, owing mostly to his relatively short time in the Senate and junior status. The democratic senators rated as most effective are Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Gary Peters (D-MI).

To be sure, ranking the effectiveness of U.S. senators is at best a subjective exercise that you are free to discount. After all, the rankings did not take into account important but hard to measure activities such as constituent pride in having them as a senator, loquaciousness, leadership qualities, combativeness toward the other side, constituent service and performing oversight of the executive branch.

But what the study did attempt to do was evaluate the effectiveness of each senator in moving their agenda through every step of the legislative process. The resulting effectiveness scores were based on the number of bills a legislator sponsored, how far each of those bills advanced, and its relative substantive significance. Full rankings, methodology and an executive summary may be found at thelawmakers.org.

Without a doubt, Mr. Cardin’s longevity in the Senate drives his perceived effectiveness. He has been a U.S. senator since 2007. Unless he retires—Mr. Cardin is currently 77 years old—he’ll stand again for reelection in 2024.  He is chair of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee and a senior member of the Foreign Relations, Finance, and Environment & Public Works Committees. Among his accomplishments are helping to write the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), sponsoring laws guaranteeing dental care to children under CHIP and prohibiting racial profiling at all levels of law enforcement.

Mr. Van Hollen was elected in 2016 and will stand for reelection in 2022. He has not reached chair or senior member status of any Senate committee yet. He is a member of the Appropriations; Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs; Environment & Public Works; and Budget Committees. He has been unable to make much headway into his stated priorities: ensuring more and better jobs, strengthening small business, and increasing educational and job training opportunities. But there is potential for him to be successful in the Senate. A member of the House from 2002 to 2016, he is credited with pushing through substantial legislation in areas such as protecting the Chesapeake Bay, fighting childhood cancer, and assisting families of children with disabilities.

It’s too early to see what the future holds for either Cardin or Van Hollen.  While some senators run for president to simply raise their profiles, it seems unlikely that Van Hollen and especially Cardin will mount such an attempt in the near future.  Cardin is 77 years old and may retire at the end of his term in 2024. Van Hollen is 61 and very ambitious. But relatively unknown democratic presidential candidates from Maryland tend to not get too far. Just ask Martin O’Malley and John Delaney.

It seems more likely that Van Hollen will face Larry Hogan in an epic match up for senator in 2022 even though Hogan has said publicly that he is not interested in running for that office after his term as governor ends. After flirting in 2020, he seems more interested in a longshot run for president in 2024. But with his ability to win democratic votes in an overwhelmingly blue state, the pressure for him to run for Senate to help tilt it red may be too strong to turn down. As for Cardin, if he does retire in 2024, the odds-on favorite to replace him has to be our new rising political star, Representative Jamie Raskin, fresh off his star turn in the second Trump impeachment trial.

H.R.1 – For the People Act — “Yad Sloof Lirpa Yppah!”

By Gary Bennett

Voters patiently waiting in line in Wisconsin on Election Day 2020.

As seen in the Frederick News-Post, Thursday, April 1, 2021

By Gary Bennett

In a recent FNP letter to the editor, the writer made a gallant attempt to explain H.R.1 and S.1, For the People Act of 2021, the controversial bills winding through both Houses of Congress. They address voter access issues such as automatic and same-day registration, vote-by-mail, and early voting among other things. The writer can’t be blamed for missing one important item, because like a lot of bills written by deep-state, congressional staffers, the devil is not in the details but in the footnotes!

A close reading of footnote 8371.4/3.5 in H.R.1 allows that citizens showing fealty to the former Confederate States of America, including actions such as displaying the confederate flag and protesting the removal of confederate general statues, be hereby flagged for voter registration review. To be fair, this doesn’t mean that said people cannot vote, only that they could be effectively tied up in review well past Election Day 2022. This is outrageous, but I’m sure the deep-staters use this logic: “Trump sympathizers, some parading the confederate flag through the capitol on Insurrection Day 2021, were hellbent on changing the presidential election result to one more to their liking. Same thing happened in 1860. Let’s not let this happen again.”

Rioter proudly carrying the confederate flag in the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021.

This development, bad as it is in general, is particularly troublesome for the poor white folks of West Virginia and at least some western Maryland counties, who believe they are part of West Virginia.  (Before you say that my characterization of West Virginians is racist, may I say in my defense that I was not only born in West Virginia but was raised in Allegany County, MD—aka eastern West Virginia. Plus, I’m only making generalizations like I was taught.) Luckily, statistics are on my side—West Virginia is 93% white and ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in personal income. So, there’s that.

The problem for West Virginians, unlike citizens of the southern states, is that displaying the confederate flag not only calls into question their loyalty but also their intelligence. During the Civil War, the northern and western counties of Virginia were allowed to leave the confederacy for the union because they could not stomach what the confederacy stood for. (No doubt, irony is now lost.) And just like that, for better or worse, we had West Virginia. But particularly worrisome are those that display their confederate Stars and Bars right beside Old Glory. After all, who in their right mind roots for both Ohio State and Michigan?

So, watch out for this nefarious bill and fight tooth and nail against it. By one count this new law, if passed, could disenfranchise up to 600,000 confederate flag waving, right-leaning West Virginians, which would be enough to turn the state blue! If West Virginia falls, who’s next, Arkansas?

This whole sordid affair is best summed up in this Yiddish phrase my great-grandmother taught me, which lawyers love to use and often appears in court briefs and, unfortunately, the laws of the land—Yad Sloof Lirpa Yppah!  This roughly translates to Happy April Fools’ Day!

Gary Bennett
Frederick, MD

Time for Media to Move on from Trump

Former President Trump benefitted from intense, free media coverage.

By Gary Bennett

With former President Trump grudgingly departing the White House and decamping for the friendlier confines of Mar-a-Lago, I think I speak for most Frederick County citizens and certainly all Frederick County democrats by calling on all major media outlets, including this newspaper, to refrain from covering his future attempts at making news just to remain relevant. It’s time we got on to the serious business of this country, and we now have a serious president who will do just that.

Just like a train wreck happening in real time, we had to watch.  But no more. The deafening silence you’ve heard since Insurrection Day on January 6 was a president with nothing relevant to say and no social media accounts to say it with. It’s been great. It’s how life used to be in the U.S. For you youngish readers, this may be hard to believe but in the old days – back to at least 2016 – we could go weeks without hearing from the president. I submit that’s how it should be. We should be able to trust the fact that the president is hard at work for the American people, and there is no need to rile us up at every turn.

Can there be any doubt that Mr. Trump will ignore the tradition that calls for former presidents to keep their mouths shut for a while so a new president can get his footing and a fair chance at governing without constant second-guessing and backbiting? It would be a major upset if Mr. Trump found this religion, but I wouldn’t bet on it. So, if he won’t do it willingly, we must do it for him. All media have a starring role to play. Social media has started the job; traditional media must now finish it. The AP and UPI will continue to submit stories about his latest outrage no doubt, but there is no reason this newspaper should pick them up. I hope that’s what happens.

You have to go all the way back to Herbert Hoover in 1933 before you can find an ex-president who just couldn’t let go.  Just like Mr. Trump, Mr. Hoover didn’t know just how out of touch and out of his depth he was. He soon realized how foolish he was as the New Deal kicked in and the economy began to recover. Unfortunately, Mr. Trump does not suffer from any pesky self-awareness. 

The last two one-term presidents who lost their reelection bids showed us the true meaning of grace and patriotism by putting country before their own bruised egos. Mr. Carter in 1981 and Mr. GHW Bush in 1993 went on to serve their countries with distinction in their post-presidencies, and in at least the former’s case, went on to greater acclaim as a past-president than president.

I know it won’t be easy to wean ourselves off of Mr. Trump. He has been like catnip to us and to the nightly talking heads, social media giants, and print publishers. Ratings are up. Clicks are up. Readership is up. He couldn’t stand not to be in the spotlight, and good or bad, that’s where he put himself. Constantly.

But, I’m asking, no pleading, to give him no air now. We are exhausted. Oh, he’ll threaten, but I doubt Mr. Trump will run again in 2024 even if he is eligible. There is a reason only one president has served nonconsecutive terms. Grover Cleveland was an anomaly. Former presidents enjoy the post-presidential life of many perks but no responsibilities. Even if Trump doesn’t like retired life, Americans are almost never ready to look again to a vanquished president or nominee. For that reason, democrats will welcome Mr. Trump as the 2024 republican nominee if it comes to that. Only the most weak-minded, politically naïve, easily swayed die-hards with short memories and stars in their eyes will want four more years of constant chaos and mean-spirited politics.

I’ll make one exception to reading about Mr. Trump in the future. I hope newspapers like this one will cover his upcoming civil and criminal legal proceedings completely and fully, including all his outlandish claims that he did nothing wrong and that it was all a hoax despite hours and hours of damning video and his own reprehensible and never ending lies that the election was stolen from him. After his conviction or acquittal, it’s time to move on.

For the Good of the Country, Time to Move Forward

As seen in the Frederick News-Post, 12/11/2020.

The best thing that could have happened, happened.

This is hard to say as a proud democrat but no, I’m not talking about the election of Joe Biden as 46th president of the United States. I’m referring to the election of a centrist democratic president along with republicans having a good shot of hanging onto a thin majority in the Senate and adding a few more seats in the House. This configuration screams, almost demands, governing from the center and looking for compromise. I believe Mr. Biden has a golden opportunity to do just that. I believe that is where his heart is, and I believe that is where America’s heart really is.

It won’t be easy. There are loud and charismatic voices coming from his left who are just spoiling for a fight and wishing for payback. The same goes for the far right. Some on both sides want to win at all costs. It’s “their way or the highway.” I hope and pray he resists both. I believe most Americans are yearning for government to work together, to find common ground and embrace compromise.  These activities should be seen as a badge of honor, not a shortcoming. Mr. Biden is using those words already, and that is a good sign. We should reward politicians who take this stance and marginalize the fringes on both sides who are harming America with their recalcitrance.

Along with the divisive rhetoric, I believe a main reason we have felt so out of sorts the past four years is that Mr. Trump attempted to govern from the hard right, ignoring the 50/50 split in our country. Smart politicians would have held out an olive branch to the other side, and most new presidents do. We got none of that from Mr. Trump. He did not receive a mandate to govern this way, but he gleefully went ahead anyway, enabled by Congressional republicans who could have reigned him in and cheered on by Fox News and his adoring fans, insulting and demonizing his opponents along the way, and by proxy, more than half of America. He has now paid the price for that.

We should never forget that our government was designed by the framers to move ahead slowly, not in fits and starts like we have over the past four years. We’re supposed to compromise. I’m asking this new democratic administration to take a bullet for the good of the country. Don’t think about payback. Think about progress. Mr. Biden is right—we are not enemies. Let’s accept that we all love this country and try to move ahead.

I Was a Census Taker in the Age of Trump and COVID

By Gary Bennett

My official Bureau of Census badge. Yes, I was proud to be a temporary G-man.

As seen in the Frederick News-Post, Monday, Oct. 22, 2020.

I don’t have a death wish, but I’m always interested in new experiences so being a census taker or “enumerator” in Census Bureau parlance sounded interesting and appealed to my sense of civic duty. And sure, the $21 an hour plus mileage didn’t hurt either.  240,000 of my fellow U.S. citizens joined me as an enumerator in 2020, down by about half from 2010 due to COVID-19.

It is pretty tough work. Not only because of political roadblocks and the current health crisis, but because most people just don’t want to talk to someone knocking at their door. Often times I was sent far from Frederick to work in unfamiliar communities that didn’t have enough census takers. I worked in everything from the blazing hot sun to pouring rain. Census takers are pushed hard by the full-time supervisors, always encouraging us to work fast, “close” cases, and not take no for an answer. 

Initially, the work started easy enough—leaving ‘notice of visit’ flyers to those not at home and talking to agreeable people who legitimately overlooked completing the census.

These Notices of Visists are surprisingly effective at getting people to do the census online.

Soon, though, the work became much harder. The remaining people were evasive and not so agreeable. Many claimed to have already done the census online. Census officials assured us this was not the case and encouraged us to keep pushing. I was never sure who to believe. I did push ahead and performed reasonably well, talking many people into doing the census ‘again’ with me because they obviously wanted their voice to be heard. After enumerating these hesitant folks, however, the work became almost impossible. The people left to count obviously didn’t want to be counted. Many were belligerent and threatening. 

My most memorable difficult case consisted of residents of a ramshackle townhouse community in Poolesville. I should have known I was in trouble when I read the notes from a fellow enumerator’s previous visit to the address. “I think the people at this place might be crazy. When I knocked on the door, they knocked back even harder.” I was intrigued. No one had enumerated this house and I wanted to be the one who did!

I logged more than 500 miles as a census worker over 6 weeks.

I had an ace in the hole. Census enumerators were allowed to use “proxies” to enumerate hard to complete addresses. Proxies are nearby neighbors who have at least a little information about their neighbors and are willing to tell you what they know. Unfortunately, it was equally clear in the notes that nearby neighbors might not be so willing to comment on these people either. “I don’t want to get involved,” “I’ve never talked to those people,” “They are not very friendly,” read some of the additional notes.

Undeterred, I strode up to the house and knocked. No answer. I knocked again, but this time I could hear people talking behind the door.  When I peeked in, a mom and two kids stared back. When I knocked and peeked in a third time they were hiding behind some curtains. As I began to step away to find a neighbor, the man of the house pulled into his parking space. “Get your ass off my property right now and don’t come back or I’ll remove you myself,” he threatened.  I assured him I had every right to be on his property, that I was with the Census Bureau and just wanted to know how many people lived at his place. He repeated his threat again as he began to get out of his van. Discretion being the better part of valor, I began to depart. To my relief, he got back in his van and left. As he did, I made sure he saw me walk up to his next-door neighbor’s house. I hoped he knew that we would be talking about him. I finally did get the information I needed and closed the case.

This was my worst brush with a hostile citizen, but there were others nearly as worrisome. One person railed about the poor use of his tax money that kept sending people to his house when he told us over and over that he has done the survey already. Two people were upset that Trump wanted to deport them even though they were here legally. An older gentleman offered “I’ve never done the census in my life. Maryland has been gerrymandered to death. That’s why I’m moving.” One young fellow at a new development used his Ring doorbell to size me up and said “You people need to quit hounding us. Nobody cares about this crap.” And, as I left one proxy who provided info on his townhouse neighbor, I could see the neighbor running out of his home and berating the proxy for provided any information at all.

The census app was extremely intuitive and well done. It guided our conversations as we entered data and completed the census with citizens on the fly.

It wasn’t all bad, though. One nice older gentleman in Dickerson wanted to talk about how the census helped us during the Revolutionary War.  One fellow came running out of his house to give me a bottle of water.  One little girl did the same with a popsicle at the behest of her dad. One scantily clad woman answered the door and made no effort to cover up.  We didn’t cover that in training. 

I am not sure why so many people were upset about completing the census, but I suspect it didn’t help that the president chose to make the census political and that a public health crisis was raging at the time. Completing a decennial census is in the Constitution.

Even so, the presidential attacks came in waves. First, Trump directed his Commerce secretary to add a citizenship question to the survey after months of planning and testing and just before the instrument was to be rolled out. That ploy lost in the courts. Next, he directed other federal agencies to share data with the Census Bureau so that “no undocumented aliens would be counted.”  This was despite the fact the Constitution calls for the counting of every person residing in the country regardless of legal status. This one lost in the courts, too.  And finally, he required the Census Bureau to finish field operations by September 30.  This was after his own Commerce Department requested a three-month extension to December 31 in order to accommodate complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The House even passed a bill mandating the three-month extension, but it died in the Senate as most things do now. Again, the courts had to come to the rescue. A federal judge recently issued a restraining order halting the winding down of operations in September and resetting it to October 31. Census enumerators were finally directed to cease work on October 5.

I was never really worried about COVID-19, but perhaps I should have been. All enumerators were issued masks and required to wear them. But it did not occur to many of my interviewees to don them while standing face-to-face at close quarters with a stranger for ten minutes. I can’t say that I blame them. After all, they were responding spur of the moment from their own homes. As I write this, I have been a former census enumerator for over two weeks and feel fine. I might be lucky.  I worked for the Census Bureau for about six weeks and had over 500 brief contacts and about 250 full interviews with strangers. I was very appreciative to those few who did wear a mask but could never bring myself to ask them to go get one. Respondents, however, were not shy about citing COVID-19 to keep me away. That excuse was used 20 times with me.

Despite a late start because of COVID and political interference, most parts of America are doing well. As of late August, about 65 percent of households had self-reported. An additional 30 percent have been enumerated by personal interviews from folks like me. The remaining five percent will be completed by the very best census enumerators, full-time census employees, and data from publicly available sources.  By the time you read this, America will be very near to 100 percent complete.

Maryland is well above average among U.S. states, and Frederick County is in the top tier of reporting counties in Maryland. The latest data show Maryland at number 10 of the 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico in self reporting at 70.3 percent.  Minnesota leads the way at 75 percent. Portions of the south including Arkansas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia bring up the rear, averaging between 55 and 60 percent.  Average education levels within states mirror census response. A spokesperson for the Census Bureau cites lack of knowledge about the importance and safety of the census for people not responding. As of September 15, 98.1 percent of residences in Fredrick County have been completed, placing us among the top five Maryland counties.

Our conspicuous census bags helped to identify us as we stood on porches.

In Defense of the Humble Word ‘Hoax’

Irony may be lost on this Trump supporter.

By Gary Bennett

If there is one word that defines the Trump presidency, it would have to be ‘hoax.’  I’m not talking about his presidency itself. That has been all too real. I’m talking about all the wild, outlandish tricks and pranks that have been perpetrated on this poor man in just four short years.

The president, for his part, has not missed a chance to call our attention to a veritable smorgasbord of hoaxes that have befallen him. He has used this humble word to describe everything from the deadly dual poxes of climate change and coronavirus to Russian election meddling and Bountygate. Even when the damaging words come right from the president’s own mouth – Ukrainian phone call, disparaging war heroes, and grabbing female body parts – he has called on this once-obscure word to assure Americans that all is well except when his enemies are putting words in his mouth and disrespecting America.

But, why the word ‘hoax’?  The president could have used longer or less dated words like conspiracy, scheme, ruse, or collusion (okay, that one’s been taken.) I believe Mr. Trump keeps returning to the word because it is simple, understandable, and even a little bit old-fashioned. Hoax is a derivation of the Latin word ‘hocus’ as in the fun phrase ‘hocus pocus’. Hocus refers to a conjurer or juggler. Hocus pocus refers to deceiving with a fabrication, lie, or misdirection. A close word cousin to hoax is ‘hokey’, which means lame, strange or odd.  Knowing this, is it any wonder Mr. Trump is drawn to this word, subconsciously or otherwise?

Of course, none of the hoaxes I mentioned previously sound like much fun, and indeed they haven’t been; not to the intended target, POTUS himself, and certainly not to the American people who’ve had to incessantly ponder who would do such things to the leader of the free world, or more perplexingly, who has the time to think up these elaborate ruses.

It wasn’t always this way. Hoaxes used to conjure up feelings of fun and frivolity. Remember the classic one where college engineering students disassemble the dean’s car and reassemble it on top of the administration building?  Or, how about the truly great Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast in the 1930s? After the hysteria died down, folks hailed this hoax as a masterpiece. Bigfoot? Crop circles? Jackalope? Loch Ness Monster? Paul is dead?  All of these thoughtful hoaxes took time, planning, patience, and a certain genius to fool the media, crowds, and even the military. But when everything turned out to be harmless and entertaining, it was a thing of beauty. Coronavirus and Russian election meddling?  Not so much.

But just like crying wolf, crying hoax can be too much of a good thing. According to Twitter and Factbase, Mr. Trump has publicly used the word over 600 times during his three and a half years as president. There is nothing else even remotely close. Not ‘policy’, ‘serve’, ‘protect’, or even ‘American people’. It’s almost a verbal tic at this point, predictably coming out of his mouth at the first sign of trouble.

But political scientists will invariably tell you that repetition of this word serves to portray Mr. Trump as a victim and an everyman victim at that. This has become a very effective part of his brand – an ‘us versus them’ mentality. It allows him to avoid explaining complicated issues by simply dismissing them out of hand, which is something Mr. Trump must do since he is demonstrably incapable of defending any challenge in a thoughtful and analytical way. The goal, of course, is to make himself the only credible authority, and it works like a charm with a sizable segment of America. For the rest of us, we’re left with that niggling, bothersome thought in the corner of our minds that perhaps there are no facts and nothing can be trusted. The president knows this all too well, and to the detriment of everything else, uses it to his advantage as no one before. After all, if nothing can be trusted, nothing can be changed. And if nothing can be changed, how can you change the president?  

Always the butt of the joke, Mr. Trump nevertheless plies his hand at hoaxes, too.  Unfortunately for him, but perhaps good for the country, he is not very good at it. In fact, he has a perfect losing record when it comes to hoaxes. Remember the oldies but goodies that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya and that Ted Cruz’s father assisted with the JFK assassination?  To his credit, he keeps trying.  Mail-in voting fraud, Harris’s ineligibility to run because of her Asian Indian roots, and wacky QAnon conspiracies are still on the front burner and simmering away.