A critical Prince George's County Zoning Examiner's Hearing may seal the fate of a controversial Concrete Batch Plant project being sought in Bladensburg, near the Anacostia waterfront and potentially threatening health and safety in the Port Towns. The Aug. 22 hearing was continued after lengthy debate until Wednesday, Sept. 6, when opponents of the plant hope to have, again, a large crowd to let the Examiner -- and County Council -- know that community control of local development is important to many of the county's residents.

ln this repost from the essential political blog Maryland Matters, a deep-dive account of the twisty history of the Purple Line leading up to the tent-revival groundbreaking on Monday. Gov. Hogan gets props (and needs them) for reshaping the path for this crucial piece of mass transit for Prince George's and Montgomery counties, which will serve largely working-class users and was blocked for so long by MoCo country-clubbers, their platoons of lawyers and even a judge or two who shared their class perspective. Maryland Matters founder and chief blogger Josh Kurtz, a seasoned Maryland political observer, provides this great overview.

The turn of Labor Day brings renewed activism. Making Maryland better – more in tune with ordinary people and their/our real needs, less controlled by big moneyed interests – is a big piece of making the nation and the world better.

Let’s keep going.

Donald Trump is getting away with many flip-flops on his promises to the working-class constituents who pushed him over the top, studies show. But progressive and Democratic leadership have to make that case forcefully in order to reclaim the mantle of the peace and prosperity forces; it won't happen automatically, Hal Ginsberg asserts.

Maryland is staying in a strengthened multistate pact to reduce greenhouse gases in electric power generation. It's a compromise, but much better than sulkily pulling out. The pact has been (mostly) holding together for many years and “The [RGGI] program has a track record of cutting emissions fairly painlessly across a densely populated section of the country,” observes Inside Climate News.

"For Progressive Maryland and its parent Peoples' Action, our low and middle income neighbors are our primary constituents.  We need to make an effort to bring these groups into the political process and to help them advocate for themselves," Howard County activist Dave Bazell reminds us.

Residents of the Port Towns communities in Prince George's County are fighting the siting of a concrete batching plant in Bladensburg near Peace Cross, threatening the Anacostia River and the health of residents in the viciinity. Today, Tuesday August 22, they go before the Zoning Hearing Examiner at 9 a.m. to fight for the right of communities to control development in their own backyards.

Welcome to the Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo for August 21-29. Lots going on, including the health care fight, leadership development opportunities, letting Larry Hogan know he has to listen to more than big donors – he should speak out on protecting Maryland’s health care and pushing back against the white supremacist elements that Trump appears to condone -- plus community struggles like the concrete plant being foisted on the Port Towns of Prince George’s, and much more at chapters around the state. Dip in…

The skyrocketing costs of runnng for office in Maryland make a good argument for public financing to level the playing field and get big money out of state and local politics. We cross-post here Ana Faguy's excellent account of a new study by Common Cause Maryland coupled with her interview with longtime public financing advocate Sen. Paul Pinsky of Prince George's. The account first appeared on the blog site Maryland Matters.

The consultant study that MoCo executive Ike Leggett commissioned on a $15 minimum wage – and that served his purpose with a maxi-alarmist conclusion about huge job losses (according to the employers who were surveyed) – is looking flimsier and flimsier. The $149,000 taxpayer-funded study – derided by the respected Economic Policy Institute as “absurd junk science” – looks headed to the junkyard as Leggett is backing away from the study’s conclusion that over 8 percent of all county jobs and huge amounts of income would be lost if the minimum wage were raised to $15 per hour.