Rescue 911: Calling All Salisbury Fire Department Members

With all the talk about Mayor Jim Ireton NOT hiring a new Fire Chief, let this Post serve as an open forum for Salisbury Firefighters to speak their peace anonymously.

Let the Citizens know how you feel. Many are clueless to the multiple interviews and expenses of such. Many are not aware of just how low morale is within the Fire department, or is it?

Fire away Ladies & Gentlemen. Who do YOU want to be your next Fire Chief?

Another Cat Adopted Today

Hi Joe,

Just wanted to let you know that the calico that needed a home has found one,

Adopted today.

Thanks,

LP

BREAKING NEWS: Bay National Bank Seized By Regulators Today

Bay National Seized by FDIC

Late today, Federal regulators closed Bay National Bank with has one of its two branch offices in Salisbury. It is the 87th U.S. bank to fail this year.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency seized the bank, which had $282.2 million in assets and $276.1 million in deposits as of March 31. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. arranged for all the deposits and the two branches of Bay National to be purchased by Bay Bank, based in Lutherville, Md.

Bay Bank also bought "essentially all" the assets of the failed bank, the FDIC said Friday.
The FDIC said the failure is expected to cost the agency's deposit-insurance fund about $17.4 million.

Bay National’s deposits are being assumed by the new entity called Bay Bank FSB. Its two branches will reopen Monday as Bay Bank branches, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said.

Bay National depositors will automatically become depositors of Bay Bank, of Lutherville.

Bay Bank will led by CEO Kevin B. Cashen, a bank consultant and former executive with Chevy Chase Bank and Signet Bank.

Bay National first faced federal regulatory scrutiny 18 months ago, with regulators citing problem loans that drained the bank’s liquidity and capital. Despite talk of turning the bank around by raising new capital and a stock offering, the bank never was able to right itself.

According to Baltimore Business Journal,
"Throughout the bank’s ordeal with regulators, CEO Hugh Mohler has remained quiet. The usually press friendly banker has refused to give interviews in the past three months. He could not be reached for comment Friday.

Mohler, a former Mercantile Bankshares executive and Salisbury based president of Peninsula Bank, founded the bank in 2000 to focus on business lending in Greater Baltimore.

Mohler said in an earlier interview the bank ran into problems when the once hot real estate market in Canton and Federal Hill cooled and borrowers who had taken out loans to rehab houses in those neighborhoods had trouble repaying their loans."

Greg Olinde, a former Senior VP with Bay National has joined the staff of a Cambridge bank. Many locals had invested heavily in Mohler's bank and will lose tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Rasmussen: 67% Say Illegals Are Major Strain On Budget

As the country wrestles with a future of historic-level deficits, 67 percent of U.S. voters say that illegal immigrants are a significant strain on the U.S. budget.

Just 23 percent disagree and do not believe illegal immigration strains the budget, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Two-thirds of voters say the availability of government money and services draws illegal immigrants to the United States. Almost 19 percent think otherwise, while 15 percent are not sure.

These findings help to explain why 68 percent say gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers already living in the United States. Just over 25 percent believe that legalizing illegal immigrants is more important.

The majority support for controlling the borders has been consistent through several years of surveying.

Read the rest here>>

Chrysler's PT Cruiser Hits End Of The Road

Iconic vehicle was hit with consumers, but didn’t change with times

The PT Cruiser, one of Chrysler’s most successful and iconic vehicles, ends production Friday after a decade of service.

The retro-looking vehicle was launched in 2000 at a time when nostalgic car design was all the rage, inspiring a raft of revamped vehicles, from the redesigned Volkswagen Beetle to the updated Mini Cooper.

Chrysler’s design move was bold and it paid off handsomely. The PT Cruiser was an instant success, striking a chord with buyers. Chrysler sold more than 1.3 million of the vehicles in total, according to the Detroit News, with sales levels never dipping below 120,000 during the first eight years.

GO HERE to read more.

Salisbury Police Department Press Releases

On July 8, 2010 at approximately 10:28 am, Officers of the Salisbury Police received a call to respond to a vacant residence on the three hundred (300) block of Charles Street for the report of a burglary. Upon arrival the officers met with the complainant who advised the officers that the complainant was checking the property and discovered a subject inside of the residence without authorization. The officers checked the residence and located the below listed suspect sleeping. The suspect had made entry through a door to enter the residence.

ARRESTED: Kyle Marquis Colon, 18 years of age
Salisbury, Maryland
CHARGES: Third degree burglary
Fourth degree burglary
Trespassing
DISPOSITION: Released to Central Booking
CC # 201000027221

On July 8, 2010 at approximately 9:00 pm, Officers of the Salisbury Police arrested the below listed suspect on two (2) outstanding Wicomico County District Court Bench Warrants for Violation of Probation.

ARRESTED: Ashley Marie Meadows-Simms, 22 years of age
Salisbury, Maryland
CHARGES: Wicomico Co. District Court Bench Warrant-
Violation of Probation – CDS Possession
Wicomico Co. District Court Bench Warrant-
Violation of Probation - Theft
DISPOSITION: Released to Central Booking
CC # 201000027299/201000027300

LCB Defends Promotion, Questioned For Overstating Figures

OCEAN CITY — The Liquor Control Board for Worcester County (LCB) defended the liquor promotion that has sparked a new array of investigations and accusations against it in hopes of proving no law was broken.

Unfortunately for the LCB, the supplier who sold it the liquor shot a gaping hole in that defense when it said the numbers the LCB quoted were “severely overstated.”

As per Article 2B of Maryland State Law, the LCB must offer all licensees the same pricing for alcohol and they can’t sell a product for below cost unless the product in question has been discontinued.

In the instance of the March Stoli promotion that has sparked a controversy throughout Worcester County, three licensees claim to have paid three different prices on the same day and the promotion itself came into question when it was argued that selling a bottle of Stoli at $5 a bottle was far below cost, thus making it illegal from the start.

LCB Board member and spokesperson Larry Wilkinson provided the invoices from March 31, 2010, the last day of the promotion, which shows when the vodka was delivered to the LCB’s Snow Hill headquarters from the supplier William Grant & Sons.

The total invoice was for 4,236 bottles of Stoli at $17.17 (gross cost per bottle) or $72,699.08. However, after a massive depletion allowance/promotional credit of $52,663.98 was allegedly given back to the LCB, according to a summary of the transaction prepared by the LCB, the net cost for the LCB stood at $20,035.10 or $4.73 per bottle.

These numbers would affirm the LCB’s claim that it knew the numbers and didn’t violate any of the laws by setting the price at $5, which is still technically above the $4.73 a bottle that they quoted.

However, William Grant & Sons spokesperson James Curich, who said last week the company had no knowledge of the $5 promotion, said the more than $52,000 in depletion allowances was incorrect.

“That number that they are quoting for a depletion allowance is severely overstated, said Curich via phone interview yesterday afternoon. “Our records show that we paid them significantly less than what they are projecting. In fact, it was less than $10,000.”

GO HERE to read more.

Murder Conviction For Md. Teacher

A Baltimore County jury has convicted a former English teacher of killing her estranged husband and trying to kill their teenage daughter.

Jurors rejected arguments that 60-year-old Mary Koontz was mentally ill when she shot Ronald Koontz at his home in Glen Arm in June 2009.

Koontz was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder in her husband's death and first-degree attempted murder for firing at their then-16-year-old daughter, Kelsey, who was not injured.

Kelsey Koontz, now 17, cried after the verdicts were announced and later described herself as “relieved.” Ronald Koontz worked for more than 30 years in the county school system, mostly as an administrator.

Prosecutors argued that Koontz prepared meticulously for the “sneak attack” on her husband.

Caption This Photo

Senate Candidate Wants Obama Birth-Certificate Treatment

A Mexican-born candidate for U.S. Senate said he is considering a lawsuit against the Missouri secretary of state for discrimination because her office forced him to produce a birth certificate but "didn't make Obama show proof of citizenship" to appear on the ballot.

Hector Maldonado, 38, a self-described "Lincolnian Republican conservative," is seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri. He was born one of 10 children in Durango, Mexico. His father is a migrant field worker who owns a small hog ranch in Perris, California.

Maldonado, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, explains on his website that he became a U.S. citizen in 1995. But he said Secretaryof State Robin Carnahan sent him a letter in May asking him to produce documentation.

"It said, 'Hey, you have to prove you're a citizen.' I ignored it," he said. "You know, Obama ignored it, so I figured I could get away with it, too."

Maldonado continued, "But it's not that simple. I didn't get away with it. I got a certified letter from Ms. Robin Carnahan's office saying that if I did not prove that I was a U.S. citizen, then I would be removed from the ballot."

He claims Carnahan's office gave him a deadline of May 12.

"I got all my documents together: my birth certificate, which is a Mexican birth certificate; my naturalization certificate; my orders sending me to Iraq and Afghanistan; my bronze-star citations and a couple of officer evaluations that say I'm a pretty good and effective leader," he said. "So I brought all this documentation, and they were only interested in the naturalizationcertificate. They made a photocopy of it."

Maldonado said he asked Carnahan's office if his citizenship documentation would be public record and available to anyone who wants a copy.

"They said, oh yes, absolutely, anyone that wants proof, we have it," he explained. "I said, OK, can you do me a favor then? I'm sure Ms. Carnahan requested the same of Barack Obama when he petitioned to get on the Missouri ballot to become president."

He added, "They had no response. They had nothing."

There's more here>>

Are Overdue Reports Concealing ObamaCare Impact On Medicare?

Every year, the Annual Report of the Social Security Board of Trustees comes out between mid-April and mid-May. Now it's July, and there's no sign of this year's report. What is the Obama administration hiding?

The annual report includes detailed information about Social Security and its financing over the next 75 years, produced by the Office of the Actuary of the Social Security Administration.

The Congressional Budget Office reported last week in its Long Term Budget Outlook that Social Security was already running a deficit this year. According to last year's Social Security Trustees Report, that was not supposed to happen until 2015, with the trust fund to run out completely by 2037.

With the disastrous Obama economy, the great Social Security surplus that started in the Reagan administration is gone completely.

Every year, the federal government has been raiding the Social Security trust funds to take that annual surplus and spend it on the rest of the federal government's runaway spending, leaving the trust funds only with IOUs backed by nothing but politicians' promise to pay it back when it's needed. Now even that annual surplus is gone. How soon will the trust funds run out completely now?

President Obama keeps telling us a fairy tale that he saved us from another Great Depression. But he is actually leading us into another Depression.

The National Bureau of Economic Research scores the recession as officially starting in December 2007. Thirty-one months later, with unemployment still near 10% and the work force still declining, the NBER says it still cannot determine an official end to the recession.

The longest recession since World War II previously was 16 months, with the average being 10 months. By next month, it will be twice as long as the previous postwar record since the latest recession started. The markets echoed by many pundits are now suggesting a renewed double-dip downturn may be starting, with the comprehensive Obama tax rate increases next year poised to pour napalm on this developing bonfire.

How soon will the trust funds run out with this utter failure of 1930s-style Obamanomics?

The implications for Social Security aren't what the Obama administration is hiding by delaying the annual trustees reports. Those annual reports also include information regarding Medicare over the next 75 years. What the administration is trying to hide are sweeping draconian cuts to Medicare resulting from the ObamaCare legislation, which the annual report will document.

Keep reading>>

LCB Profits Plunge Compared To Others

OCEAN CITY — The numbers continue to tell quite a story concerning the recent performance of the Liquor Control Board for Worcester County (LCB) as new reports surfaced this week on money given back to other counties.

Both Somerset and Wicomico counties released their unofficial numbers this week on the amount of funds paid back to their respective counties by their liquor control boards for 2010, and local residents, licensees, and politicians were unanimously awestruck by the figures.

Worcester’s LCB has come under fire in recent weeks after eyebrows were raised and proverbial liquor licensee lynch mobs were formed when their 2010 contribution to the county, and the county’s four municipalities was a mere fraction of last year’s numbers and hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what came in just five years ago, as well as accusations of price discrimination and possible collusion.

The reported $110,000 check that the LCB wrote to Worcester County (of which, the county gets roughly $55,000, and Ocean City approximately $22,000) is significantly less than the approximated $415,000 given back in 2009 and the $777,000 from 2008.

However, more questions arose this week when Somerset and Wicomico counties released their numbers and posted larger dollar amounts than Worcester County’s take, despite gross sales that even when added together, don’t come close to the more than $14 million that Worcester County LCB made in 2008, 2009 and reportedly will reach when the audited 2010 reports are released in upcoming weeks.

“The numbers don’t lie, and they never have,” said Mayor Rick Meehan. “How can you continue to bring in more than $14 million from year to year, but see your profits go down by more than $300,000 every year since 2008? That just doesn’t seem like it’s being run like a good business operation. No other business that I know of could continue to operate under those numbers and still justify their existence.”

Somerset County’s LCB reported $1.8 million in total revenue in 2010, cutting a check to Somerset County for $79,733, less than the $110,000 to Worcester this year, but if you factor in the money dispersed to the municipalities in the respective counties, Somerset County’s take of $71,065 was 23% more than Worcester’s take of $55,000 this year.

For comparison’s sake, in 2009, Somerset’s total revenue was $1.78 million, with $91,701 going to the county, but that total was much less than Worcester’s take.

Wicomico County Director of Finance Patricia Peterson said this week that although the total revenue for the Wicomico County LCB has yet to be released, officials do know that the money being paid back to the county will be $424,000.

Last year, Wicomico’s LCB reported a little more than $7 million in sales or half of Worcester’s total sales ($14.6 million), and gave its county $476,000, which was still slightly more than the Worcester LCB gave back that year.

GO HERE to read more.

NASA's Muslim Outreach: Al Jazeera Was Told First

Lawmakers across Capitol Hill, both Democrats and Republicans, were surprised to learn recently that the Obama administration has made reaching out to Muslim nations a top priority for the space agency NASA. They will probably be more surprised to learn that administration officials told the Middle East news organization Al Jazeera about it before they told Congress.

Rep. Pete Olson, the ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, got a call from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on June 28, the day the White House released its new long-term plan for the space program. "He ran down some of the things from the president's new space policy, and mentioned outreach to Muslims," Olson recalls. "That stunned me. I didn't believe it."

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Democrat who chairs the subcommittee (and is also married to astronaut Mark Kelly), got a briefing from Bolden the same day, according to a spokesman.

As it happens, Bolden's calls to Giffords and Olson came several days after Bolden discussed the Muslim initiative with Al Jazeera. According to a NASA spokesman, Bolden sat down with Al Jazeera's Imran Garda on June 17, during a stop in Doha, Qatar. Bolden's Mideast trip, which was timed to mark the first anniversary of President Obama's June 2009 Muslim outreach speech, was devoted to pursuing "a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world."

Read more>>

Where's Abbas?

Speaking on the ABC network's "Good Morning America" program, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sidestepped questions about whether he would extend the construction freeze, and repeated numerous times that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas must agree to face-to-face talks with Israel. He also provided Israel's nationalist camp with reason for concern.

Interviewer George Stephanopoulos began the talk by noting the very warm and friendly reception Mr. and Mrs. Netanyahu received from U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife. He then asked, "What concrete steps are you prepared to take" to advance the peace process with the Palestinian Authority?

"... The main thing that came out of these very good discussions I had with the President," Netanyahu said, "is that we want to advance peace. And the simplest way to advance peace is to put aside all the grievances and all the preconditions and all the excuses that have been put up to prevent me and President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority from sitting down."

Netanyahu reiterated that he's "ready to sit down with him in Jerusalem, in Ramallah - that's 10 minutes away from my office - to discuss peace without preconditions. And if we do it, we can defy the world."

He implied that there could be "additional easing of movements" and economic projects – "but what we want to see finally is one thing. We want President Abbas to grasp my hand, get into a room, shake it, sit down and negotiate a final settlement of peace between Israel and the Palestinians."

Netanyahu repeated several more times his seemingly innocuous hope that Abbas would agree to direct talks, and added his insistence on "very strong security arrangements so that the areas that we vacate do not turn into Iranian strongholds for flying rockets and sending terrorists against us," as has occurred in Gaza and Lebanon.

More>>

Thank God Its Friday

What Will You Be Doing This Weekend?

The Town Hall Revolt, One Year Later

Democrats didn't get the message. Will Republicans do better?

Much has happened in the dense and shifting political landscape of the past 18 months—the quick breakdown along partisan lines in Congress; continuing arguments over spending, the economy and immigration; the big Republican wins in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts; the Gulf oil spill; falling poll numbers for the president and his party.

But the biggest political moment, the one that carried the deepest implications, came exactly one year ago, in July and August of 2009, in the town hall rebellion. Looking back, that was a turning point in both parties' fortunes. That is when the first resistance to Washington's plans on health care became manifest, and it's when a more generalized resistance rose and spread. President Obama and his party in Congress had, during their first months in power, done the one thing they could not afford to do politically, and that was arouse and unite their opposition. The conservative movement and Republican Party had been left fractured and broken by the end of the Bush years. Now, suddenly, they had something to fight against together. Social conservatives hated the social provisions, liberty-minded conservatives the state control, economic conservatives the spending. Health care brought them together. The center, which had gone for Mr. Obama in 2008, joined them.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats saw it coming. But it was a seminal moment, and whatever is coming in November, it started there.

It was a largely self-generated uprising, and it was marked, wherever it happened, in San Diego or St. Louis, by certain common elements. The visiting senator or representative, gone home to visit the voters, always seemed shocked at the size of the audience and the depth of his constituents' anger. There was usually a voter making a videotape in the back of the hall. There were almost always spirited speeches from voters. There was never, or not once that I saw, a strong and informed response from the congressman. In one way it was like the Iranian revolution: Most people got the earliest and fullest reports of what was happening on the Internet, through YouTube. Voters would take shaky videos on their cellphones and post them when they got home. Suddenly, over a matter of weeks, you could type in "town hall" and you'd get hundreds, and finally thousands, of choices.

The politicians, every one of them, seemed taken aback—shaken and unprepared. They tried various strategies—mollify the crowd, or try to explain to them how complex governing is. Sen. Arlen Specter tried that in early August 2009, in an appearance with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Faced with fierce criticism of the health-care bill as it then stood, Mr. Specter explained that see here, it's a thousand-page bill and sometimes Congress must make judgements "very fast." The crowd exploded in jeers.

More here>>

As The United States Collapses, Media Worships LeBron James

Alex Jones gives the inside scoop on basketball MVP LeBron James’ pivotal trade decision… err, I mean, rather breaks down how society has become obsessed with celebrity culture and taken its eye off of important world events, allowing corruption and global domination to take root. While LeBron announces his move to Miami, the mindless sports fans of America have essentially ignored larger problems.



GO HERE to read more.

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy

Democratic House members are so worried about the fall elections they're leaving Washington on July 30, a full week earlier than normal—and they won't return until mid-September. Members gulped when National Journal's Charlie Cook, the Beltway's leading political handicapper, predicted last month "the House is gone," meaning a GOP takeover. He thinks Democrats will hold the Senate, but with a significantly reduced majority.

The rush to recess gives Democrats little time to pass any major laws. That's why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don't want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

"I've got lots of things I want to do" in a lame duck, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W. Va.) told reporters in mid June. North Dakota's Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, wants a lame-duck session to act on the recommendations of President Obama's deficit commission, which is due to report on Dec. 1. "It could be a huge deal," he told Roll Call last month. "We could get the country on a sound long-term fiscal path."

By which he undoubtedly means new taxes in exchange for extending some, but not all, of the Bush-era tax reductions that will expire at the end of the year.

[Do you get that? Trading tax cuts for new taxes. They must think we're stupid.-- Editor]

Other lame-duck possibilities? Senate ratification of the New Start nuclear treaty, a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws, and a budget resolution to lock in increased agency spending.

Then there is pork. A Senate aide told me that "some of the biggest porkers on both sides of the aisle are leaving office this year, and a lame-duck session would be their last hurrah for spending." Likely suspects include key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress's "favor factory," such as Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Bob Bennett.

More from the WSJ>>