We are at a crossroads for healthcare in our country. As we speak, Congress is hashing out what could be the largest expansion of Medicare in years! Let’s be sure that our lawmakers take the very best path forward. The path that leads us to funding critical Medicare improvements and expansion which could result in: lower costs for prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate on Rx prices; coverage for vision, dental, and hearing; a younger eligibility age to enroll in Medicare; and lower copays. We can do this with your support.

Officials fromaroundd the state are gathering in Ocean City this week at the Maryland Association of Counties annual meeting. The officials will be surrounded by deep-pocketed types aiming to influence the way they make law and policy. We have come to call them lobbyists.

Jimmy Tarlau, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates, checks off the ways high-paid lobbyists distort the public policy process with financial contributions and provides a checklist of how the Legislature should check the lobbyists power.

As soon as they stop eating the lobbyists' crab cakes.

Maryland’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium expired Sunday without an extension of the state of emergency by Gov. Larry Hogan, despite a letter Friday  from House Speaker Adrienne Jones and her top lieutenants urging Hogan to extend it. 

“This is a preventable public health crisis,” WMAR quotes Public Justice Center attorney Matt Hill, who said up to 4,500 Maryland families were at risk of eviction without Hogan’s extension. Support your neighbors in trouble and let your local officials know how you feel about Hogan’s do-nothing pandemic response. 

“ 'Bipartisan' sounds like it includes all viewpoints, but it’s just another word for control by the duopoly," concludes veteran journalist and observer of folly Len Lazarick in this column on how Maryland's state politics stay in the grip of centrism.

As he might have noted, county-level Central Committees, particularly of Democrats, consolidate the parties' grip on their locales by appointing replacements for Assembly members who die or leave office, magically creating the electoral power of "incumbency" for their in-house favorites.

So the parties pick their voters, not the other way round.

Stop evictions? MD has the money PM Weekly Memo for Monday, August 9, 2021

Progressive Maryland joins our friends in the labor, civil rights, and social justice movements to memorialize Richard Trumka, the President of the AFL-CIO, who died last Thursday. He was a fierce fighter for working people and a powerful movement leader. Sadly we’ve lost him at a significant moment in the campaigns for the right to organize workplaces and for greater economic security for all Americans. Statement from the AFL . Mike Podhorzer, Special Advisor to President Trumka, lifted up this quote in his tribute to Trumka:  “There’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism--and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge. It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” Let’s honor his legacy by staying committed to the struggle for racial and economic justice.

Maryland is still lagging in helping local governments get relief to those threatened with eviction as the moratorium on evictions expired at midnight Saturday. Gov. Hogan and the sometimes-contradictory federal program(s) do not help. Get the least confusing information and help here, in the Memo. And share it. Keep people housed in our communities.

Thank you for being part of this movement. 

Medicare For All is making more sense to more and more people (it has always made sense to us). Montgomery’s Council joined many others in backing it last week. Just in time for its birthday Friday, July 30. You can sign on too; see below.

Thank you for being part of this movement. 

Progressive Maryland and The Maryland Progressive Healthcare Coalition Celebrate the Montgomery County Medicare For All Resolution as the Montgomery County Council passes a resolution calling on Congress to enact Medicare For All. Organizations and individuals including small business owners have backed this effort. Read more below.

Medicare for All is making more sense to more and more people (it has always made sense to us). Resolutions backing the national campaign passed in Annapolis’ council last week and looks to pass in Montgomery’s council this week. The New Era project is under way and the critical needs of our communities are on the line -- including health care and the welfare of kids, in the classroom and out. 

 And we lost Rep. John Lewis, champion of civil rights and voting rights, a year ago this week. The bill named for him, which would help ward off anti-voter craziness such as the Texas GOP is up to, is struggling in Congress. Join that struggle. Check it all out in this week’s memo.

Thank you for being part of this movement. 

"The War on Drugs has been with us for more than fifty years, and hasn’t been a war on drugs at all. It’s been a war on people: people like me, and my family. Black people. The part where it was supposed to decrease drug use? That part failed."

Prince George's resident Alfrieda Hylton reminds us of the devastation Nixon's deliberate attack on his perceived enemies has brought to communities of color everywhere.