Commentary

In his seminal book, “The Selling of the President 1968,” author Joe McGinnis famously describes how a Richard Nixon operative named Roger Ailes arranged televised town halls that featured pre-arranged questions from friendly audience members, so Nixon could hit them out of the park. I was vaguely reminded of this at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference last week, as I sat through a seminar sponsored by the Choose Who You Use Maryland coalition, which seeks to change state law to allow for more competition in the electric power market.

This is the start of a new academic year for about 20 million college students across the country. Here is some friendly advice, especially for those starting their first year, from someone who has worked in higher education for over 40 years. Please note that someone is spending a lot of money in order for you to attend college. Perhaps it is your money, money from your family, or a scholarship from a government agency investing in your education.

Maryland, like every other state in our union, has confronted a stressful, disturbing, and complex mixture of social injustices, divisive elections, and a global pandemic, all of which continues to highlight inequities in health, education, housing, economic opportunity, and more. And as our country mourns and protests the murders of Black people due to senseless police brutality and mistreatment of people of color, we continue to reckon with the undeniable, ongoing, and sometimes obscured truth of systemic racism.

Like in the rest of the country, Maryland’s COVID-19 cases are once again on the rise. While we hoped to be out of the woods by now, we still have a lot of work to beat back the virus and recover from the economic downturn. That’s why Marylanders need Congress to pass the bipartisan Hospitality and Commerce Job Recovery Act without delay, so our state’s affected businesses, including its vibrant beer industry, can get the additional help they need to get back up and running.

I am deeply disappointed in the Carroll County school board’s reaction to the issue of masking in our schools. Schools in Florida recently opened without requiring masks and promptly had to quarantine thousands of students due to COVID-19 exposures. How can we keep it from happening here? Require everyone inside the schools to wear masks. Our county health officer Ed Singer gave an informative presentation to the school board on Aug. 11 detailing the pros and cons of different masking situations.

On Saturday, citizens from Anne Arundel County will be joining tens of thousands of people in the Nation’s Capitol in observance of the anniversary of 1963 March on Washington. It was at that rally for jobs, freedom and justice more than a half-century ago that the late Congressman John Lewis called on his nation to form “a more perfect union.” Now, attorney Daryl Jones, a former Anne Arundel County councilman and chair of the national Transformative Justice Coalition is spearheading an effort to mobilize, organize and energize citizens from the county to attend.

CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward is a very good reporter, and there are other good ones risking their lives to take us to dangerous locations in Afghanistan, Africa, Haiti and wherever trouble is making news. Ward was showing her anger. Her reporter’s eyes were alternately flashing and rolling, showing obvious disgust with the answer she was getting from John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman official trying to answer press questions about the chaos in Afghanistan.

Citing a “historical decline in the living resources of the Chesapeake Bay” bay state governors joined by the mayor of Washington, D.C. and the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed an agreement solemnly committing to restoration. This first Bay Agreement of Dec. 9, 1983, set the stage for the formal EPA Bay Program, which was initially supported and funded by President Reagan.