The old adage goes that there are two constants in life; death and taxes. But if you live in the DC metropolitan area, there is a third: traffic. 

            Their have been countless studies, hundreds of news reports and millions of anecdotal stories to  tell us why we are ranked dead last for traffic in the country. Think about that, we are worse than Los Angeles, worse than New York, worse than Chicago. All with populations multiple times that of our region. 

            Some in our region are aware of the problem and are looking to fix this, namely officials in Virginia. However, while some are looking to fix the problem, others, like our leaders in Montgomery County and Annapolis are looking to do nothing. They are interested in subjecting us to generations of a traffic nightmare. 

            Their apathy towards a solution is two-fold; they have contempt for the average citizen and they are supported by an extremely vocal minority.  

            However, their apathy towards a solution has now reached critical mass. It is now time for us as frustrated citizens to voice our concern and let the Montgomery County leadership in Rockville and Annapolis know that we have had enough. 

            The Montgomery County leadership a very vocal group of naysayers. But they are in the vast minority. How many of them are their? Five thousand? Ten Thousand? Fifteen thousand? Are we really going to allow fifteen thousand noisemakers hold hostage the other six-million residents of the greater DC area?  These noisemakers are not opposed to any particular solution, they are opposed to ALL solutions. They are more interested in making noise than finding any solutions, and the Montgomery County leaders in Rockville and Annapolis are all too happy to listen to them.

            I have written many opinion pieces, I have testified before council and committee hearings, I have written emails and spoken face-to-face. But I am just one person, and my message has fallen on deaf and indifferent ears. To be heard, we need the collective voice of all concerned traffic dwellers. The leaders of Montgomery County in Rockville and Annapolis need to hear from more than just me, they need to hear from all of us. We need to be louder than the noisemakers. 

            The noisemakers have a loud voice and they are effective. But we can be even louder and even more effective. We must write, we must testify, we must engage and we must remind our neighbors and friends to do the same. 

            In a region that shares few bipartisan concerns, it is surprising that the issue of traffic has not garnered more outrage. We all know it’s there and we all know it’s a problem. But why are we not so outraged as to take action? The prospect of defeat may keep us from engaging, but this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are only defeated because we refuse to engage.  It is time we say no more to this self-fulfilling prophecy. It is time we act. It is time we author and it is time we vote for action. 

            Imagine yourself on I-270 in 2035. Will you be traveling at 65 mph with the flow of traffic getting to your destination on time? Or will you sit in bumper to bumper traffic asking yourself “why didn’t I speak up when I could have?”

_______________ 

The author, Mr. Jason Neuringer is a resident of Montgomery County.

Big Tech: A conservative investor’s dilemma

Big Tech’s recent strong stock performance and large size creates a conundrum for politically-conservative investors who want to align their core beliefs with their investments. Many conservative investors begrudgingly own these left-leaning companies due to not wanting to sacrifice performance.

The reference to Big Tech companies includes the likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple, due to their recent collective efforts to censor free speech in America. Strictly speaking, they are all not tech companies, but in the eyes of the public, they are part of the Big Tech monopoly. 

Big Tech has censored conservatives on multiple platforms in recent years. Parler, a thriving social media alternative to Twitter, was deplatformed by Amazon Web Services, Apple and Google for allegedly inciting violence at the U.S. Capitol. Facebook, not to be outdone by its Big Tech allies, banned a Virginia Second Amendment advocacy group, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, from their platform without much explanation. Twitter famously banned President Donald Trump from its platform, after suspending his account indefinitely. The Silicon Valley-based corporation said that their “close review” of the president’s account led to the permanent ban because of the “risk of further incitement of violence.” Twitter never commented about why it never banned the accounts of dictatorial regimes, such as Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, China’s Xi Jinping, or Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Is now the time to boycott ownership of Big Tech?

The First Amendment, which protects our freedom of speech and religion, is the bedrock issue that strongly unites all conservatives. These Big Tech companies are actively undermining our freedom of speech and are emboldened by the recently elected Democratic majorities. It is not only the liberal media, liberal CEOs, and campaign contributions that we have grown weary of, but Big Tech companies now have the power to suppress conservative voices, destroy companies, and deny conservatives access to the technological infrastructure that they monopolize. This includes access to e-commerce, cloud technology, credit card processing payments, and more. Big Tech has clearly demonstrated an unabashed and unrestrained willingness to use their power to economically influence those they disagree with. If these companies continue to run roughshod over the conservative beliefs of their shareholders, the silent majority will become the silenced majority in short order. 

Results from a recent Gallup poll conducted earlier this year show positive views of Big Tech have fallen 12 percent since late 2019, and the majority of poll respondents want more government regulation of technology companies. Given the customer centric business models and rapid growth necessary to justify recent valuations, how can this level of dissatisfaction not affect the bottom line? Big Tech executives fail to realize that the implementation of liberal-leaning policies may result in lost revenue, a growing opportunity for potential new competitors, and vulnerability to government anti-trust actions.

Certainly, the general market environment should be considered and there are warning signs that Big Tech’s run cannot last forever

If you have been begrudgingly or unknowingly holding onto Big Tech stocks, this confluence of recent events highlights the need for a shift towards greater conservative advocacy. It starts with principle-focused investment and holding Big Tech and left-wing “woke” corporations accountable to their shareholders. 

Now is the time for conservatives to take action and hold Big Tech and left-wing corporations accountable and reject “woke capitalism.”

_______________ 

Donald Irvine is the Director of Political Research at Ridgeline Research, the investment adviser to the American Conservative Values ETF (ACVF) and a Member and former Treasurer of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee.

Give Us the News         

The MCGOP is always looking for news items or great editorials. If you’ve got news of your Republican organization or club, or an item you think would be of interest, please send it to us at [email protected].

Editorials and Opinions should be between 300 and 600 words, sent in Word document format.

Our Republican Party stands strong as we commemorate our 245'th Independence Day.

Our party’s ideals and our vision stand strong. We stand for freedom of religion, freedom from tyranny, and a drive toward equal treatment, under the law, for every Man and Woman in these great and United States.

The pillars of our Republican history are steeped in the history of our great United States. From when Abraham Lincoln stood against the Democrat establishment and oppose their efforts to continue slavery to after the Civil War when we pushed through Emancipation, pushed through voting rights, pushed through women's right to vote, and ever expanded the great freedoms Americans rely on. All the time with opposition by the Democrats.

We we're still fighting the progressive proposal to divide and conquer, instead of unite! As a united Republican party, we stand in opposition to racism against Whites, Asians, legal immigrants and conservative people of color as the Democratic playbook continues to execute their strategy of intolerance.

We must be united against the progressive politicians pushing laws restricting personal freedoms, far-left school boards mandating something they call "Critical Race Theory", and folks living behind private security screaming "Defund the Police".  All the time prices are rising, crime is rising and the schools are falling behind.  We'll have none of that... I promise you we won't back down.

The grand reopening of our headquarters was an amazing success and brought together many like-minded Republicans for an afternoon of fun and fellowship. If you know of local conservative organization or groups, please point them our way so that we can continue the MCGOP goal of working together to make Montgomery County better.   

Thanks so much for your support of your local Republicans. Special thanks for the folks who stepped up this past month. Ceremonial display flags donated by the Chevy Chase Republican Women's Club and our great 1st Vice Chair Anne Koutsoutis,  Katja Bullock, Darby Gingery and others. A great Statue of Liberty portrait was provided by former Chairman Dennis Melby.

Make sure you read our Party Line newsletter this month.

• Opinion pieces on Critical Race Theory, Defunding Police, and freedom of Discussion.
• A wrap of our Maryland Republican Convention
• Sign up for our Volunteer Orientation
• See our Ads and join a Club
• Check out the fundraiser for Kelly Schulz
• Register for our July Webinar
• Volunteer to work the Republican tent at the County Fair
•  Come to our Summer Soiree July 10
• Donate to the Cause

Our party is growing and we need tech help. Anyone that has database, social media or SQL expertise and can dedicate 6 to 10 hours per week is urged to contact me. See our ad in this newsletter.

As always, thanks for being a great Republican, and if you can, send me a note at [email protected]. 

I’d love to hear from you. Your notes are encouraging and welcome.

By Deborah Lambert

These days it is becoming increasingly difficult for the American public to see or hear a sustained positive commentary about the underlying concepts of Critical Race Theory, even from some of its strongest supporters. Case in point: During a recent interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten not only under-estimated some of the CRT’s unpleasant aspects, but quickly sidestepped some of her previous comments and moseyed into a more comfortable discussion about the recent 2020 election instead.

Fortunately, more and more critics are publicizing the facts about CRT.

Christopher Rufo, filmmaker, writer, and policy researcher, noted in the March 2021 issue of the City Journal that while critical race theorists on the Left have denounced “a war on woke,” they are afraid to defend CRT principles in a public debate. Rufo predicts that the increasing backlash against CRT will likely come as a surprise to many supporters of the intellectual Left, who have become accustomed to dominating public perception of our public institutions for decades, adding that “they perceive any challenge to the dominant ideology as an affront, then search to backfill their preferences with high-minded concerns about ‘free speech and academic freedom.’” 

In the May 18^th issue of the American Thinker, Christopher Paslay, a longtime Philadelphia public school teacher and education writer, listed Ten Questions on Critical Race Theory. Each one of them outlined unusual approaches to uncovering how bad this concept really is, even though that was NOT the purpose of the question.

For example, Question 2 asks the following: “Should we be teaching children that America is a systematically racist country based on white supremacy?” These days, the Oregon Department of Education is examining this exact question in their program called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” which apparently tries to “deconstruct racism in mathematics” while simultaneously focusing on “the toxic characteristics of White supremacy culture in math.”

According to the explanation in the program’s toolkit, “White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions,” adding that this tends to “perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics.”

But wait, there’s more, and perhaps some interested parties believe this had to happen. Ibram X Kendi, who presides over the Center for Anti-Racist Research at Boston University, has proposed “an anti-racist constitutional amendment” to “fix the original sin of racism” in America. Moreover, these days Kendi’s bestselling book How to be an Antiracist presents his reader/educators with a natural choice: “You either accept the concepts of his ideology – or take the risk of being labeled as a racist.”

Meanwhile, the Seattle public school system recently decided during a teacher training session that some educators were guilty of “spirit murder.” According to Bettina Love, an education prof at the U. of Georgia, this is apparently based on a concept which claims that our country’s schools “murder the souls of Black children every day through systemic, institutionalized, anti-Black, state-sanctioned violence.”

One more thing: Amid the growing belief that the term “whiteness” may become an even more serious problem, a group of English teachers called “Disrupt Texts” has decided that the study of white authors such as William Shakespeare should be eliminated from future English classes.

However, on the flip side of the CRT debate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has publicly stated that he wants to get rid of it altogether. During his Florida International University press conference on May 24^th, the governor announced that he planned to defund Critical Race Theory in order to “prevent tax dollars from being spent to promote the divisive and controversial philosophy in Florida.”

DeSantis, who recently described CRT as a “hate-driven and identity politics version of Marxism,” restated his opposition to the “woke” education initiative by noting that the “Black race-based education philosophy is not appropriate for schools, because it is based on historical falsehoods.”

Deborah Lambert, Editor, MCGOP Newsletter