For a moment we could suspend disbelief.
People laughed and stomped their feet together. They took photos for one another and they dabbed eyes together. They waited in line without incident. They smiled at one another. No one was shot — at least during the day. Public transportation worked. Police and work crews did a fabulous job of making sure everything went smoothly. That was Baltimore Saturday awaiting President-elect Barack Obama’s speech.
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And Obama showed we were not just some celebrity tour stop.
He reminded us of our history, describing the 1814 bombardment of Fort McHenry when our troops held off the British navy, saving our fledgling nation. That was also the battle that inspired the Star-Spangled Banner, our national anthem. Big things happened here.
Invoking them reminds us that we are capable of something bigger than what we are now. It’s almost unfathomable to think that anything we do here could save our nation now. Just as the city completed a year with a record low of murders, Mayor Sheila Dixon was indicted on 12 counts of felony theft, perjury, fraud and misconduct in office. Murders spiked again. Constellation Energy, one of our only headquarters companies, is being sold. Census figures show people still do not want to move here. The latest state statistical handbook shows the city shed jobs last year. The United States Council of Mayors estimates the Baltimore-Towson metro area will lose 18,700 jobs this year.
Baltimore may be less than 1 percent of state land area and 10 percent of population, but as our only major city, face it, as Baltimore goes, so goes Maryland.
We could go on with the litany of ills. We just do not want to. We’re sick of being sick.
Obama showed we can come together to celebrate what really matters. So why can we not also come together to solve the problems plaguing our city and state for decades?
The answers are within our reach. Johns Hopkins amazes the world on a regular basis with its breakthrough medical treatments. It’s doctors don’t let their ZIP code get them down. Neither should the rest of us.
Professors Stephen Walters and Louis Miserendino offer a great road map for making Baltimore great again that will, in turn, fuel our state’s success. In their study,
http://www.castlecoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=707 “Baltimore’s Flawed Renaissance: The Failure of Plan-Control-Subsidize Redevelopment,” they show how lowering property taxes — now more than double those throughout the state — would spark dramatic growth in Baltimore. Cleaner and greener, Dixon’s motto, is not enough. We need bigger and richer first to achieve the laundry list of improvements our city and state needs.
That won’t happen when we have to endure the embarrassment of our current mayor being unable to appear with the president-elect of the United States because of indictments, and our former mayor and current governor being greeted with boos when he speaks at the historic event.
Take it as a sign, Maryland politicians, that our citizens don’t spell “change” more of the same.
Let’s make 2009 the year politicians, together with residents, lower those taxes and cut spending. That will be change we can all believe in and thrive from.
