New York City taxicab service currently features green Boro Taxis, left, and yellow Medallion cabs, neither of which runs on tracks like a roller coaster — although maybe they should?  (See column for clarification.)

An educational lifestyle experience

CROWDED & HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT
 
By David Maril
 
In contrast to Baltimoreans, who seem to go everywhere by car, New Yorkers rave about their subway system. No matter how bottled up the streets are with traffic, New Yorkers boast about how they can get from, say, Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan in minutes underground.

However, if you are an infrequent visitor to the Big Apple and want to experience the city, forget subways. When your destinations are too far to walk, New York City taxis are the way to go.

Occasionally a travel magazine or supplement will extol the virtues of exploring the city by subway. In reality, the only two things the subway has going for it are, it’s cheap and fast.

If zooming along underground through dark tunnels gives you a thrill, why not save a lot of money and stay in Baltimore, riding our one subway line back and forth?

Any propaganda travel-story piece for subterranean commuting arouses my skepticism when the focus is put on riding the subways out of Manhattan to the river bridges for the best views and scenery. What’s the point of visiting The City if you have to immediately leave it?

If you really want to see and feel the forces of New York, riding taxicabs is the only way to go.

A five-minute cab ride can be the thrill of a lifetime, sort of a combination of a roller coaster, Space Mountain, and bumper-car amusement park ride.

For starters, flagging a cab down is an educational lifestyle experience. Competing with New Yorkers trying to get in a cab before you do, offers a free lesson in how to come out on top in a crowded and hostile environment.

Read more »

 
NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Friday April 18

[Scroll down for full week’s compendia]
 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Friday:

Former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton is expecting a baby ‘later this year.’

•  FORMER FIRST DAUGHTER EXPECTING BABY

Chelsea Clinton — who will reprise her role as First Daughter if her mom gets elected president — announced Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she’s pregnant and expecting her first child “later this year.” She also told Vogue magazine last August she would consider a run for office at some point in the future.

Read More at:  ABC News

•  GUBERNATORIAL DEMOCRATS APPEAR SEPARATELY AT 2 FORUMS

Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Attorney General Douglas Gansler, and Montgomery County Del. Heather Mizeur answered questions separately — and secretly — from education and business leaders at a forum at Towson University’s SECU Arena, where they were not permitted to hear their opponents’ responses.

Earlier Thursday evening, they were scheduled to appear separately at a Baltimore senior center forum sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the local NAACP.

Read More at:  WBFF Fox45-TV

•  ‘SHERLOCK’ FRANCHOT SETS SEARCH FOR OWNERS OF $1B OF MARYLAND MONEY

State Comptroller Peter Franchot is looking for state residents to apply for more than $980 million in unclaimed funds. Watch his entertaining video at http://www.marylandtaxes.com — click on “Search for Unclaimed Property” or go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwnvHARcVj8&feature=youtu.be.

Read More at:  WJZ-TV (Channel 13)

•  FOX45-TV PARENT HIRES FINANCIAL ADVISER

Hunt Valley-based Sinclair Broadcast Group has engaged a New York investment banking firm as its exclusive financial adviser in connection with the sale of certain assets tied to its proposed acquisition of eight television stations owned by Allbritton Communications.

Read More at:  Maryland Daily Record

•  PANTELIDES STRUGGLES IN ANNAPOLIS

The new mayor, 30-year-old Mike Pantelides, has been having a rough time since taking office following his upset election victory last November.

Read more »

Major cable-news networks, a disgrace to journalism.

Arguments & character assassination rule airwaves;
panelists’ dialogue is juvenile, abrasive and absurd

LOW-GRADE CONTENT KILLS OFF CIVILIZED DEBATE
 
By David Maril
 
Tune in much of the “discussion” programming on right-wing Fox News and left-wing MSNBC and you wonder how this type of low-grade content can generate an audience. The dialogue between the panelists, on the left  and right, often becomes juvenile, petty, abrasive and absurd.

Although these programs, which have become the rage of cable networks,  are masqueraded as news analysis and perspective shows, they deal more in entertainment than information.

People don’t watch these programs for news. The ratings are generated by the intensity of the arguments.

MSNBC and Fox News don’t inform their audiences. The goal is to inflame the viewers, making people more intolerant of hearing opposing points of view while fattening up the networks’ ratings.

The thinking is, the more outspoken the hosts are and the more they disagree and interrupt their guests, the more viewers are drawn to the chaos on camera.

The success of this type of screaming format has forced cable networks to turn up the volume and put etiquette on the back-burner. As this trend becomes even more entrenched, one has to wonder if an interviewer like Charlie Rose, the master of diplomacy, can survive. Will CNN find a way to generate decent ratings if it focuses on strictly covering the news?

Read more »

Gov. Martin O’Malley and Balto. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake got into a heated debate last year over zero-tolerance policing in Md.’s largest city.

Collecting progressive cred like casino markers

A VOICE OF BALTIMORE EDITORIAL
 
By R.P.M. Kolchak
 
Make no mistake about it, Martin O’Malley likes putting people in prison.

He locked up hundreds of thousands of people as Mayor of Baltimore, and has advocated for even more arrests since taking up residence in Annapolis.

But his penchant for punishment has put the lock-’em-up gov in a dicey dilemma:  What to do about a pesky little pot decriminalization bill that won’t go away and will soon show up on his desk for signing?

In an unusually bold maneuver last week the city’s black caucus forced the Maryland House of Delegates to bypass Judiciary Committee Chairman/strongman Joseph F. Vallario Jr. and pass a bill that would make possession of small amounts of pot the equivalent of a harsh parking ticket.

The maneuver was lauded as a much-needed reining-in in the war against drugs, a battle that has disproportionately taken a toll on African-Americans in the form of minor criminal records.

But the legislative victory has put O’Malley’s tough-on-crime cred into an uncomfortable crucible. In a sense, he’s being asked to tamp down on the very tactic he has long espoused.

During his tenure as Mayor of Baltimore the city arrested more than 600,000 people, thanks to the concept known as “zero tolerance.” It was a strategy O’Malley touted as the answer to a stubbornly high homicide rate which led to a torrent of incarceration, courtesy of a crackdown on minor crimes like drinking beer in public, and spitting on the sidewalk.

But the crime-crushing effect it was supposed to engender never materialized. And in an historic settlement of a lawsuit with the NAACP and ACLU, the city actually admitted that many of the arrests were illegal.

BAD PRESS AND LEGAL WRANGLING

But all the bad press and ugly legal wrangling made little impression on the presidential aspirant.

Witness his recent public sparring with Mayor Stephanie-Rawlings-Blake about ratcheting up the arrest rates during a particularly violent stretch in Baltimore last summer.

Read more »

 
NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Friday April 11

[Scroll down for full week’s compendia]
 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Friday:

Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-7th) was ac- cused Thurs. of obstructing a congressional investigation. (VoB File Photo/Bonnie J. Schupp)

•  REP. CUMMINGS ACCUSED OF OBSTRUCTION; EX-IRS OFFICIAL LERNER HELD IN CONTEMPT

House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) accused Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of obstructing an investigation and conspiring with the Internal Revenue Service to target a conservative voter-fraud prevention group.

In March, Cummings and Issa had a heated exchange following a committee hearing after Issa cut off committee microphones during questioning of retired IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner.

On Thursday afternoon Issa’s committee voted 21-12 to hold Lerner in contempt, stating that she waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when, during a hearing last May, she gave a voluntary statement declaring her innocence.

Read More at:  WBAL-TV (Channel 11) | Fox News

•  BALTIMORE HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL RESIGNS AFTER PLEADING GUILTY TO THEFT OF NEARLY
$2M INTENDED FOR NEEDY CHILDREN IN GEORGIA

The principal of Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School resigned Thursday after pleading guilty in Georgia to stealing nearly $2 million in federal children’s nutrition funds.

Read More at:  WJZ-TV (Channel 13)

•  GANSLER LAUNCHES ATTACK AD ON RADIO

The Attorney General’s 30-second radio spot attacking the O’Malley-Brown Administration for the failed launch of the state’s health care insurance exchange is the first critical broadcast ad of the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial campaign.

Without mentioning Brown by name the ad repeats press coverage labeling the exchange’s launch a “debacle” and “one of the worst-performing in the country.”

Brown was tasked by O’Malley with overseeing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a “Obamacare”) in Maryland, making him a target for criticism over its failure, which the Governor has attempted to blame on the state’s contractor.

Read More at:  Baltimore Sun

•  WOMAN THROWS SHOE AT HILLARY CLINTON

Read more »