Sunday, March 14, 2010

Misery Acquaints a Man with Strange Bedfellows

As we were packing up from our podcast last Friday we started talking about the petition drive to subject the Columbia Town Center redevelopment enabling legislation to referendum.

“Have you seen any petition gatherers out and about?” I asked the boys.

No one had.

“Not even at the grocery stores?”

Dave Bittner said he had heard that the grocery stores weren’t allowing the petition proponents on their property.

Really?

Let me make it clear that I do understand that this is nothing more than hearsay. I do not know for a fact whether it is true or not. What I do know is that I haven’t been approached nor have I seen anyone out gathering signatures in my own Ho Co travels. I certainly haven’t seen anyone working the grocery store turf like I did for a previous ill fated petition drive.

If it’s true it would seem to suggest that the Bard of Avon was right in that “misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” The grocery stores, or more specifically the union grocers, perhaps might feel that they don’t have a dog in this fight. The right of citizens to petition for referendum was never really their issue anyway.

3 comments:

DavidYungmann said...

Funny how much harder it is to invent opposition when you don't have an army of paid union people out conning people into signing a petition based on loose facts. I remember the day last year a union guy, who told me he lived in Harford Co and didn't know where Turf Valley was, tried to tell me the petition he had was to stop big box stores from being built on Marriottsville Rd.

Anonymous said...

Yes, and the Company in AA county that wanted slots in a Mall is claiming all sorts of misdeeds on the part of the petition gatherers.

It's a Democracy. Live with it.

Gimme a Break said...

Hey Dave - it just sticks in your craw that 10,000 of your Howard County neighbors signed that petition.

But then, what the hell, let's just change the election rules because.... we don't like what they're saying.

All documents submitted to the Board of Elections said the collectors weren't paid. Do you have evidence to the contrary?..... didn't think so.

Oh, in case your copies of the Constitution (and federal/state regs) haven't yet arrived in your RR (rural redneck) mailbox, it's completely legal to be paid to collect petition signatures in Maryland while residing anywhere in the United States.