Gas-powered leaf blowers are super annoying. I recently woke up 7:30 one beautiful Saturday morning to the NASCAR-like grinding of a leaf blower. My initial reaction was to confront my neighbor for working on his lawn during my prime snooze time, but it turned out is was my gardener cleaning up my lawn! Gas blowers…
(Lead image from the Washington Post, August 11, 2023.) A high-school math teacher was, by all accounts, a very good teacher, but his social skills were affected by a streak of anger. During one class a student misbehaved. The teacher reacted far out of proportion to the offense; he pushed the student against a wall.…
The lead image was photographed close to the Montrose Road offramp of the I-270. There is nothing more stirring, jolting, or heartbreaking than driving by a small memorial marking where a fatal accident occurred. We see them on Old Georgetown Road, Georgia Avenue, and interstate onramps. Was the victim a careless pedestrian looking at an…
(Disclaimer: No investment advice is intended in this post.) If you own a rental in White Oak, Bel Pre, Aspen Hill, Gaithersburg, or Montgomery Village, you might want to sell. Today. The county government has developed a Community Equity Index that indicates what areas reflect the county’s prevailing diversity. (Actually, this index indicates what areas…
Just about every week County Executive Marc Elrich sends out a video message. Almost all of these messages pertain to policy, commemorations, awards, meetings, and the CE’s outs-and-abouts. The message from September 1 was quite different. He gave us a view of his home, his gardening, and to some extent his personal life. Mr. Elrich…
When I see a Tesla, I emote four feelings that, surprisingly for me, do not contradict each other: pride (I am a member of a species that can conceive of such machines), admiration (for the investors, managers, and workers who make these machines), optimism (tailpipe emissions are slowly going somewhere else), and vituperative jealousy (McMahon…
In May 1773, the British parliament passed the Tea Act that granted the British East India Company, a government-chartered corporate monopoly with exclusive rights to sell tea in the colonies, to collect tax on that tea at the port. Americans, enraged at a tea tax being imposed without their due representation, reacted by boarding one…
In Part 1 of this series we introduced the county’s corporate liquor monopoly Alcohol Beverage Services, and in Part 2 we refuted every single claim ABS gives to justify its existence. In this installment we’ll provide an indication of who really does benefit from the county’s corporate liquor monopoly. When we ask who benefits from…
Folks, it’s on rare occasions that I need to actually think before writing a blog post. Usually I only describe and transcribe the bizarre and dysfunctional events unfolding around us, such as the recent trial Tamer Mahmoud v. Monica B. McKnight. This was the landmark trial and ruling by Judge Deborah Boardman that denied the…
This is part 2 in a 4 part series debunking the excuses ABS uses to justify its existence, identify who benefits from this monopoly, and what (if anything) can be done to dismantle it. You can read part 1 here. The county’s Alcoholic Beverage Service justifies its corporate monopoly in the following video. Viewing with…