Boy’s Own Brexit, Part 2
The UK goes it alone (but not really).
politics
Electing the Howard County Board of Education by districts makes no sense
Yes, this is another post promoting ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting questions and answers
I answer questions about ranked choice voting raised by the Howard County Charter Review Commission and others.
A better way to elect the Howard County Council
Tweaking the council redistricting process is the wrong solution. Ranked choice voting is the right one.
Boy’s Own Brexit
The men (sic) offering idiosyncratic in-depth takes on the UK and the EU.
How do schools and parents matter?
I explore the ideas of Judith Rich Harris as they apply to the roles of parents and schools in Howard County and elsewhere.
The Niskanen Center’s incomplete vision
The Niskanen Center promotes a pro-market pro-government vision for the center-right, but I think the sales pitch needs to be tweaked to get at least some co...
Seven answers: Final thoughts
I present some final post-election thoughts on the issues covered in my “Seven Answers” series.
Seven answers: LGBTQIA equality
The struggle for marriage equality provides guidance for how the longer-term campaign for LGBTQIA equality might go.
Seven answers: Gender equality
When it comes to gender equality, I don’t think there are any simple solutions, only tentative ways forward.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 8: And the winner is …
I reveal the winner of the vote for best-looking Howard Couny 2018 campaign sign.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 7: Election day special
After you vote in today’s 2018 primary, vote for the best-looking campaign signs among those that made it to the final round.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 6
Here’s my final set of reviews of Howard County 2018 campaign signs.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 5
I’m in the home stretch now in the race to review Howard County 2018 campaign signs.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 4
My reviews of 2018 campaign signs in Howard County continue.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 3
We’re halfway through my reviews of 2018 campaign signs in Howard County.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 2
I continue my look at 2018 campaign signs in Howard County.
Howard County campaign signs 2018, part 1
I take a look at 2018 campaign signs in Howard County.
Seven answers: Class warfare
Is there a class war going on? Yes, but it’s also an intra-elite war with others caught in the crossfire.
Seven answers: Liberty, equality, and baseball
How America’s pastime illustrates the tensions and trade-offs between liberty and equality.
Seven answers: Racial equality
How to promote racial equality? Possible places to start: reducing crime, improving policing, and promoting voting.
If-by-socialism
“You have asked me how I feel about socialism. All right, here is how I feel about socialism.”
Seven answers: Social democracy
What is social democracy? Dynamic capitalism plus liberal democracy plus an effective social safety net.
Seven answers: Wealth inequality
Is wealth inequality corrosive for democracy, and if so what then? It’s complicated….
Seven answers: Introduction
Even though I’m not a candidate for office, I’m going to take a shot at answering seven questions raised by Jason Booms.
The politics of the future
I start a new series of semi-random posts on political themes for the 21st century.
How politicians see Howard County
The map of Howard County looks very different if you’re looking for votes. Cartograms help you see like a politician.
Useful datasets for Howard County election analysis
I release two useful Howard County election datasets in preparation for future posts.
Thank you Tom Coale
Tom Coale deserves our thanks for showing us the best aspects of politics, in a world in which we so often see the worst.
Making Howard County government data of value to us all
Before Howard County’s next county executive goes off on a high-profile “open government data” initiative, they (and we) should think more about what such a ...
A public service announcement
Vote for Tom Coale for Maryland House of Delegates, District 9B.
Campaign signs 2014: Final results
I’ve looked at and commented on lots of Howard County campaign signs during the 2014 primaries. I end my series of posts with some final winners.
Campaign signs 2014: Howard County Executive
In the battle for Howard County Executive, whose sign reigns supreme?
Campaign signs 2014: Howard County Council District 1
I look at campaign signs in the 2014 primaries for Howard County Council District 1.
Campaign signs 2014: Howard County Board of Education
My thoughts on campaign signs in the race for Howard County Board of Education.
Campaign signs 2014: Maryland State Senate Districts 12 and 13
I look at campaign signs for the 2014 primaries for Maryland State Senate Districts 12 and 13.
Campaign signs 2014: Maryland State Senate District 9
I turn to another of my home districts to look at campaign signs for the Maryland State Senate, District 9.
Campaign signs 2014: Maryland House of Delegates District 13
I look at campaign signs for the 2014 primaries for the Maryland House of Delegates, District 13.
Campaign signs 2014: Maryland House of Delegates District 12
There are lots and lots of campaign signs in the primaries for the Maryland House of Delegates in District 12.
Campaign signs 2014: Maryland House of Delegates District 9B
I look at campaign signs in the 2014 primaries for the Maryland House of Delegates in District 9B.
Campaign signs 2014: Maryland House of Delegates District 9A
I look at campaign signs for the Maryland House of Delegates race in my home district, District 9A.
Campaign signs 2014: Howard County Judge of the Orphans’ Court
I continue my focus on Howard County local races with a look at campaign sings for the Judge of the Orphans’ Court positions.
Campaign signs 2014: Howard County State’s Attorney
My next “sign-off” is for the race for Howard County State’s Attorney, in which incumbent Dario Broccolino faces fellow Democrat Rich Gibson in the 2014 prim...
Campaign signs 2014: Howard County Sheriff
OK, the preliminaries are over, and here’s my first campaign sign 2014 face-off. I’m starting with the courthouse races, and in particular the race for Howar...
Campaign signs 2014: Judging criteria
Here are the criteria I use when judging 2014 campaign signs.
Campaign signs 2014: A call for submissions
Pity the poor political candidates of Howard County. It’s hard enough running a campaign as it is, but they also have pesky bloggers grading their performanc...
Thoughts on market democracy, part 2a: Society as a spontaneous order
This is part 2a of a (hopefully) four-part series; see also part 1, part 3, and part 4. This part grew so long I’m spreading it across two posts, with the se...
People worth reading: Peter Turchin and modeling the cycles of history
This week brings another in my series on people whose blogs and other writings are worth reading. (The first post was on the libertarian economist Arnold Kl...
People worth reading: Arnold Kling and the three languages of politics
I subscribe to almost two hundred blogs, covering a wide range of topics. I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the more interesting ones, in case a...
Looking back at 2010 Howard County campaign signs, part 3
We conclude our tour of campaign signs from the 2010 Howard County elections by looking at some of my favorites. (For more signs see part 1 and part 2.)
Looking back at 2010 Howard County campaign signs, part 2
Continue down memory lane with me as we look back at the campaign signs for Howard County local elections in 2010. (For more signs see part 1 and part 3, and...
Looking back at 2010 Howard County campaign signs, part 1
Now that the local Howard County political campaigns are starting to heat up, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the last local elections in 20...
Tom Coale for Delegate in District 9B
Last Tuesday Tom Coale announced that he’s running for the open House of Delegates seat in the newly-created District 9B in (parts of) Ellicott City. Unfortu...
The long game in Columbia
One political faction obtains a solid majority and uses it to push through a far-reaching initiative, only to have their dominance threatened in a subsequent...
What good is economic freedom (as measured by the Mercatus Center)?
Recently the Mercatus Center at George Mason University released its latest “Freedom in the 50 States” index ranking U.S. states by their overall levels of p...
Weekend reading: Wealth and politics
Here’s another in an intermittent series of posts on articles I found interesting; this one focuses on issues related to wealth, politics, and how they inter...
Thoughts on market democracy, part 1: Capitalistic economic freedoms as vital aspects of liberty
This is part 1 of a projected four-part series, of which the only other part I’ve completed is the first half of part 2.
Should Amazon control the .book domain, or Google .blog?
Everyone who uses the Internet knows about “.com”: google.com, disney.com, even frankhecker.com. It’s one of the well-known suffixes for Internet domain name...
Martin O’Malley has his eyes on the prize and off the ball
I don’t usually comment on Maryland politics beyond Howard County, but this Washington Post story on Martin O’Malley’s approval rating reinforces an opinion ...
Columbia is not a gated community
Over at Columbia Compass Bill Santos has written a great post that brought into focus some of my thoughts around the proposed Inner Arbor project for Symphon...
From Symphony Woods to the Commonwealth of Belle Isle
For the most part I’ve stayed out of the debate over the “Inner Arbor” plan proposed for consideration by the Columbia Association Board of Directors. For th...
Weekend reading: Dense Democrats, supercharged cities, and rural reaction then and now
This week my theme is the urban-rural divide in U.S. politics, both present and past:
Weekend reading: Whither the GOP, after the world gets eaten, and science reading and writing
I’m going to try to post more frequently, and one good way to do that is with link posts. The first of this week’s themes is the future of the Republican par...
Why Maryland Democrats should vote NO on Question 5
Recently my fellow HoCo blogger Tom Coale strongly recommended voting against Maryland Question 5, the state ballot question asking voters to approve or reje...
Inheriting our politics, part 3
In part 1 of this series I referenced the paper “The genetics of politics: discovery, challenges, and progress”, a review of years of research on genetic inf...
Inheriting our politics, part 2
In part 1 of this series I referenced the paper “The genetics of politics: discovery, challenges, and progress”, a review of years of research on genetic inf...
Inheriting our politics, part 1
How do we come by our political attitudes? Are some people “born conservatives” (or liberals)? Why do we identify as Democrats vs. Republicans vs. independen...
Participatory budgeting in Howard County?
If you could vote on exactly how Howard County spends $10M (just over 1% of its operating budget), would you take advantage of the opportunity? What if you c...
Ensuring the integrity of Maryland elections
I’m interrupting my blogging hiatus again to point you to an important report that I think everyone interested in Howard County and Maryland politics should ...
Free market fairness and the challenges of the 21st century
Many people recall that John Maynard Keynes characterized “practical men” as being the “slaves of some defunct economist.” Fewer people recall that Keynes ac...
How to win an STV election for Howard County Council, part 2
Thus far this weekend I’ve suggested revamping the way we elect the Howard County Council as the price for extending the time council members can serve, prop...
How to win an STV election for Howard County Council, part 1
Walking around the neighborhood after publishing my last post I had a sudden pang of anxiety: Were the things I wrote about STV (or “ranked choice”) election...
Electing a council that reflects Howard County, part 2
In part 1 of this two-part post I discussed my proposal to replace the current way of electing the Howard County Council with a new scheme to elect council m...
Electing a council that reflects Howard County, part 1
In my previous post I proposed a bargain between the voters of Howard County and those who want to extend the time Howard County Council members can serve: T...
Beyond term limits for the Howard County Council
As noted by HoCo Rising, Calvin Ball recently proposed allowing Howard County Council members to serve four terms instead of three. The usual opinionating en...
Are you a “statist”?
Some people are fond of using the term “statist” to describe their political opponents. (I’ve never heard of anyone using it to describe themselves.) For exa...
Should Howard County Board of Education candidates take the “Audrey Test”?
Technology and education is a funny topic. On the one hand technological innovation in education holds out the promise of helping students learn better and t...
Howard County executives and council redistricting
As reported by the Howard County Times, county executive Ken Ulman “decided not to sign” the council redistricting bill passed by the Howard County Council b...
Closing the book on 2011
Last December I took the opportunity to review my Howard County-related blogging in 2010, and I thought it would be fun to repeat that for 2011, including pr...
Should Howard County elect council members at large?
This is my fifth and final post in Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of county council redistri...
Can we take the politics out of Howard County Council redistricting?
This is my fourth post in Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in...
Council gerrymandering and the Howard County selectorate
This is my third post in Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in ...
Did the Howard County GOP help dig its own grave?
I’m continuing Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in Howard Cou...
No Columbia, no Howard County Council?
This is Dividing Howard week here on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in Howard Count...
My new book on Howard County Council redistricting
For those of you who enjoyed my blog posts on Howard County Council redistricting so much that you’d like to read them all again in one convenient package, y...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 23
In part 22 the redistricting commission created an initial set of proposed council district maps. In this post the commission makes its final recommendation ...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 22
In part 21 in this series we saw Democrats succeed in taking back both the Howard County Council and the county executive position from Republicans. In this ...
Weekly reading
Here are more recent links from hecker.tumblr.com. This week (actually, more like two weeks) was somewhat random, to say the least.
A letter to Ken Ulman
Dear Ken,
Revisiting Howard County 2010 general election predictions
Back in October 2010 pollsters were dueling over their predictions in the Howard County race for county executive, with pollster Patrick Gonzales of Gonzales...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 21
In this post I continue the story of the 1998 elections for Howard County Council that I began in part 20 of this series.
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 20
In part 19 of this series we saw that in 1996 the voters by referendum adopted a change to the Howard County charter to have a redistricting commission creat...
Changing my (blog) name, plus Plus
For those following this blog, note that I’ve changed the canonical site name from blog.hecker.org to frankhecker.com. Any links and feed URLs referencing th...
Weekly reading
For some time now I’ve been posting links I find interesting at hecker.tumblr.com. This is mainly for personal reference, but I thought it might be useful to...
Creating a blueprint for growing Maryland jobs
How can Maryland promote job growth and the well-being of its citizens as the economy languishes and Federal spending shows every sign of declining, never to...
Does America need a good dose of instability?
Is the U.S. too stable for its own good? You’d think that stability would be a welcome thing, especially for a country in the midst of an economic downturn m...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 19
In part 18 of this series Republicans overcame the disadvantage imposed on them by the recently-adopted redistricting plan and gained a majority on the count...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 18
In part 17 of this series the Howard County Council ended an over two-year battle by finally adopting new councilmanic district lines based on the 1990 censu...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 17
As we saw in part 16 of this series, 1992 ended with the Howard County Council still divided over how to proceed with redistricting in the wake of the ruling...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 16
Part 15 of this series ended with the trial about to begin that would decide whether the Howard County Council had acted illegally in passing the Democratic-...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 15
As we concluded part 14 we’d seen a move by the Democratic council members (adopting their preferred redistricting plan as a bill), a counter-move by the Rep...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 14
As we saw in part 13, the fallout from the 1990 Howard County general election ensured that the path to creating new council district boundaries would not be...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 13
The recent publishing of proposed revised Howard County Council district lines has pushed me to try to finish this series before the new lines are actually a...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 12
Part 11 of this series took us through the 1990 party primaries for the second election year featuring county council districts; in this part we see how the ...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 11
After a long hiatus, I’m happy to announce that I’m resuming my series on the history of County Council redistricting in Howard County (which is also, as in ...
Grover Norquist and Daniel Webster
In a fire-proof vault somewhere in the capital Grover Norquist stores the signed originals of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in which politicians solemnly bi...
Post-modern politics and the Pew typology
Lots of people love filling out quizzes to find out things about themselves they probably already know, and if you’re that type of person here’s another one ...
If taxation is theft, are we recipients of stolen goods?
I’m still enjoying reading and commenting on the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog. Today while reading a post on the deserving vs. the undeserving poor a com...
Bleeding heart libertarians
For those of you who haven’t heard, the Howard County local blogosphere has a new entrant, as Corey Andrews has started a new HoCoLibertarian blog, to get a ...
Maryland says, no DTC genetic testing for you
I’m interrupting my blog hiatus to discuss direct-to-consumer (or DTC) genetic testing, an issue that has recently become a cause celebre (at least among the...
OpenGovernment.org comes to Maryland
I hadn’t seen this mentioned in any other local blogs, so I thought I’d note it here for the benefit of all you political anoraks out there: The folks who br...
Back to the future in Howard County politics, part 1
Quick, guess in which year the following events occurred in Howard County:
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 10
In the previous part 9 of this series we reviewed the Howard County Council races of 1986 up to the time of the party primaries. In this part we continue the...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 9
Part 8 of this series covered the Howard County Council’s first exercise in drawing council district lines. We now turn to how that effort affected the 1986 ...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 8
1985 was a busy year in Howard County Council districting news, so busy I’m having to split it into two parts. Part 7 covered the creation and public unveili...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 7
As we concluded part 6 of this series proponents of electing Howard County Council members by districts had finally achieved their goal of amending the count...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 6
In part 5 of this series nothing much happened in relation to actually doing something about council districts (as opposed to just talking about their potent...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 5
In part 4 of this series proponents of Howard County Council districts failed to get a referendum on the ballot in the November 1980 general election. In thi...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 4
In part 3 of this series Columbia’s new-found political power was tested in a referendum in 1976 on a proposal to expand the Howard County Council from five ...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 3
At the end of part 2 of this series Columbia Democrats had finally achieved political power within Howard County: The 1974 general election produced a 5-0 De...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 2
In part 1 of this series I discussed the formation of the Howard County Council as part of an bipartisan effort to modernize Howard County government at the ...
A history of Howard County Council redistricting, part 1
Now that the 2010 Maryland general election is over, the thoughts of Howard County political activists are turning to the 2014 county elections. Adding an ex...
Exploring Howard County election data with R, part 4
In part 3 of this series we constructed a linear model in R to estimate the proportion of voters in the 2010 Howard County general election who are unaffilia...
Exploring Howard County election data with R, part 3
In part 1 of this series I discussed downloading and installing the R statistical package and loading it with Howard County election data, and then in part 2...
Exploring Howard County election data with R, part 2
In a previous post I promised to explore how we can use the statistics package R to produce estimates for the relative proportions of Republicans, Democrats,...
Relative performance of candidates in District 9A and Council District 1
HoCo Rising recently commented on supposed high Republican turnout in the Maryland House of Delegates race in District 9A, and wondered whether Bob Flanagan ...
How many people in Howard County work for the government?
There’s this meme going around that Howard County Republicans fared badly because Howard County has so many government workers, and they all vote for Democra...
Exploring Howard County election data with R, part 1
The Maryland and Howard County general elections are now over, and we (mostly) know who won. However there’s still one major question I’m waiting on the answ...
How independent are Howard County independents?
Continuing my series of posts related to my political beliefs, today I thought I’d look at the issue of independent voters and what their independence actual...
Why government? Public goods
A while back in the course of a comment thread for a HoCo Rising post I promised to write more about my political views, so that people could decide whether ...
Why the Taxpayer Protection Initiative is a bad idea
Recently Wordbones blogged about a proposed Taxpayer Protection Initiative that Howard County Republicans would like to put on the November ballot. The basic...
Thomas P.M. Barnett and the case for globalization
I have a fondness for big thinkers and theories that attempt to reflect, integrate, and address a wide variety of phenomena. In the area of national security...