Commentary

I moved to Annapolis at 22 for my first job where I made $500 a week. I couldn’t afford the most inexpensive apartments, where a studio costs over $1,000 a month. Fortunately, I found an above-garage flat owned by a friend. It was small, but comfortable and affordable, only $500 a month. That accessory dwelling unit (ADU), an additional dwelling on a single-family lot, helped me stay here, put down roots, start a family and now represent my community as an alderman.

City representatives have officially recommended against building a proposed high-speed SCMaglev train between Baltimore and Washington, with eventual plans to stretch to New York City. This recommendation might surprise some Baltimore residents. After all, how could an innovative technological project that promotes sustainability, provides jobs and creates faster connections to surrounding cities not be good for a struggling city like ours? The city’s reasoning, however, becomes more understandable when we consider the maglev project as part of a longer history of transportation planning in the Baltimore region.

Journalism — that irreverent, nettlesome profession that delivers the news every day — has an identity crisis. The problem with the job description these days is that anyone with a cell phone is a photographer and everyone with a computer is a reporter. Thus, the conundrum for federal officials trying to protect reporters from government intrusion with a shield law is one of definition and what’s in a name: Exactly what and who are journalists?

If you’re like me, you watch one of the local Baltimore news stations when you’re putting on your jammies at the end of a long day.  With luck and cool sheets, you’ll be asleep before you hear the lead stories about murder and mayhem in the big city. Forget about all the wonderful and impressive things the people of Baltimore do every day.  Crime is the lead story.

Frederick County Councilman Kai Hagen’s decision to interject himself in what appeared to be a lawful traffic stop being conducted by a sheriff’s deputy last month was wrong. Hagen, who was with his wife in the area of U.S. 15 and Catoctin Furnace Road on June 20, said he pulled over near the traffic stop as a “concerned citizen” and wanted to make sure the motorist, who was Black, was OK. The deputy recognized Hagen and told him to leave because he was blocking the road and interfering in the stop.

The paralysis in Maryland over Gov. Larry Hogan’s push to expand parts of two key important transportation arteries, the Beltway and Interstate 270, is a triumph of partisanship, myopia and parochialism that poses a threat to the Washington region’s long-term welfare. There are no victors in Maryland’s dysfunction, but the losers are obvious: commuters hoping to avert a future of increasingly nightmarish highway congestion.

Jarrod Ramos is on trial to determine if his killing of five innocent journalists at The Capital Gazette was due to his being “not criminally responsible” in the terms of Maryland’s insanity statute. To reasonable sentient people, the slaying of Gerald Fischman (editorial page editor), Rob Hiaasen (assistant editor and columnist), John McNamara (sports reporter), Rebecca Smith (sales assistant) and Wendi Winters (special publication editor) and the non-fatal attacks on others present were a wholly premeditated act.

The economic news couldn’t be better, right? U.S. employers added 559,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate is falling. President Biden says his proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan would create 19 million more jobs. The massive plan would rebuild roads and bridges, fund public transportation and affordable housing, modernize schools, replace lead water pipes and more. This is great news for cities hard hit by the pandemic. But Baltimore can’t just return to the pre-pandemic status quo of declining population and staggering inequality and hope for the best.

WEAA-FM, Morgan State University’s public radio station, will debut a talk show tonight co-hosted by Anthony McCarthy, who has served as spokesman for three Baltimore City mayors and two members of Congress. McCarthy will be co-hosting with Cara Williams, a former Baltimore City police officer for two decades who is now in her senior year at Morgan State’s School for Global Journalism and Communications, according to a university news release. The show titled “Two Way Talk” will air from 5 to 7 p.m. weekdays.