DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
Come down to the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center at 10 AM to pay tribute to those who have given their lives to protect the freedoms which we too often take for granted.
The service is hosted by the Wicomico War Memorial Committee. Some seating is available. In the event of rain, the service will be moved inside the Civic Center.
Over the years I have argued that the Daily Times has acted unethically by refusing to disclose certain relationships and potential conflicts of interest. These include, but are not limited to, then Executive Editor (now General Manager) Greg Bassett’s relationship with former congressman Wayne Gilchrest (his wife Cathy served as Gilchrest’s Communications Director) and Managing Director Erick Sahler’s relationship with the Wicomico Board of Education (his wife serves as the BOE’s public information officer).
To be clear, I am not arguing that either Cathy Bassett or Tracy Sahler have done anything wrong. I am not even arguing that the DT has done anything wrong, other than their failure to disclose the relationships. I will argue that they have shown bias in favor of both Gilchrest and the BOE. However, I will also admit that this bias would probably have manifested itself without the aforementioned relationships.
No, my request is a simple one – DISCLOSE the relationships. Let the reader make up his or her own mind.
The Daily Times has further eroded its own credibility when it argues that in an area like ours it is ridiculous to expect such disclosure. The gist of Sahler’s argument is that we are all a bunch of incestuous bumpkins and EVERY article written would require such a disclosure. Sahler attempts to justify this foolish theory by claiming that, under my argument, they would have to go so far as to disclose op-ed editor Susan Parker’s role as a member of the Salisbury Orchestra when writing about the Orchestra. I wasn’t even aware that the DT had a music critic.
Yesterday we ran an op-ed regarding a Virginia lawyer declaring his candidacy against House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. In the post we linked to an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch. At the bottom of the article ran the following disclosure:
Cantor's wife, Diana F. Cantor, is a member of the board of directors of Media General Inc., parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Is that so difficult? Is the Daily Times so filled with earth shatteringly important news that they can’t afford to print an extra 25 or 30 words?
Such disclosures can go a long way into showing motive (or at least suggesting it). Is the Daily Times an independent agent when reporting on the board of ed (as the most current example)? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing is certain, their childish refusal to do the right thing and disclose a potential conflict leads many readers to believe that they are less than independent.
G. A. Harrison is a frequent contributor to “Salisbury News”. “Delmarva Dealings” appears each Wednesday and Sunday at Noon on SbyNEWS.com.
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As state budgets get slimmer by the year, school systems suffering devastating cuts — a collective $17 billion nationwide in the past two fiscal years, partially counteracted by stimulus funds — are passing their costs on to students.
The Wall Street Journal finds examples of schools charging fees for electives and advanced placement classes, and finds one family who ended up shelling out more than $4,000 in fees for the school year. High schools in several states pile on hundreds of dollars of fees for registration, technology and vague "instructional fees."
Schools justify the fees by saying they're needed to support some programs that would otherwise face the guillotine, and insisting that students from low-income families get waivers.
If your kid is in school, what fees are you asked to pay?
Public Schools Charge Kids for Basics, Frills [The Wall Street Journal via Metafilter]
The body of a teenage boy, an apparent drowning victim, was recovered from the Susquehanna River off Havre de Grace Saturday afternoon.
The drowning was the second in Harford County waters in less than 24 hours.
Rescuers at the scene said the victim, who was not immediately identified, was swimming with friends and diving off a pier in the vicinity of Jean Roberts Park and the old oil terminal, when he went under the water north of the Amtrak railroad bridge.
Harford County Emergency Operations was notified of the missing boy shortly after 3:20 p.m., according to police radio transmissions.
Emergency crews were scourer the Susquehanna River in hopes of finding the boy alive but to no avail.
Last Year the US transferred 200 million dollars to the Palestinian Authority in what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said would help to support its budget needs.A 52-year-old Harrington woman apparently drowned in a backyard swimming pool Saturday morning, state police said.
Charlotte Pritchard was found by her daughter about 11 a.m. at a home in the 2000 block of Brownsville Road in Harrington.
Police said Pritchard had been in the pool for about 45 minutes before being discovered. She was unconscious, and her daughter tried to pull her from the pool, police said.
Paramedics came to the home and began CPR on Pritchard before taking her to Milford Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The Medical Examiner’s Office will perform an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death.
A 33-year-old Millsboro man was arrested Friday after allegedly burglarizing a home in Georgetown, state police said.
It happened about 5 p.m. when residents of the 30000 block of Conaway Road flagged down a passing trooper to report a suspicious red Ford parked on a nearby dirt road, said police Master Cpl. Jeffrey Hale.
When the trooper approached, the vehicle pulled away but was later stopped.
The trooper took David A. Honeycutt into custody after he was seen trying to hide jewelry and money under a seat, Hale said.
Honeycutt is accused of entering an unoccupied house through an unsecured rear window. He was charged with burglary and three other offenses and committed to Sussex Correctional Institution on $8,000 bail.
Even though Delaware's civil union law doesn't go into effect for another seven months, Rehoboth Beach's Chris Beagle and Eric Engelhart are not only beginning preparations for their ceremony, but for many others as well.
Because both have backgrounds in hospitality, the couple of 22 years has decided to start a wedding planning business, focusing on same-sex couples in the area planning civil union ceremonies after years of waiting.
The pair hope to have the company, C.U. in Rehoboth (the "C.U." stands for civil union), up and running this summer, ready to plan the celebrations once they become legal on Jan. 1.
Just as they will eventually do for others, Beagle and Engelhart are starting to plan their own service, looking into hiring local photographers, caterers, cake decorators, DJs, printers and all the other services needed for a 125-person event.
Starting Sunday, Sarah Palin enters enemy territory.
The bus tour that stands to return her to the 2012 spotlight is taking her to the part of the country that’s the least friendly to her — the northeastern U.S.
It’s a part of the country she’s mostly avoided since 2008, conspicuously not setting foot in early presidential state New Hampshire at all during her two book tours and her 2010 tea party campaign swings. Now, however, with her luster dimmed and her national relevance in question, she has chosen to venture into the belly of the beast.
“There’s no doubt in my mind the northeast is the least favorable area of the country to Sarah Palin,” said Terry Madonna, a longtime Pennsylvania pollster and analyst who directs the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College. “But she has to show she can broaden her appeal. She can’t just go to where she’s already won voters.”
Nailing paint cans to your wall is not necessarily a sign that you're suffering mental confusion or own an Applebee's. Thanks to their storage capacity, cans tend to make better coat hooks than coat hooks themselves, argues Instructables.
The post reasons you can still drape jackets, scarves and what have you over the cans, but can also utilize the can openings to shove gloves, coat keys and whatever else you'd like. Depending on your tastes, metal cans might not work with whatever setup you've got going, but with some creativity you can apply the concept to something that looks good and provides the extra convenience.
What other odd things make a surprising amount of sense when attached to walls?
High Functioning Coat Hangers [Instructables via Lifehacker]
Nine NATO service members were killed Thursday in Afghanistan, including seven U.S. troops among eight who died when a powerful bomb exploded in a field where they were patrolling on foot, officials said.
Two Afghan policemen also died and two others were wounded in the explosion in the mountainous Shorabak district of Kandahar province, 12 miles from the Pakistan border, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, chief of the Afghan border police in the province.
"Two months ago, we cleared this area of terrorists, but still they are active there," Raziq said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.
"A bomb was planted for them in a field," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Associated Press in a telephone call.
Garage sales aren't just for picking up useless junk that you'll end up dumping at a sale of your own in a few years. They provide optimal opportunities to pick up cheap stuff that you can hawk online, marking up the price several times over.
Brittney at Blonde Nerd, who collects old video games, brags about hauling in loads of video games for a buck or so, no doubt taking advantage of parents who don't realize old games their kids have abandoned still retain some value. Her biggest killing was scoring a copy of Spyro 2, which she saw on eBay for $12, for a buck. That's the sort of profit margin that makes GameStop such a successful enterprise.
If you're a regular on the garage sale and flea market circuit, what items do you look out for, and how much do you make when you resell them?
Garage sale haul #1: Let me show you my loot [Blonde Nerd]