Commentary

Our Maryland, RCV Maryland and FairVote recently co-sponsored an online straw poll of the candidates in the Maryland Democratic primary for governor. The straw poll was open to all Marylanders, with voting taking place from June 1 to 15. Ranked choice voting (RCV) was used to yield a majority — as opposed to plurality — winner and to allow voters to rank their favorite candidates without fear of playing a spoiler role. We are now prepared to publicly report the results and lessons learned from the straw poll. There was a total of 1,121 voters.

The shrill call earlier this month by Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for a criminal investigation into grading practices in Baltimore City schools is a new low in his political grandstanding on public education in general and city schools in particular. It is legitimate to call attention to laxity and confusion in the grading policies, as laid out in a report by Maryland’s Inspector General for Education. And heaven knows the Baltimore City school system has terrible problems — some of their own making and many caused by lack of national and state support. Still, the governor’s outburst is far out of proportion and not constructive.

She’s not exactly starving for affirmation. To the contrary, Malala Yousafzai is a global icon. Since 2012 when, as a 15-year-old Pakistani girl, she survived being shot in the head by a Taliban thug, she has met with heads of state, addressed the United Nations and won the Nobel Peace Prize. It says something, then, that this celebrated woman finds validation in a Marvel superhero. “Ms. Marvel,” to be exact, now streaming on Disney+.

Before the pandemic, around 1 in 10 older adults in the U.S. experienced elder mistreatment. In 2020, this number doubled to 1 in 5 – a nearly 84% increase. Mistreatment comes in many forms, including various types of abuse, neglect, exploitation and fraud. Adult Protective Services agencies exist in every U.S. state and territory to investigate adult mistreatment reports and work with clients to address their needs. APS staff members gather information from clients, alleged abusers and third parties such as family members, friends or neighbors to determine whether there is enough evidence to support a mistreatment claim.

The Baltimore City Council recently demanded that Police Commissioner Michael Harrison present a hasty plan detailing how the police will make the city safer. The commissioner complied in short order and told the council there would be, in essence, a larger police presence. Everyone is very upset by the violent crime gripping the city; way too many of these acts of violence involve the use of a handgun by people who are not permitted to possess a gun.

Offshore wind power is coming here! Maryland’s Clean Energy Jobs Act of 2019 (CEJA) mandates the procurement of at least 1,200 megawatts of in-state offshore wind by 2030. Because offshore wind is one of the most expensive forms of renewable energy, this requirement will increase the electric bills of Maryland’s residential and small-business electricity consumers (large consumers are exempt).

At one point in Al Gore’s seminal 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth,” the former vice president laments that his tobacco-farming parents didn’t stop raising tobacco until after their beloved daughter Nancy died of lung cancer in Tennessee. “It’s just human nature to take time to connect the dots,” Mr. Gore says in the film. “But … there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly.”

Five sentences sum up the war in Ukraine as it stands now. The Russians are running out of precision-guided weapons. The Ukrainians are running out of Soviet-era munitions. The world is running out of patience for the war. The Biden administration is running out of ideas for how to wage it. And the Chinese are watching.