Commentary

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.

A is for Adnan Syed, who served more than 20 years in prison for the killing of Hae Min Lee in 1999, the focus of the groundbreaking podcast “Serial.” He was released in September, his conviction vacated and Baltimore’s top prosecutor ultimately deciding not to pursue further charges. Yet questions still linger, including over the treatment of the victim’s family, who would like a redo of the hearing that led to Syed’s release. B is for Baltimore City Fire Department and the loss of three firefighters in a Jan. 24 blaze in a vacant house on South Stricker Street. The community mourned the loss of Paul Butrim, Kelsey Sadler and Kenny Lacayo, and the tragedy already has spurred reforms in how empty dwellings — potential tinderboxes — are tracked, as well as raised questions about whether stations are adequately equipped. Fire Chief Niles R. Ford resigned from office with the release of a 182-page report critical of the city’s performance.

China’s “zero covid” policy was unsustainable and abruptly scrapped, but the absence of a coherent fallback strategy threatens a fresh set of nightmares for its population, its economy and the Communist Party leadership. A new crisis could shake the whole world. As the Wuhan outbreak demonstrated three years ago, what begins in China does not necessarily stay there. President Xi Jinping’s government had imposed draconian requirements for lockdowns, tests and forced quarantines during most of the pandemic. But once lifted on Dec. 7, the measures were followed by little guidance from the top. China’s party-state usually declares that everything is under control. Now, it appears to be quite unsettled. A wave of omicron infections is sweeping Beijing and might soon hit the rest of China.

What’s so special about the number 2? Quite a lot, if you’re a central banker – and that number is followed by a percent sign. That’s been the de facto or official target inflation rate for the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and many other similar institutions since at least the 1990s. But in recent months, inflation in the U.S. and elsewhere has soared, forcing the Fed and its counterparts to jack up interest rates to bring it down to near their target level. As an economist who has studied the movements of key economic indicators like inflation, I know that low and stable inflation is essential for a well-functioning economy. But why does the target have to be 2%? Why not 3%? Or even zero?