Commentary

Commentary Ocean City Today Mar. 18, 2022 Page 49 School funding protest pointless

Once again, Worcester County government finds itself in familiar territory: another budget season of more “want” than “have.” This time, the county’s departments and outside beneficiaries of its annual spending want about $11 million more than the county expects to receive in revenue.

At one time, this large variance between requests and the financial and political realities of budgeting might be looked on as disturbing. But not so much these days, as the commissioners have always worked it out, and fairly smoothly at that.

The one bump in the road this year, however, has nothing to do with the people, departments, organizations and local governments that have appealed to the county for money.

No, this time it is the state law that requires the county to maintain the same level of school funding, on a per-pupil basis, as it did the year before. It’s a fairly simple statute written decades ago to ensure that counties don’t balance their budgets or keep taxes low by cutting education spending.

It's called “Maintenance of Effort,” and it applies equally to every public school system in every jurisdiction in the state. That’s why the decision this week by a commissioner majority to hire lawyers to look into the fairness of Maintenance of Effort is pointless. Worcester challenged the law once before a decade or so ago, and that went nowhere, so there’s no reason to believe that this attempt will turn out any differently.

Commissioners Joe Mitrecic and Ted Elder said as much when they voted against the majority. Protesting this requirement might look good on paper — or in the paper, for that matter — but the reality is the county’s legal team would have to bring down the state’s entire school funding structure to accomplish anything.

Further, sympathy in Annapolis for Worcester’s financial circumstance is not exactly abundant, considering that this county has the state’s third lowest property tax rate and the lowest county income tax.

As flawed as the state’s school funding formula might be as it relates to the tiny share Worcester receives, the county can’t do much about it. And trying to get out of the Maintenance of Effort requirement, isn’t just impractical, it’s impossible.

Ocean City Today

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EDITOR ............................................ Stewart Dobson MANAGING EDITOR................................ Lisa Capitelli STAFF WRITERS .................. Greg Ellison, Greg Wehner, ..........................................Jack Chavez, Mallory Panuska ACCOUNT MANAGERS.......... Mary Cooper, Vicki Shrier ..............................................................Amanda Shick CLASSIFIEDS/LEGALS MANAGER .... Nancy MacCubbin SENIOR DESIGNER ................................ Susan Parks GRAPHIC ARTIST .................................... Kelly Brown PUBLISHER........................................ Christine Brown ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT ...................... Gini Tufts

PUBLIC EYE One tough decision

Sometimes, it’s just so difficult to decide what to write about when I have two compelling choices, and this is one of those weeks.

When faced with a pair of equally compelling stories, I’m forced to call on my understanding of the market and decades of editing and writing experience to make a selection, and even then I sometimes struggle. So, which of these two actual stories is best: Giant Spiders Invade East Coast or Nurses With Guns. The problem here is that both these stories sound like the main feature at the drivein movie circa 1960. “Coming Soon: Nurses With Guns! No More Hearts and Flowers For These Nightingales! It’s Guns and Glory! (see previews for how well the uniforms fit).”

I’m telling you, 13-year-old boys would have been all agog over that back in the day, as concern with plot, dialogue, cinematography and such didn’t rank that highly on their movie-ranking checklist.

“Wow! That movie was fantastic. This one nurse was really ...

“Yeah, well I thought the dialogue was a little stilted.”

Yeah, no, that’s not happening.

Now take our other possible B-movie feature: “Giant Spiders Invade.”

The thing about this entry is that giant spiders really are invading the East Coast, and my guess is the Syfy Channel already had a giant spider feature in the works, along with sequels: Giant Mutant Spiders Invade, MegaGiant Spiders Invade, Mecha-Giant Spiders, and Mecha-Spiders vs Mega-Spiders. All are thrilling, I am sure, especially if you’re just knocking off from a long day of sniffing gas tanks (note: don’t do that). As it happens, the giant spiders have arrived via shipping containers from Asia, where they enjoy a quiet and happy life of keeping the pet population in check. Just kidding. They don’t do that, because their fangs are so tiny they are harmless. Okay, maybe they’ll wrap up the occasional 13-year-old boy and put him in storage for later, but there are plenty of them. Just kidding again. They are harmless, really.

By Now, about those nurses with guns. This Stewart has been discussed for at least the past 10 years, and it’s come up again out in the MidDobson west courtesy of some wobble-wigged legislator who believes nothing says health care like a Glock 22 with a 15-round clip. Of course, there would be the occasional variation. “So, Mr. Jones, did we take our meds this morning? No? Well, Mr. Jones, do you see what I have strapped to my hip? Why yes, you are correct. That IS a .44 magnum Smith & Wesson, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off. You've got to ask yourself one question, Mr. Jones. Do you want to take your meds? Well, do ya?” Nevertheless, I’m still conflicted about picking just one of these incredibly attractive topics. I’ll wrestle with it a little more before making a decision, and hope that in the meantime I see a story about spiders with guns. Yeah, that’s it, spiders with guns running around in tight little uniforms. Oh, the possibilities.

Continued from Page 47

A woman who walked up told Dunford to be quiet because the officer was trying to help him, but instead, Dunford smacked the sergeant’s hands away and he was arrested.

Dunford resisted arrest, according to police, and it took “approximately four officers” to place him in handcuffs.

“Bro, you gotta let me go. I’ll get fired,” Dunford told police.

Drug possession

Franklin Benjamin Owens, 52, of Horntown, Virginia was arrested by Ocean City Police at approximately 5:45 p.m. last Friday near Third Street and St. Louis Avenue and charged with possession of drugs other than marijuana.

Police stopped Owens for several traffic violations and said he appeared to be under the influence of drugs.

Officers asked Owens if he had any drugs or weapons, court documents read, and he said no before consenting to a search.

According to the police report, the search resulted in officers finding a plastic baggie with white residue consistent with cocaine, a small off-white crystallized rock substance on the driver’s seat that appeared to be crack cocaine, and a clear glass pipe with

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Bar fight

Jaden Allen Brady, 21, of Williamsport, Maryland was arrested by Ocean City Police at approximately 10:45 p.m. last Friday near the south end of the Boardwalk and charged with first-degree assault and two counts of second-degree assault.

Police responded to reports of an assault with a beer bottle at a pub and saw another fight taking place on Talbot Street as they arrived. and a request for more officers was made.

At Talbot Street, officers spotted a man with a cut above his eye, wearing a green shirt that was covered in blood. Police said the man was trying to push his way to Brady, claiming he had struck him in the head.

Brady told police that when he was in the pub, the man attacked his mother, though he did not say how. In response to the attack on his mother, Brady said he punched the man.

When pressed by officers to remember how he hit the man, Brady said he could not and that he “sort of blacked out.”

The girlfriend of the man who was assaulted was also interviewed by police, and she said the cut on her boyfriend’s head resulted from Brady hitting him on the noggin with a beer bottle.

Burglary

Harold Ralph Snead, 37, of an unknown location was arrested by Ocean City Police at approximately 12:45 a.m. on Wednesday March 9 near Second Street and charged with third-degree burglary, two counts of fourth-degree burglary, and destruction of property.

According to court documents, police were on patrol near Second Street when they heard glass shattering. As police searched the area they were alerted to a hallway motion detector and front door motion detector set off at a nearby hotel.

The front entrance of the hotel was unlocked, and broken glass was spotted on the north side of the building.

Police setup a perimeter around the building and said when Snead walked by they saw had fresh blood on his arms and legs. Officers told Snead to stop, but instead he ran and was detained a short time later, according to court documents.

Police said he told officers he was an addict and had been released from jail earlier that day. Despite asking to be held longer and taken to a rehabilitation facility, Snead said in the report, the judge ordered his release.

Snead admitted to police that he burglarized the hotel, but it was to get their attention and get the medical attention he needed. He was taken to Atlantic General Hospital for further evaluation.

America targets Japanese with concentration camps

By Peter Ayers Wimbrow III Contributing Writer (March 18, 2022) This week 80 years ago, Congress enacted legislation that made, " . . . it a misdemeanor knowingly to disregard restrictions made applicable by a military commander to persons in a military area prescribed by him as such, all as authorized by an Executive Order of the President." In testimony before Congress, in support of the legislation, Gen. John L. DeWitt, Military Commander of the Western Defense Command, said, "I don’t want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty . . . it makes no difference whether he is an American citizen. He is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty . . .. But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map." (Emphasis supplied)

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi had crashlanded his Zero on a small island named Ni’ihau in the Hawaiian Islands chain. Since the Native Hawaiians living on the small island could not understand the Japanese pilot, they sent for their neighbor Ishimatsu Shintani, who had been born in Japan but was married to a native Hawaiian, to translate.

At the time, the Hawaiians did not know that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. When the two Japanese spoke in their native tongue, Mr. Shintani realized there could be a big problem and quickly left.

The Hawaiians — still in the dark — did not understand and sent for Mr. and Mrs. Yoshio Harada, who, although born in Hawaii, were of Japanese ancestry and also spoke Japanese. The first Hawaiian on the scene, Hawila Kaleohano, had retrieved the pilot’s papers, which being in Japanese, were indecipherable to him.

The pilot desperately wanted to retrieve them, but Mr. Kaleohano would not release them. Ultimately, the Hawaiians learned of the attack and kept the pilot under guard. It was at that point that Mr. and Mrs. Harada lost their minds and attempted to free the pilot, attacking and overpowering the lone guard who had been posted outside of their residence.

They then proceeded to Mr. Kaleohano’s house to retrieve the documents. The upshot was that the escape attempt failed, the pilot was killed and another Hawaiian — Bene Kanahele — seriously wounded. But there it was — Americans of Japanese heritage had turned on their country and assisted the enemy, which had just completed its, "...unprovoked and dastardly attack..." on the United States of America.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, on Feb. 19, 1942, which authorized military commanders to designate "military areas" at their discretion, "...from which any or all persons may be excluded."

Executive Order 9066 had come at the insistences of Gen. DeWitt and California Attorney General Earl Warren, who would later be elected governor of that state, and later still appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Gen. DeWitt had reported to the president that, although no acts of sabotage — or terrorism as it would now be called — by Japanese-Americans had been confirmed, this only proved, "... a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." (Emphasis supplied) As a result of the order, ultimately, all Japanese and Japanese-Americans were removed from the coastal areas of California, Oregon and Washington, and placed in internment camps.

On March 24, 1942, Gen. DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 3, which declared an 8 p.m. - 6 a.m. curfew for, "...all enemy aliens and all persons of Japanese ancestry," within the military areas. Both Gordon Hirabayashi and Lt. Minoru Yasui were charged with violating that curfew. Mr. Hirabayashi was also charged with failing, " . . . to report to the Civil Control Station on May 11 or May 12, 1942, as directed, to register for evacuation from the military area."

On May 3, 1942, Gen. DeWitt had issued Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34, ordering all people of Japanese ancestry, whether citizens or non-citizens, to report to assembly centers for transport to the camps. Mr. Hirabayashi was convicted on both counts and received a sentence of three months for each count, the sentences to run concurrently.

Both Mr. Hirabayashi and Lt. Yasui were citizens of this country, born in this country, of Japanese parents. Mr. Hirabayashi was born in Seattle in 1918, had never been to Japan and, " . . . was educated in the Washington public schools and, at the time of his arrest, was a senior at the University of Washington . . ."

Lt.. Yasui was born in Oregon in 1916, " . . . attended the public schools . . ., attended the University of Oregon, from which he received A.B. and L.L.B. Degrees; ... was a member of the Bar of Oregon, and a second lieutenant in the Army of the United Continued on Page 51

Continued from Page 50 States, Infantry Reserve; ... had been employed by the Japanese Consulate in Chicago, but had resigned on Dec. 8, 1941, and immediately offered his services to the [U.S.] military authorities . . ." Instead of accepting his offer of service to his country, Lt. Yasui was sentenced to one year in prison.

The Supreme Court of the United States issued opinions in the two cases — Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 84, 92 (1943) and Yasui v. United States, 320 U.S. 115, 116, 117 (1943). Mr. Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone authored both for a unanimous court, although there were three short concurring opinions in Hirabayashi.

The Hirabayashi court based its decision on the government’s power to wage war, saying that the Congressional Act and the Executive Orders, " . . . were each an exercise of the power to wage war conferred on the Congress and on the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, by Articles I and II of the Constitution."

The holding and language of Hirabayashi would go on to form part of the foundation of the Bush-era philosophy — Government can do whatever it wants, including torture, extrajudicial imprisonment and assassination, during a time of war, and the protection of the country overrules any individual constitutional protections.

Mr. Justice Robert Jackson, in his dissenting opinion, in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 243, 246 (1944), warned that when the courts pervert the constitution to sustain such an infringement on an innocent citizen’s liberties, then the principle has been validated, "...for all time..." and awaits, "...the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need." (Emphasis supplied.) Interestingly, Mr. Korematsu filed amicus curiae briefs in Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466(2004) and Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426(2004), which challenged the illegal detentions in the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, Cuba.

Charles Fahy was solicitor-general and argued the cases before the Supreme Court. It was later determined that he, intentionally, withheld the findings of the Office of Naval Intelligence, which would have undermined the government’s case, because that office found that most Japanese-Americans were not an actual security threat and that the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission had found that the allegations of communication espionage were "without merit." The Acting Solicitor-General, Neal Katyal, conceded his office’s "ethical lapse" on May 24, 2011.

Between 110,000 - 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes, jobs, and businesses, and sent to the "relocation centers." At least two-thirds of those people were United States citizens. Many of the remaining had been prevented from obtaining citizenship because of laws that blocked Asian-born nationals from applying.

And although one would think that the United States had enough problems feeding and housing 110,000 people, most of whom were citizens, and most of the rest wanting to be, it imported people of Japanese heritage from Latin American countries to incarcerate! But the government drew the line at incarcerating the 150,000 citizens of Japanese heritage living in the Hawaiian Islands. That was just too many!

In Korematsu and Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 383, 294, 304 (1944), the Supreme Court, on Dec. 18, 1944, issued two more opinions addressing this sad state of affairs. In an opinion by Mr. Justice Hugo Black, the Korematsu Court, using tortured logic, upheld the constitutionality of the executive orders and the congressional act and affirmed Mr. Korematsu’s conviction for failing to leave an "Excluded Area."

Although the court was beginning to be troubled by this situation, the majority felt constrained by the previous opinions in Hirabayashi and Yasui. Even so, for the first time, there were dissents. In addition to Justice Jackson, Justices Owen J. Roberts and Frank Murphy dissented, and Mr. Justice Felix Frankfurter concurred.

In the Endo case, Mitsuye Endo had filed a petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, alleging that she was being held illegally in the, euphemistically titled, Tule Lake War Relocation Center. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California denied her requested relief and she appealed.

The high court reversed and ordered the petition be granted and further, that, "Mitsuye Endo is entitled to an unconditional release by the War Relocation Authority." The government had conceded, "... that appellant is a loyal and law-abiding citizen,...[and]...that she [was] not even suspected of disloyalty."

The Court, citing Congress’ intent to prevent sabotage and espionage, held that, "A citizen who is concededly loyal presents no problem of espionage and sabotage," and could not, therefore, be detained under that act.

Mr. Justice Murphy’s dissent recognized the racial motivation for the orders, laws and court opinions. He decried, "...the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups..." The justice noted that, "All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land." When Mr. Justice Murphy described the government’s action as falling, "...into the ugly abyss of racism...," it was the first instance in which that term had been used.

Decades later, the convictions of Messers Hirabayashi, Korematsu and Lt. Yasui were vacated. President Gerald Ford rescinded Executive Order No. 9066 on Feb. 19, 1976. The following year, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating the Commission on War Time Relocation and Interment of Civilians, which commission was to study Executive Order No. 9066.

It found that, "...Executive Order 9066 was not justified by military necessity...," and that the governmental actions were based on, " . . . race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." The commission recommended an official governmental apology and restitution of $20,000 to each of the survivors.

Photo of camp life

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On Aug. 10, 1988, a law adopting those recommendations was signed by President Ronald Reagan. President George H. W. Bush signed an appropriation bill authorizing those payments on Nov. 21, 1989. Each of the surviving internees received payments of $20,000 and a letter of apology.

Next week: Demyansk

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own. He can be contacted at wimbrowlaw@gmail.com.