Commentary

The Baltimore Banner has been reporting on how, right now, in Maryland, children in the state’s care are living in hotel rooms and office buildings. We’re told the problem is a “shortfall of placement options” and the fact that group homes have closed. But this framing ignores the actual problem: Maryland doesn’t have too few foster homes, Maryland has too many foster children. We should be horrified not simply by where children are being housed, but also because they are being unnecessarily removed from their families in the first place. At a fundamental level, the overwhelming majority of cases are nothing like the horror stories in the news. In Maryland, over 62% of the children in the foster system are there due to neglect. 

Hydrocephalus occurs when excess cerebrospinal fluid accumulates in cavities of the brain. The only known treatment is brain surgery, which often involves implanting a device called a shunt in the head to drain the excess fluid. Unfortunately, shunts are prone to failure over time, thereby requiring surgical replacements. According to the Hydrocephalus Association, over 36,000 shunt surgeries are performed each year, averaging to one every fifteen minutes and making it the most common reason for brain surgery in children.

That is the number of adult Marylanders who the National Student Clearinghouse reports as having “some college, no credential” and who are not currently enrolled. 613,000 is a staggering number – representing 13 percent of all Maryland adults — but one that also represents a significant opportunity for our state, and especially for those Marylanders who began their postsecondary journeys but never completed them. Aside from the lost economic benefits that having a postsecondary credential affords the graduate (estimated, on average, to be worth $1 million), businesses in Maryland increasingly rely on talent who possess some form of education beyond high school.

September in Ocean City can be a glorious time. The weather is mild, the beach less crowded, and, this year, business owners have the added joy of taking stock of a successful summer season despite the ongoing pandemic (note to Joe: We’re still in it). OC even has a new tagline from their hired influencers on social media: “Enjoy Fall,” which has officially replaced “Enjoy Summer.” September is also apparently a good time to talk about bicycles on the Ocean City Boardwalk, portions of which crews are even now redecking. It’s a longtime transportation issue with a distinctly 21st century twist: Should electric bikes, more commonly known as “e-bikes” be permitted on the boardwalk wherever standard bicycles are allowed?

Marketing – we encounter it every day and everywhere it seems. Yet, when developing marketing for our own businesses, knowing what to say and how to say it eludes us. Often tactics come first, like creating a website, social media posts, blogging, and vlogging. But focusing on tactics before developing marketing strategies dilutes the message and misses the targeted customer – your buyer. One of the most successful strategies begins with embracing your “WHY.”

For a quarter-century, it appeared the law was settled: Silicon Valley’s internet platforms were private companies, full stop, with absolute control over what content to promote or suppress. As the platforms tightened political control over user speech in recent years, conservatives complained about “Big Tech Censorship,” but legal experts scoffed. Scoffing will no longer suffice. Supposedly settled law can be altered when its political foundation erodes. Liberals now take a dimmer view of free speech than they did at the dawn of the tech era, while conservatives take a dimmer view of corporate power. That has created an opening for a frontal assault on the rules that govern America’s digital public square. Now the Supreme Court is being asked to weigh in.

The late William Donald Schaefer was a controversial four-term mayor (and later two-term governor). Unabashedly pro-business, but socially progressive, he could be mercurial, stubborn and even childish. But one thing he had an absolute genius for was in pushing, scolding, embarrassing and perhaps even, at times, terrorizing a potentially indifferent bureaucracy into prompt action. Esquire magazine famously dubbed him “Mayor Annoyed” for his obsessive attention to detail. But here was the consequence of his toughness: People living in Baltimore could have faith that someone cared about trash that wasn’t picked up or streets that weren’t cleaned or snow that hadn’t been removed.