This is exactly right. It seems to me that the OP believes that a person asking for money outside a grocery store is only deserving if he deems them worthy. Whether the person can actually play the violin or not, it’s not exactly the most glamorous or lucrative lifestyle to stand outside asking strangers for money. Telling them they are unworthy of a small sum because they lack talent in your opinion is pretty tone deaf (pun intended).

How do you know he is not in need? Does the fact that he can or cannot play the violin have any correlation with his financial situation? The way I see it, someone would have to be pretty hard up to choose to rely on the generosity of strangers by standing outside a grocery store whether they can actually play an instrument or not.

How do you know how much he is making? Do you have some sort of insight?

Raking in the cash? How much do you honestly think he could possibly make standing outside a grocery store?

https://www.cary-hoco.org/adler

Look at questions 4 and 5.

Also, at a recent BOE candidate forum, a gay father asked Adler (and Chen) why they don’t support his child feeling accepted in school. Adler’s response was that there are parents who aren’t comfortable yet. Others may disagree, but I don’t feel as though people that do not accept gay people in this day and age should dictate school policy. We do not accept racism as a valid reason for making school policy and we should not accept anti-LGBTQ beliefs as a valid reason.

Let’s just start off with the fact that I did not downvote you so don’t jump to conclusions.

Adler was very good at putting on a nice face and saying things that sound ok at first but weren’t quite what they seemed when you looked deeper, so I didn’t trust her to restrict her position on books to just be “pedophilia dick-sucking.” Her positions on LGBTQ issues is a good example of this. She frequently said that she supported all students and that students should feel welcome and accepted in schools, but then supported policies that treated LGBTQ students like pariahs. Banning even the mention of anything relating to LGBTQ people from middle and elementary schools is absurd and detrimental to LGBTQ youth and kids with LGBTQ families. How do you think a kid in elementary school with 2 male or 2 female parents would feel if in a discussion of families they were not permitted to talk about their family? It’s potentially even worse for middle schoolers given their greater awareness. It’s hard to believe an 8th grader struggling with conflicted feelings about their sexual orientation wouldn’t feel some sort of shame about their feelings if presented with a policy that does not permit the mention of LGBTQ people or that they wouldn’t offended by the reduction of their own parents to inappropriate sexual beings rather than loving parents.

All one has to do is look to the groups pushing the Adler candidacy to see what a change in book policies in schools would have lead to. She was heavily supported by people from two Facebook groups, Howard County Neighbors United and Families Unite Howard County (yes, FUHC). These groups had many postings vilifying LGBTQ people and decrying the “indoctrination of students.” Their complaints went far beyond the example we’re talking about to anything LGBTQ related. To these people anything LGBTQ is sexually explicitly and needs to be banned. It seemed clear to me, given Adler’s position on even talking about LGBTQ issues that she would be sympathetic to this claim at the very least if not an outright supporter of it.

She supported policies that would have prohibited even mentioning the existence of LGBTQ people in classes below the high school level and even then she supported giving parents the right to pull their kids out of any class that discussed LGBTQ issues. Her opinions on book banning also went beyond just that one example. She supported overriding decisions made by educators and librarians to allow banning books that have “sexually explicitly content”. What exactly is considered sexually explicit remained to be seen, but given the postings on Facebook by her most ardent supporters, it is clear that it if she were in power there would be attempts to ban books more innocuous than the example you provided. That language she used in her campaign, specifically the phrases neighborhood schools and parents rights while sounding innocent enough are code words used by far right groups pushing agendas far right agendas.

My thought process was that progressives focused hard on Adler’s far right views and conservatives focused hard on Newberger’s progressive views so voters might have been reluctant to vote for either of them. Chen was very good at concealing that he is a conservative guy. Everything I saw that he posted was just so generic and vague. Other the redistricting, pretty much all his positions are just generic promises that anyone could get behind. It would take further digging that most voters don’t do to realize that Chen does not have the best view of the less well off of that he is incredibly dismissive of the issues facing LGBTQ students.

It’s a separate store with a separate entrance. You can’t access it from inside wegmans. When it opens you can take a staircase or the elevator from the first floor of wegmans near the prepared foods to the second floor then go outside and in a separate door to the liquor store.

Kittleman has traded developer money for conservative wealthy Columbia and western county money. If you want to know who is funding the Kittleman campaign take a trip over to the Howard County Neighbors United group on Facebook. It is a cesspool of wealthy Republican grievance politics. A bunch of well off people claiming they are the true victims of policies aimed at benefitting the less well off, minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people.

That’s essentially the thrust of the Kittleman campaign. Blast Ball and deflect from everything Kittleman did while in office.

I’ve been really disappointed by Kittleman’s campaign. He’s gone very negative and most of what he is saying is incredibly misleading.

Check out the link below. Crime was actually higher under Kittleman than it was under Ball. Kittleman is heavily pushing the fact they homicides are higher under Ball, but the homicide rate is incredibly low under both of them. Whether there are 6 homicides in the county of 11 there is an incredibly small number of homicides in a county of 330,000 people. It’s ridiculous for Kittleman to constantly harp on a homicide rate of 1 homicide per 33,000 residents. It’s nothing but pure fearmongering.

Kittleman’s claims regarding taxes are similarly misleading. He talks about taxes skyrocketing by 35% but what he doesn’t reveal is that he is talking about the firetax which went from .176% to .236% so basically 6 one hundredths of a percent which is equivalent to $25 per month on a $500,000 home.

Kittleman also loves to hit Ball on accepting developer donations. What he mentions less is that he accepted developer donations in the past and opposed public funding of campaigns when the county council considered the CEF. Kittleman only came to oppose developer donations when it became a convenient talking point and he knew there would be a groundswell of donations from wealthy residents in western Howard county who are desperate to get Ball out of office.

Cue the Kittleman supporters giving Kittleman all the credit and claiming things would be even better if it weren’t for Calvin Ball.

If Dr. Chen truly believes in working to ensure all students are successful he should at least make a basic attempt to hear the concerns of all students. He has not held back on listening to and championing the “plight” of those who have been redistricted and who oppose redistricting even if they haven’t been directly impacted by it, but he hasn’t even made a basic attempt to listen to LGBTQ students who frequently suffer much worse conditions. LGBTQ youth are at a higher risk of mental illness and suicide as a result of the treatment they receive, but I guess that’s meaningless compared to what students experience having to take a longer bus ride to school or seeing their friends less frequently. But yeah only LGBTQ students are playing the victimhood card.

You just don’t get it. No one is asking Dr. Chen for special treatment. He has expressed a desire to listen to people’s concerns and yet when given the opportunity to listen to the concerns of the LGBTQ community he has turned down the opportunity more than once.

This whole isssue combined with Dr. Chen’s recent statements denigrating FARMs kids just demonstrates how little regard he has for some parts of the county. And yes I saw his pathetic attempt to walk back those horrendous comments.

Coded language?!? What exactly is a Confucian demeanor. Does it involve completely ignoring a portion of the community? There is a huge area between kissing the ring and completely ignoring people. If Mr. Chen cares about all students as he claims he should at least make an attempt to listen to a variety of concerns. As it stands he seems as though he could not care less about the issues those students face.

Pretends to kowtow to the gay community? That’s just a little offensive. Further, he didn’t even respond to a written questionnaire. Claim what you want about the in person forum, but responding to a written questionnaire isnt that hard. Considering that 90% of what I’ve seen from Mr. Chen are general statements that basically every candidate supports, you’d think he could spend the hour writing responses that just rehash the same generic talking points he frequently uses. If Mr. Chen doesn’t have enough respect to even respond to a written survey I really wonder whether he cares about the outcomes for all students.

My impression is that Mr. Chen knows his best chance of winning is to court the anti-progressive vote along with Adler while getting enough middle of the road voters to get him over the line. Accordingly he has taken an anti-redistricting view and the rest of his campaign is about working as hard as possible to avoid offending anyone except the voters he knows won’t support him. I guess you could call that pragmatic. I call it lacking a backbone.

I don’t get Chen’d campaign. Nearly everything he posts is incredibly vague and generic with no specifics. He has also avoided addressing LGBTQ issues by being the only candidate to skip the CARY forum and to not fill out their questionnaire. Chen also made some very troubling comments at a recent candidate forum where he essentially blamed poor students for receiving free and reduced lunch. My impression is that Chen is a pretty conservative guy who is doing everything in his power to conceal those positions.

Here are some real stats on crime in the county. Kittleman and his supporters are lying. Crime is not up. In fact in most categories it is down.

https://www.howardcountymd.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/Annual%202021%20UCR%20.pdf

Now you’re just trolling. You know full well that stating the increase as a percentage and ignoring absolute figures is highly misleading.

Give me stats, don’t give me anecdotes. How much exactly have all types of crime gone up in the county and how much have they gone up on comparison to surrounding jurisdictions. How many of those crimes were committed by people from outside of the county on other people from outside the county but they just happened to be in the county. How many of the the victims of those crimes were innocent people and how many were targeted crimes based on drug deals that went bad or something similar. You need to present the full story and not just say have you see how many crimes are reported lately.

Of course every death or shooting is a tragedy, but the way Kittleman and his right wing followers are using crime as a political talking point is disgusting. We hear residents of rural western Howard county decrying the increase in crime based primarily on anecdotes about events in eastern Howard County. We hear people decrying shootings, many of which are targeted and are not random events putting innocent lives at risk. We have commercials complaining that SROs are not in school to protect kids against school shootings without any explanation as to how a single police officer with a pistol is supposed to stop a lunatic with an AR-15 shooting into crowds of panicked students. The crime argument is nothing but fear mongering aimed at appealing to a certain crowd that spends more time worrying about some “thug” mugging them than thinking logically.

You’re giving half assed information to rile people up. Property taxes have not gone up and the tax that has gone up is a minor increase.

As for recordation taxes, once again you’re avoiding numbers because the increases are minimal. The rate went from 1% to 1.25%. One quarter of a percent. $1,250 on a $500,000 home or $2,500 on a million dollar home. I’m not exactly shedding many tears for a person selling a million dollar home netting $2,500 less. Even more so considering how much property values have gone up in recent years. But then again some people are just greedy jerks that decry any tax increase, demand the county cut the budget, but complain about any decrease to the services that they like the best.

Ah yes the Howard County is a crime riddled hell hole argument. I shudder every time I leave my house at the fear of bullets flying.

Saying Ball raised property taxes is highly misleading. The property tax rate in Howard County did NOT go up since Ball has been CE. I haven’t looked at every one of the tax bills for my property for the past 20 years, but the tax rate is the same as 2017 (ie when Kittleman was CE) and is actually lower the rate from 20 years ago.

What did go up was the fire tax rate which went from .00176 to .00236. That right, the rate went up a whopping six one hundredths of a percent. Now the amount you are paying now compared to 2017 might be a lot higher, but that’s mainly because property values are significantly higher now than in 2017. So yeah the CE that you hate so much that is dragging the county into the gutter also presided over significant increases in county property values. Perhaps you should thank him when you sell your home and bail from the county you consider a sinking ship.