Commentary

Regarding the Dec. 29 front-page article “Southwest didn’t heed warnings, unions say”: As passengers find out that many shortcomings exist in our nation’s airline system, they might not appreciate that the airline “meltdown” affecting millions of travelers around Christmastime was completely avoidable. The problem goes back to 1978, when the airline industry was deregulated, and competition and profits were prioritized over basic public-utility goals.

As Christopher Schafer, tailor to men rich and poor, described two terrible events of the last year — the thief who pointed a gun at him, the fire that damaged his new shop in Fells Point — it suddenly made sense that a man who had successfully pulled away from addictions to drugs and alcohol would become attached to Baltimore. A man in recovery — for Schafer, 18 years now — understands that it’s a long, hard road that never ends. Recovery means remembering who you were, what you went through, never losing hope for a better life, never letting go once you get there. It tends to foster empathy, too.

It’s sobering, but not surprising, to read that the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the pollution reduction goals identified in the 2010 Chesapeake Bay Agreement will not be met. The EPA recommends that a new agreement and timeline be developed over the next year. This is the time for all of us to think about what can be done to help the states in the bay watershed finally achieve a clean Chesapeake Bay.

Like many Americans, as the 2022 midterms approached, I feared for our democracy. I’ve worked in campaigns for years and at levels where I witnessed the rough side of the business. But 2022 felt different, more threatening and more consequential than other elections. The Jan. 6 insurrection showed how extreme Make America Great Again was and is. Plus, the combination of Donald Trump, foreign intervention, and social media have proven impossible to regulate and very effective in the dark art of misinformation and grievance politics.

As the 2020 presidential election neared, then-President Donald Trump warned all Americans — especially Republicans — about the supposed dangers he saw in early, absentee and mail-in voting. “As far as the ballots are concerned, it’s a disaster,” he said during a September 2020 presidential debate, repeating a fully debunked, utterly untrue argument that such ballots lead to election fraud. But Trump, who lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, was right in one way. Mail-in voting was a disaster – for Maryland Republicans in 2022.

Should judges be elected or appointed? While neither system is perfect, the risks of electing judges by popular vote are too great to ignore — from the potential for causing judges to shy away from decisions that might make them less popular with the general public to the ethics of judicial candidates accepting campaign donations from lawyers who are likely to appear in their courtrooms.

Once Anthony Brown is sworn in as Maryland’s attorney general Jan. 3, he must move expeditiously to seek permission to release the delayed report on alleged sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. The result of a four-year investigation led by Brian Frosh, the state’s outgoing attorney general, the 456-page document identifies 158 priests who allegedly abused more than 600 boys and girls — some of them preschoolers — over a period of 80 years.