Christ. Janiya Woodley, the four-year-old who was beaten and raped has died. Her cousin has now been charged with first-degree murder.
Since when is "gay" a noun? Also appointed to the Circuit Court, by the way: Yvette M. Bryant, defense lawyer for insurance companies (the gov. ♥s him some insurance companies!); John A. Howard of Towson, a white male heterosexual with an indistinguished law career; and Timothy J. Doory, Loyloa Don, UB Law, lawyer for 22 years, judge for 10.
Someone was shot in Columbia.
Antonio Murray got 139 years for robbing drug dealers and reselling the plunder.
Legislators: maybe we shouldn't let pedophiles keep their teaching cerificates.
This just in: it really blows to be poor and live in a crappy neighborhood.
Two employees were fired last week from an Eastern Shore juvie facility after two teens Did It in a classroom.
8 comments:
On the subject of the Sun article on East Baltimore, have you ever noticed that Baltimore is fixated with objects?
American Brewery building = source of all our problems ???
Hello? The neighborhood is full of substantially disfunctional people. Harsh, you say? No, not really. A resident who lives there because by her own admission she earns less than $300 per week and cannot afford anything better than a criminal-infested ghetto.
Is she the object of a conspiracy to deprive her of the $100,000 she should be 'entitled to' by virtue of being an American? No, she simply has very limited talents, in economic terms.
Most Baltimoreans just aren't very productive, relative to the global workforce. Chinese factory workers get $1 per hour for unskilled/low-skilled labor.
What do large numbers of Baltimoreans do when they are worth less than the so-called Living Wage? Some are in the underground economy. Others, many of them, are criminals.
Am I sorry for these? No. They cannot be readily fixed. They are willfully antisocial. They gotta go. And no, we cannot simply hand them a pile of money. It won't fix the fact that they're not able to bid competitively for resources, which are inherently scarce. If you want to live anything like those yuppies in Canton, you need to earn $$$. There's just no way to be poor and live well.
Once upon a time, you could be poor, live very modestly, and stay for the most part out of criminal activities. That was when we charged the police with making all neighborhoods safe (other than skid row) and were willing to abridge to privileges of criminals to the degree necessary to accomplish that.
Now that criminals' rights are paramount, only the relatively wealthy get to be safe, hidden in their enclaves. Once upon a time, all rights were subordinate to the primary public purpose of common safety. I don't really understand the justification for having a government in this modern setting.
Are the buildings to blame? Now, that's just stupid. Why not blame poverty on the pavement? Or the moon.
'The fault, dear Horatio, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.' - Shaky Willie
These people don't have stable jobs because... it's actually unlawful to pay them what they're worth.
Inner cities should possibly be exempted from minimum wage floors so that people can have actual jobs. It's really very important for them to have regular contact with a supervisor/boss who tells them when their behavior is starting to jeopardize their livelihood. Most young males in Baltimore don't have that, so they get no feedback until they've really screwed up.
But please, Baltimore, grow up and stop trying to blame it on bricks and mortar. Stand up, look at yourself in the mirror, and admit that it's a defective population which has concentrated here. You have some of the most antisocial, ignorant, and useless people on the Eastern Seaboard. They are the problem. Period. No city can survive such a plague of undesirables. The willful ones need to go anywhere but here.
I'd recommend restoring the concept of exile.
"What do large numbers of Baltimoreans do when they are worth less than the so-called Living Wage?"
BLOG!
ps. please do not rob my enclave while I'm in exile. Thanks.
Oh, but fear not - when Dixon becomes mayor, all problems shall be solved...
Ugh... I can just see her sister now as Commissioner of Police,.. or maybe Director of Finance.
Come to think of it, shouldn't the City Council be reserving a big chunk of the temporary surplus for under-the-table contracts with Dixon cronies in the event she becomes Mayor? In increments under $5,000 per contract, of course.
Men's Fitness ranks Balto. City 68th out of 100 for mental faculties among American cities.
[http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=metrogrades&conitem=225a99edbbbd201099edbbbd2010cfe793cd____&page=2]
Men's fitness is too nice - after all, you must be lacking mental faculties if you want to live here...
The Sun article is so bad, and when you compare it to a really well-done series, like the Post's 'Being a Black Man' or the NYT's amazing work on the Race and Class series-es, you can really see what's missing. For instance--
1. you're right about the objects. People can't feel empathy for buildings... especially not ones that were abandoned 30 years ago and have no apparent cultural importance.
2. Lack of focus. Readers also can't feel empathy for more than one person at a time. The story switches for character to character, but you never get a feel for who any of these people are and more insight into what motivates them.
3. No new insights. After reading the Post thing about the boys who went to public school, or any of the good series articles, you come away feeling like you've gained a new perspective on the subject. There are just no new insights or approaches here. An article on the people "Rebuilding Madison," for instance, would show people who have fresh approaches to old problems.
4. No history. If you're going to talk about the brewery, then talk about how the neighborhood's demographics have changed from a working-class German neighborhood to what we have here, how we got to where we are.
I don't mean to 'dis' anyone's hard work, guy deserves a medal just for going down there in the first place when most Sun reporters never leave the office... but at the end of this story instead of feeling edified there's just a sinking sensation of gloom.
I was there for the Columbia shooting, we were out on my friend's balcony and we heard what sounded like fireworks.
Then the police blocade showed up and the helicopters and we put two and two together.
Didn't know the guy but people I remembered from high school were friends with him and very upset. Doesn't really surprise me though, I've been mugged within a mile of my house a few times. Columbia isn't as fuzzy as it used to be.
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