Baltimore residents react to recent violence: ‘I don’t really feel safe anywhere anymore’

“Anymore.” This implies that the person quoted once felt safer than now. If you’ve ever been to Baltimore you understand why this is a particularly sad statement.

Baltimore suffers from many things, widespread crime, widespread addiction, and particularly, cronyism. It is like many other large cities, a conglomerate of neighborhood fiefdoms all operated under a 1 party umbrella. The syndrome that afflicts Baltimore, afflicts Detroit, Chicago, large parts of California, swathes of New Jersey, too many places in this country. In these places the urban political machines control everything. And these machines have run their dominions consistently into the ground. It’s the crony way. Loot the wealth of a city. Make sure the pols get paid. Let people suffer.

(From The Baltimore Sun)

The daylight shooting of Suiter came hard on the heels of another brazen attack. Just the day before, a Locust Point man was killed in a robbery as he left a Royal Farms on Key Highway. He had stopped at the convenience store after work to pick up a snack of cookies and milk. Three suspects are in custody.

That Alexander Wroblewski, 41, was killed within view of the security cameras that guard the nearby and just-opened Anthem House luxury apartments seemed emblematic of where Baltimore finds himself at the moment: striving for a better version of itself, and yet seemingly trapped in a dangerous, impoverished past.

Baltimore, and the image it has sought to present to the world — and to Amazon, which is looking for a place to build its second headquarters — has taken a decided hit, as even those most devoted to polishing that image conceded. 

“We have experienced a very disheartening week and a rash of incidents of violent crime and homicides,” said Don Fry, president and CEO of the pro-business Greater Baltimore Committee. “One of the things that this clearly does is it overwhelms the good news and positive things that are occurring in the city every day.”

Baltimore thinks its a good candidate for Amazon’s HQ2? OK. Hey, why not put HQ3 in Yemen?

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http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/