Commentary

Not since the glory days of the B&O Railroad has Baltimore been so much in the limelight of railroading as it has recently. Last week, it was President Joe Biden’s announcement of $16.4 billion in spending on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, a big chunk of which is headed to Charm City. On Monday, top Biden administration officials were back to talk with Gov. Wes Moore about a secondary benefit of all that spending including the $4.7 billion committed to create a new Frederick Douglass Tunnel through Baltimore — the chance to put a lot of young people on the right track toward high-paying transportation jobs (as a “workforce hub”) connected to such public investment.

State Sen. Karen Lewis Young said she plans to propose a bill giving student members of county school boards in the state a much broader baseline for voting rights. Lewis Young, a Democrat, said she and Democratic Del. Kris Fair want to propose legislation to require all student members of local school boards to have at least the same voting rights as the student member of the Maryland State Board of Education.

“The racial wealth gap is intentional. It was created. It was created by the Homestead Act. It was created by urban redlining. It was created by the inequitable distribution of the GI bill. It was created by unfair appraisal values. It was created by racist procurement policies. The racial wealth gap was created by the misguided choices of people in power.

I love the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. I know that is a controversial statement for legions of people who commute over it every day or spend hours crossing it for vacations or are trapped in their neighborhoods by the miles-long anaconda of slowly moving cars. I know some people fear driving across it. But I love the bridge.No other engineering marvel shapes Maryland like the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial (Bay) Bridge.

With the news last week that the FBI headquarters is moving to Maryland, the state has a major reason to celebrate. It also has a major reason to make new plans. The new headquarters, which will be built on a currently empty site adjacent to the Greenbelt Metro Station — the terminus of the Green Line — is expected to house 11,000 workers. They are moving from the J. Edgar Hoover building in central DC.

When you consider the monsoon of violent images that flood young brains — on television, in video games, movies and social media — it’s difficult to see how one 60-second, anti-violence video could effectively counter all that gun-infested conditioning. It’s even harder to imagine a short video causing a young man in Baltimore, a felon on probation, to throw away his handgun and break from the perilous life that caused him to carry it.

Only 3 in 10 leaders at mid-size businesses nationally are upbeat about the national economy. But they feel good about their own industries and companies, according to the JPMorgan Chase Midyear Business Leaders Outlook survey. I hear all the time about Charm City becoming a great place for business, and based on recent local events and milestones, the future is looking bright.