ELECTION 2024: Larry Hogan -a smorgasbord of ideas, arrogance, and petulance

LARRY HOGAN: A smorgasbord of ideas, arrogance, and petulance

The best thing that has happened to Maryland since the turn of the 21^st Century in Maryland government was the election of Larry Hogan as governor in 2014. In his two terms as governor, he worked to lower taxes, tolls, and fees while improving the delivery of a bloated, inefficient, and socialist state government ruled by leftist nitwits in the Maryland General Assembly.

On May 14, 2024, Marylanders will see the culmination of the primary election season that began earlier this month with early voting, with the latest election theft operation being put together by Democrats trying to steal the United States Senate nomination from each other. Also, a pack of GOP candidates led by a nutty guy from Montgomery County, former Delegate Robin Ficker, as they try to snare the nomination of the Republican Party from former Governor Larry Hogan.

Hogan doesn’t deserve the vote of a single solitary Republican.

Hogan has repeatedly said he will not vote for President Trump for another term. When you vote for a Democrat, you get a Democrat. When you vote for Hogan, you get a Democrat.

Larry Hogan realizes that he has Republicans over a barrel as the choice between either of the two Socialist Democrats, Trone, and Alsobrooks, against him in November is like choosing between hitting a hive of mad hornets or climbing a poison ivy bush.

Larry Hogan failed to bring forward a new third Chesapeake Bay Bridge crossing but succeeded in building a replacement for the Governor Harry W. Nice Bridge over the Potomac to Virginia. Isn’t that ironic? Hogan couldn’t unite Maryland with a third bridge across the Chesapeake Bay, but he made it easier to leave the People’s Republic of Maryland and flee south.

 Larry’s petulance led him to tag on the name of a Charles County senator who was defeated for reelection in the Democratic Primary in 2018. That state senator failed to bring commuter rail to Waldorf and was himself arrogant enough to bid for a seventh term in the Maryland Senate.  

Larry was quick to throw the statue of Maryland’s only Supreme Court Chief Justice under the bus after Freddie Gray’s death. Never let it be said that Larry won’t miss a chance to grandstand. Hogan bypassed the state historical commission that has province over the Statehouse grounds, and he ordered a crew to jackhammer the statue of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney from the grounds of the Maryland Statehouse in the middle of the night – a very Soviet-style way of coopting the public from the view of operating government.

Hogan’s actions were protested by Maryland Senate President Mike Miller, who asked, “Where do we hide our history?” and argued that Hogan was wrong to exercise power in violation of the law. Hogan acted like a South American strongman instead of showing leadership.

Naming public buildings, highways, sports stadiums, and airports such as BWI has become a sport of tin-horned politicians eager to pander to anyone who might lead them to more votes and glory.  

A typical mental midget of a former Democrat County Commissioner, Taxing Tommy Mattingly, pushed the renaming of the St. Mary’s Airport, mostly because he had two votes, plus his own, on the Commissioner Board of St. Mary’s to change the name to Walter Francis Duke Airport. Mattingly’s legendary lack of knowledge about government was shown to reveal him once again to be clueless in that the FAA locks in the name of airports in multitudes of national aviation systems that are not tinkered with by some bozo in Leonardtown.

After St. Mary’s County learned its lesson, the name was restored to St. Mary’s Regional Airport, and the Commissioners named the White Elephant Airport terminal to honor Capt. Duke has never had a single ticketed airline passenger pass through its portals in twenty-five years. Not a single passenger. They built the terminal because they could get the funds from Steny Hoyer, another big-spending twit, not because a serious marketing study and legitimate contracts demanded the construction of a terminal.

Why did Senate President Mike Miller, a longtime leader of the modern Democratic Party in Maryland, believe that Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s memorial should have been left alone? Miller was right; you can’t hide your history, but you can learn from it. The pandering Rino Republican Hogan only believed he could ingratiate himself with the meandering flocks of sheep moving between political viewpoints in a small-time stamp of history and gain support as a moderate and thinking Republican, a committed ‘Never Trumper.’

With the Chief Justice Taney memorial hidden away in some warehouse, at least he did better than Christopher Columbus, who the modern sissy Italians of Little Italy and the brainless Baltimore Police officials who allowed a mob to rip him down and dump him into Baltimore Harbor. The previous generation of Italians would have quickly dispersed that mob with bats and brass knuckles.

Senator Miller was one of the most skilled attorneys in Maryland. His point was well taken: we can’t hide our history, and without the statue on the Statehouse lawn, there will never be a class gathered on that lawn with a teacher explaining how wrong the Dred Scott decision issued by Chief Justice Taney was and how detrimental the effects of the ruling was on America and led to the Civil War.

Now, it would be interesting to find out how many of the Socialist Democrats in the Maryland General Assembly could answer the question of who Roger Taney was and his connection to American history.

Larry Hogan knows and his act during a period of media-inflamed riots in Baltimore after Ferguson and Freddie Gray in 2015 took his action in 2017 to hoist Taney skyward in the wee hours of the morning.

Senator Miller penned this letter to Hogan:

The Senate of Maryland

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401-1991

The Honorable Lawrence Hogan, Jr.

State House

100 State Circle

Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Dear Governor Hogan:

As you know, I specifically requested a public meeting to vote on the proposal regarding the removal of the statue of Justice Roger Brooke Taney, as well as a number of other matters of concern to the State House Trust. This was certainly a matter of such consequence that the transparency of a public meeting and public conversation should have occurred. This was not an ordinary matter of business before the Trust. Any urgency could certainly have been accommodated by an emergency meeting and does not excuse the hidden nature of the process regarding an important matter before the State House Trust.

We all know that the inflammatory and derogatory language and holding of the Dred Scott decision created great and lasting wounds in our Country and incited rather than avoided a Civil War. And yet, many do not know that Roger Brooke Taney also served with distinction in many State and National offices. He was born in Calvert County and later moved to Frederick County, where he was elected as a member of the House of Delegates and then the Maryland Senate. Taney was then elected as Attorney General of the State of Maryland.

He served as Acting United States Secretary of War and also as the Attorney General for the United States where his opinion on South Carolina nullification was later used by President Lincoln as the basis to declare the secession invalid. He was appointed as Secretary of the United States Treasury, where he fought as a Jacksonian Democrat against a central Bank of America, which he believed was beholden to foreign interests and had abused its powers. Taney was appointed as the first Catholic Justice and first and only Maryland Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and served from 1836 to 1864 under six Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.

As The New York Times wrote in his 1864 obituary, “Had it not been for his unfortunate Dred Scott decision, all would admit that he had through all those years, nobly sustained his high office.”

Few people are aware of Taney’s prior anti-slavery words and actions and that unlike George Washington who freed his slaves upon his death, Taney freed his slaves early in his life.

In 1806, he married Anne Charlton Key, sister of Francis Scott Key. As described by author Timothy Huebner in an article in the Journal of American History, at that time “Taney entered a circle of young, reform­ minded Marylanders who sought to protect free blacks from kidnapping and alleviate the harshness of slavery. Both Taney and Francis Scott Key joined an anti-kidnapping society and developed reputations for their willingness to argue cases for the benefit of slaves and free blacks.”

In representing an abolitionist minister, Taney called slavery “a blot on our national character,” saying that “every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectively, though it must be gradually, wiped away. “

Senate President Mike Miller

In representing an abolitionist minister, Taney called slavery “a blot on our national character,” saying that “every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectively, though it must be gradually, wiped away.”

As notable as Taney’s complex history is the history of this very discussion in Maryland which many appear to have forgotten. When we commissioned the statue to honor Justice Thurgood Marshall, it was a very public and purposeful compromise to give balance to the State House grounds, recognizing our State and our Country have a flawed history.

As Delegate Howard Pete Rawlings, who helped craft the compromise, said in 2007, “You want people to be aware of your past and also your future. We needed Taney to stay where he was to show the dichotomy between Taney and Marshall.

With Taney gone, you wouldn’t have that.”

A 2007 Washington Post editorial opposed removal of Taney statues at that time saying, “Memorials are meant to cause reflection and not always a celebration or even respect. The Taney statues should remain but be supplemented with signs explaining the significance of Taney’s contributions to American law, warts and all. More, rather than less, education about the past is always a good thing.”

Dred Scott’s descendant, Dred Scott Madison II, told The Washington Post at that time, “If you move it, where do you end… It’s part of American history. You can’t hide it.”

“If you move it, where do you end… It’s part of American history. You can’t hide it.”

Dred Scott Madison II

I continue to agree with both of these sentiments.

Roger Brooke Taney was not a Confederate officer, and he remained loyal to the Union until his death in 1864. Many historians have debated the conflicting anti-slavery words and works of Roger Brooke Taney, the Frederick County Attorney and the man who authored the Dred Scott decision.

As a student of history, I personally believe as the New York Times opined in 1864 that “That decision itself, wrong as it was, did not spring from a corrupt or malignant heart. It came, we have the charity to believe, from a sincere desire to compose, rather than exacerbate, sectional discord. But yet it was nonetheless an act of supreme folly, and its shadow will ever rest in his memory.”

At a minimum, the debate should have been allowed and each member of the State House Trust should have been allowed the opportunity to explain our vote, as it takes place in both the Maryland Senate and the House of Delegates.

But regardless of one’s position on this issue, it is insulting to our citizens for the State House Trust to vote on such a matter outside of the public eye.

At a minimum, the debate should have been allowed and each member of the State House Trust should have been allowed the opportunity to explain our vote, as it takes place in both the Maryland Senate and the House of Delegates.

We should have and continue to have a public conversation about difficult issues facing our country. A full discussion of each of our reasons for supporting either removal or retention of the statue as well as the complex history of this man and our State would only have added to the public conversation and understanding.

Voting on this matter by email was just plain wrong.

Sincerely,

Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr.