Commentary

Data from the Association of American Medical Colleges shows about 5.7% of physicians in the United States identify as Black or African American, even though Black individuals make up approximately 13.6% of the overall population. In Maryland, where 31.4% of our population is Black, only 12.3% of physicians identify as Black.

Hello, Taxes. It’s been a while. Yeah, almost no one thinks about me until it’s time. Me and Death: an afterthought. But it’s budget season in Maryland and beyond, when cities, counties and even those doofuses in Washington fight over me and my sister, Spend. So it’s a good time to catch up. You, mortals, have to deal with me sooner or later. I am eternal.

In as little as six weeks, the U.S. economy may suffer substantial and lasting harm. That’s when the United States could default on its debt, the product of the failure of Congress to raise the limit on how much money the nation can borrow to pay its bills. The debt limit itself is something of an oddity. It has nothing to do with spending or tax policy. It’s really just about paying the bills — the equivalent of a consumer maxing out the credit card but then deciding whether or not to make a payment to creditors.

April 5, 2023: Sun-streaked skies and the glorious length of a warm spring break evening downtown. Meanwhile, Baltimore Police Department officers descend, and the public fearfully condemns a “swarm of people” at Pratt Street and Market Place. Businesses are ordered to close early and helicopters circle with threatening speaker calls to “disperse.”

There is DNA evidence from at least 1,295 sexual assault cases sitting in a storage facility in Baltimore County. Every one of those slides of DNA represents a woman who walked into GBMC hospital, said she was raped, and endured evidence being taken from her body on what was likely the worst day of her life. These DNA slides date back to the 1970s.

2023 is proving to be a challenging year for Montgomery County food farmers. As recession fears take hold and the impact of inflation is felt by more and more people in our community, local farms that sell direct to consumers like us and often rely on a Community Support Agriculture (CSA) model are feeling the impact.

Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragnet fame advisedly said, “just the facts, ma’am”. So, here are the facts. The U.S. has warmed 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970 and the annual rate of warming is accelerating. The frequency of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. has increased from once every 4 months in the 1980s to once every 3 weeks (after accounting for inflation).