QUOTE OF THE
WEEK: “Whatever you
think of the security fence, one thing is for sure, it has prevented suicide
bombers. Lives have been saved.”
– Mayor Martin O’Malley, writing from Israel
Friday Footnote #11 … January 14, 2005
A
publication of The Baltimore Jewish Council.
5750 Park Heights Avenue. Baltimore MD 21215.
Phone:
(410) 542-4850.
Contents
1. Legislative
update
2. Mayor
O’Malley’s Israel trip
3. Worth a read
4. In Conclusion: Heschel and King
…And click here for our archive of
previous Friday Footnotes.
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W |
elcome, friends, to another edition of the Friday Footnote, a
weekly letter about Maryland politics and the Jewish community.
Despite all that has been happening in Annapolis and in
Israel, our thoughts remain with the victims of the tsunami disaster, and the
thousands of heroic rescue and relief workers who are battling to save
lives. With the passage this week of a
law in Congress, donations made by the end of January to tsunami relief efforts
remain tax deductible for 2004. As a reminder,
The Associated is collecting funds to support these efforts. Go to their website, at www.associated.org, or send a check
directly to:
Tsunami Relief Fund
THE ASSOCIATED
101 W. Mt. Royal Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21201
Attn: Amy Silberman
As always, I hope you and your family have a pleasant and
peaceful Shabbat.
- David
Don’t
forget to sign up for: “Hands-on
Israel Advocacy Training, The Five Rules of Israel Advocacy: A Hands-On Israel
Advocacy Seminar About Survival, Terror and Diplomacy,” presented by the
Baltimore Jewish Council and The Associated. The seminar is on January 25 at
7:00 p.m. at the Park Heights JCC, and features Neil Lazarus,
internationally acclaimed expert in the field of Middle East, Israel advocacy
and effective communication training. Please contact Lynn Katzen for more information.
Legislative update
Knowing my readership, I’m sure you are all aware of the
outcome of Tuesday’s conclusion to last month’s special session of the General
Assembly. Legislators convened this
week solely to consider whether to override various bills that were vetoed by
Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. In all, six
vetoes were overridden, including the now-controversial medical malpractice
legislation which, among other things, will cap physicians’ malpractice
insurance rate increases through a fund paid for by instituting a 2% premium
tax on HMOs. That fund will also pay
for increased Medicaid reimbursements for specialty physicians.
Also overridden was Senate Bill 819,
sponsored by Sen. Paula Hollinger, which sets the parameters for a pilot
program to deliver long-term care to low-income seniors and others in home- and
community-based settings. The legislature
sustained the Governor’s vetoes on bills to require state contractors to pay a “living wage” to
employees, and a bill to cap public college
tuition increases by adding a 10% surcharge to corporate income taxes.
The newspapers reported the long delay by the House of
Delegates to take those votes on Tuesday. They were waiting for Del. Sandy
Rosenberg, who was doing his best to overcome flight delays and other travel
woes to return from Israel, where he had rendezvous’d with Mayor Martin
O’Malley during his first-ever Israel trip, along with leaders from the
Associated and BJC.
The next day, Wednesday, was the start of the 2005 regular
General Assembly session, traditionally a festive and ceremonial day of
reunions and receptions. There were
ceremonies and receptions, but the mood was far from festive, and many of the
players had already spent just about as much time with each other over the
previous few weeks as they’d like, thank you very much. It was a subdued start to what promises to
be a very tense and contentious session.
We look forward, however, to working on a variety of
important issues on behalf of the Jewish agencies and communities throughout
Maryland. We are hopeful that a bill
codifying the right to do stem cell research in Maryland – but not human
cloning – and designating some funding for this research will pass this
year. Sen. Paula Hollinger and Del. Rosenberg
will be the lead Senate and House sponsors of the bill.
At a meeting yesterday of the Maryland Interfaith
Legislative Committee, we heard a briefing from Glenn Schneider, of the Maryland Citizens Health Initiative,
which has been working to address the problem of more than 700,000 Marylanders
who lack insurance. Glenn predicted
that, despite the acrimony, there is a strong desire among House and Senate
leadership to pass a major health care reform bill this year. We’ll keep you posted on the outlines of the
plans that emerge over the next three months.
The Montgomery
Gazette reports that even some large employers, such as Giant Food, are
backing the idea of enhanced revenues to pay for health coverage for the
uninsured.
I encourage you to track this and other legislation being
sponsored in Annapolis. Go to the
General Assembly’s website, at http://mlis.state.md.us,
and click on “Bill Information and
Status.” From there, you can type in the number of any bill you’re interested
in and get all the information you need. Or, you can go directly to these
synopses of all the House and Senate bills
submitted today.
Finally, please be on the lookout for the invitation and
registration form for our Maryland Jewish Alliance Advocacy Day in
Annapolis, on Monday March 7 at 6:30 p.m.
You’ll find the registration
form here, but I’ll also send you a notice soon.
Mayor O’Malley’s Israel trip
Congratulations and mazel tov to Mayor Martin O'Malley and his
wife, Judge Katie O'Malley, for their safe return today from their first trip
to Israel. They were accompanied by Associated,
Baltimore Jewish Council and other Jewish community leaders for a trip whose
primary focus was information exchanges on homeland security best practices.
You can read a thorough and at times very personal account of the trip in dispatches the Mayor sent to the Baltimore Jewish Times, starting with this first installment. The Jewish Times also wrote this account of the trip. And the Baltimore Sun weighed in with this story on Wednesday.
Worth a read
The Sun has launched a new section on local politics. State House reporters Andrew Green and David Nitkin agree: Session gets off to testy start. And the paper reports this morning on the results of a new poll on the 2006 Gubernatorial election (only 20 months and counting!).
The Post has a slightly different take on
the first day of the legislative session: “Ehrlich
and Democrats Strike Conciliatory Note,” writes Matthew Mosk and John
Wagner. And here’s that other
newspaper’s special
section on Maryland government.
The Gazette writes about one of Governor Ehrlich’s legislative priorities for this session: he wants to make teen drivers safer by giving them more time to learn to drive and tightening penalties on young drivers who drive irresponsibly.
And Gazette
columnist Barry Rascovar offers this
interesting analysis of how University of Maryland System Chancellor
William “Brit” Kirwan navigated the political waters swirling around the
college tuition legislation.
In Conclusion: Heschel and King
On Monday we honor the birthday of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
whose “I Have a Dream”
speech has lost none of its power since he delivered it 42 years ago. Let’s
also remember the most prominent Jewish theologian who walked with Dr. King in
his civil rights struggles, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Rabbi Harold Schulweis offers this description of Rabbi Heschel:
“Heschel, a Polish immigrant, scion of a long line of Chasidic rabbis, Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and King, an American descendant of slaves, a compassionate protector of the oppressed, charismatic orator, writer and theologian, marched side-by- side from Selma to Montgomery to protest the pernicious racism that poisoned America and humiliated its African-American citizens. A host of white citizens, filled with venomous hate, surrounded the marchers, jeered and spat upon them. But as Heschel declared later: ‘When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying.’ It is important not only to protest against evil but to be seen protesting. Faith in the goodness and oneness of God is powerfully expressed through the language of feet, hands, and spine.”
Rabbi Heschel said this about Dr. King after his assassination in 1968:
“Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. God has sent him to us...his mission is sacred...I call upon every Jew to hearken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow in his way.”