Commentary

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued this blistering assessment: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” The report was a wakeup call for El Paso, Texas, which a few years later launched the El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence (EPCAE).

In a recent article referencing a West Baltimore “clubhouse” where young people accused of crimes were said to congregate, these young people are positioned as solely responsible for their alleged criminal behavior. In a news conference, Mayor Brandon Scott drastically oversimplified the issue and disregarded social and economic impacts driving risky behavior in youth.

The Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome, used to block infrastructure projects, is an extremely powerful force in our democracy. Some examples of projects that have been opposed by NIMBYs include affordable housing units, trailer parks, high-speed rail lines, daycare facilities, schools and bike lanes. When I was a senator, a fellow environmental leader was trying to block the proposed Lighthouse homeless shelter on West Street.

A contractor turned to alcohol after his wife died. A single mom with two children welcomed food from a stranger. A certified nursing assistant and her working teenage son couldn’t afford a rent increase. They were among those who experienced homelessness in Maryland last year, totaling nearly 6,000 one winter night, according to an annual federal count.

“In solitary, they are trying to break you without realizing that most people in [prison] are there because someone else already tried to break them.” That’s how Paul Torres, a returning citizen who spent 90 days in solitary at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles described his experience in solitary confinement to me last August.

April is Autism Acceptance Month, a time to learn, reflect and (I hope) act with and on behalf of the many people who have autism. Despite the increased number of people known to be living with autism, less well-known is just how difficult it can be for them to access beneficial care. Given the somewhat recent changes in the definition of what constitutes autism, an accepted description (from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) states that autism is a condition that results from differences in the way that a brain develops.

For those who feel like Baltimore has endured more than its share of bad news in recent months — the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge providing the biggest example but hardly the only one — the Greater Baltimore Committee may have provided just the timely antidote you need. The business advocacy group recently compiled a “Baltimore Region Investment Scorecard” to survey for the first time how, through various measures, the Baltimore area is doing in terms of investment, job growth, deal-making and tax revenue.

“Just enough of me, way too much of you.” This quote from the chapter on overpopulation in political humorist P. J. O’Rourke’s “All the Trouble in the World” popped into my head after a pair of recent articles in The Frederick News-Post. The first, a piece about how the county’s added just over 20,000 people to its total population over the past three years, prompted the usual chorus of complaints about how we’re growing too fast.