Where are they investing? Are they in Oil-energy stocks with prices at an all-time high and headed higher?

Local governments investing in oil and energy commodities is exactly what is driving the insane price of oil right now.

Various State and local governments nationwide were grossly overexposed in the SIV ("special investment vehicles", also known as "mortgage tranches") market and took a massive bath. How to try to salvage their losses? Dive right into commodities like everyone else was doing. The price of oil has been artificially "commoditized" at about 200 percent of actual value. It costs the Saudis about $2.50 per barrel to get it out of their wells and onto a ship headed for US refineries. Everything else between shipment and delivery at market prices is solely the result of speculation.

Of course, with prices like these, and considering the prices they bought at, the local government actually are praying that the prices only get higher. Of course, that will entirely crush the US economy and they'll have even less of a taxable base, but we're talking about bean counters, here, not rocket scientists or actual economists.

This sort of stupidity is why Western Civilization is on the skids and headed straight for disaster.

Meantime, Montgomery County is trying to figure out how to scrap essential services by the bucket load, so they can continue to pander to illegal aliens. It looks like they're going to cut police patrols in half so that they can save fuel costs in order to built even more trailer-classrooms to provide schools for all of the illegal aliens migrating out of Prince William County Virginia.

Prince William budget: looking better all the time. MoCo budget? It's all about the aliens and how to make the citizens move to Prince William.

Silver Spring, MD - This month, County Executive Leggett will release his budget. His budget will exceed the charter limit on property tax collection. He needs another reliable tax-and-spend vote to override the charter property tax limit - Don Praisner. Leggett knows that a November, 2008 ballot question requiring nine votes to exceed the charter property tax limit is likely to pass. Leggett knows that Praisner will be one of his nine votes and that Mark D. Fennel will not. Leggett was wrong when he endorsed Congressman Al Wynn (D-MD), and tried to dictate Gaithersburg City council choices. He's wrong again with his Don Praisner choice.

Mark D. Fennel stated, "We do not need another member of the county council who will vote to override the charter property tax limit as the council did for three consecutive years (FY03-FY05). We do not need another member of the county council to vote for an over-the-top 13% election-year budget increase with a financial crisis looming on the horizon as the council did for FY07. We do not need another member of the county council to vote for a 20% increase in the county income tax as Leggett did in the early 1990's."

Mark D. Fennel has pledged not to exceed the charter amendment limiting property tax collection to the value of inflation and new construction stating, "It was put in place to protect families from unfair taxation. Surpassing the charter limit would hit minorities hardest, accelerate foreclosures, further erode the struggling middle class, and drive more residents out of the county thus shrinking our tax base."

A vote for Mark D. Fennel is a vote for change. Mark D. Fennel is a candidate of the future, not a candidate of failed Montgomery County policies of the past.

VOTE FENNEL FOR COUNTY COUNCIL! -- ELECTION APRIL 15