The ban also includes a new tax. There's already a tax on each bag you receive at a business. The deceptively-titled Bring Your Own Bag Bill will ban plastic bags altogether, and place a 10-cent tax on paper bags. They'll say you won't have to pay it, if you remember to bring your stained and germ-ridden reusable shopping bags with you. The press release falsely claims that the bill will create "a more sustainable future for the County," and "improve the effectiveness of the carryout bag tax law."
If you ask yourself - or anyone outside of the small world of the Montgomery County cartel - to name one thing the Council has done to improve the quality of life since 2000, good luck getting an answer. They haven't. They've just raised taxes, driven business away, and banned stuff. To be fair, they've also jacked up your health insurance premiums with the ambulance fee, and your auto insurance premiums by defunding the police, leading to skyrocketing auto theft and stolen auto parts. Heckuva job, Brownie!
The faces change, but the Council stays the same since the cartel seized control of it in 2002. Smug, arrogant, and corrupt, with delusions of innovation, while plagiarizing the dumbest legislation from Eugene, Oregon to Sacramento, California. Your taxes go up, and so do their salaries, just like Bell, California. They said a bag tax would save the environment, just like they claimed natural gas was the solution to global warming. Lies, all lies, that evaporated as quickly as the Council-mandated paper straw does in your iced coffee. Incompetence combined with autocratic power is a recipe for failure, which is all we've seen in Montgomery County this century.
But this is what a majority of Montgomery County voters continue to vote for, and they're getting exactly what they wanted. As the writer from another Maryland jurisdiction where voters don't have the heart to punish the elected officials who reliably fail them once wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
According to police, officers were patrolling the area around 3:27 AM, when they discovered a truck on the median of University Boulevard. Upon further investigation, they found the victim suffering from a stab wound. Despite efforts by emergency responders, Sanchez Cruz was pronounced dead at the scene.
Following an investigation, Ortiz Alba was identified as the suspect. An arrest warrant was obtained, and he was taken into custody the same day. The investigation into the incident is ongoing. Anyone with information about this incident is urged to contact the Major Crimes Division at 240-773-5070.
Brown has been charged with felony unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, felony theft, and misdemeanor unauthorized removal of a motor vehicle. He was ordered held without bond, according to Maryland Court records. A trial has been scheduled for November 21 in Montgomery County District Court in Silver Spring.
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| Maryland State Senator Justin Ready questioned the use of taxpayer dollars for a migrant-arrival "drill" Tuesday |
WBFF Fox Baltimore 45 and The Baltimore Sun reported on the exercise yesterday. The two media outlets share an owner, and quoted alarmed GOP elected officials who felt this could be a dry run with a purpose. "It sounds to me like the state is thirsty for this to happen," State Senator Justin Ready (R - District 5) said. State officials told Fox 45 and the Sun that they are not aware of any immediate plans for a major influx of new migrants to Maryland.
Some immigration supporters on social media decried the reports as fearmongering. Most other news outlets ignored the state exercise.
Such an event would hardly qualify as a shock in Maryland, however. The state has accepted the most unaccompanied migrant children of any in America since 2015, and added 33,000 migrants to its population between 2022 and 2023 alone, according to CASA of Maryland.
