“We don’t have the money,” according to MoCo Exec Marc Elrich and Council President Natali Fani-González. They promise us they will talk about how to get more money, and they do not rule out increasing our taxes. In fact they warn us to expect taxes to be increased. Targeted tax increases. We all know who…
Maps of the Middle East before World War I approximate an area called Palestine bisected by the Jordan River. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica describes a Western Palestine and an Eastern Palestine. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine Today, Western Palestine is the…
In his 1789 work An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham gives a definition for ethical behavior. Ethics at large may be defined as the art of directing men’s actions to the production of the greatest possible quantity of happiness for those whose interests are in view. Bentham’s thinking later became…
In 2003, Vladimir Putin ordered the arrest of Russia’s wealthiest citizen Mikhail Khodorkovsky. During the preceding decade, the oligarch had challenged Putin’s increasingly centralized authority. Those challenges included funding opposition political parties. The charges against Khodorkovsky included fraud, tax evasion, and embezzlement. There is strong evidence that these charges were synthetic. After his conviction, Khodorkovsky’s…
Amy Ming walks into my vegetable store and wants to buy a few tomatoes. I ask her a few harmless demographic questions such as address, race, income, net worth, marital status, pronouns, gender identification, party registration, and positions on LGBT/Trump/DEI. (You know, the standard stuff we all have to disclose.) She provides all the answers…
There’s a knock at your door. You open the door. A former bouncer at the 9:30 Club announces, “Mr. Gonzales of Aspen Hill never received his delivery of an Omega Speedmaster co-axial automatic men’s chronograph watch, so you are paying for the replacement.” The man then enters your premises and confiscates your Tesla charging station,…
TLDR: Send a message to Wes Moore expressing support for the ECCA. The recent One Big Beautiful Bill Act has a few provisions that are transformative (some less so), and one of them is the associated Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA). This act provides a tax credit for private school tuition. Nothing in the…
A parent wrote in expressing concern about the tone of a lesson in Sandy Young’s AP US History class at Churchill High School. The student did not feel comfortable during the lesson which included an apparent negative juxtaposition between President Trump/MAGA and Governor Moore. (The lead image above is from the lesson presentation.) You can…
In his 2023 piece Reforming our school budgets, county executive candidate Evan Glass emphasizes the importance of funding and reducing classroom size as a primary pathway to improved school performance. As I talk with parents, educators and residents, there is common agreement on the need to ensure that the money we allocate to Montgomery County…
In Part 1 of this series we suggested that County Executive candidate Evan Glass bolster his demands for transparency by disclosing those MCPS union members and administrators involved in the Beidelman cover-up. In this post we look at Mr. Glass’s voting record on the MCPS budget. Mr. Glass made an emphatic case for transparency in…