Government

Scheduled meetings this week of the Washington County Commissioners, Washington County Board of Education, and Hagerstown Mayor and Council: WASHINGTON COUNTY COMMISSIONERS County Administration Building 100 W. Washington St., Hagerstown Tuesday, Dec. 11, 1 p.m. Agenda • 7:30 a.m.: Pre-legislative forum and breakfast with the Washington County Delegation at Hager Hall Conference and Event Center, 901...

Tanner C. Beal of Hagerstown was one of four Saint Vincent College students who were named officers of the Student Government Association Executive Board for 2013. Beal was named vice president. Beal, a 2010 graduate of Saint Maria Goretti High School in Hagerstown, is the son of Karen Divelbiss of Hagerstown and Christopher Beal of Kill Devil Hills, N.C. Beal is a junior criminology, law and society major with a minor in Spanish. He has served as vice president of the Student Government Association Executive Board, a member and captain of the varsity swimming team, a swimming representative member of the student athlete advisory council, activities programming board team leader, member of the orientation committee, member and vice president of the criminology club, member and treasurer of the Active Minds Club, member and secretary of the pre-law society, and a four-semester member of the dean's list and the Presidents' Athletic Conference honor roll.

A multiuse sports and events center may not happen after all, and for people like Hagerstown resident Pat Matter, the blame should go in one direction: City Government. “Everybody thought the anonymous donor would come up with the money, but they can't make up their mind,” she said. “One says yes, then one says no; they want to put it one place, then they want to put it somewhere else. It's an odd situation.” Matter, 71, said she would be fine with the downtown stadium “if they had places to park.” Hagerstown City Councilman Lewis C. Metzner said Wednesday that the $15 million from an anonymous donor that could go toward the $37 million multiuse stadium may not happen, reducing the chances for a downtown stadium, where the Hagerstown Suns would play baseball.

Ethics is a neat little word. Do you know what it means? Simply said, “it's a system of moral principles;” those rules of conduct in respect to a particular class of human actions, or a particular group or culture. After attending several seminars and a class or two in college on the subject of “ethics,” I always thought it was just doing the right thing when no one was looking. As I watched news events unfold a few weeks ago, there was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. David Petraeus, in the headlines.

In his acceptance speech for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination, Walter Mondale made a bold promise: He would raise Americans' taxes and cut the federal deficit. His justification: “These deficits hike interest rates, clobber exports, stunt investment, kill jobs, undermine growth, cheat our kids and shrink our future.” That year, the deficit was $185.4 billion  and the national debt was $1.57 trillion - quaint numbers compared to today's $1.1 trillion  and $16.2 trillion.

From the book “Winter of the World” by Ken Follett, speaking of the ambivalence and apathy of many pre- and post-WWII Germans, Follett writes: “… those inadequate people who were so scared by life that they preferred to live under harsh authority, to be told what to do and what to think by a government that allowed no dissent.  They were foolish and dangerous, but there were an awful lot of them”. To compare Nazi Germany and Communist-controlled East Germany with America today is not altogether farfetched; certainly our government is not “harsh” in terms of the enforcement of laws.