Commentary

Scott Gibson is a Republican candidate for Ward 2 seat on City Council to replace the affable Fred Paone who is retiring. Gibson testified before the Charter Review Commission, recommending that the City Charter be amended to institute non-partisan elections. This would allow anyone wanting to run — Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, and Non-affiliated — to just pay $60 and fill out a candidate form designating the office sought. Only parties with 10 percent of registered voters could participate in primaries, now Republican, Democrat, and Green.

After more than three decades and $24 billion spent on restoration, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s annual report card indicates that the bay is little better off now than when we started. The most recent annual report card gave it a D+. It has never received a grade higher than a C — and that’s on an inflated scale. Would the bay have been worse had we not made this effort? Absolutely yes. But should we accept a return on investment this low after nearly a quarter of a century, and continue to invest in this venture?

Most people think Maryland is a state where all workers have full union rights. Unfortunately, this is not true. Thousands of public employees in our state do not have the right to form a union. Even if they want to form a union, it is not legal for them to form a union and negotiate with their employer. Public workers in Gaithersburg have no more rights than public workers in Hattiesburg, Miss. Why is this true?

As political events go, the visit to Annapolis by the second gentleman — a phrase we’ll all have to wrap our heads around now — was lowkey. Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, came to Annapolis to hear from small business owners about their experiences surviving the COVID-19 recession and how federal aid programs expanded by President Joe Biden helped them through it.

Ronald Reagan made famous the punchline, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” But Joe Biden is turning that on its head. He is, according to friends and foes alike, attempting a bold social contract on a scale not seen since FDR and LBJ. And public education is a big piece of the action. Two COVID-19 relief and recovery laws have already poured about $180 billion into state and local school budgets nationwide. In Maryland alone, the bounty is around $3 billion.

Other than my mom, who left this Earth a decade ago, the deceased person I’ve probably missed the most over the past five years has been Wayne Barrett, my mentor and role model in the journalism business, who died on Jan. 19, 2017 at the age of 71. That’s a significant date that we’ll get back to shortly. When I think about the madness of the last five years, I think maybe Wayne would have made sense of it all. He knew and understood some of the major players of the past half-decade better than anyone.

Smallpox has been eradicated from the face of the Earth following a highly effective, worldwide vaccination campaign. Paralytic poliomyelitis is no longer a problem in the U.S. because of development and use of effective vaccines against the poliovirus. In current times, millions of lives have been saved because of rapid deployment of effective vaccines against COVID-19. And yet, it has been 37 years since HIV was discovered as the cause of AIDS, and there is no vaccine.

Other than my mom, who left this Earth a decade ago, the deceased person I’ve probably missed the most over the past five years has been Wayne Barrett, my mentor and role model in the journalism business, who died on Jan. 19, 2017 at the age of 71. That’s a significant date that we’ll get back to shortly. When I think about the madness of the last five years, I think maybe Wayne would have made sense of it all.