Joint Commission Assembly
Baltimore, Maryland
December 15, 2009
I want to thank Lt. Governor Brown for his kind words, his continuing leadership and efforts and partnership. I saw you on TV this morning, up there doing the BRAC announcement, about jobs, jobs, jobs. Some of you may remember our 10 Point Plan for Maryland three years ago -- I won’t ask you to recite all 10 points. In these times we now have three and I’d like you to sing it with me: jobs, jobs, jobs.
We have a lot of good jobs coming to Maryland, not only because of BRAC, but because of the imperative that we have as Marylanders; that central State, that middle State, to rise to the adversity before us, to harness that greatest of all strengths that we have, which is the strength of our diversity. And, really, square our shoulders to the big challenges facing our country and our planet, in terms of the security of our resources; land, air, water, food.
To unleash those “weapons of mass salvation” that make us a moral leader of this world, rather than simply a military or economic leader. (Applause.)
So I look around this room and I’m really inspired by all of you. I really consider it, as Anthony does, a great blessing and honor that I have the privilege to serve you and serve the people of our State, especially in these difficult times. Neither of us would trade places with any Governor or Lt. Governor in the country. And it’s because of you and what you bring to that most important of all titles in our Republic, and that is the title of citizen.
I also want to thank Jeanne Hitchcock, who does a terrific job answering all our calls, staying accessible, Appointments Secretary Jeanne Hitchcock. (Applause.)
The diversity that’s reflected in this room is a reflection of her hard work and that of Izzy Patoka and his team at the Governor’s Office of Community Initiatives. This office is actually becoming a national model, I’m told that state governments in North Carolina, in Indiana and in Michigan and Washington state have been looking at our office of Community Initiatives to help them figure out how to connect the various communities within their state to the common cause.
Frederick Douglass -- that great Marylander and early minority business developer -- and I can show you the houses right over there on Dallas Street -- he probably said it best when he said, in that timeless way, that “we are one, our cause is one and we must help each other if we are to succeed.”
There are very few more concise or eloquent summations of what it means to be an American e pluribus unum, of understanding that we are all indeed in this together.
So I want to thank you all for coming out today. I want to thank you for your hard work on behalf of our State.
I know you heard from Secretary Foster earlier today and she has been doing an outstanding job managing our budget challenges -- all challenges are opportunities, right? The Jesuits taught me at an early age Arnold Toynbee’s theory of the progress of man. Of course, what he meant at the time was men and women, individuals regardless of gender, and progress of all societies. So we progress as individuals and as a community in response to adversity.
My fellow Marylanders, if that’s true we’re in for a lot of progress in the years ahead. (Laughter and applause.)
We have been battling this economic downturn. And three of the last six months we actually saw positive job growth; November looks like another negative month. But that bumpy sort of, you know, big heavy bird of the economy looks like it’s starting to kind of jump a little bit and try to get off the ground. And hopefully it will get off the ground sooner, rather than later, here in Maryland.
It is so easy in times of scarcity, isn’t it, to turn on ourselves, whether that’s within a business, within a family, within a community. But you all have not allowed that to happen. And I want to thank you for being ambassadors to carry that nudge of reality.
One of the big myths that we still suffer from, after the last eight years of national non-leadership, is the notion that our government, that tool of ours, our common endeavor, is absolutely flush and rolling in cash and they’re just spending it in the wrong places.
We need to, of course, always recognize that we can be more efficient, more effective, but I want to thank you for being the ambassadors to carry the message that, you know what, we are all in this together. When we face these shortfalls, it’s not because we made the decision to put the dollars in the wrong places. In fact, I’ll argue that Marylanders understand better than most people where to put the dollars. We put them in the future of our children, the future of our workforce, and that’s why we have the number one public school system in the United States. (Applause.)
That sort of accomplishment is not the product of chance -- many other things are. I mean, we have the Bay, right? We’re located next to the Nation’s Capitol, but that was not the product of chance, that was the product of choice. Tough choices made even tougher in these difficult times.
But it is also that investment in the quality of our education, therefore, the quality of our workforce that has us better poised to come back and bounce back out of that recession. If we can hold onto the wheel here of the Good Ship Maryland and maintain fiscal responsibility.
Sometimes you hear people talking about the triple A bond rating. We are one of only seven states that still has a triple A bond rating in these difficult times. Without fiscal responsibility, we cannot make progress.
Stated another and more positive way, if we maintain fiscal responsibility in these difficult times we can not only continue to make progress, but we can actually rebound out of this downturn more quickly than others.
It’s those investments, that fiscal responsibility is also part of the reason why our unemployment rate is 28 percent less than the rest of the country, although not to sugar-coat things, it’s still higher here than it’s been in 28, 30 years, maybe higher than it’s been since the Great Depression.
So, you know, one of the words that I keep hearing and I think the call of our mission, and your mission, as ambassadors of Maryland progress and our oneness, one of the words I keep hearing all of the time is the word connections.
We realize probably more starkly and with more anxiety and, let’s admit it, occasional fear, we realize how very, very connected we are to this world of ours. Right?
We’re connected to global recessions, we’re connected to a global economy, we are connected to global warming. We’re connected to global pandemics and flu.
But the happy and positive and, I think, optimistic flip side of those connections is that we are better able to strengthen and forge connections among ourselves and our neighbors in this world, to the mutual benefit of all than we have ever been.
We have the ability -- not only through that more keen awareness that, I think frankly, the next generation holds in their hearts and heads more optimistically than sometimes we do -- to actually forge the connections that allow us to create a new era of not only greater opportunity, but greater sustainability, greater balance within this planet, both in terms of environmental justice and social justice.
There’s a great man named Paul Hawken, he’s written a book called Blessed Unrest. And, in fact, he’s doing continuing work with your Department of Natural Resources, bringing all of us together around this imperative of sustainability.
He wrote the best commencement exercise of the year, go Google it, Hawken, H A W K E N. He gave it at the University of Portland.
Part of what he said then I wanted to share with you. He said this, “humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, … No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection.”
It seeks connection.
All of us are here today because on some level we also seek connection. A deeper connection between our individual efforts and the lives of our communities. A stronger and more affirming connection between our government and the people who our government is supposed to serve.
A more effective and efficient connection between our goals and aspirations and the actions that we need to take on a daily basis in order to reach those goals and to deliver progress. And a government that works. A more meaningful connection between the choices of this generation and perhaps even the survival of future generations.
So we seek connections because we care about our State, yes, we care about our future, and we care also because we are one Maryland and we are a community, not a crowd. And in a community, we recognize that our diversity is our greatest strength and that there is no such thing in our State as a spare American.
Everyone is needed. I don’t know what the next chapter holds, but I do know this -- your Lt. Governor and Governor are not capable of writing it by ourselves. The Indian community is not capable of writing it by itself. The African American community is not capable of writing it by itself.
We are all in this together. And we need to write as if the future is watching and the future depends upon us.
We need to work together to advance the big connected goals to which we aspire. Some of them being creating, protecting and placing Marylanders in 250,000 jobs by 2012. Goals like becoming the first state in the nation to eradicate childhood hunger. It actually can be done.
And goals like reducing violent crime by 10 percent a year. This year, by the way, we are on track -- knock on wood -- because of the connections we forged with one-time very disparate public safety agencies and entities of local and State government. We’re actually on our way to achieving the lowest crime levels, violent crime levels, in our State since 1987.
Again, not the product of chance, not the product of the weather, it’s not because everybody is getting a job and therefore aren’t robbing people anymore. It’s because of the connections we’ve forged, choices we make, goals that flow for our connected priority of strengthening and growing the ranks of our middle class. A middle class that is ever more diverse and ever more upwardly mobile, so that we can meet the challenges of our day.
Thomas Aquinas once said that any seeker of a higher truth, or of God, must eventually and inevitably return to the idea of community.
And that’s what we’ve returned to today. And I’m really looking forward to hearing from all of you about your plans, about your goals, about your aspirations and your ambition to make us truly one.
Thanks very much. (Applause.)
