News & Opinions
News & Opinions
Montgomery County Cannot Prosper If We Ignore the Future | Montgomery Perspective | Adam Pagnucco | Guest column - Adam Van Grack |March 5, 2026
____________
New MoCo bill would prohibit building permits for ICE detention facilities | The Banner | Ginny Bixby | March 2, 2026, 5:56 pm
____________
Inspector general finds MCPS improperly paid $149K to police | Montgomery Community Media | Suzanne Pollak | March 4, 2026
____________
MoCo Republican Central Committee member running for register of wills | Bethesda Today | Elia Griffin | March 2, 2026, 5:12 pm
____________
Has Jared Demarinis Found the Fountain of Youth? Maryland’s Super Aged Voters | Substack | Direct Line News | Mark Uncapher | March 05, 2026
____________
The Real Threat to Democracy | Mary Jane Perraut | March 3, 2026
Like Warren Buffett, in 2009, I was still using a flip phone. My co-workers made fun of me especially as they showed off the latest iPhone. It really struck me that times had changed when I was waiting to board a train at Union Station to New York. There was dead silence. I looked around and all passengers waiting in line were on their phones, isolated in their own worlds. Technology had changed society.
Then, the pandemic isolated us even more. Whatever was in our own cyber space became “truth.” We lost the power of healthy debate with each other. We lost critical thinking because the information being fed to us via algorithms was believed to be honest and factual. The questioning of our positions seems to be guarded at all costs as if to protect our self-worth and inner souls. READ MORE
____________
How to Make America Great Again | Jon Nowick | March 2, 2026
The last round of elections and recent polls suggest challenges for Republicans this November. Growing political rancor also raises questions about our country’s direction and the future of our democracy. As a lifelong registered Republican and independent-minded voter, I offer a few thoughts for our leaders about how to make America great and keep it great:
1. Show Respect. Restore civility to public life by treating friend and foe with decency. Refrain from labeling, name-calling, belittling. Set an example for our children.
2. Promote Unity. Seek solutions that bridge the political divide—or at least are palatable to the various sides. Downplay culture wars. We’re all Americans and all in this together. We need our elected officials to broker deals, starting with lasting budget agreements.
3. Uphold Legal Norms. Our forefathers signed on to a Constitution, independent institutions, and separation of powers and of church and state. Maintain them. Avoid retribution, redistricting, and attempts to curb free speech. READ MORE
WHAT IS THE CUCKOO BIRD ANALOGY?
Instagram | canarymission | October 28, 2025
I'm Surrounded by Immigrants
By Dennis Brent Melby
I’ve spent the week talking with some of the finest citizens in Montgomery County. Great folks who came here for a better life and helped to make MoCo and the USA a much better place because of their experience, beliefs, hard work and family values.
We had hundreds at our celebration of the GOP Lunar New Year in Gaithersburg. Many from communist China so grateful to live in the USA – and so productive paying taxes, raising kids and providing for those less fortunate – many of them native born Americans.
Saturday at Coffee with the Chairman in Gaithersburg again, from Russia, Bangladesh, Germany – all folks who’d come here with their families to escape the confines of the old world and form a better Union here in a democratic, capitalist and often very religious new world. What did they have in common? They all came legally. Did they fear deportation? No…not one of them. The hype of a threatening ICE was not a reality – only a story from the left wing media and a opposing Party seeking to use if for political advantage in the next election. Sad. The left-wing media drops the word "Illegal" and calls everyone immigrants. Why? READ ON
Read moreHUNDREDS AT THE REUPUBLICAN LNY CELEBRATION
Hundreds of moderates, conservatives, Republicans, Independents and Democrats joined us in Gaithersburg for our 10th annual MCGOP Lunar New Year Celebration featuring 22 candidates, emcee Dennis Melby and main speaker Xi Van Fleet.
School Budget Insanity
By Lori Jaffe
Last month, two volunteer groups, the Montgomery County Taxpayers League (MCTL) and the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County (PCMC) held the Montgomery County Public Schools budget review - “MCPS FY2027 Operating Budget Palooza.” As we watched, it brought to mind the old saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Below are some of the highlights.
This November we have several good candidates who will run for office, including the County Council and the Board of Education. Remember what was unearthed in the analysis and vote for change.
- The MCPS budget (3.77 Billion) is roughly half of the total Montgomery County budget (6.6 Billion). The County Council funds MCPS.
- MoCo economic conditions are stagnant. The average taxpayer’s personal income has increased 1%. Population growth is “muted,” i.e. 0.6% annually. Unemployment is up.
- Despite our economic conditions, “(t)his year, the Superintendent is proposing a 5% increase over last year’s budget, to $3.778 Billion.”
- Funding of MCPS by the taxpayers through the council is on a per pupil basis. In the past, when the student population was increasing, it made more sense for MCPS to ask for more money. But now that the student population is decreasing, it doesn’t make sense for that request to increase.
Read more
From Chris Burnett for CD6 Campaign
Tuesday, March 3 at 6:30 PM
Frederick Co. Innovation Corridor & Economic Town Hall
Please join us for the upcoming Innovation Corridor & Economic Town Hall hosted by Chris Burnett, Candidate for Maryland’s 6th Congressional District. This event will feature local Frederick County candidates and will be held on March 3, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. Below is the announcement with details of the event. Location will be announced by Wednesday, February 25th.
This is a FREE public event. Please share this invitation with as many people as possible so the public can be informed about the Burnett Innovation Corridor Plan and the various candidates’ Economic Development solutions for Frederick County. For more information, please contact [email protected] or call Jen Charlton at 410-507-1197.
Melby Minute - Happy Norwuz
LIBERATION DAY - HAPPY NEW YEAR
Norwuz, the Persian New Year is in about 2 weeks. In Persia the Iranian people are dancing in the streets of Tehran because of the liberation of their county by Israel and the United States. Much the way the Venezuelans celebrated months ago when the drug kingpin Maduro was arrested and removed, the young residents of Iran will finally be able to experience a normal life.
Instead of President Obama sending pallets of Billions of Dollar bills President Trump has sent planes, rockets and liberation to rid the country of the Death to America chants and the murderous clerics who for years had tormented their own citizens, sending their own people to gulags or fields of war for slaughter or torture. The world, the US and the people of Iran have finally had enough.
God bless, them, Happy Norwuz, Happy New year and we all look forward to a free, prosperous and safe Iran from today forward.
Your Feedback Matters
Rooting for America
Dear Mr. Melby: another great article. Thank you for another great story.
__________
Pass the Save Act
The GOP needs to push the senate and Thune to pass the SAVE ACT!!
Republicans see how spineless and RINOS “business as usual” are.
We have a chance now to keep winning. Don’t screw it up and push the senate to pass the save ACT, among other bills that have not yet to pass!!
It’s a shame and we might lose this midterms if republicans voters see the passivity and all talk no action from the leadership that we trusted and voted for in 2024!!
The President Donald Trump is doing as much as he can!
Get to work ceaselessly like the democrats do!
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
A fed up Republican
News & Opinions
News & Opinions
_______________
The Democratic Party Has Sold Out to the Chinese Communist Party
By Harold Maldonado
As noted in the presentation by author and activist Xi Van Fleet at the Lunar New Year Celebration, Marxism has infiltrated our government, our institutions, and our whole society for decades now. Thus, what we’re seeing today in all aspects of our lives is a result of this infiltration.
I remember back in 2022, when we were in the campaign trail, I made it a point to share with residents that the Democratic Party had essentially become communist and I got a lot of push back on that because people didn’t see it. How could an American political party be affiliated or be espousing a communist/socialist agenda? Most Americans have not been exposed to how communism is pushed into a society, so they don’t know how to recognize it and this is the reason why democrats have been able to gain ground under the auspices of a well-crafted propaganda machine. Americans who have lived overseas and who come from countries where communists rule know exactly how this ideology enters a country and overtakes all society. I saw it from a mile away because I knew how communists operate as I saw it live in my country of birth, Bolivia. If you don’t know the story of how Bolivia became a narco-socialist country, it all started by playing the “racist” card, pinning the indigenous population against the minority white population, blaming the latter for all the poverty, injustice, and racism in the country. Do you see this happening in America? Of course, you do, every day. Long story short, the poor and the uneducated bought into the narrative that the elite, white Bolivians were the cause of it and they were the enemy and this is how Evo Morales got into power in 2006 with all the violent, deceitful, and propaganda trimmings unique to Marxists. Who was behind Morales, the usual suspects: Cuba, Venezuela, and of course, China.
“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War READ MORE
