The Trump Agriculture Department is rolling out a trifecta of badness that could “take food off the table of struggling families” in Maryland and nationwide, as StatesNewsroom’s Robin Bravender reports.

This week: links to our recent blogs – on business leaders seeing their self-interest in full funding of the Kirwan school improvement program, how militarism roadblocks health care improvement, and a roundup of our coverage on the funding of the Kirwan school improvement plan, a battle coming up in the General Assembly next month. Plus more battles on criminal justice reform and Medicare for All, news and events from PM’s chapters, and events from our progressive allies.

Despite Gov. Hogan's alarmism about taxes, some business leaders have taken a look at the costs and benefits of the Kirwan Commission school improvement plan and see a win-win in pushing it all the way, no half measures. A business-commissioned report has the details, as Maryland Matters recounts here.

How do we afford Medicare for All? We have to buckle up and recognize that war profiteers endanger our safety AND cost the US taxpayer massive amounts that can be redirected to human needs, including the one that most voters rank first -- fixing the broken health care system.

Prince George's County, with lack of police conduct accountability and near-nonexistent assistance for returning citizens, is in serious need of reform on those and other fronts.

This week: links to our recent blogs – on how activists are chipping away at the entrenched profit-before-people health care system, and a roundup of our coverage on the funding of the Kirwan school improvement plan, a battle coming up in the General Assembly next month. Plus PM’s one-day power-building training Dec. 7, more battles on school improvement and Medicare for All, news and events from PM’s chapters, and events from our progressive allies.

Activists are dismantling, piece by piece, the decades-old resistance of traditional capitalist medicine to pro-people, pro-family changes in the health care system. As Connie Huynh of People's Action points out, “The AMA’s decision to leave the [anti-single payer) PAHCF didn’t happen on its own, or overnight. Rather, it was the product of organizing.”

In the Memo this week: links to our recent blogs – Kirwan finale and next steps, as well as SCOTUS DACA hearings and vigilance against the chipping away of working families’ gains. Plus PM’s one-day power-building training Dec. 7, battles on school improvement and Medicare for All, news and events from PM’s chapters, and events from our progressive allies.

SEIU Local 500 and progressive coalition partners have laid out what everyone agrees is needed to fund the schools -- and the Maryland -- that we all want. That's a genuinely fair tax regime that requires corporate Maryland to stop looting the state for private gain and CEO megasalaries. Unspoken here is the barrier of corporate toady Gov. Larry Hogan's ruling-class grip on the state budget process -- the new leadership of the General Assembly will have to take bold new steps to wrench it loose.

Links to our latest blog posts, plus the Progressive Maryland statewide meeting Dec. 14, school improvement and Medicare for all -- plus progressive events across the state