Commentary

With the holiday season upon us, I want to remind Marylanders that shopping locally is the best way to support our hometown communities and local entrepreneurs. Ever since taking office, I’ve encouraged you to put your local dollars back into local pockets. As my fourth and final term as Comptroller comes to an end, I’m sticking with that message and urging everyone to take part in our annual Shop Maryland and Save for the Holidays campaign. This past year has seen families grapple with many financial challenges, like high gas prices and record inflation levels eating into budgets. The country is still recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and experiencing supply chain problems.

Seven months ago, with the first rumblings that Elon Musk might buy Twitter, I made the decision to pull back from the site and use it only to alert people to things like the publication of my column or my television appearances. I stopped checking every day. I stopped publishing original thoughts there. I stopped responding to other accounts. Twitter went from an integral part of my life to a tool I hardly used. Now that Twitter is teetering, it seems worthwhile to let my readers know what the experience of walking away has been like. Cutting back on Twitter changed my life … for the better.

Hunger is often likened to a wolf at the door — ravenous, dangerous and ever-present. Such a foe can be held at bay for a short periods but often not for long. People who woke up today without the benefit of stocked holiday cupboards, who do not have refrigerators brimming with the makings of Thanksgiving dinner from ready-to-roast turkeys with giblet gravy to green bean casserole, who lack even a few dollars in their pocket to buy enough to tide them over know the wolf lies in waiting. In the field of public health, this is described more exactly as “food insecurity” or the lack of access to a sufficient quantity of affordable nutrition. In Maryland, a state of 6 million people, it is estimated that one out of three people, or 2 million total, qualify as food insecure.

After essentially a year and a half of being online, school has changed. Maryland students returned to in-person school with gaps in their learning and effects on their behavior. And when things change, it’s tempting to cling more tightly to the strategies that we used before, to double down on what used to work. But it is an unfortunate truth that being tough with school discipline without addressing the root issues that lead to student misbehavior won’t fix anything.

Early in my life, I saw first-hand the terrible impact sickle cell disease had on my loved ones. This disease causes chronic, severe pain and lowers life expectancy by up to three decades. Those with it also very often suffer from vision problems, a high risk of stroke, kidney disease, frequent infections, and anemia. Today there are too few treatments for sickle cell, but new gene therapies in clinical trials offer the promise of a cure someday soon.

We justifiably remark about the advancement that Black Marylanders have made in the political arena, most recently with the election of Wes Moore, a Black man, as governor. But like the Sankofa that looks backward as its feet point forward, I draw from the past to guide my enthusiasm and my expectations.