Of Silliness and Tragedy

Oh, where to begin this week….. Let me start with what I originally planned to write. Jim Matthews, Montgomery County commissioner and brother of television commentator Chris Matthews, is in the news again. This time it is for suggesting the county only hire nonsmokers. While I applaud his attempt to hold down the county’s health care costs, I wonder if this is the way to start. After all, you are dependent on people being honest about whether or not they smoke, unless the county will hire someone to follow them 24 hours a day or sniff their clothes on a daily basis. Going after Joe Six Pack or Charmaine Chocoholic could be next and then, hey, they might get around to those who, like me, can’t keep away from the Mountain Dew. I wonder if Commissioner Matthews is willing to open his private life up to as close a scrutiny as he is proposing for those who work for the county. Is he willing to swear that he never has a beer or cocktail with lunch on a workday or before driving a government vehicle?

Looking into things further, last year Commissioner Matthews was in the news for publicly stating that he checked campaign finance reports to see if county employees were donating to those evil Democrats. And here I thought he was representing all the county residents, not just those in the Republican Party. Around the same time he declined to put a qualified man on a county commission because the man was a potential Democratic candidate for state office. Gee I hope he found a qualified Republican. I’d hate to think that he wasn’t putting the best possible, most knowledgeable people on an unpaid committee because of their politics. Color me naïve, but I’d hope an elected official would honor the office by keeping the well being of his constituency uppermost in his mind.

Commissioner Matthews has an additional headache, in the form of his fellow Republican commissioner Tom Ellis who has been having a bad year all around. His on again off again girlfriend and mother of his young child filed a protection from abuse order. Commissioner Ellis presents a dilemma for the county. When elected, his employer, the Ballard Spahr law firm, decided, out of the goodness of their collective partnered hearts, to continue paying his salary while he served the county. Thus the county paid him an annual sum of $1.00 and took the money it would have paid him to hire a deputy chief operations officer. Oddly enough the man hired is a longtime friend of Jim Matthews with limited experience in the area of his new job. A tangled web indeed. So if the county ousts Ellis they will also have to oust the man who is being paid his salary.

I had always thought the Republicans were the party of small government. Yet, here they are, peeking into ashtrays and campaign finance reports. On the federal level we have the GOP getting involved in what is primarily a family dispute, in the Shiavo family. I’m very glad I have a durable power of attorney and a living will. Hopefully those documents will circumvent any similar tragedies in my household.

But primarily I have been watching another heartbreaking story out of Florida, that of the little 9 year old girl who was taken out of her house and murdered. Either Mr. Jane or I, whichever is the last one up at night, double check the deadbolts on the doors. Even so I am painfully aware that some of the window locks leave something to be desired, and that if someone wants into the house they will get in. I am very thankful for the creaky stairs and floorboards that frequently wake me as the cat moves around. (He’s a very big cat and the floors and stairs are very creaky.) Hopefully they would alert me to anything larger and more menacing that creeps towards my children’s bedrooms. I hope you and yours are all safe.