Baltimore Sun: Maryland First in Household Income Among U.S. States Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 29, 2007:

It's the kind of statistic that makes politicians and economic development gurus cheer: Maryland ranked as the richest state in the nation last year, according to estimates released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

...

Look no further than Howard County, with a median household income of $94,260 - the nation's third-wealthiest behind the Virginia counties of Fairfax and Loudoun. In Maryland, Howard came in first [emphasis Crablaw].

...

Statewide, Maryland became wealthier in the first half of the decade, with the median household income rising to $65,144 in 2006, from $63,973 in 2000, when adjusted for inflation. Demographers note that while Maryland took the top slot last year, its median income was not statistically different from New Jersey's at $64,470. Maryland's income was nearly three times that of the nation's poorest state - Mississippi.

A few points.

First, if Howard is third in the nation, and two Virginia counties are ahead of Howard, it stands to reason that Howard must be first in Maryland. Thus, the sentence highlighted in green above is surplusage that a careful editor should have caught.

Second, the term "household income" skews to the vanity of two-income households. When two single people earning $60,000 a year marry or move in together, their household income doubles. Whether chils support or alimony payments were taken into consideration in the definition of "household income" is unclear. Howard County has a lot of medium and large-acre zoning, along with a lot of tall, skinny townhouses in Columbia. Some apartment condos and rentals, but not many.

Third, Maryland and New Jersey are within the margin of error of each other for household income.

Fourth, per capita or household incomes do not translate into standards of living directly. I would rather be a bus driver in Baltimore making $40,000 than an Alaskan fishing boat captain making $150,000+, and would rather be impoverished in Berlin or Rome than either of them. There are many externalities that per capita and household income statistics don't measure. One of the best things about Howard County is that is a relatively crime free, though hardly absolutely so. It is better to be a poor person in Howard County than in Baltimore City in many ways not only because local government is better funded and far more efficient, but because some aspects of the poverty tax (i.e. additional costs borne often by poor people) such a crime are reduced. On the other hand, local transit in Howard County is not as good as in Baltimore, though still pretty good for a suburban county with many spread-out destinations. (Transit-phobes like Julia Gouge in Carroll County, please take note.)

Income is not synonymous with wealth; the article describes Maryland as the "wealthiest" state in a few places but wealth is net assets, not a stream bearing unidentified expenses.

Fourth and most importantly, there is no Maryland. I mean, there's the Maryland Annotated Code and Form 502, and there are goofy traditions like Maryland's state song calling Lincoln a despot and trivial garbage like ring jousting as the state sport (a sport which probably less than 1% of the state has ever seen live, and only 1% of those has ever played.) But I have more in common with a suburban attorney living outside of Seattle, Toronto or Amsterdam than I do with most of the Eastern Shore, and I have been a legal resident of the state my entire life. You can find bumper stickers for Ireland nationalism showing a green 26 + an orange 6 = the map of Ireland, representing the Irish Republic and Ulster's six counties, respectively. An analogous sticker for a united Maryland would be a farce.

Maryland is at least six states, psychologically and economically. Montgomery County has the financial resources to secede and may technically have done so without notice by the newspapers. The Eastern Shore is our own little piece of Mississippi, though happily with somewhat higher income as noted in the Sun article. Carroll County is scared to death of the Baltimore Negro Menace that commuter buses to Baltimore threaten to inflict on white womanhood. Prince George's County is mostly black, mostly wealthy by U.S. standards and full of very strong local pride. Baltimore County is too busy being ... not Baltimore City. Baltimore City is bleeding to death: income, wealth and literal blood. So hearing that the wealthy part of Maryland grew, or just enough Baltimoreans slipped through the statistical cracks, retired to South Carolina or died of natural causes or gunfire doesn't tell you very much.

Thank a Gay Mom and Dad Day Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

When you find a gay parent, you are finding someone who, in general, went out of her or his way to become a parent. Put simply, if "Adam and Steve" or "Marcia and Janet" are raising a child, it means that they a) probably went through some unusual headaches to get to the point of raising a child, and b) probably are going through some unusual headaches to continue to raise the child, "unusual" meaning not experienced or minimally experienced by most het couples. Ditto for single gay parents, times two.

A large number of children of het couples are formed by "oopsie." They did not plan the kid, but three tracks of Marvin Gaye or two glasses of Chianti later, the kid is on her or his way. Modern birth control (controversial morally among many of the critics of same-sex parenting) reduces the chance of "oopsie" but hardly to zero. Gay/lesbian couples or single parents, on the other hand, are usually undergoing a lot of resistance to doing what some Christians call "agape" - love for the sake of love of the children that they raise. They aren't doing it parenthood by default or because they are afraid of Social Services; they could have avoided parenthood and social services by default. They aren't doing it because of child support issues; they are doing because they really want to do it well, to show lots of love to a child and to do the amazingly difficult work of child-rearing. Why else bother; parenthood is a wonderful experience but, let's get real, a royal pain in the neck also, as many worthwhile experiences of life are for a certain percentage of the time.

Often, though not always, gay parents come in when het parents have dropped the ball. This is particularly true of gay adoptions, about which this blog has posted previously. So instead of these ridiculous right-wing moralists complaining about the horrors of a child experiencing stigma because of having gay parents - stigma which these moralists take pains to perpetuate - they should be offering gay couples assistance in doing the child-rearing better.

I don't know of churches or other religious institutions that provide male role models for children of deceased servicemen; their freak-out about Heather having two Mommies would seem a little less thin if they were going out of their way to provide male role models for single het moms whose husbands died. Ditto re: single dads through divorce, abandonment of the children by the mother, becoming widowers or otherwise.

Regardless of why the moms are single, if having male role models around is so paramount for kids, you'd think that the preachers would be demanding that the men of their congregation volunteer to offer themselves that way rather than just asking for donations so that the minister can get a new Bentley or, more likely, a fresh coat of paint for the sanctuary. Paint is nice but providing support to children of unusual family circumstances either matters more or matters not one bit. You'd think they would sell the altar and the pews to help the children. But no. Ditto with single dads and coupled dads.

Let's put it another way. Let's say that all of us do things that traditional religion favors and things that traditional religion discourages or criticizes or even condemns. Presumably, feeding a child, teaching a child to read and learn a useful trade or profession, or funding that education, clothing the child, carting that child to the E.R. when she has the roto-virus or a fishing hook stuck in her mouth, teaching the child to tell the truth, to refrain from fraud, trespassing on the rights of others or violence and teaching that child to obey the law of the land likely fall into the "favors" category above. Sexual acts can sometimes fall into the "discourages" or "condemns" column - or indeed the "favors" column - depending on specific act, specific tradition and surrounding circumstances.

Yet child-rearing is a economic competitor with sex for time and energy; every parent knows this to be true. The percentage of couples who have as much time for personal intimacy after becoming child rearers as before is stone zero. A person who had a different viewpoint from mine about human sexuality might argue for child-rearing as a method of abatement of the evils of sinful sex, perhaps under the theory that the devil likes idle hands but hates a tired-ass parent asleep and temporarily celibate after a miserably long day of brat management.

Regardless of one's religious or non-religious viewpoint about gay sex, we should thank gay parents who are doing good parenting. James Brown may have urged us to "get on up - like a Sex Machine" but none of us, gay or straight, are sex machines. We are people, usually people trying to get difficult things done under painful constraints. We should thank all parents of course who are doing good parenting, but especially gay parents who went out of their way and defeated obstacles to take on this massive responsibility with specific intent, often after straight parents failed.

HAT TIP to Terrance for getting me thinking today.

Sinead O'Connor: Oró Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

HAT TIP Heart of Women's Space. Lyrics for this traditional Irish song available in Gaelic and English.

RUSH: Subdivisions Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Because we at Crab Media do not apologize for speaking Nerd fluently without an accent.

Wherein I Get Shrill At Murderous Theocrats Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Over at Majikthise, where I have the honor of occasional guest-blogging for a little while ueber-blogger Lindsay Beyerstein takes care of other matters professional and personal, I get very shrill about a pastor's call for the deaths of his critics regarding the enforcement of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code and attendant regulations.

Nothing special, just The Crab getting overly opinionated about calls for murder by radical clerics.

Baltimore Loses 30-3 - In BASEBALL Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

I cannot bear to produce an excerpt of the Post's coverage. Go read it, if you must. Vomit-worthy.

This should take the taste of vomit out of your mouth. If you are my age, you remember happier days like these. (WARNING: Contains SEVERE unbleeped baseball managerial terminology regarding what the 'ump' was trying to do to the home team.)

A Un-Civil Complaint? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

HAT TIP Majikthise. Attorneys and non-attorneys, please take a look at this PDF and itemize the ways that it looks like garbage. I don't mean from a legal, 1st Amendment perspective though that's welcome as well. No, I am a referring to the basic editing and formatting of a $15 million dollar lawsuit. Indenting, formatting, use Of cOnsistenT capitalization, etc. Have fun.

Baltimore Sun: William "Wild Bill" Hagy, Orioles' Fan Beyond Compare, Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 20, 2007:

William "Wild Bill" Hagy started out as just another Orioles fan from Dundalk who loved his Budweiser in Section 34 of the upper deck at Memorial Stadium.

But with his sloping gut, fluffy beard and straw hat, he cut a striking visual. And eventually his O-R-I-O-L-E-S cheers, replete with dramatic contortions of his out-of-shape body, became the emotional fulcrum as crowds at Memorial urged the baseball team to improbable comebacks in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

...

Mr. Hagy became such a fixture that he was allowed to climb atop the Orioles' dugout to rally the crowd with his act. He was so popular that all he had to do was stand in his section to get the crowd roaring. For a generation of Orioles lovers, he was the quintessential fan.

I remember the summer of 1979 well. We lived in densely residential Reisterstown; while I was not the baseball card fanatic in the house the team was the biggest news of the day. The Orioles were playing incredible baseball, with four legitimate candidates for the Cy Young award in rotation: Steve Stone, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan and the famed Jim Palmer, with Bozo-the-Clown-coiffed Don Stanhouse bringing up frequent lunatic antics along with great relief pitching. Brooks Robinson was no longer playing but was a beloved sportscaster along with "Ain't the Beer Cold" Chuck Thompson. They played in Memorial Stadium located at 34th Street, a deeply residential neighborhood maybe 2 miles from downtown, reflecting the old-time Baltimore community loyalty to the team, before the era of the personal seat license in football and the corporate luxury box. Other personalities - down home Rick Dempsey, the furious umpire-torturer Earl Weaver, the cool and distant batter Eddie Murray and easy-going Ken Singleton. Cal Ripken Jr. came later but Cal Sr. was a line coach, I forget whether he was 3rd or 1st base line.

I recall freezing through a Webelos camp day during game 5 of the World Series that year, a game we won through offensive heroics of pitcher Tim Stoddard - an unusual event even in the National League but nearly incredible for a pitcher who had not gone to bat in "prime time" in years. We lost that series to the Pirates in Game 7.

Up high in the cheap seats, Wild Bill would get the crowds going crazy. He looked like he should have been an alumnus of Hell's Angels rather than a working cab driver. But everybody loved him; he was arguably as important to the team's success at home and with the fans generally as were the great play and the actual players themselves.

R.I.P.

Blame-dotted? Slash-blamed? IBTP-ulverized? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

I must thank Twisty Faster for her generous link to this humble blog. She may or may not have intended it as generosity but Crab Media would be an ingrate to take it in any lesser spirit. Crab Media is a lot smaller than "Blame Media"; our link to her blog probably generated 1-2% of the traffic to IBTP that hers did to this humble mid-Atlantic empire petty tyranny. Morally, I owe her at least a case of tacos, especially since I pretty much cannot eat them any more myself under the nutrition and exercise regimen which I am now working, about which I will bore readers more sometime soon over at Crab Media's homepage.

Traffic today is about double that of a typical Monday's ENTIRE DAY; it is about 8:50 AM EST now. I predict a near-record day.

In the so-called real world, I commence work today on a new project involving, apparently, patent law after a restful busy and occasionally frenetic week of professional activities. It's funny to me how much of a creature of habit I have become; one imagines balding, mildly grouchy Immanuel Kant on a peripatetic route of commuter and Metro trains, and becoming disoriented in its temporary absence. It felt good to sit myself down on the southbound 7:28 departure out of Halethorpe, especially after a decent 40 minute workout at my new house of worship.

Blogging will be light this week in light of exercise and work scheduling.

Police: Rapes of Men, Rapes of Women Investigated Differently Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Amanda Marcotte on the double standards used by British (and, one suspects, other) police in investigating rapes of men and of women. Excerpt therefrom:

1. Incident:
Caller reporting her 17-year-old daughter was raped last night by two named offenders after going out drinking at her local pub. Daughter is very distressed and sore.
Update from supervisor:
Officers to attend and establish the following:
1. Is the daughter making an allegation?
2. Names and descriptions of alleged offenders.
3. How much alcohol was consumed?
4. If allegation is being made, locate scene.
5. Will the victim attend court?
6. If allegation could be true, will she consent to a medical?

2. Incident:
Caller reporting her 18-year-old son was raped last night by a male known to him, following a party at his house. Son is in pain and upset.
Update from supervisor:
Officers to attend and establish the following:
1. Locate the crime scene.
2. Arrange medical examination and take victim to rape suite.
3. Name/description of offender.
4. Preserve forensic evidence, seize clothing.

Two reported rapes of a woman are soft-pedalled when one of a man is treated by the book.

The more I think and read, the more Twisty Faster makes sense, which bothers me, somehow.

Lysol as a VERY Personal Care Item? No Joke Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

One of the many shortcomings of the Crablaw petty tyranny empire has been the probable gender imbalance of active readers. Whether this derives from the superior taste of women, I cannot say, but it is fairly rare for women to drop by and comment. (Whether they drop by without commenting, I could not say without some unbelievable, probably felonious malware...)

But I would welcome any women among the lurkers to feel free to extend their counsel and views to this nearly unbelievable piece of consumer product history, courtesy of Melissa McEwan's Shakesville. I literally have nothing of value to contribute beyond the link itself.

Lèse majesté from the Field Negro on the Anniversary of the Death of the King [sic] Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Maximum respect be upon the Field Negro for his failure to bow down to the "King." I don't get the adulation of Tupac Shakur or of Elvis Presley; both died "awkwardly" and in ways that allow their worshippers fans to maintain that they did not die but do live. Maybe I am too much of a damn Yankee.

At least Tupac could write real lyrics.

Give me Sinatra before Presley any day.

Sun: Carjacker, Bank Robber to Serve 70 Months Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 17, 2007:

A 47-year-old man was sentenced today to nearly six years in prison for robbing four banks in two weeks in Baltimore City and Baltimore County and committing an armed carjacking, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's office said.

Anthony Mabray of Baltimore pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to walking into the banks, implying he had a gun and escaping with thousands of dollars, prosecutors said. The robberies and the carjacking occurred between Jan. 13 and Jan. 27.

According to authorities, Mabray robbed the Sun Trust Bank on Baltimore National Pike in Catonsville of $1,458; the Chevy Chase Bank on Edmondson Avenue in West Baltimore of $1,959 and again of $953; and the M&T Bank on South Greene Street in the city of $3,307.

This moron probably saw Pulp Fiction and thought that it was about as easy to rob a federally insured bank as to rob a restaurant. Thugtastic.

David Lublin at FSP on O'Malley's Shrewd Slots Strategy Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Check out David Lublin's solid piece at Free State Politics on the political maneuvering on slots by Governor O'Malley.

Sun: Slots Not the Way to Save Horse Racing Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun Editorial, August 16, 2007:

The horse-racing business in Maryland is worth trying to save, for three main reasons. It employs about 9,000 people; the Preakness is a great national showcase for Baltimore; and, maybe most important, the horse farms in the state supported directly or indirectly by racing occupy 685,000 acres of land as open space, about a tenth of all the open space in Maryland.

But slot machines are not the way to save the horses.

On Tuesday, the administration of Gov. Martin O'Malley began distributing a report by Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, licensing and regulation, that examines the impact of slots on neighboring states and on their racetracks, and finds it to be significant. But there are all sorts of apples and oranges in this debate (we're tempted to say road apples and oranges) - and perhaps a fig leaf or two, as well.

Crab's commentary below the fold...

I am neutral about slots. Part of the problem with government spending is that when times are good, government tends to get creative and the pork spreads all around. Then times get lean, and pork's constituents stand up to be fed anyway. Political economy suggests that demand will roar in to meet the excess supply of money into Annapolis, that the money will be wasted rather than used but wasted more painfully in hard times, once its constituency is well ensconced. The very thing that makes slots useful makes them a little addictive - for Annapolis, not the gamblers.

But more obnoxious than the sound of 10,000 bleeping, ringing slot machines echoing through a neon-and-puke-juice-colored-plastic-bunting-trimmed whorehouse of clinking greed is the "neighing" from Maryland's wealthy horse industry come-a-begging for yet more financial support, more hand-holding. The Sun has it backwards. These welfare "queens" ride in $85,000 BMWs, not the #20 bus from public housing in West Baltimore. The idea that the horsey set need yet more state coddling while Baltimore sits in ruins amazes and stuns me. I mean, I understand that it's expensive to send "Trip" to Gilman, but really. While I don't favor putting the tax screw on the Valleys for the non-crime of being rich, they don't need Annapolis' teat either.

Yesterday I took the light rail from Hunt Valley adjacent to much of Baltimore's horse country into downtown Baltimore to visit my old law school and the law library. The light rail train creaked, grinded loudly, as if MTA had not bought lubrication since trolleys and long-distance passenger trains last ran along about the same right-of-way over 40 years ago. The right-of-way was ugly with uncut grass and weeds almost sneaking up between the railroad ties. And of course the train's schedule and actual arrival times even before downtown's infamously slow shared right-of-way and stop-light ridden path compares not that well to a well-handled bicycle until the train hits Lutherville and runs more or less express. Then it finally hits downtown, and slows to a crawl. General rule: if you are under 40, have two legs and cannot outrace a light rail train going south through downtown Baltimore, you need to get to the gym. Howard Street looked like pictures I have seen of the "urban-unrenewed" side of Tijuana, replete with buildings fit for tribes of rats and of roaches.

But it's what's north and northwest of Hunt Valley's light rail station, the lots of 10, 20 and 40 acres or more replete with horses and lawn jockeys that so desperately needs the permanent attention of Annapolis, not the underdeveloped urban and suburban infrastructure. I know that infrastructure is not sexy but reasonable people invest in maintenance anyway, despite its near-fatal unsexyness.

Some people of good will and fair mind have accused me of bringing out my libertarian "claws" from time to time. My only problem with that claim is that they are not claws, they are damn sight seven inch fangs. Government should have enough money to build and maintain its infrastructure but not enough to create a new class of welfare queens with riding crops. If that's libertarian, then I am betting "all in."

Sun: DNA Leads to Triple Murder, Rape Pleas in Anne Arundel Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 16, 2007:

A man already serving a life sentence for a 1994 slaying pleaded guilty this morning to three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of rape in a trio of brutal killings that went unsolved for more than a decade.

Alexander Wayne Watson Jr., 36, made the formal plea three days after meeting with families of his victims, who were all strangled and fatally stabbed: Boontem Andersen at her Gambrills home on Oct. 8, 1986; Mary Elaine Shereika as she was jogging on May 23, 1988; and Lisa Kathleen Haenel, 14, as she walked to Old Mill High School on Jan. 15, 1993.

...

Watson was indicted three years ago in the three Anne Arundel killings after cold-case detectives linked him to them using DNA evidence. Investigators said Watson lived in the same neighborhoods as his victims and monitored their movements. The killings began just after his 17th birthday.

Frank Weathersbee's State's Attorney's Office in Annapolis made the decision to drop the death penalty in exchange for the murderer (he pled, can call him that) meeting with the survivors' families. I support and respect his office's offer in that regard. Disclosure: I was active as campaign Treasurer in the campaign of attorney David Fischer to unseat Frank Weathersbee as Anne Arundel County's State's Attorney last year.

Irshad Manji: The Gates of Ijtihad Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Irshad Manji in the Washington Post, August 16, 2007:

From the 8th to the 12th centuries, the "gates of ijtihad" — of discussion, debate and dissent — remained wide open. This is also when Islamic civilization led the world in ingenuity. If ever we Muslims needed to renew our commitment to ijtihad, it is now. From the emerging generation, I continually hear this question: “Is there a way to reconcile our faith with freedom of thought?”

Yes, there is. The Qur’an contains three times as many verses calling on us to think than verses that tell us what is forbidden or acceptable. In that sense, re-interpretation – which means re-thinking Qur’anic passages, not re-writing them – is an Islamic responsibility. The Illinois-based Nawawi Foundation even describes it as a “religious duty of the first magnitude”.

That is why I and other young Muslims have launched Project Ijtihad, an effort to revive critical thinking in Islam by sparking honest debates both online and in person. ... Muslims in the West are perfectly positioned to rediscover ijtihad. After all, it is in countries like the United States, Canada and Britain that we already enjoy precious freedoms to think, express, challenge and be challenged on matters of interpretation. What a precious gift.

More like this in all religious and non-religious environments.

Sexual Harassment: Chris Matthews' Clumsy Guide for the Creepy Independent Practitioner Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Asshole. Hope your wife had the decency to knee you in the groin last night for humiliating without provocation, mitigation or excuse a fellow journalist and professional colleague. The Jesuits teach their students to be men (and women) for others; looks like it didn't sink in very well at Holy Cross.

But of course I am just a dirty &#(*$^ hippie blogger, so what I say about a Serious Journalist like Tweety cannot be serious.

HAT TIP Majikthise. HAT TIP Atrios for months of meritorious and justified scorn at traditional media gasbags.

Sun: Arabbers Stabled at Pimlico Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 15, 2007:

Baltimore's Arabbers welcomed the return of 51 horses and ponies to the city today and were on hand to greet the animals at Pimlico Race Course where a temporary stable has been set up.

...

Though city officials had vowed to help the Arabbers find a way to maintain their tradition, some last week questioned the city officials' promises and warned that the practice of horse-drawn produce wagons, which dates back to the 19th century, could be on the verge of being wiped out.

For the record, the word is pronounced /'e: 'r(ae)b r/ or "AAY-Rab-er".

Sun: Keiffer Mitchell is the "White Candidate In This Race" Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2007:

According to the results of an opinion poll conducted last month for The Sun, white voters make up the bulk of [City Mayoral candidate Keiffer] Mitchell's support. But he still trails Dixon among white voters, though the gap is narrow and within the poll's margin of error. Mayor Sheila Dixon leads in every category, especially among black and female voters, according to the survey.

...


"Sheila has a lot of strong black support," said 2nd District City Councilman Nicholas C. D'Adamo Jr., who has been knocking on doors for a couple of weeks in his re-election effort.

"Mitchell has a lot of white support," D'Adamo said. "I'm seeing it. I'm hearing it. That black vote and female vote is definitely going with Sheila. There's a lot of white support for Mitchell in my district. Here's the thing: Is the white vote enough to put you over?"

...

"To the extent that there is a white candidate in this race, he's it," said Matthew A. Crenson, a political scientist at the Johns Hopkins University. "White voters are more likely to vote for Keiffer Mitchell than black voters are because he seems more receptive to the white communities."

From website of
Friends of Keiffer
Mitchell, Jr.

If I wanted to inflict ruin upon Keiffer Mitchell (which I don't, am benignly neutral from my perch in suburban Reisterstown), make him hemorrhage, I would run an article in my paper calling him the "white candidate in this race." As the Sun article went on to note, race and racial politics influence substantially all aspects of politics in the City of Baltimore. In one particularly infamous example in 2002, bad blood developed between the Jewish and Black communities in the 41st District between Senate candidate (now Senator) Lisa Gladden and incumbent Senator Barbara Hoffman when, amidst a post-redistricting contested primary, Gladden's political godfather Howard "Pete" Rawlings asserted that voters want candidates who "look like them, smell like them and think like them."

White voters do vote disproportionately in Baltimore for a variety of reasons, as elsewhere, but the city is 2-1 Black, the city's Democratic registered voters in about the same proportion (Republicans competing with the Libertarians and Greens for second place there.) D'Adamo's East Baltimore district is more ethnically diverse than most of Baltimore. Mitchell represents Bolton Hill and downtown, among the "Whiter" districts in the City.

The very Irish, "very White" Martin O'Malley did win and win big, but O'Malley's Irish rock-band personality gave him additional strength and he was elected while sitting as a City Councilman from one of 6 districts rather than one of 14. Sheila Dixon has been City Council President and then Mayor after O'Malley's election. O'Malley also had two significant but relatively weak Black opponents in his first Mayor run, and commentators mused after O'Malley's first win whether a single Black candidate would have conserved resources and galvanized Black support early. Mitchell is in a very different scenario and a different city politically.

Mitchell takes notice in his advertisements that his family, particularly his grandparents, were major civil rights leaders in Baltimore. I think that that, politically, gets you the interview but not the job. I suspect that the people supporting Dixon, particularly black women, will have a more compelling intuitive reasons or motivations to vote for Dixon than Mitchell's supporters will to vote for Mitchell. She is the incumbent, has not yet had a full term in which to serve and has not obviously messed up her new office at City Hall. She would be the first elected black woman mayor of Baltimore and the only or nearly the only black woman mayor of a major U.S. city (if we fudge a little and call Baltimore "major.") I have no dog in the fight but if I had to bet cash, I would bet the mortgage money on Dixon winning without hesitation.

Sun: Regional plan includes widening county roads Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

http://mobile.baltimoresun.com/detail.jsp?key=152009&rc=baltimore

The article talks about widening Reisterstown Road between Owings Mills Boulevard and Garrison. While this proposal has a lot of merit, one thinks that competent planners would have thought of doing that before, not after, approving the construction of a Wal-Mart, a Sam's Club and a Home Depot, all of which have been built fairly recently and which now try a huge, car-dependent trade.



Unfortunate that these stores, or maybe one or two of them, could not have been built less than a mile away, where a major interstate and Metro terminus sit and where other development projects are now going on to try to make use of a substantial parcel of almost dead, underused fallow land and unused parking spaces.



But I forgot. Only perceived losers in the U.S. use public transiit., the kind of people that suburban sprawl is designed to isolate from "our kind.". You know, those urban people. Not good suburbanites.



Bruce Godfrey

MyDD: Itemization of Republican Misstatements About YearlyKos Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Check out this syllabus of lies absolutely innocent misstatements of fact made in good faith by some Republican officials regarding the events at the Yearly Kos Convention (soon to be renamed Netroots Nation, a name I definitely prefer.)

I did not attend Yearly Kos even though I had originally thought about doing so, out of conscientious objection to what I perceived as Markos Moulitsas' handling of an issue involving women bloggers. I have not contributed to anything on Kos Media or anything indirectly affiliated with it in about 4 months, with one exception: I placed a bland notice in one Open Thread about the Facebook group for Donna Edwards running for Congress in Maryland's 4th. I also don't publish content there - and wouldn't if Kos sold it to the ten authors there I admire most - because there is more enough work to do here at Crab Media. Kos Media can take care of itself.

But O'Reilly and others have attacked Daily Kos as a "hate site." The site gets hundreds of thousands of comments a day. Yeah, people at Daily Kos hate the Republican Party and right-wing politics; by that standard, Ravens Stadium is a "hate site" because a whole lot of hostility exists there towards the Pittsburgh Steelers and presumably the mouldering bones of Bob Irsay. For the vicious Bill O'Reilly to complain about Daily Kos as a "hate site" is ludicrous, a farce of bad taste. Daily Kos has a comment rating system that allows pointless and destructive comments to get culled and their authors auto-banned. Anyone can get a UserID at DailyKos, including every staffer at the RNC and every member of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. (I know, all three of them....)

If you want to see "vicious" in the left blogosphere, you can do so better elsewhere. Try Firedoglake, where Jane Hamsher - whom I want to like - made and stood by an exceptionally indecent reference to the anatomy of a National Review writer, one that I won't repeat here. Or Pandagon, where Amanda Marcotte - again, someone whose writings I want to like - effectively lost a job as a blogger with the Edwards campaign for engaging previously in extremely offensive speculation about the anatomy of a central figure of the Roman Catholic faith, providing through her flagrant foul a penalty kick to sacroturf blackbelt William Donohue of the Catholic League. On the other hand, Daily Kos is indeed vulgar, proudly so, though vulgarities in article titles are more or less banned. And you can definitely find refined, elevated liberal blogging outside of Kos Media; osh Marshall from the center-left and Lindsay Beyerstein from a more staunchly left perspective maintain strong standards in their tone and content.

If Daily Kos were a hate site, Bill O'Reilly would have been pounding on it for years, not a day and a half before the Yearly Kos convention. Every Republican operative in Washington knows about Daily Kos; if they had found a soft target before last week, they would have pummeled it to death before last week. But no matter how much O'Reilly squeaks, there is no "there" there. That's why you won't hear him talking about Daily Kos this week. Or next.

Sun: Teenagers Batter Patterson Park Resident Into Coma Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 4, 2007:

It was her one free weekend amid a hectic schedule juggling work and graduate school, and Anna Sowers spent it shopping for purses and jewelry with friends in downtown Chicago. But she couldn't reach her husband back in Baltimore, who had been out with friends in Canton the night before.

...

Anna had no way of knowing her new husband had been beaten into a coma just steps away from their rowhouse near Patterson Park. Police say the young men accused of the beating live nearby and stole his Timex watch and used his credit card to rent two action movies.

...

Sowers was attacked on a Friday night, June 1, when two men walked up to him and asked for a cigarette, some of the suspects told detectives. Then, police said, they beat him. An unidentified witness told police he saw one stomp on Sowers' head. The pair ran to a car, where two others waited, and the car sped away, police said.

Obviously one's heart goes out to the victim, his wife and family.

For a watch and some Blockbuster videos, this man was nearly killed, and is not yet out of the woods. Mortality rates of coma-survivors are high from a multitude of maladies, including but not limited to the damage that induced the coma in the first place.

I once represented a 15 year-old who was found "involved" (juvenile-speak equivalent of "guilty" in MD) in the gunpoint robbery of a Domino's pizza-deliverer. Three teenagers were found to have called Domino's, ordered a pizza and then stuck a gun in the face the deliverer, robbing him of, I think, $30.00. What struck me in open court was the complete indifference of my client. He did not care whether he went to Cheltenham's Juvenile Facility or not. His single mother's affect and demeanor were bizarre as well; she seemed resigned to his going to Cheltenham, and may well have been in a pattern of child neglect for years with him. A few days after my client was placed at Cheltenham, I drove over to debrief him and gave him a copy of Ken Hamblin's "Pick a Better Country." I have no idea whether Cheltenham was boring enough that he might have been tempted to read a few pages out of sheer tedium. I was hoping that his low threshhold for boredom - what led him and his friends to execute this stick-up - might lead him to think about things differently somehow. Liberal optimist to the end, one must say.

Why did the assailant or assailants do this? Because they could not think of anything else that they both 1) could do, and 2) wanted to do more than beat this man nearly to death for his wallet and watch. It's as simple as that.

Patterson Park is border country between some of the severest, nastiest neighborhoods of East Baltimore to the north, Fell's Point's lively drinking zone to the West and Canton's gentry to the east and southeast. When I had a law office on Eastern Avenue near Patterson Park pretty much right out of law school in the mid-1990s, a hooker worked the evening shift in front of my front door. I remember thinking it odd that both of our professions required street knowledge, geographical positioning and courthouse management. At one time, Patterson Park was a largely Ukrainian, Czech and Polish neighborhood; a Ukrainian Byzantine Rite church continues to hold services there. It's now a neighborhood of gamblers - happy, wealthy gamblers who rehab houses under the gambler's hope that Fell's Point and Canton are expanding trends in Baltimore, not barbed-wire islands of middle-class sanity; drug dealers who are the quintessential gamblers; and young thugs who feel they have nothing to lose, so why not gamble?

When representing another client, a 17 year-old accused of dealing heroin on the street, I recall him bringing me his fee for services to be rendered. The first fact that struck me was that he brought $600.00 (reduced fee) in a bill pile consisting mostly of very raggedy one and five dollar bills. The second fact that I recall was that it was amazingly difficult for him to imagine visiting Pikesville. Pikesville abuts Baltimore City to the immediate northwest and is relatively easy to reach by public transit. I practiced technically outside the Beltway but only by about 200 feet or so. He lived in northwest Baltimore between Pikesville and downtown, pretty much on the bus line that he would need to take, maybe 4-5 miles southeast of my front door. But for my client, it's was like I asked him to meet me in Bangkok or Minsk. His world was so small that going out to Pikesville - a relatively prosperous, stable suburb with a very active community life - disturbed and confused him.

Major factors in ghetto sociopathology are sheer tedium and smallness of vision. No ghetto walls keep people in the ghetto today; while housing discrimination is a reality, sundown towns no longer exist and meaningful if imperfect legal remedies exist against housing discrimination. While people made fun of the "Midnight Basketball" programs sponsored by police agencies, it seems that for kids to get to know police better and vice versa is a good idea and anything done to fight raw tedium has to be an improvement.

On a podcast some weeks ago, I learned about an environmental cleanup and supervision program started in Southeast DC by a DC resident with a troubled past, may have been drug dealing, I forget. The program sought out volunteers and paid workers who lived in the affected communities, and the group did things like E.coli testing of the infamously polluted Anacostia River and the creeks that fed it. Some of the best volunteers in this project got killed in meaningless shootings or busted for violence or other problems, but some took on the project as a career step towards getting jobs with EPA or the Department of the Interior. My impression is that smart, interesting things like this project happen in DC and not in militantly and defiantly hopeless Baltimore.

Back and Crabbier than Ever Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

The Crab is back from his two week semi-vacation from blogospheric business. New developments to come:

1) The Crab Media homepage has been a dull, unattractive mess for quite a while. Sort of a semi-good idea but badly implemented. Looks like a haunted house but that's about to change. The homepage will be completely revamped to the column format that much of the rest of Crab Media and will have a "house blog" covering many of the "meta" topics that now crowd Crablaw MD Weekly. Three benefits of this change: a) Who likes ugly?; b) MD Weekly will be more politics, less in-house meta business; and c) the home page can be a positive draw in its own right, replete with a strong Technorati rating. Frankly, I should smack myself across the mouth for not implementing this sort of upgrade earlier.

2) After I upgrade the home page, Crab's List will get the next rework. I want to set up either a database with SQL or a blog by which to list new jobs that Craig's List (my source for the List's feed) does not get. I don't know which tool is the best; the blog is familiar but the database could be a much more powerful tool - with a sharper learning curve. I don't know enough about SQL to know whether it's worth the investment of time.

3) One change that I will be making across the board is to move the formats to 1000px-wide screens. Accordingly to SiteMeter, 94% of my readers read Crab Media's pages using screens that accommodate 1000px or much wider. I had shrunk the width of the page in response to the comments of one web designer acquaintance of mine whom I do respect, but satisfying 94% of my readers is sufficient if the upside is extra real estate on the page. I had mentioned doing this some time ago but now it's a plan rather than an idea.

4) As far as content for here at Crablaw, yes, I will be getting more material up and running shortly, but not before 1) and 2) above get done.