Michael McKee

Today a friend of mine who's a naturalized citizen told me he doesn't vote because

1) all politicians are actors
2) in his country of origin, during a civil war, citizens' voting records were used to decide who to shoot

Quite the perspective.

#voting

Cool bill just introduced into the #MGA by @ggwash@urbanists.social , legalizes residential in commercial #zoning in the largest counties in #Maryland "Bring Back Mainstreet." Housing over stores.

https://youtu.be/lSI1XnJsRhU?list=PLeM0kxAEV5MmUy1WPYY8NoD3Z6Tex1aRO&t=3812

Also appreciated Sen. Fry-Hester's question to MD Assc. of Counties: "It seems like there's several #Housing bills this year, and you seem opposed to most of them, except for your own... but, I kinda like this one? And I'm just curious... is there anything that would make this, like, better?"

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/02/22/housing-bills-concerns-carroll-county/

"Among the 16 are two of Moore’s three affordable housing bills, along with another bill backed by MACO that is something of a middle ground ...All of these bills are still being considered by committees in the state legislature, and it’s not certain whether they will pass..."

Anyone who's interested in getting a mortgage sometime this century (or even just cheaper rent, honestly) should be invested in this story. E-mail your reps!

#Maryland #Housing #Zoning #MGA

If I were really, really trying to be persuasive to my target audience here, I would be making a Truth Social account and posting the link to it there instead of this #Mastodon page, which no one in the county reads (or possibly on planet Earth), but there are some sacrifices I'm just not willing to make!

#difficultdecisions

@michaelmckee497@medium.com

I have written another long, meandering #blog post, to join two I've written on #ApprovalVoting and #Zoning in #MontgomeryCounty #Maryland . What's this one on, you ask?

The #MoCo #Republicans have an initiative in the works that is basically guaranteed to fail because it would just blatantly give them power. It's also maybe illegal.

However, them having started this discussion offers us a wonderful opportunity to discuss a better system: #ProportionalRepresentation !

https://youtu.be/S6ZMdkiF-tA?list=PLOsmSj9g47xW9Hncwvp_f1xeMoko-wOj4&t=6709

Notes from the #MGA hearing on #IRV #AV

-Proponents say IRV would make it easier to establish consensus, IRV doesn't reduce turnout, and it would help black candidates win races, and IRV "can lead to more civil campaigns"

-League of Women Voters: "I've never quite been able to understand why it's not made it out of committee when it's clear that this is something that Montgomery County elected officials want, and that the residents of Montgomery County" want as well!

https://ggwash.org/view/102458/andrew-friedson-for-montgomery-county-executive

"Which Will Jawando will voters actually get? The one who understood how modern-day #landuse could address a legacy of discrimination? Or the one who points fingers and sides with affluent neighbors who don’t want different kinds of people living near them? ... By not responding to the questionnaire as the other candidates took time to do, #Jawando is telling #MontgomeryCounty voters they don’t need to know what he thinks.."

#Maryland #MoCo #politics #zoning #friedson

Reading the #bible , just finished #Numbers . So far I have enjoyed
-->An Israelite and a non-Israelite woman being executed by a righteous man for the crime of miscegenation in the camp
--> #God responding to the Israelites complaining about Manna by giving them so much meat they die
-->The last 3 books of the Pentateuch being about the conquest of the promised land and the violent expulsion of the people there
--> #Moses ordering all Midianite boys executed so they don't become a future threat

https://www.earth.com/news/chernobyl-black-fungus-cladosporium-sphaerospermum-living-radiation-space-travel/

Radiation, mmmm, delicious! If we want to get to #Mars we're going to need plants like this one. I wonder if you could make a bunch of different strains and then selectively cultivate the ones that respond most positively to #radiation exposure? It might be useful for colonization because I think that on Mars itself the atmosphere is thinner. If it secretes Oxygen, that might be nice too.

I'm curious about all the weird evolution happening around #Chernobyl .

https://www.nlrbedge.com/p/the-aclu-is-attempting-to-limit-the

A legal dispute over the legality of the firing of an ACLU employee could set a precedent that drastically restricts the free speech rights of Americans in the workplace.

"if the #ACLU succeeds... it will strike a huge blow against the speech rights of all private-sector employees. The range of things workers will be allowed to say to the public and to their bosses without risking termination will be significantly narrowed. " @aclu@twitter.oksocial.net

#Freespeech #1a #labor