There has been a lot of talk about Baltimore because of the dust up between Trump and Cummings and I get that Mr. Cummings wants to protect his district but it is still a crime-ridden shithole. And the Obama administration gave it a 1.8 Billion — yes that is BILLION with a B – boost and it didn’t help a bit. There are deep issues in Baltimore including poverty, crime and poor economic conditions and those all lead to it being a bit more of shithole.
This has NOTHING to do with the people of Baltimore. A PERSON cannot fix this. You can only fix yourself and your own conditions and if you are poor, you cannot afford to open businesses and create jobs and economic prosperity so people should not take this as a slam on people. It is however a TOTAL SLAM on the politicians. Politicians can create conditions that bring businesses and economic conditions.
Want an example — look at Atlanta. It was a very poorly run place with the highest murder rate in the nation a couple of decades ago and now there are movie studios, google has a facility, car companies are building factories nearby. Yes, there are still poor areas. Yes, it still needs work. But there is change and there is hope and there isn’t a 1.8 Billion dollar government handout. There are billions and billions of dollars of economic investment from conditions created by making business focused decisions that benefit the people of Georgia. Georgia still has pre-K (paid by the lottery) so parents can get out of the daycare bills when their kids are 4 and it has the Hope Scholarship for EVERY kid in Georgia who goes to college to help with some of the bills. Is it perfect? Of course not – but it is moving forward and everyone benefits.
I am not calling out Baltimore as a home of bad people — it is just a bad place probably filled with a lot of great people. But nobody is going to build a business if it might be burned down like they were during the riots a couple of years ago. Small businesses cannot afford that and insurance does not cover that. Larger businesses want business forward policies like tax incentives and a pool of qualified workers. With where Baltimore is located, there should be no problem with the workers, so it is a political problem.
So, if politicians could stop bickering like they are in Junior High and start courting some businesses, they can start FIXING this problem. And isn’t that why we elect people in the first place.