Commentary

Many Montgomery County residents pride themselves on living in a progressive place. Our county government has a Climate Action Plan that promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2027 and 100 percent by 2035. Looking around at the ever-bigger SUVs that dominate the roads, you’d think this seems an implausible goal. Because transportation is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in this country, you’d imagine Montgomery County must be engaged in a massive effort to encourage walking and biking for transportation. And in another ambitious initiative, the county government has promised zero pedestrian and biker fatalities by the end of 2030. But if anything, we seem to be going backward.

The last Republican state comptroller in Maryland was one Phillips Lee Goldsborough, who served from 1898 to 1900, when William McKinley was president of the United States. So the odds definitely favor Brooke Lierman (D), the Baltimore City delegate, in the general election for comptroller this fall. Not only does Lierman have history and party registration on her side, but she’s an indefatigable campaigner brimming with ideas for the office, who is poised to make history as the first woman elected independently to a statewide position in Maryland government. That fact alone gets a lot of people excited. Lierman’s Republican opponent, Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, is the most solid and qualified GOP nominee in several generations.

Speaking at Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty initiative in Rome, Justice Samuel Alito, the author of Dobbs v. Jackson, used the event to attack foreign leaders who criticized his decision. He did so by mocking them and cracking jokes. Specifically, he said he had the honor of writing a decision that had been lambasted by “a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law…”  He then cracked, “one of these was former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but he paid the price,” referencing Johnson’s resignation.

Most Anne Arundel County residents likely aren’t old enough to recall the late Joseph W. Alton Jr. who served as county executive, the subdivision’s first, beginning in 1965. In the early 1970s, he was caught up in the federal investigation of public corruption that also targeted Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and Baltimore County Executive Dale Anderson, all of whom made it a habit to take money from those who did business with government.

The proliferation of lying in the body politic and certain news media has reached proportions so great that America finds itself on the brink of a revolution that threatens our entire system of government. The weaponization of fact-free speech should be criminalized and offenders penalized by either removing the bully pulpit from which they perpetuate their lies or by streamlining legal channels by which the target of such attacks can extract monetary damages more easily.

Last week’s column detailed the many disastrous consequences of warming temperatures linked to the discharge of millions of tons of greenhouse gases by human activities. Since that column, Kentucky floods have led to 37 deaths, 100 people missing, 1,300 emergency evacuees, and thousands of homes destroyed by water sweeping away entire houses. So, how should we respond as caring citizens since global warming is caused primarily by our production and burning of fossil fuels. Fortunately, most actions we can take involve conservation that can save us money while saving the planet.

It is no exaggeration to say that at this moment, education across the nation is in crisis. COVID-19 has further exposed the huge deficiencies and inequities in America’s K–12 education. Widespread teacher shortages, falling enrollments, learning losses in core curriculum areas and mental health challenges have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Baltimore, like all of the nation’s great cities, must face the challenge of re-imagining schooling now and into the future.