Dying Young in Baltimore

Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post captures the sorrows of Baltimore with this striking datum:

Fifteen Baltimore neighborhoods have lower life expectancies than North Korea. Eight are doing worse than Syria.

It is bad and we’ve known that for a long time. But if The Wire didn’t make the point emphatically enough, the recent riots certainly should have. But agreement on just how dire conditions are is about all we are likely to get, especially in this political year.  One where, incidentally, one of the candidates was actually mayor of that city not very long ago.  That will be a tough record to run on but never doubt the creativity of a major American politician.

Baltimore has been a project of the Democratic party political class for years now.  It schools (and teachers unions) are lavishly funded.  But it has failed to the point where a child born in one of the city’s neighborhoods:

…could expect to die 20 years earlier than another kid who simply had the good fortune of being born just a few miles up the road from you. For Baltimore’s poorest, that’s the reality they’re living in.

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