This blog entry is by Jean Athey of Peace Action Montgomery. Jean recently switched her registration from Democrat to Green.

“I haven’t given up on the American people, but I have given up on the Democrats,” my friend told me last week. A life-long Democrat and an active participant in several legislative campaigns in Maryland, she has dropped her membership in the party. “The debt deal was the last straw,” she said.

The housing bubble of 2008 and the subsequent credit crunch have played havoc with our economy. While the Federal reserve has provided $12.3 trillion in aid to the major banks in the form of liquidity, short term loans and other financial arrangements, local businesses have found credit drying up, homeowners have
been unable to refinance their mortgages, and state and local governments have been forced to make severe budget cuts.

We believe that the establishment of a state owned bank offer help for all of these problems.

Our ballot access case was heard today in Anne Arundel Circuit Court and the judge awarded our request for summary judgment on all points. The disputed signatures will count and we will retain ballot access.

There is still the possibility that the BoE could appeal the case or that the Appeals Court could move to hear it on their own. We will know if they do within a couple of weeks. But for now we are back on the ballot.

Our lawyer, Mark Granniss was outstanding; very articulate in arguing both the constitutional issues and the legal cases involved.

The Maryland Green Party is shocked and saddened by the loss of Natasha
Pettigrew, the party's 2010 nominee for United States Senate. Natasha
had been fatally injured when her bicycle was struck early Sunday
morning and has passed away as a result of her injuries.

“As a party, we have never experienced a loss like this,” said Brian
Bittner, party Co-Chair. “We all looked forward to working with
Natasha for years to come.”

Click through on the following links to our candidates webpages and help out by donating some time or money to the effort.

Maria Allwine for Governor.

Natasha Pettigrew for Senate.

Mike Shay for Anne Arundel County Executive.

George Gluck for Montgomery County Council.

Joe Lane for Washington County Commission.

Paula Crossfield writes in CivilEats.com:

This week, the House Agriculture Committee held the first hearing on the 2012 Farm Bill, the main piece of legislation that every five years establishes our nations food and agriculture policy. The Farm Bill affects farm payments, supplemental nutrition assistance programs (SNAP, formally called food stamps), international trade, conservation programs, the opportunities in rural communities, agriculture research, food safety, and more. Currently 70% of farm payments go to the wealthiest 10% of producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice. These kinds of oversights are the result of a Farm Bill that has been largely cobbled together over time.

[...]

WaPo is carrying an A.P. story that says that the Obama Administration is still carrying out a Bush II administration policy to encourage farmers to apply waste generated from coal-fired electrical-generation plants to agricultural fields.

So the mainstream media is in an uproar over over the Salahi's crashing the White House State Dinner.

It says here that 1/2 of all children at some point (not, however, all at once) are on food stamps. Naturally, the story quotes a conservative shill who downplays the significance of that datum as much as possible without actually disputing the validity of the datum itself.