We’ve covered in prior parts of this series the ‘seeds’ of Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s ideological bent. Starting with “labor activism” in college but then graduating to full-bore “democratic socialism” incoherence and Hugo Chavez-era Venezuelan socialism pandering, Mr. Elrich doesn’t care much for private property rights, particularly the private property rights of those whom he deems “greedy developers” or property renovators. He also embraces a retrograde “command-and-control” style economics that was disproven as an organizing model decades ago, where the state, the government, will decide how much of certain commodities or goods will be produced.
In 2023, he still thinks the Montgomery County government does a fine job in selling liquor and alcohol to the “proletariat.” This is from a May 16, 2018 post by Adam Pagnucco at theSeventhState.com blog, but it still rings true today:
First, he is arguably the strongest supporter of an indisputably socialist institution: the county’s liquor monopoly. The notion that a county government should have a monopoly on the wholesale distribution of alcohol is about as socialist as one can get. Not only is Elrich one of the monopoly’s biggest defenders – he actually accused restaurant owners who wanted freedom from it of “whining” and wanting to “steal everything.” That got him banned from four restaurants that had protested the monopoly. As a County Executive candidate, he promises to increase the monopoly’s sales, thereby expanding the reach of MoCo’s most prominent socialist institution.
Marc Elrich even wanted das state, yes the government, to be in control of another vice market. Back in 2019 he told Maryland Matters in an interview:
Cannabis stores owned and operated by the state.
“The state should do something bold with this,” Montgomery County Executive Marc B. Elrich (D) told Maryland Matters in an interview last week.
“They should not just legalize it. They should let Maryland farmers grow, and the state should process and sell. And take every dime of revenues.”
So we can see it is a kind of ‘pick-and-choose’ top-down socialist policy that guides the County Executive. Vices like pot and booze should be controlled by das state or the County government, with Elrich in command, and then presumably while this same government is selling you the products to poison or toxify your mind and / or body, it’ll also provide you with “free healthcare”. Unfortunately for Mr. Elrich, pot is poised to be a wholly-private enterprise in MoCo, soon.
While Mr. Elrich doesn’t really like what other people do to their property, he has a history of using the people’s property, that is, the Montgomery County Council Office building on 100 Maryland Ave in Rockville (paid for with our tax dollars), for his own ideological purposes and to further plant “seeds”. One might say, seeds of stagnation and local de-growth agendas.
As this photo shows, proudly posted to Elrich’s own Facebook page back in 2017, he, and others, used the MoCo Council Office Building for a Sunday afternoon “Progressive Organizing Workshop to Empower Resistance”:
The following year, in 2018, “Our Revolution” MoCo also mentioned that they co-sponsored another of these workshops. It is unclear where it was held:
On November 5th [2018], as a part of a progressive alliance of groups, OR MoCo co-sponsored the Progressive Organizing Workshop to Empower Resistance (P.O.W.E.R).
Is the Montgomery County Council Office Building and cafeteria open to any and all partisan advocacy groups for a Sunday afternoon meet-up and “organizing conference”? This website seems to imply that at least one entrance is open to public visitors on Saturday and Sunday.
Mr. Elrich’s regressive policies, dressed up as compassionate progressivism, are leading the County into decline, not growth and prosperity. The County trails its peers regionally in job creation and new business starts, but we can see that then-Council Member Elrich in 2017 had his focus on “organizing a resistance”, not improving the finances, government services or business climate of Montgomery County.
