Repelling UMD Students?! Clash Over College Park's Rent Control Extention.

With the economy finally starting to recover, even though the real economy will not see a recovery anytime soon, it's still important for people to keep or to be able to afford a home, even if it means renting an apartment. This is especially true for students studying in the University of Maryland. Problem is that apartments will be more expensive if the landlords get their way to abolish rent control.

Many landlords accused the city of having an ulterior motive behind the ordinance — to rid neighborhoods of students from the University of Maryland, College Park.

"You can't come out and say, ‘We don't want students living here,'" said Bryan Mack, a College Park landlord who lives in Mount Airy. "But I think that's what's lying underneath everything."

While many landlords favored the outright abolishment of the ordinance, students at Tuesday's hearing spoke in favor of extending rent control to apartments as well as houses.

"The new [apartments] that are being built have an unfair advantage. They can charge rents that are artificially high," said Bob Hayes, a UM junior. "The only reason that I can afford to live in College Park is because I'm able to rent a single-family house with a group of people."

People should be able to rent rooms to other people, as long as they pay their share of the rent and don't disturb the community. The vote is scheduled on August 11 and this blog will cover it.

Morning Note

When you have classes on Monday and Wednesday, you tend to focus on Monday through Wednesday concentrating on that day. Then you take a day off on Thursday, then you start to slowly continue your studies on Friday to Sunday, taking small breaks throughout the day until the assignment is done.

That's why I'm study during the summer.

No More Adult Court Waivers or Not!?

What's really a bad idea, sending serious child offenders to adult court to do adult time. Doing that actually defeats the purpose of Juvenile Courts. The United States have done this bad idea for about two decades. But the state legislators are thinking of ways of reforming Maryland's juvenile justice system.

Source: http://www.gazette.net/stories/07272009/polinew173445_32533.shtml

What Free Market?! The Taxi Cab Cartel in Prince Georges County!

According to a report entitled "Dispatching Injustice: Cab Drivers' Struggle in Prince George's County", a cartel of cab companies which control taxi business in prince georges county hinders competition, leading to long hours and low pay to those that you hire to take you wherever you need to go. What even worse, is that there are many companies who still have taxi cab licenses, but never reliquished them when they gone out of business. What's interestingly is that Silver Cab and Taxi-Taxi, the county's central taxi dispatching service, share the same owner.

I'm watching this story as it develops, and I need to read the report to see what is going on.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/29/AR2009072902528.html

What is the Modern Day Prophet? (Part 1)

The Modern Day Prophet is a news and commentary blog reporting on events in the state of Maryland. When I mean news, I mean hard news. No celebrity news, no crime blotter news that our local TV news reports every day, no fluff consumer or health pieces. Just hard news: News about social issues, politics, the economy, government, civic and cultural events.

Why hard news? Because local TV news in Baltimore/Washington area, rarely report hard news, because doing hit-and-run crime blotter stories is just too profitable. Newspapers? They just either too focused on Washington or too focused on Baltimore. So why not a regular person, a regular African American, to report hard news? And probably do its own investigations as well. Probably even better than the various consumer story laden investigative reports that our local TV station “I-teams” trot out once in a while.

The Free State Still in the Red?! 700 Million Dollars Must Be Still Cut!

The Government of Maryland is still 700 million dollars in the red. This is despite salary freezes, cuts to road aid, and taking advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Governor O'Malley is planing this week to present a package of cuts to the Board of Public Works.

This is a bit of old news because it was reported on July 10. But what cuts is the Governor planning to propose?

Morning Note

It's unbelievable, but I'm back in College Park. I'm about just to begin my 2009-2010 year in Leonardtown for the summer. I just need to cook breakfast for myself and be on my way to class. The thing is that why the University of Maryland likes to house students in Old Leonardtown? Because I have been in the same housing complex like the time I got housed there in Summer 2007. Amazingly, I'm across the street of where I was when I was in summer 2007 in Leonardtown.