Baltimore City failed to clear sidewalks on both sides of Mount Washington’s Kelly Avenue Bridge — shown here looking east toward its intersection with Falls Rd. — until the ninth day following the snowstorm. (VoB Staff Photo)

…before threatening to fine residents
for not clearing the snow from theirs

MTA DOES ITS USUAL LACKLUSTER JOB,
FAILING TO MEET WEATHER CHALLENGE
AND PROVIDE NEEDED PUBLIC SERVICE

Light Rail and subway systems miss opportunity
to display strong, positive impact at a time
when cars needed to be kept off roads

TWO NEW BOOKS OFFER INSIGHT
INTO FINDING COMMON GROUND
TO GET THINGS DONE IN D.C.
 
By David Maril
 
While wondering how Baltimore elected officials can even consider fining private citizens for not shoveling off snow-covered sidewalks, it is interesting to note the following:

 Talk about living in glass houses and throwing stones! Certain city administrative people need some Windex and take a few moments to look out at their own sidewalks and walkways.

Before they start threatening to enforce the law on residents and businesses — issuing fines if sidewalks in front of individual properties are not cleared of snow — they should make certain Baltimore City cleans up its own act.

While over two feet of snow blanketed the city, the focus has been on clearing roadways — often one lane at a time — leaving many city sidewalks and walkways ignored.

One prime example, on the Kelly Avenue Bridge in Mount Washington, involves the two sidewalks connecting with the bridge’s intersection at Falls Road.

The walkways on both sides are safety hazards for anyone trying to get below the bridge to the U.S. Post Office, or to attempt to reach Falls Road or nearby stores.

Pedestrians would have to navigate through 24 inches of packed snow and ice. The only way to avoid slipping and breaking your neck would be to walk out on the road surface of the bridge, which is narrower than usual because of snow plowed up on the sides.

There are plenty of other examples around the city.

But this isn’t meant to be a criticism of the walkways’ not being cleared in a timely fashion. With a record-breaking snowstorm, a measure of patience and understanding is merited.

This storm has required a major cleanup effort, and that needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating the city’s performance.

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Baltimore snowed in: Time was, the metropoli- tan area stood alone as “City of Snow Wimps.”

FEAR OF ICE-COATED ROAD SURFACES
— A ‘MODEL CITY’ FOR OVERREACTING
TO FORECASTS OF WINTER STORMS —
USED TO BE LOCAL AREA MONOPOLY

WE’RE NO LONGER UNIQUE
AS ‘CITY OF SNOW WIMPS’

A one-inch ‘Storm of Significance’
 
By David Maril
 
Baltimoreans used to stand alone when it came to being wimps about snow forecasts.

I lived in New England for awhile and when I first moved up there from Baltimore I was impressed with the indifference Boston people displayed toward heavy and powerful snowstorms.

A foot of snow and drifts all over the place did not seem to matter.

When I was at college in Worcester, it seemed unusual, from January into March, when bare pavement was noticeable on road surfaces.

It made me feel more confident about driving to work on ice and snow. But just when I thought I had graduated to a tougher, all-weather driving skill-level, the old fears of snow intimidation would return whenever I was visiting Baltimore and it was snowing.

While I at one time drove through all kinds of horrendous weather in New England without any second thoughts, I have returned to the mode of caution and reluctance to hit the roads now that I am back in Baltimore.

You can’t avoid it in the Land of Pleasant Living. Fear of snow-coated road-surfaces is how we are raised, and it’s in the Maryland air.

It’s impossible not to participate in this ineptitude when you are in a procession of drivers hitting the brakes too hard, gripping the wheel too tightly, and skidding.

It’s like being on a boat with a few people getting seasick and pretty soon just about everyone is turning green and expelling their most recent meal.

New Englanders, however, used to be tough when it came to snow. But lately, all that has changed. It is as if Baltimore has become the model city on how to overreact even to slight dustings.

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Statue of William Donald Schaefer overlooks the Baltimore Inner Harbor. According to retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a modern-day Willie Don
is what the city desperately needs for its future.

EMPHASIS SHOULD BE ON PREVENTION,
RATHER THAN TRYING TO AFFIX BLAME
AND FIND SCAPEGOATS AFTERWARDS

Cops on the beat are too often condemned
for the poor performance of their bosses.
Where is the training and supervision?

BALTIMORE NEEDS A 2016 WILLIAM DONALD SCHAEFER
PLUS MASS CLEANUP OF ITS HARBOR-AREA WATERS,
AS WELL AS AN IMPROVED PUBLIC-TRANSIT SYSTEM
TO INCLUDE AN IMMEDIATE FIX OF BUS ROUTES

Obama’s State of Union speech = usual mush

ORIOLES RE-SIGN DAVIS; NEXT SHOULD BE MACHADO
 
By David Maril
 
While wondering how many seconds it will take Maryland legislators to legalize fantasy gambling once they can figure out a way for the state to get a cut of the sucker money, it’s interesting to note the following:

 In the effort to reduce the number of racial incidents, where Baltimore police over-reaction in inner-city streets results in questionable and abusive treatment of suspects, the legislators and administrative officials in the city and state are taking a limited, misguided approach.

Instead of focusing on streamlining the investigative processes after incidents have occurred, the emphasis should be on preventing them in the first place.

Training procedures, supervision and accountability is where priorities need to be addressed.

As the court cases of police officers remain in the spotlight following the death of prisoner Freddie Gray, you can’t help but wonder if the law-enforcement people who really should be on trial are getting a free pass.

Shouldn’t there be accountability for a culture in the police department that has been allowed to exist where “rough rides” in paddy wagons are tolerated until a prisoner has to be hospitalized, and, in Gray’s case, dies?

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  A Voice of Baltimore Feature, an excerpt from

EPSTEIN’S PANCAKE, a political thriller
set at the end of the Reagan Administration

By Bjarne Rostaing

BEGIN on a warm September afternoon in a small old fashioned Manhattan tailor shop circa the ‘88 elections.  Me looking at an attaché case, about to buy it, not sure exactly why.  I knew some of the reasons, though.  I’d never seen anything like it, and I happened to have the money, and it was a quirky access to power.  At a lower price I might have bought it just because it was a really excellent case — black leather, solid and very well made.  A little oversized, so you could use it for an overnight bag, and heavy, with the classic hardwood frame.  Tan peccary interior, everything included — calculator, battery shaver, Pelikan writing set.  Security via large brass combination lock.  A tight ship.

It was the end of the Reagan years, a bad time for me.  My job was gone, followed by my second wife, and my money was running out.  I was investing in something different here.  New York is attitude, and this piece of luggage had it.  Not twelve hundred dollars worth, but that’s what I paid for it when I saw what it was.  In the false bottom of this banker-faced artifact was a small green pistol with a remote firing mechanism and suppressor.  It was set-in diagonally, corner-to-corner, just right if you decided to gut someone in the middle of a disagreement.  Not that I’d ever thought of doing anything like that, but in any case I knew half a dozen traders who’d love to own it for a higher price if I wasn’t comfortable with it.  And owning a gun didn’t bother me.  In Vietnam I’d seen that people kill each other and get used to it.  It’s a crowded world, and what with Darwin staring us in the eye and third world hordes threatening to overwhelm us, we find a way to feel all right about it.  Bottom line, I was used to guns.  In rural New England where I grew up, rifles and shotguns were part of life.  A solid, pious little world where the unspoken thought was “Kill not, that you may look down on those who do.”  I suppose my father thought that way too, until he met a French girl who’d been running around for the Resistance with a Sten gun while he was pushing paper on a troop ship.  He was the last of a long line of teachers and preachers from which I escaped somehow.  Checked out in his old Pontiac not long after she died.  One-car accident on an off-camber curve he’d been driving for years.

The pistol was small and thin, mostly green composite, made by a Swiss company, Michaud-Coubert.  There were two loads — a Teflon cop-killer and a mercury load that would turn into a big lead flower more deadly than the poppy.  In the false bottom with the gun were ammo, a recorder, and currency compartments.  Corner-to-corner metal braces aligned with the barrel to fudge x-rays.  Trigger and safety fore and aft in the handle, with a little plate to let you know which end was which.

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Snake Oil Salesman — A prototype for futuristic cable-TV huckster “Getrich Kwick,” who gives advice on what will sell & how to sell it.

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT
CONSUMERS WORLDWIDE
WOULD ANTE UP BIG BUCKS
TO BUY BOTTLED WATER?

Huckster/Snake Oil Salesman
‘Getrich Kwick’ reveals how
to make money pandering
anything that will sell
 
By David Maril
 
With confusion and fear setting in over the rough path the stock market is following in this New Year, how long before we see the following on a cable-TV financial network business show?

The 45-year-old financial-expert host, opens with these investing tips for the New Year:

“Hello, I’m your host, Getrich Kwick,” he announces, revealing a heavy but clipped British accent.

“I’m going to tell you how to invest your money so you can retire, age 20 to 80, whenever you want, travel all over the world, plus own five houses, three yachts and 12 cars.

“It’s simply a matter of studying the economic patterns and understanding human nature. My theory is to predict what the impact trends will be and sink money into these ventures and products.”

He goes on:  “In case you haven’t noticed, paying for what you used to get free is in.

“And it’s only going to get bigger. Years ago, who would have believed people would actually pay to watch television? Cable, except in remote areas where regular reception was impossible, seemed pretty farfetched.

“So what happened? The free TV networks worked overtime producing inferior programming and viewers were driven to cable,” he adds.

“The economic theory in this scheme to get rich quick is to identify what everyone gets for free that can be converted into a premium product people would be willing to pay for. And following this commercial break, I will tell you how to strike gold.”

After the advertisement on how to order his new book, “Get Rich the Kwick Way,” he continues with the explanation of his strategic plan:

“The regular networks bought into cable,” he explains, “thereby creating related broadcast outlets, and now profit off the subscription fees.”

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