Montgomery County's Marxist County Council has beaten Zohran Mamdani at his own game. Before the New York City mayor could even acquire a site for his first government-run grocery store, his fellow travelers on the Montgomery County Council are poised to launch a government-run grocery wholesale business. It's a two-part scheme.
Part 1 involves the County awarding one lucky bidder $550,000 in taxpayer funds to build, stock and operate a wholesale grocery warehouse. The government-funded wholesale operation would sell to "schools, senior centers, hospitals, food banks and correctional facilities," according to a press release from Councilmember Andrew Friedson.
Part 2? Friedson is taking a victory lap in proclaiming Montgomery County will be the first jurisdiction in the region to join the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) Local Food Procurement Challenge. Activating the Montgomery County Anger Translator, we can convert that word salad program name into the English language: The County will mandate the purchase of local farm produce by its "departments and agencies" with "public dollars" on the basis of geography, rather than stretching tight "local dollars" (a.k.a. taxpayer funds) by purchasing the cheapest products from anywhere.
The move continues two longstanding Council trends: socialism, and jacking up the cost of government by continually reducing the number of suppliers of a product or service. These include numerous laws mandating the preference or outright mandate that all bidders or sellers must be minority-owned, woman-owned, or veteran-owned. Likewise, some of the laws have excluded bidders or service providers who do not meet a particular ideological or politically-correct profile determined by the Council.
It doesn't take a Harvard economist to tell you that when you reduce the number of bidders, the cost of the winning bid automatically increases. It's called market economics, and it's only one small reason the County budget has doubled in just the last decade. Equally obvious is that the more public dollars funneled into the grocery business by the County, state, and federal government, the more local grocery prices increase. Heckuva job, Brownie!
4 comments:
Consequences of electing stupid people and giving them unchecked power. Actually, they are far from dumb, they are just off the map Left Wing loons. This won't work because it can't work. There are dozens and dozens of articles and interviewers with people who actually know the grocery business but they don't listen and go forward with dystopian ideas anyway. My gosh, wake up.
Well, since they're already in the liquor business...
Socialism is when people have food nearby that isn't price gouged by corporations, apparently.
Montgomery County prioritizing local farms first, pumping more money into farmowners and the (nationally) struggling agricultural industry? Sounds good to me.
"These include numerous laws mandating the preference or outright mandate that all bidders or sellers must be minority-owned, woman-owned, or veteran-owned" is this supposed to be a bad thing?
I'm expecting to see "Marxibund" on this site, any day now.
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