Jordan P. Cooper

Comptroller Peter Franchot spoke to a half-filled room with the Civic Federation on Nov. 9 at the County Council Building. Speaking of his role on the Maryland Board of Public Works, which he said has approved 18,000 contracts accounting for $85 billion in state spending since he rose to the position from being a delegate from Takoma Park, Franchot emphasized his independence from partisan politics as comptroller. Franchot portrayed the Board of Public Works as a “court of last resort” against “machine politics,” citing his ability to stand up to the Democratic Party in Baltimore County as a champion of Dundalk Citizen groups regarding a development proposal that he voted against. The comptroller continued to paint himself as the champion of taxpayers and consumers in the face of stifling government overreach. Consumers of education, he said, will support his proposed one-year standardized testing moratorium that prevents “teachers from doing what they’re go...

The Montgomery County delegation to the Maryland General Assembly has 32 members. With the recent appointments of now Senator Will Smith and now Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins due to the vacancy created by the election of former Senator and now Congressman Jamie Raskin that number has risen to 37.5% [i] or more than 1 in 3 of our elected officials in Montgomery County having arrived in ‘elected’ office through a non-democratic appointment process instead of being elected.  12 members of the current delegation arrived there through appointments without having been directly elected to office by their constituency. So in our great democracy, one-third of our representatives were not chosen democratically by the people they are meant to represent. The appointment process is doubly damaging in Maryland since we are one of five states that has a four year term for the lower house in the state legislature. In effect, delegates appointed a year into a four year term are able...

I wish to clarify the complexity of the many hats that paint the broader strokes of our elected officials' responsibilities. The elected official is at once a politician, a legislator, and a social worker. Many candidates seem to be motivated to run for public office by one or two of these three roles, but few are driven by a desire and/or have the ability to adeptly act as all three. There is some degree of each in every elected official, but generally one trait runs dominant. There are the single-issue candidates who run on a policy platform, often drawing their inspiration from personal experience. These are the candidates that lobby for harsher penalties for DUIs because a family member was killed in a drunk-driving accident, who are frustrated by the de-funding of a school's art program and wish to strengthen state investments in the arts, or a small businessman who has seen the costs of providing health care to his employees skyrocket and is determined to p...

Voter participation in Baltimore City, and much of America, has reached an all-time low. More than ever, Americans are disenfranchised by their frustration with the political system. Americans are not apathetic; the American spirit inherently nurtures strong political conviction. Americans care deeply about myriad issues. Yet low voter turnout predominates on election day. Perhaps the American voter could benefit from a reminder of why s/he should cast a ballot. Here are the top ten reasons why you should exercise your right vote: 10. If you have a problem and require a politician’s assistance, if you wish to have politicians knock on your door and ask you your opinion, if you wish to engage in a conversation with your leaders, if you are at all frustrated by government, if you think we can do better, then have your name show up on voter registration databases. 9. Voting is simple and accommodating of your schedule and special needs- there is ea...

In this increasingly globalized world, each person must learn to become his own advocate and his own product. With the recession, capitalism has come to define our identity with greater visibility than any other time in recent memory. As globalization has exposed markets to global competition in the wake of the free trade and general deregulation movement of the 1980s and 90s, wages have subsequently been driven downwards, employment is no longer guaranteed, and formerly qualified and educated individuals find themselves struggling to make ends meet in this contracted economy. The result, and Reader I would ask if you or anyone you know can relate to this, is that job hunters must sell not just their replaceable labor, but must sell themselves as a product in a market that would make Marx cringe. The commoditization of the individual seems to be the mark of a new era in the information age. Social networking, online job applications, online dating, expedi...

The democratizing effects of the internet that, for some, has become a megaphone for individual calls to action, have fundamentally begun a shift of the basis of world power away from institutional control. The internet has transformed the helmet of state control (in more repressive regimes, with information having been controlled to a lesser extent by share-holders in the freer societies) of information into a sieve that has ultimately proven to be uncontainable by any singular or plural force. In a more concrete sense, I refer to Turkey's attempt to censor the internet for access to pornographic, terrorist, or sites that support the theory of Darwinian evolution. I refer to China's severe and uncompromising censorship of the world wide web, which prompted Google's retreat to Hong Kong. I refer to the Arab Spring, the reverberations of which continue to be felt by tyrannical powers to this day. To each of these attempts to block access to information, news of the cens...

I wish to elaborate upon the scope and means of conducting the project described in the posting entitled: "Grassroots Education, Hidden Costs, and Health Care." The scope essentially is that the American health care system is broken and needs to be fixed. The hypothesis is that there are already models in this country (VA (socialized medicine) and Medicare (single payer medicine)) that excel at providing good quality care, appropriate care, and access to care, while keeping overhead/administrative costs in control. The idea is that Americans can get a lot more for current levels of spending, and that the acceleration of costs can be curbed through the expansion of eligibility to the VA or Medicare to any human being living in the US. It follows that, should data support this hypothesis/idea, that a media campaign to educate voters and advocate for legislative change would, if successful, correct a lot of what is wrong in this country. I can hardly think of a more ...

Among the many drivers of skyrocketing health care expenditures, medical education might well be characterized as the often neglected, figurative elephant in the middle of room. The Association of American Medical Colleges reports that the average annual cost of attending a private medical school is approximately $51,000 and $48,000 for public medical schools (https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/report_median.cfm?year_of_study=2012). Prior to attending medical school, medical students must have completed a bachelors degree and all pre-med curricular requirements at a similar annual cost for private universities. The cost of residency, a three to seven year term immediately following medical school, which is required for aspiring medical doctors to become board certified, is about $28,000. This fee often affords the resident the opportunity to work 100+ hours per work at minimal salary of about $40,000. The cost of tuition (and its associated expenses) ...

As economic conditions conspire to engender an entrepreneurial spirit among those who would otherwise seek to be productive through traditional means of employment, I here present a dilemma endemic to our society, and a proposal that has been created with the intention of addressing this challenge. The Problem I’m trying to solve: There is insufficient political support for a health care delivery system that is more simple, streamlined, efficient, and adequate in addressing the health needs of those living within America's borders. The lay public has been insufficiently informed of the counter-intuitive reality that all persons living within the borders of the United States currently access health care (in Emergency Departments) regardless of their ability to pay or their citizenship status; much of this cost is already borne by taxpayers, and reorganization of the system can improve quality, access, and value. Description of Project: I will study the true costs of Eme...

Many Americans are registered to vote, yet on election day polling booths remain empty. Many are not convinced of the value of an individual vote. Others have not yet realized the value of active participation in civil discourse. Most might like to vote, but have not chosen to make it a priority. These are good Americans, not by virtue of their abstinence from political participation, nor from their historical knowledge of suffrage movements throughout civilization, but because these are generally good people who each contribute to their community in their own way. The value of their honest work, their philanthropy, and their contributions to society are not to be underestimated. Instead, it is the purpose of this writer to advocate for the augmentation and glorification of their efforts through the noble and simple act of voting. The ability to articulate one's thoughts, to give voice to one's thoughts and emotions, is perhaps the most defining...

The partisan polity that American government seems to have become is one in which toleration for dissent and dialogue have given way to obedience and obeisance to leadership. Who were once the representatives of the people, have now in large part become fettered by a party machine that, as a rule, has concentrated the seat of political power in the hands of those few few in the upper echelon of party leadership. The resultant oligarchy, irrespective of its benevolence or malevolence, gravitates towards intolerance of diversity of opinion. Legislators become complicit; the gradual accrual of political capital necessitates as much. Political independence from party leadership becomes dangerously equivocal with political isolation and impotence. The antidote: an informed and civically responsible electorate. The Jefferson Library of Congress building, arguably the most magnificent architectural tribute to the American Democratic experiment an...

March 28, 2013 The Lockheed Martin conference and training center is clearly the sole beneficiary of this legislation, given that it is the only applicable entity that might fit the exemption language. It is equally apparent that the Lockheed Martin conference and training center competes with area hotels, which is where Lockheed contractors, employees, and visitors would otherwise stay had the center not been constructed. Under any definition of a hotel, in light of particular instances of Lockheed charging visitors to stay at the center as an alternative to lodging in local hotels, it is clear that the center provides a service that falls within the purview of the hotel tax, which is the subject of this proposed legislation.  Lockheed must be held accountable to the same rules and standards that its competitors are held to; to do otherwise is to act against both local business interests and a basic understanding of fair play. Lockheed constructed the center...

  Cooper for Maryland                    From the Community, For the Community FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                CONTACT: Adam Beitman November 15 th , 2013                                                                      202-670-5585               ...

Thomas V. Miller, Jr., President, Maryland Senate Michael Busch, Speaker, Maryland House of Delegates 100 State Circle Annapolis, Maryland 21401-1925 Dear President Miller and Speaker Busch: We, the members of the Customer Advisory Board (CAB), are writing to advocate for the adoption of an “Infrastructure Tax.” The WSSC CAB is responsible for representing the interests of WSSC rate-payers to WSSC Commissioners and the WSSC General Manager. WSSC 's top priority should be to reliably deliver water and sewer services to WSSC rate-payers at a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory rate. The enormous backlog of maintenance work on WSSC 's pipe and facility infrastructure present a challenge to the ability of the water and sewer utility to reliably deliver it services to rate-payers. At the present rate, it will take 100 years [1] to address the entire backlog of work that must be done WSSC 's infrastructure. To accommodate the increasi...