Friday, March 29, 2024 | Baltimore, MD
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Commentary

Opinion: Traffic deaths are up, but where is the urgency to reduce them?

In the first three months of last year, Maryland recorded 110 traffic fatalities. During the same time period this year, there have been 164 such deaths, a nearly 50% increase. And while that first quarter trend was among the worst in the nation, ), it was hardly unique. U.S. road deaths increased by 7% overall from January through March this year continuing a nearly two-year trend to produce the highest 3-month level of traffic fatalities in two decades, according to recently released National Highway Traffic Safety Administration numbers. At what point will those in charge of traffic safety at the state, local and federal level find these numbers alarming? This quarterly result represents 9,560 deaths.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Opinion: 21 years after 9/11, the war has not ended for anyone

Twenty-one years after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan, one can ask whether the United States has yet learned the principal lesson of that shocking, savage day. It is a lesson well-known to military planners, yet hard for a nation with allies on its borders and oceans at its sides to believe bone deep. In the starting and ending of wars, the letting of blood and the waging of battle, the enemy has a vote. The day that has come to be known as 9/11 began a war only for us; for the enemy, the war had been raging for years.

Brooks: The immortal awfulness of open plan workplaces

Oscar Wilde is said to have quipped that “God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” Our species is capable of folly on a grand scale. Exhibit 4,000 in this litany of woe is the continued existence of open plan workplaces. For decades, research has found that open plan offices are bad for companies, bad for workers, bad for health and bad for morale. And yet they just won’t die. Human beings, if they are to thrive, need a bit of privacy — walls and a door. And yet employers, decade after decade, neglect to give workers what they need, refuse to do what’s in their own self-interest.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
I Voted
Opinion: The power of unity in Maryland

Maryland Democrats had a party unity problem in the 2018 statewide election cycle. Amid a national blue wave fueled by resistance to President Donald Trump, about a third of their own voted to give incumbent Gov. Larry Hogan (R) a second term. And it wasn’t just the Democratic voters who broke ranks. Many Democratic lawmakers offered only halfhearted support for their gubernatorial nominee, Ben Jealous, and kept their distance from him on the campaign trail. Some, most notably State Comptroller Peter Franchot, withheld their endorsements altogether. The Democratic Senate Caucus Slate even funded mailers boasting about Democrats’ working relationship with the Republican governor.

Streeter: For the parents who don’t have help: An ode to the village we all deserve

Colons and Cosmopolitans don’t usually go together, but a line from the “Sex and the City 2” movie popped into my mind last week while trying to coordinate the indelicate procedure of a colonoscopy. It’s in a scene where Miranda and Charlotte are in their obscenely huge Abu Dhabi vacation villa commiserating over cocktails about how hard parenting is, and how, for their sanity, they needed a break from their kids. “How do the women without help do it?” a flabbergasted Charlotte asks, and they raise a toast to those hapless, less-supported mothers before going back to their materialistic holiday of being judgmental about local customs and singing ancient Helen Reddy lyrics at unsuspecting Middle Eastern women.

Rodricks: Squeegee workers conducted a survey of squeegee workers. Here’s what they said.

In all the grousing and near-hysteria about the young Baltimoreans who do the squeegee thing on the streets of our city, there’s been a woeful lack of listening. Talk radio listens to the squeegee haters. With its ongoing “City In Crisis” reports, Fox 45 listens to any motorist who tells of being accosted by squeegee workers. There has been some, but not much, listening to the boys and young men who wash windshields for money at busy intersections. I’ve done some, but not enough. It was after July’s fatal shooting of Timothy Reynolds, the bat-wielding motorist who went after squeegee workers in downtown Baltimore, that someone thought it time to listen to the squeegee kids, and not just a few of them.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Opinion: A little customer service, please

We have all faced issues with customer service during the pandemic. Many businesses, especially restaurants and the hospitality industry, have been hit hard with worker shortages. Some restaurants have reduced hours, some have placed signs at the entrance to be patient as they are short-staffed, and some businesses have failed altogether. I fully understand excessive waiting times and erratic business hours due to being short-staffed. But the lack of basic customer service is not acceptable. Recently, my wife and I had experiences of both exceptional and horrendous customer service. Our first negative experience is an ongoing challenge that began last summer when we replaced the sliding glass door in our basement.

Water on tap
Mayor Scott, what is Baltimore doing to avoid becoming the next Flint or Jackson?

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and his administration are being widely criticized for what many see as a failure to alert residents in the fullest and fastest manner possible to water contamination issues first discovered Saturday. Two days passed before the city’s Department of Public Works made any mention of the presence of E. coli in the drinking supply, and then the news was delivered via social media on a holiday morning, claiming the problem was likely limited to particular fire and police facilities.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Wanted in Maryland: FBI headquarters

Since that day in 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that a new building to house a consolidated U.S. War Department would make the most sense situated across the river from Washington, D.C., in Virginia (and which would later be named the Pentagon), the federal government has regularly looked to the suburbs to provide space for an expanding federal government.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
For the parents who don’t have help: An ode to the village we all deserve

Colons and Cosmopolitans don’t usually go together, but a line from the “Sex and the City 2” movie popped into my mind last week while trying to coordinate the indelicate procedure of a colonoscopy. It’s in a scene where Miranda and Charlotte are in their obscenely huge Abu Dhabi vacation villa commiserating over cocktails about how hard parenting is, and how, for their sanity, they needed a break from their kids. “How do the women without help do it?” a flabbergasted Charlotte asks, and they raise a toast to those hapless, less-supported mothers before going back to their materialistic holiday of being judgmental about local customs and singing ancient Helen Reddy lyrics at unsuspecting Middle Eastern women.

The Morning Rundown

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