Our President has recently called into question the common sense understanding of what constitutes an emergency or crisis. Is, for example, the lack of a wall across our southern border really as disconcerting as, let’s say, the abuse of opioids? Or the fact that 1 out of 8 women in the United States will develop breast cancer in her lifetime?
Topgolf? You’ve got to be kidding.
A conscientious reader of our website has sent us the following article from the Wednesday, February 13, 2019 edition of the Baltimore Sun. It’s by Daniel Parsons, an English teacher at Frederick Douglass High School and it is essential reading for anyone who cares about the City and its people. If you have trouble reading the version that you can see below, even after clicking on it to make it larger, you’ll need to find the article on the Sun’s website. …As for the uneven edges around the image of the paper version, it was cut out by a younger member of my family who is still perfecting his skills with a scissors. Until then, “Good work!”
No-brainer.
Some choices are difficult for our legislature to make. This one is a no-brainer.
On one hand we have two counties ¬– Prince George’s and Baltimore City – that are desperately short of the funding they need to give their children even a minimum quality education. Of the 24 counties in the state, including Baltimore City, their public education systems are ranked 23rd and 24th respectively.
The pie chart.
Given a choice between investing in horse racing or our children’s education, which one do you pick?
I don’t know about you, but I like pie. Cherry pie, in particular, apple and key lime, but also pizza and charts.
Hey. As you may know, we did some work recently having to do with the MGM National Harbor casino.
“So what? …I’m hungry and I thought this post had something to do with pie.”
The MGM National Harbor has withdrawn its application!
Hey, everybody. Please click on the link below to see the letter from MGM attorneys Shipley & Horne that officially withdraws MGM’s application for a cigar lounge, that is, for an exemption to the Maryland Clean Indoor Air Act.
Congratulations, MGM! It’s a bar. No smoking allowed.
This article discusses two arguments related to the licensed sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages that should cause the Prince George’s County Zoning Hearing Examiner to disapprove the application by MGM for an exemption to the Maryland Clean Indoor Air Act. This article does not address additional, compelling arguments related to the harmful effects of secondhand smoke to MGM National Harbor employees and customers.
What’s wrong with this picture?
The picture we’re talking about is the floor plan you see below. It’s MGM’s plan for a tobacco store/cigar lounge to be opened inside the MGM National Harbor complex along the “Retail Promenade,” very near the main entrance to the casino.
The Topgolf/Horseshoe Casino’s Homeless Family
As you may have heard, Horseshoe Casino revenues have been declining while revenues at Maryland’s other 5 casinos continue to grow. This is not what former Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake and current Mayor Catherine Pugh had hoped and anticipated.
MGM Cigar Lounge Site and Floor Plans
For those of you following the application that the MGM National Harbor has made for an exemption from the Maryland Clean Indoor Air Act, here are a link to the full site plan – that is, to the interior location of the proposed MGM Retail Tobacco Store (the “Cigar Lounge”) – with two closeup screenshots…
Topgolf? Really?
Depending upon the source, approximately two-thirds of Baltimore’s families are struggling financially – in neighborhoods that need all the help they can get.
The last thing Baltimore needs is a high-end, expensive, glitzy combination of high-tech driving range and bar, most of whose customers and many of its employees will come from outside the city, just to save the Horseshoe Casino and make more money for a handful of developers – with the help of the Baltimore Development Corporation. (“Baltimore Development Corporation.” Now there’s an oxymoron if ever there was one.)
Unfortunately, …
…the next time you go to the MGM National Harbor 
casino, your money won’t be the only thing you’ll be risking.
Sure, we all appreciate the taxes the MGM National Harbor casino is paying to help fund improvements to public education in Prince George’s County. Why wouldn’t we? But that money doesn’t give them the right or permission to do whatever they please, with reckless disregard for public safety.
Why shouldn’t we exempt MGM from the Clean Indoor Air Act?
At 9:30 AM on Wednesday, January 23, the Prince George’s County Zoning Hearing Examiner is having a hearing to determine whether or not the Zoning Examiner will recommend to the County Council that the MGM National Harbor should be allowed an exemption from state law that forbids smoking in casinos. Why should they be given an exemption?