re: #399 sagehen
it’s escaped their attention that commercial fishing, tourism and clam chowder production are businesses too.
The oyster harvest from the Chesapeake Bay was more than 100 million bushels / year less than 100 years ago. It is ~0.5% of that, now. The crab harvest has seen similar drops. There has been an uptick in crab harvest number and size due to restrictions (opposed by the watermen who rely on crab for a living) on harvest and clean-up of the Bay (opposed by chicken farmers on the Eastern Shore),
Going to Happy’s point about blue MD, that is mostly Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard, and Anne Arunadel Counties. The Eastern Shore, Western Shore, and Western MD are red, but make up a much smaller fraction of MD’s population.