2016 Election

I'm really enjoying the circus of the 2016 election. I have seen nothing like this in my lifetime. Working in Montgomery County (MC), Maryland, I get to hear the opinions of self-righteous, elitist, upper middle class or wealthy, Bethesda or Potomac living, college educated white liberals on a regular basis. It's amazing how much disrespect they have for the white working class. Isn't tolerance a wonderful thing. Along those lines, Donald Trump scares the livin hell out of them, because he has woken up a sleeping giant.

I'm going to make this short and sweet. First of all, I am not a huge fan of The Donald. That being said, I'm enjoying the fact that he has stirred up a hornet's nest. It's a hornet's nest that should have been stirred up a long time ago. The establishment politicians from both parties are squirming in their seats between pants wetting sessions. Also, the upper middle class and wealthy liberals from MC are doing the same. They are scared, and they are lashing out. After all, many of them are beholden to government money, either directly or indirectly. Under a President Trump administration, their gravy train would go away. It will no longer be cronyism business as usual. What I'm really enjoying is watching the liberals' underlying ideology coming to the forefront: their direct, like the residents of places like Takoma Park and their employment with various non-profit activist organizations, or indirectly, like the contractors and government contractors that commute from Gaithersburg, Marx said there would be a revolution in which the proletariat would rise up against the bourgeoisie. Well guess what it's coming true. The white working class non-educated, proletariat scum are rising up against you. You are the bourgeoisie. They are ready to take you down. Let's hope that there will be a quiet revolution at the ballot box, and not one where the peasants start climbing over the wall with their torches and pitchforks.  No matter who is elected president this year, things are changing. I'm just sitting here laughing and enjoying the circus.

Public Transportation

This is going to come as a shock to many of my Conservative friends, but I really love public transportation. Now before you call 911 and ask that they send those "very nice men in their nice white coats," with a straight jacket to haul  me to St. E's...Wait, Saint E's is really not working anymore. It's going to be the new home of the Department Of Homeland Security. OK, so much for that anecdote.

I'm basically an urban type of person. I love the convenience of the city. Part of that convenience is the reliance on public transportation. I would love to see Metro and all the bus service here in Prince George's County, Maryland, run 24/7 in 15 minute increments. On Fridays and Saturdays, Metro runs Metro Rail until 3 AM, but the last bus on Friday to get me home from the College Park station, is at 10:20 PM, and the last bus on Saturday, when Metro Rail runs until 3 AM, is at 9:19 PM, and on Sunday at 5:41 PM. Not only that, the 83 bus runs every half hour, and the 86 bus, which brings me closest to my house, runs once per hour. So much for encouraging people to use public transportation. Yes, I can park at a Metro station for free on weekends, but I still have to drive there. Because I'm only driving about 2.5 miles from  my home to the College Park Metro station, my car doesn't get a chance to warm up completely. Therefore, it burns a lot of fuel in that 2.5 miles. If I drive to the Metro on weekdays, it costs me $5.10 per day to park, in addition to the Metro fare.

I was informed by a Metrobus driver, that it is not Metro that determines where the bus stops are, nor service times and frequency. It is the county and city councils that determine service. What is wrong with the Prince George's County Council? I have an interesting theory on this. It has to do with the gasoline tax. As cars become more fuel efficient, there is less tax revenue. As more people take public transportation, there is less tax revenue. As people switch to electric vehicles, there is less gasoline tax revenue. A large percentage of the citizens in Prince George's County are tradesmen who drive big vehicles for work, and many of them drive pickup trucks as part of the redneck culture. They are gas hogs. SOMEONE has to pay the gasoline tax, if you catch my drift. It is a discriminatory tax directed at the White working class. I'm sure the elitist Prius drivers approve. I just don't want to hear them complain when the plumber charges $200 to walk in the door, and another $200 to fix the toilet. Sometimes payback time is sweet.

Metro

I am a big fan of public transportation. Unlike a lot of liberals, I am willing to make some time sacrifices to ride the buses and rail systems, and I am a conservative. What it really boils down to too, is I really don't like driving in the DC area. I would rather have it take a little longer to get there by public transportation.

I recently joined a Metro community group called Amplify By Metro. I received a survey from the new General Manager yesterday, and I took the time to fill it out. There are some definite improvements needed in the Metro Rail, and Metro Bus systems.

My biggest beefs are the price of parking at the Metro stations, and the fact that here in Prince George's County, there is very limited feeder bus service after 10 PM, and even less on weekends. Forcing people to drive to the Metro stations, and then pay $5.10 per day to park there, is no way to encourage people to use public transportation. Metro Rail is expensive enough during rush hour. When you add the price of parking, it is more cost effective for many people living in the suburbs to drive and pay to park in the city, rather than use public transportation.

I am hoping that as College Park, where I live, redevelops, with the addition of many high rise apartments and condos along the Route One corridor, that the bus service servicing the College Park Metro station will improve. If you live in the city, public transportation is effective. Montgomery County also has late night bus service feeding the Metro Rail System. Prince George's County does not. I would hope that this would change soon.

Cookies

When I logged in today, there was a notice that Google, my hosting company for this blog, requires an announcement that this blog contains cookies. It looks like the European Union requires an announcement about cookies.  I don't use them myself, but Google uses them. This is just to let you know. Thanks.

We Are Living In Crazy Times

Trying to make sense of what is going on in this county, has become an exercise in futility. Who would have ever thought that Donald Trump would become a serious presidential candidate? According to the Quinnipac University poll on September 11th, he's in the lead, with Dr. Ben Carson in a fairly close second. All the establishment candidates are scraping the bottom of the barrel. In my opinion, that is a good thing. It's time for some serious change in this country. People are fed up with Barack Obama, the Democrats, the Republicans, and politicians in general. President Obama said that he was going to "fundamentally change" this country. Yes, it has fundamentally changed, but it hasn't fundamentally changed the way that he wanted.

The little people have finally woken up. It's about time. Your average lower middle class schlub like myself, has finally said enough is enough. We are sick of being looked down upon by smug, arrogant elites, who rub their college degrees in our faces, and tell us that we need to get used to becoming second class citizens. Well guess what? We are not going to become second class citizens. Keep pushing us, and there will be consequences. You are trying to start a race war in order to keep us "occupied." I don't think that it's going to work. It may work in the beginning, but in the long run, it's going to be the White working class and the Black working class joining forces and going after the upper middle class, college educated, elites. What happens after that, only time will tell. The president is right. America is going to "fundamentally change." More to follow...

Diversity

I laugh when I hear white people from Montgomery County, MD, talk about how they believe in diversity. If you go into most of the middle size single family home areas in that county, you will see that the vast majority of the residents are as white as can be. I guess that's diversity. There are Hispanic neighborhoods and Black neighborhoods, but you don't see a lot of diversity, except in the condo communities, because of the cost of housing. The single family homes in the Hispanic and black neighborhoods, tend to be small, and those neighborhoods are not all that safe. Yes, that's diversity. You have economically "gated" communities to help you celebrate diversity.

Now, over here in good old College Park, Prince George's County, MD, currently majority black with a mostly black county council, we are quite diverse. At one time, College Park was all white, except for one area, Lakeland. That area is still  90% black, with a smattering of Koreans thrown in for good measure. Originally, Lakeland was the only area in College Park where blacks were allowed to live, welcome to the South, so they tend to continue to live there out of tradition, and a desire to have their own community, even though they are no longer restricted by covenants from other neighborhoods. Except for the university, most of College Park was as white redneck as they come. I found that out when I moved here. I'm from the north, and I'm not used to Southern culture to begin with;
all things considered,  I am not comfortable with Southern working class, redneck culture. It is too foreign to me being a Yankee.  Back in the old days, most of Prince George's County was majority redneck white.

Times have changed. In my neighborhood, which was mostly white redneck when I moved in, there are white families, black families, mixed race families, gay families, lesbian families, Asian families, Hispanic families, and every combination that you can think of. Why? Because, this area is reasonably affordable. Most of the people that live in my area, except for a small representation of lawyers, doctors, and other professionals, are lower middle class white collar workers, or lower middle class blue collar workers. A $250,000 single family home here, would go for over $450,000 in Montgomery County. We haven't been able to price ourselves out of celebrating diversity, by being able to keep our neighborhoods 99% upper middle class white economically gated communities.

Yes, we have Starbucks, but no Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. As a side note, I wish we had a Trader Joe's. We have an Aldi up the road in Beltsville, and if we had a Trader Joe's nearby, that would be the best of both worlds. We do have an REI Sporting Goods, and a MOM's Organic Market, and the Berwyn Heights area has a vegan coffee house and cafe, but we don't have the designer boutique shops and restaurants like they have in the next county.

Also, unlike Montgomery County, except for Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, our public schools are quite sub-standard. Despite having the University of Maryland College Park, the flagship university of the state university system, we are lacking in quality public education. Hopefully, this will change as more and more lower end professional families move into the area. You are seeing this in the Hyattsville and Mount Ranier areas, which are becoming quite gentrified. This, however, could still be offset by the fact that there are a vast majority of families that are blue collar lower middle class, and they tend not to put a high value on quality education. Those that do, send their children to either religious schools, or if they can pass the entrance exams and get a scholarship, the private schools in Montgomery County. Many families concerned with the quality of education, home school. Prince George's County, which is majority black, has the largest black educated upper middle class in the country. Most of them send their children to private school or home school. They don't sent their kids to the low quality public schools in this county. Quite a few of the black students in the Bullis School, a high-end private prep school in Potomac, MD where I teach, are scholarship students from Prince George's County. Of course, they had to pass the same entrance exams as anyone else, and there are no Affirmative Action points for race. You either can cut it or you can't. More to follow...

My Crazy Mixed Up Beliefs

.Recently, I finished reading a book by Michael Lind, called "The Radical Center." After reading his book, I can identify with most of what he talks about. I disagree with Lind on some specific details of certain issues. However, I do agree with most of his reasoning. I consider myself to be a Radical Center Conservative. I'm sure that many Liberals would consider themselves to be Radical Center Liberals. If that were the case, we could fix a lot of the problems in this country, by agreeing on 90% of most issues, and agreeing to disagree on the other 10% where we don't agree, but are willing to wortk together to reduced that 10% to about 5%.

What a  lot of it boils down to is the fact that we are not really a red America or a blue America. We are a purple America. Some of us lean more to the red side of the purple and some of us lean more toward the blue side of the purple. For example: I can't think of any conservative senior citizen that would be willing to give up their social security checks that they get each month. They may bitch and holler about handouts and entitlements, but don't you dare touch social security or medicare.

With these thoughts in mind, here are where I currently stand on certain issues. I can't name them all, because things change over the years. I'll add posts as I think of things to say...