Commentary

Two unlikely stars in recent weeks have delighted all ages with their joyful cheerleading for Team USA — NBC’s Olympic-gold star Snoop Dogg and America’s favorite new football coach, Tim Walz.

When asked, most people probably lie — a little or a lot — about how often they eat leafy green vegetables or drink water or exercise. And if it’s not outright lying, there’s probably some self-delusion at play, an inflated sense of the healthiness of our personal habits.

On the day in July that a 20-year-old man named Thomas Crooks tried to assassinate former president Donald Trump, too many officials and agencies came up short, as we’ve heard again and again. But we’ve heard far less about another category of first responders — one that appears at every major emergency — who have received very little scrutiny or credit. Who were among the first to notice that there was a man behaving suspiciously on a nearby roof?

Summer has meant fireworks for Capital Bikeshare (CaBi), as the regional bikesharing network registered a record-breaking 589,464 rides in July. The surge in system use in July marks the third consecutive month in which CaBi has broken its all-time ridership record. Trips have increased 26.4% compared to July 2023 and ridership thus far in 2024 totals 3,173,995 trips, a 31.1% increase over last year.

It was nice to read a positive commentary about behavioral health care (“Investing in mental health recovery helps everyone in Baltimore,” Aug. 13). In 1977 when I started a job with the Mental Heath Association of Maryland, 85% of state mental health dollars were spent on state psychiatric institutions. At the same time, a few pioneers were starting programs similar to B’More Clubhouse in counties across the state, often in church basements.

Public servants rarely receive praise. Instead, they tend to hear from the people only when problems arise. For so many reasons, however, the Social Security Administration deserves a different response — because the SSA and its commissioner, Martin O’Malley, are putting on a clinic in showing how visionary leadership can drive meaningful change.

Bryan Sears did his usual outstanding job covering two important items on this week’s Board of Public Works meeting agenda (“New prescription benefits contract to yield ‘modest’ initial savings to state”, 8/7/24). But 60,000 state retirees wish he had also reported on the Medicare Prescription Drug Exchange and Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) services contract on the agenda, intended to assist Maryland’s oldest retired state employees in transitioning from their promised retiree prescription drug plan to Medicare Part D.