Commentary

There was an almost surreal detachment last week between what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was announcing about the Chesapeake Bay, and the tone of the presentation. The substance of the annual meeting on Oct. 11 of the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council, an advisory committee of Bay region governors and the EPA, was bleak: After decades of effort and billions of dollars spent, the most recent Bay cleanup plan was going to end far from meeting its goals by the deadline of 2025.

It is clear that transit-oriented development holds a host of benefits for the Washington region and the people who call it home — many of whom want to live in communities that are walkable and dense, and thus don’t require car ownership. It’s also clear, however, that TOD hasn’t always been equitable in impact. Speculation on its added value has pushed rent prices up around these developments and, by consequence, long-term and low-income residents out.

I was lucky enough to grow up on the Tred Avon River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. My childhood was simpler than that of kids today. We didn’t have cable TV, smartphones or Wi-Fi. I spent much of my time beachcombing, fishing or boating with my dad. The water was my playground. That never changed. I now live in Baltimore, a city I partly chose for its access to the Chesapeake Bay. And today, the thing I love most is being threatened by plastic.

Teen vaping continues to be a public health crisis. For evidence, look no further than new data released by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on youth e-cigarette use. The study, drawn from the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey, found that an alarming number of adolescents regularly use these harmful, addictive products. The FDA will need to respond forcefully. According to the paper, 9.4 percent of middle and high schoolers — more than 2.5 million young people — reported using e-cigarettes in the month before taking the survey. That includes approximately 14 percent of high school students. This finding might be lower than the whopping 28 percent of high schoolers reported in 2019, but it is still far too many.

How about getting some of that sweet, sweet industrial policy for an industry that really needs it? Not manufacturing plants. Not the tech sector. I’m talking about the “care” industry — the sector that’s needed to grease the wheels when it comes to the rest of the economy but one that Congress has largely ignored. The U.S. economy has more than recovered all the jobs lost in the pandemic. But there are a few sectors that are not close to recovering all the workers they lost or laid off early in 2020. Among them: child-care providers (whose ranks have begun shrinking again in recent months) as well as nursing and residential care facilities. Both of these industries employ about 10 percent fewer workers today than was the case pre-pandemic. Collectively they’ve lost almost half a million jobs on net since February 2020.

The third full week in October ushers in National Businesswomen’s Week each year. As women continue to make strides in the corporate and entrepreneurial world, there is also a growing trend in women’s giving. While women have long been thought of as taking the lead when volunteering talent and time, and they still do at 56%, women have also been slowly gaining momentum in another philanthropic category — charitable donations. Research about women and philanthropy shows that 73% of charitable donors in the world are women. Dialing that back to the U.S. in the high-net-worth category, it is estimated that approximately 93% of high-net-worth women gave money to charity, according to the “2018 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy.”

“I think it’s unfortunate that, you know, you have certain attorneys that try to exploit families,” Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said, clearly a swipe at the lawyer representing the relatives of the late Hae Min Lee, the teenager who for 23 years was the affirmed victim of Adnan Syed, but now no longer. It apparently wasn’t enough for Mosby to enjoy the national spotlight again, this time for her lead role in “Serial” Syed’s release from prison. Baltimore’s outgoing (and federally indicted) chief prosecutor could not resist a cheap shot at Steve Kelly, the attorney for Lee’s relatives, who feel they were treated as an afterthought once Mosby decided that Syed’s 1999 murder conviction should be vacated.