Jessica should do what? Let’s get real folks!

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Some of y’all need to come back down to Earth!

On the heels of the announcement that Nancy Allen moved to Gettysburg and would be resigning from the Frederick County Board of Education, our local Republican party decided to engage in some high theatrics:

Let’s talk about what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot!

Let’s say we lived in a dark timeline in which Michael Hough was the CE, and let’s just speculate for just half a second that Dean Rose decided that he couldn’t maintain two residences in Maryland and Pennsylvania and decided to throw in the towel? What would Hough do? What would this local Republican party do? We don’t need to think too long on that one! Y’all make our heads spin!

However, that isn’t even the main point. Allen decided she couldn’t or wouldn’t serve out the rest of her term. When she did this she knew (or should have known) the process for selecting her own replacement. Let’s take a look at what the law says, and be sure to see who sponsored it because what a treat!

Nowhere do we see that the new candidate needs to match the philosophy of the old. And how would that happen anyway? If anyone thought that was a necessity then the law would have been written to allow the board of education member to appoint their successor. But no one thought that idea made any sense!

We took some time to peruse the letters of intent for the over 50 people who applied for the vacancy:

https://www.frederickcountymd.gov/9170/Board-of-Education—2025-Vacancy?fbclid=IwY2xjawOr6C1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFyWUtVWkdJUldVWUg2S0E5c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHkYOI4raJ6Yd11Bwa5GI2PQXC-dOVemMtisl62MP2Sq85p5SVZepp-dYaapd_aem_nQOGJ5HkDARPtH3VpQV2Jw

Most of the candidates wrote about their dedication to education, their qualifications, and their community service experience. Unless some magic rubric exists to weed out those who wouldn’t be akin to Nancy Allen, we can’t imagine how their half-baked idea would even work!

The reality is the County Executive is only obligated to appoint (along with the County Council’s approval) the most qualified individual to fill out the last year of Allen’s term. As it is a non partisan race, there is no reason to only interview people who align themselves with the Republican party. And considering how those who align themselves with the Republican party have been behaving on that board this past year, why would anyone want that?

History may not repeat itself around here, but it sure does rhyme!

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Round and round and round we go, where it stops nobody knows!

We’ve been taking a bit of a hiatus around here, because there is just too much going on in the world and sometimes it gets, well, a bit heavy. If you don’t follow Humans of New York, please take a minute to read this because we’ve never so identified with a Facebook post before.

However, we still have a local community to keep together so we want to check in with you to bring two things to your attention.

Do y’all remember the last time we had a city election and the Republicans couldn’t get their shit together and an accused felon ran for mayor? And thankfully since our fine city doesn’t reflect a little over half of the people who choose to vote in the national election, we sent him packing. (If you don’t remember, click here to catch up.)

Well, this time around the Republicans managed to get someone on the ballot for mayor-hopefully someone who isn’t indicted-but hey that’s what their party seems to admire these days-but they didn’t manage to get folks to sign up for many of the other open city council seats. Regard their solution:

According to the Frederick News Post:

However, Frederick County Republican Central Committee Chair Jesse Pippy said on Tuesday that the party is considering appointing candidates for races that currently have no Republican running, even after the filing deadline. That party appointment process for vacancies is allowed by law.

“It would be in the best interest of the community to have contested races,” said Pippy, a state delegate.

Sooooooo, they couldn’t find anyone to file before the deadline. Therefore, there will be no primary for many of those seats and they are just going put forth anyone they can drag off the street? This better not be the way Blaine Young tries to sneak back into political office!

Nevermore!

But seriously, you guys really need to get yourselves together and stop making it so easy to make fun of you! The time to field candidates is BEFORE the filing deadline. Be best!

Now on to,

Every school board election cycle, someone tries to come up with some kind of pun on the Apple Ballot. Once of the worst attempts was fashioned together by our very own non-partisan (cough, cough) Frederick County Conservative Club.

Can we please get a graphic designer to critique this? Please?!

Before we bring you the next rendition of this nonsense, we want to remind everyone that the people who vote on that apple ballot are the people that take care of and nurture your children 180 days a year. So we would all be better served if we kept the vitriol to a minimum, but alas…

We are a little long in the tooth around here, so we know this isn’t the first time someone very uncleverly has tried to use the orange. You’ll see shortly how often the two people running this page use the Trump playbook of lies and deception.

What is that even supposed to mean, are we advocating the consumption of liberals? Might want to check with RFK on that, as I hear we are full of microplastics and artificial dyes.

However, there may be another reason as to why they choose the orange, take a gander at their first post:

Orange we glad (get it? hee hee!) about what?

They were caught in their first lie by sane school member Dean Rose. Here’s their post:

Here they claimed that FCPS had signed an agreement with The Frederick Center.

But Dean Rose stepped up and dropped the truth:

We sure are!

On that same post someone else crawled out of the woodwork, because of course she’s one of the 88 followers:

We won’t expose you to anymore of their nonsense other to share a friend of the Yokel’s observation about their website:

We love it!

We’ll keep on keeping you informed on the local stuff! Remember to drop us a line if you hear about anything we should be sharing.

This post will not find you well…..

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We’ll start with the good news! Three amazing people have filed to run for the BOE next year! Check them out and please consider supporting them:

Casey Day

Jess Douglass

Chad Wilson

Even though each day seems like an eternity lately, next year will be here before we know it!

And now for the bad news…..

Apologies all around!

Heather Fletcher is running again. If you forgot who this now twice failed candidate is, don’t worry we’ll remind you. First let’s hand her the microphone to see how y’all like her:

Exhibit A: Her defense of Colt Black:

https://www.facebook.com/61558619399066/videos/626018053725844

Exhibit B: That time she checked out all the books about LGBTQ+ people and stole pins from the library:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/school-board-candidate-checks-many-065000967.html

Exhibit C: Look how she responded to Liz Barrett saying that all families and people matter at FCPS:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BrSxWXQnq

Exhibit D: No words needed…

Exhibit E: here’s all the posts in which we’ve mentioned her:

https://fredericklocalyokel.com/?s=heather+fletcher

This post will also serve as your reminder that all of us like-minded people need to vote for the SAME number of candidates as there are openings on the board. Just look at all we’ve had to put up with because of Black and Brennan so far! #learnfromthepast!

Holy Zeus! We’ve been doing this for ten years!

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As we sat around the Round Table at Yokel Headquarters late last week, your Lady Yokels could hardly believe that 10 years had lapsed since we began this endeavor. In celebration of this milestone anniversary we will like to take you on a stroll down memory lane.

Not sure that everyone does, so we are going to retell it!

10 years ago, after reading this LTE, https://www.fredericknewspost.com/places/local/frederick_county/frederick/blaine-young-work-together-or-nothing-will-get-accomplished/article_b1616559-e265-5a0d-9fbc-fe09bfdbe811.html, from our anti-muse, Blaine Young, a group of what became known as the Lady Yokels met in our favorite coffee spot, Dublin Roasters. After we appropriately insulted both Blaine Young and his very poor analysis of why he lost, we decided that we needed to shine the spotlight not only on Blaine, but also on his buddies, Kirby Delauter, Billy Shreve, and Tony Chmelik. At first, we discussed writing a book, but nixed that idea fairly quickly as we knew keeping an eye on these people was going to be a very fluid situation. By the end of that first meeting we decided to embark upon a blog to educate people on what is not often at the top of their to-do list, the inner workings of their local government. (Don’t worry, we’ve also kept an eye on Blaine so every time he tries to slither back into politics we are there to remind everyone of his arrests and bad behavior!)

For the next four years we religiously watched every county council meeting. More often than not, we created a drinking game to accompany such meetings in order to spice things up a bit. Here’s an example:

Will the first meeting of Fall enthrall? Your September 25th drinking game!

We sincerely hope that we didn’t hurt anyone’s livers as these games were only meant for fun. Over the first four years we made sure that everyone had a front seat to just how crazy things were with those three on the council. Here’s a curated sampling from our archives:

Historian Chmelik holds lecture on George Washington and 21st century issues. Outrage follows.
The dog and pony show continued…pony stomps dog to death.
King of the Deplorables: who else makes pro human trafficking claims?

While there are so many artifacts from this part of Yokel history, this is still hands down our favorite:

Backstory: Kirby wanted to prove that the Citizens for Quality of Life PAC was corrupt, but you will notice that nothing comes out of the PAC and somehow Jessica ended up with everything!

After one term in office, Kirby and Billy tried to obtain a higher office, while Tony wanted to stay put. Thankfully enough people paid attention and NONE of that happened! We sent our three amigos out with a departing post:

Oh, they are not getting off this easy! Your Yokel good-bye post to the three amigos!

After saner folks got on the council we kinda checked out on that scene, though we did decide to check back once last summer and boy was there some drama:

A Yokel Stroll Down Memory Lane! Let’s check in with that County Council!

Our main, but certainly not our only focus, has been the Frederick County School Board. People often underestimate (though perhaps that sentiment isn’t as true as it was in the past) the damage the wrong people can do on a school board. Just take a look at Colt Black and Jaime Brennan! The person who dragged us into this new focus was none other than Cindy Rose. Thankfully everyone understood how bad she would be, and after four failed attempts, she has finally seemed to have given up. Here’s some highlights of what we had to say about that one:

All aboard the crazy train-Cindy Rose edition- Part infinity…apparently!
Cindy Rose is stupid AND dangerous
Crazy untucked: Cindy Rose edition

Hopefully we will be more successful next year in reminding everyone how to do the math with the school board candidates so we don’t get left with the shit show we have right now.

Thank you all for an interesting and fun ten years! Think of your Lady Yokels tonight as we clink our glasses together and hope that we can survive another ten years of politics! We appreciate all of you being a part of this journey.

How much are we willing to put up with around here?

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Yeah, what about that?!

If you haven’t paid attention to all the budget troubles going on around here..welcome to the terrible party. In the next few weeks the budget for FCPS is going to be voted on, and we need to make sure that our schools get what they need to educate our children. We’ll let a good friend of the Yokel explain it to y’all:

The most important duty of local government is to educate the children living within their borders. If we fail at this it really doesn’t matter how nice our parks, roads or other public services are. At the bottom of this post we are going to list the email addresses for county council members and County Executive Fitzwater so you can email them with your concerns.

Speaking of the important duty of education, one of the most important duties we have as citizens is to vote for competent school board members. That is where a fair number of us failed this time around. We tried to sound the warning about there being too many candidates on our side, but that warning did not reach enough ears and we are now left to deal with the consequences of it all.

Colt Black has decided to use his short time on the board to harass and demean LGBTQ+ students at school board meetings. From the Frederick News Post:

Referring to the part of a districtwide gender identity policy, Policy 443, that instructs teachers and staff members to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns, Black said at a Jan. 8 school board meeting: “Just as much as you have your right to be you, we have our right to be free from you.”

Lots of local folks filed complaints about this outrageous comment from a sitting school board member. Well, today an independent investigator determined that Black did not violate Title IX:

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/education/schools/public_k-12/investigation-finds-school-board-members-comments-didnt-violate-federal-law/article_2242bd78-0413-5402-a476-ea6b9bddc8a8.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawJP7-tleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTHsWze5wnM0FF0CfAHFShoMiFnr0KpqqyZsBrtDN_DGWvhhaE8i89afYg_aem_muXKc9ju-tcCUZ_Ax74Plw

But that doesn’t mean that he’s not an unqualified bigot that shouldn’t be on the board. We’ll tell you right now that the 5 member panel of judges here at the LY have already tried and convicted him in our court of public opinion, and so has a majority of the school board:

We’ll remind y’all again in a couple of years, but we do need to remember how the math works when it comes to school board elections. We cannot pay this high price again.

And now for the emails:

Jessica Fitzwater

County Executive

Kathan McCarthy
Manager, Constituent Services
Email 
Ph: 301-600-6083 
Fx: 301-600-1050 

County Council

Winchester Hall
12 East Church Street
Frederick, MD  21701
Email

Ph:  301-600-1135
Fx:  301-600-1849

The Kids Strike Back: Some thoughts on tonight’s BOE meeting!

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Several alert readers messaged your Lady Yokels to instruct us to tune in to the board meeting. Colt Black was getting his ass handed to him for his insensitive, and frankly stupid, comments about some students in our schools. We encourage all who didn’t see it, to go back and watch it as soon as it’s posted on their site.

You’ll have to mire through Heather Fletcher telling you in the name of Jesus Christ to get rid of all the porn in the school, and suffer through Tom Neumark mansplaining the budget…but it’s worth it. Because, more importantly, you’ll learn from the kids how we are going to survive this Trump hell for the next four years.

The students who came to speak during public comment made it clear to Mr. Black and the world of the impact of Policy 443. They spoke to how much better school was for both them and their friends as a result of this policy. They made it known that they would not accept any hint of discrimination in their school system.

Then came the board member comments, and we have to say that the students really knew what they were doing when they elected Elijah Steele as their representative. Mr. Steele constructed a defense of his fellow students against people like Colt Black and Jaime Brennan by using student testimony and actual facts to support why this policy matters. He reminded them not to bring their political agenda into the school system! Something they love to accuse others of, but apparently don’t see in themselves.

Afterwards, the adults on the board gave their comments. Colt Black chose to be sarcastic about his critics and then mad about the budget instead of taking any time to reflect on his behavior. Jaime Brennan wants to know why we can’t all just come together after all the hateful things she and Black have said. And Nancy Allen, who wasn’t going to speak and probably shouldn’t have, goes off on a rant about how poorly treated both she and Colt Black have been because of the horrible and hateful things they said! Can’t these people get a break and spew their hate without any repercussions?! Geeze!

Imagine that!

The other board members really stepped up to the plate and stood up for all of the students in our school system. Karen Yoho reminded us of the discussion in 2016 when Policy 443 came about. It was because of students! Mr. Rose threw some Southern shade Colt Black’s way and made it known that he would no longer tolerate any bashing of kids at board meetings. Board members Gallagher and Monier both voiced their support for policies for that protect kids. These are the people that make our board and our school system better.

What Black, Brennan, and Allen need to realize is that they are there for the kids, all of them. They and their followers can put forth all of the hyperbolic “the sky is falling” bullshit they want about what this policy “could” do, but the truth is they are wrong. There has not been a single incident of any of this propaganda happening in FCPS. Since this is an FCPS policy that only applies in FCPS, that is all that matters. If you cannot prove harm, then you don’t have a leg to stand on. What we do see over and over again is student after student testifying to how much this policy has helped them at school. That’s all that matters. Leave these kids alone, leave this policy alone, and let’s move on to more important issues.

Thank you to everyone who reminded your despondent Lady Yokels how we are going to survive this new fresh hell we find ourselves in. These kids and Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde have reminded us how to move on by standing up for what is morally right in this world:

We won’t let these people hurt the ones that we love.

Our In and Out List of 2024! We did our best!

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We’ve been doing this for almost a decade, and hands down this was the hardest one to assemble!

INOUT
DreadHope
Recognizing past patterns in elections and not ignoring them!Hoping that everything will just work itself out!
Teaching kids and adults how to spot fake news!Believing that people know how to sort through all the crap on the internet!
Not giving up!Burying our heads in the sand!
Finding better role models!Fanboying over oligarchs! 

Our Top 5 Posts of 2024! Let’s see if we can identify a pattern!

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We’ve been through a lot this year Yokels! But like the dumpster above we are going to have to find some way to plant a dumb little smile on our faces and solider on! You may see a pattern with our top five posts this year! Coming it at #5:

5. Let’s Armchair Quarterback Those Primary Election Results:

Let’s Armchair Quarterback the primary election results!

In this post we had a lot to celebrate, most especially that Dan Cox got knocked out in the primary! Towards the end we had a warning about the school board election results that was not heeded by enough folks!

4. A Yokel Stroll Down Memory Lane! Let’s Check in With That County Council.

A Yokel Stroll Down Memory Lane! Let’s check in with that County Council!

In the midst of the summer heat, we decided to go back to our roots and watch a county council meeting. We had pulled away from doing so after Kirby, Billy, and Tony (Maybe we should think twice before voting for people whose names end in Y- except you Jerry!) got sent back home! It wasn’t a pleasant experience, so we haven’t been back. Though recently we’ve been alerted to some of the Frederick City Council meetings and we may have to pay more attention to those as there is an election next year!

3. It’s Time to Get Real about the BOE Election!

It’s time to get real about the BOE election!

We tried folks! We tried!

2. Calling All Voters, And We Mean All, The BOE Primary is just around the Corner!

Calling all voters, and we mean all, the BOE primary is just around the corner.

See comments for #3.

  1. And for our number one spot, the man whose letter to editor about his loss to Jan spurred the creation of this blog, occupies our most read post of the year: Blaine Young Can’t Seem to Keep Himself Out of Trouble:
Blaine Young can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble….

We looked at West Virginia’s case search and his trial date is in 4 days:

Did you notice the theme? We need to do a better job of only supporting and promoting the exact number of candidates as there are open seats on the board of education. Some people are starting to get it:

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/frederick-county-dems-consider-limit-on-recommendations-for-school-board-race/article_d828c07c-85d7-581a-b3dd-0be0c5a6e7d8.html

So unless we want a Board of Education that will support Donald Trump’s agenda of destroying the public education system, we need to be sure everyone understands how these elections work!

We wish all of our readers a peaceful holiday week and as good a 2025 that we can muster through!

Fine! We will talk about the election!

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Keep repeating, “Everything is fine! Everything is fine!”

Usually we are quicker to the chase when it comes to talking about election results. However, we know that our faithful readers will give us some grace on this one.

There is a lot to celebrate in our fine state and county. After all, we overwhelmingly voted for Harris, Alsobrooks, and Delaney. So, at least in our little enclave of a state and county, we know that it’s not okay with a majority of us that a lying felonious charlatan fascist has control of the presidency. We also have a great mayor who has promised to stand up and protect our immigrant and LGBTQ+ neighbors against the tomfoolery that is sure to come our way:

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/politics_and_government/elections/oconnor-vows-to-protect-local-immigrants-resist-possible-trump-policies/article_521f90ab-3089-5380-9059-5eae1db47697.html

That’s something to be proud of, right?!

We’ve gotta hold on to what we can!

HOWEVER, we also need to talk about the Board of Education race. We tried to warn y’all about the danger of voting outside the Apple ballot and we are not above this:

Over and over again we tried to sound the alarm!

Exhibit A:

It’s time to get real about the BOE election!

Alas! Too many people did not listen and here’s what happened:

Sanity is in control of the board by one vote now! One vote! The lesson that has to be learned here is those of us who want a reasonable school board that isn’t full of book banners, homophobes, and history deniers need to consolidate around the exact number of seats that are open on the board! No more! We’ve had too many examples of this to not understand how it works by now!

If you need something to fight for, and ya’ll the local arena is where you can really make a difference, then make it paying attention to this board! Then, in two years time, make sure that you and everyone you know votes for the SAME people for whatever number of open seats there happens to be.

Let’s give you an example of what we are up against. If you take a look at the education section of Project 2025, you will see one of the proposals is to withhold school meals from schools who don’t fulfill their hateful agenda. Behold:

If this isn’t monstrous, then what is? Withholding food to kids is something dictators do! They also want to empower parents to sue school systems whenever they think any part of the curriculum goes against what the parents deem is against their rights. Can you imagine this? We know that the point of all of this is to undermine and break the public school system, so why are we allowing people onto the board that won’t fight against these policies? Why are we, as a county, not learning from past elections? Why? Why? Why?!!!

It’s time to lie down now.

We’ll all have to hope for the best the next time around. We need to recharge and then to continue fighting the good fight for the sake of our county and our kids. Hopefully, y’all are with us.

It’s not okay to vote for Larry Hogan! It really isn’t!

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Mittens is watching people!

We are taking a break from screaming at you about the school board race, to make sure that y’all know all about former Governor Larry Hogan! There’s been two times we’ve been on this man’s side.First of all, whenever he and Dan Cox went at it, no matter what the issue because Dan is always on the wrong side of everything forever, amen.

And secondly, at the beginning of the Covid-19 panic, when unlike other Republican governors, he was trying really hard to be a reasonable person.

But then it ended. Remember that first Fall back after the Covid closings when he said he guessed it was easier for local school boards to just stay closed? He created a culture in this state in which teachers and other school employees went from being the heroes of the pandemic to being viewed as selfish. In other words, he villainized them! What a way to just throw everyone under the bus instead of finding a way to work together! Such courage!

Speaking of education, don’t forget this!

If you haven’t read the Time Magazine article this week about all the big bucks he made for himself and his cronies while serving as governor, then you really need to take a few moments out of your day to do so!

https://time.com/7081664/exclusive-as-governor-larry-hogan-approved-millions-in-awards-to-his-firms-clients/

Here’s a sneak peek into that reporting:

Oversight of the competitive housing awards wasn’t Hogan’s only involvement in running housing policy. The governor personally voted on grants or loans to several of the same HOGAN-listed developers from his seat on the three-member Board of Public Works. From 2016 to 2017, he approved between $600,000 and $1.8 million in loans and grants to four different companies that were listed as clients of HOGAN: Pennrose Properties, Homes for America, Osprey Property Company and PIRHL. The votes authorized or funded improvements or new construction for scores of affordable housing units across the state. Says former Democratic Maryland Governor Parris Glendening: “This is clearly something that should be explained to the public.”

The only explanation he’s given so far has been just to deny it all!

If you missed this week’s debate against our preferred candidate, Angela Alsobrooks, then you really need to make the time to do so! We’ve never, ever seen someone get quite so eviscerated in such a short period of time!

If you would rather just watch some clips, the Wonkette also has a great breakdown!

https://www.wonkette.com/p/maryland-senate-hopeful-angela-alsobrooks?fbclid=IwY2xjawF3oZdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdo0fxImZh1rm3L7df-zjSBVFBZwsn6K4BbvsQpJvUWMXRvLE6znXiE-8A_aem_Ea4EC1bk5yQZdYMQNMRAOw

Some of our favorite bits are when he very poorly tries to defend his refusal to fund the Maryland abortion bill. (He was doing it for you ladies!) His refusal to answer the question over whether or not he would have voted for Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, instead choosing to launch into some fantasy world in which he lamented the politicalization of the court. But our absolute favorite part of the whole debate (and you can see this clip in the above mentioned Wonkette article), is when she took him to task for voting for a dead guy in the last three presidential elections. Alsobrooks said it was very instructive to see that he can’t make a tough decision when the chips are down! And you know what? She is 100% correct!

Dead guys don’t govern!

Let us also address that figurative and literal elephant in the room.

We’ll acknowledge you little fella!

If Larry Hogan gets into the Senate he has the potential to tilt the numbers in favor of the Republicans. Couple that with the very real possibility that Donald Trump could become President and that equals big trouble for this country. If Hogan cannot vote for a living person in a Presidential election, what makes you think he won’t go along with the other Republicans in the Senate? He can tout his so called “maverick” style from here to kingdom come, but being a U.S. Senator is a whole different animal from being the Governor of Maryland. Do you trust him to do the right thing? We sure don’t!