Back in the 1970s, I attended school in Maryland and spent a lot of time in Baltimore.  I was there during a charmed Renaissance headed by mayor and then Governor William Schaeffer.  He oversaw the investment and development of the Inner Harbor and all those residential areas that went up downtown.  It was wonderful, and going downtown was great.

Lately, it's not so pretty.  The city is a disaster, and the one-party rule does not help.

President Trump is challenging Representative Elijah Cummings to do something about his district for a change.  As expected, President Trump is being called a racist for holding "sacred cows" like Representative Cummings accountable.

As Seth Barron wrote:

The operative rule in politics these days seems to be that any criticism of a non-white politician from anywhere to their right is, by definition, a racist attack. Nothing Trump said pertained in any way to Elijah Cummings's skin color or ethnicity, only to his failure as a legislator and political leader to do anything to improve his district. The real question is: Is he right?

In May, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story called, "The Tragedy of Baltimore." 

The story details how, in the wake of the 2015 riots — or "uprising" in the view of those who imagine the torching of a neighborhood CVS and the intentional sabotage of the firefighters' equipment to be revolutionary actions — Baltimore went from bad to horrible: "nothing less than a failure of order and governance the likes of which few American cities have seen in years."

By any measure of systemic urban collapse, Baltimore is, as Trump said "very dangerous & filthy." 

Among the largest 30 American cities, Baltimore has the highest crime rate, and is a close second to Detroit for the highest rate of violent crime. 

But for murders, Baltimore is second to no other city, with more than 50 homicides per 100,000 people. 

That puts Charm City in the ranks of Jamaica, Venezuela, and El Salvador in terms of lethality.

Charm City no more, as my old friends who live there will tell you.  In fact, most of my old friends live in the suburbs and avoid the city at all costs.

Where does it go from here?  Hopefully, it will lead more local citizens to question the Democrats running their cities.  Maybe it will occur to some of them that change would be a good thing.

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