Lots going on in early January ... our Weekly Memo clues you in on coming events and has links to the most recent blog posts. BTW you can get it by email every week; check it out.

To get you started on 2017 activism: our blog posts since June 2015 relating specifically to Prince George's and Montgomery counties, places where Progressive Maryland activists are hard at work on very local issues. You can catch up with political and community doings in those counties here, with summaries and links to the posts.

It’s the slack few days between holidays this week, but don’t let 2017 sneak up on you (2017?! What?! Wait, that’s too soon…). Whether your farewell to 2016 is fond or otherwise, the Maryland General Assembly gears up January 11 and a new state-level battle (or battles) begins. Plus early January events and links to this week’s blog posts.

Barry Rascovar unmasked Gov. Larry Hogan’s Trump-like taste for the spectacle as a cover for, um, prevarications (we re-published it Tuesday, Dec. 20). Just because it’s a hoax, though, doesn’t mean some won’t fall for it – and Adam Pagnucco outlines here how many of our august media did just that, swallowing the Guvnah’s “Roadkill Bill” flimflam. A few days later (after Pagnucco’s post was first published) the respected number-crunchers of the Department of Legislative Services put a fork in the Hogan nonsense. We'll be interested to see how many in the media will acknowledge they were had...

The effects of the 2008 recession still linger in Maryland, even after two years of the business-friendly Gov. Hogan. Where are the jobs? The services? Jerome Dancis has a few ideas about this.

Commentator Barry Rascovar would probably resist the label "progressive" but no observer has nailed Gov. Hogan's slippery public persona to the wall better. Here he unmasks Hogan's bogus "roadkill bill" non-threat. (Later this week in the BlogSpace, Seventh State columnist Adam Pagnucco details who is falling for this roadkill ruse -- including many reporters.)

Let's go a-caroling Thursday (Dec. 22) at noontime to Rep. Steny Hoyer's Greenbelt office on behalf of the progress we have made in getting to universal health care. Let him know we're not going back. Plus activism around Montgomery County's Fight for Fifteen, and the week's blog posts.

In a showing of solidarity with all marginalized people and calling for electors to reject Donald Trump, demonstrators gathered in Annapolis today as electoral college members convene in state capitols nationwide to decide the final outcome of the 2016 election.

Here's the latest update on blog posts since the Progressive Maryland BlogSpace started airing your and your fellow Marylanders' activities and hopes for our state in summer 2015. Find, open and read any blog using these links and summaries. You can latch onto this link in any weekly memo, too...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose insurgent presidential primary campaign put radical democracy on the political map, tells in his new book how he became "Bernie" and how the US can find its way to a social justice future again. Bill Mosley reviews his book Our Revolution.