Baltimore You Have Major Problems and We Are Gratified That You Are Taking Action to Address Your Problems…Or are we?...Or are you?

Baltimore’s Problems

Ø Baltimore violent crime has spun out of control in recent years.
>There were 342 homicides in Baltimore in 2017.
>This is the highest homicide count in the nation.
>2019 is the fifth year in a row that there have been more than 300 homicides and there is still more than a month remaining in 2019.
>To add insult to injury, the number of homicides is climbing in Baltimore while it’s falling around the rest of the country.

Ø If that’s not bad enough, the city has an astounding amount of poverty to go along with crushingly high taxes.

Ø Baltimore isn’t even offering much hope for future generations because it has some of the lowest-performing public schools in the country, despite the fact that the city annually spends about $16,000 per student.
>In 4^th and 8^th grade reading, only 13% of city’s students are considered proficient or advanced.
>In 4^th grade math, 14% were proficient.
>In 8^th grade math, 11% were proficient.

Ø To top it all off, the city is contending with a heaping helping of corruption.
>The past three Baltimore mayors have resigned in disgrace.
>Former Mayor Catherine Pugh, who at one time was billed as a “reformer”, resigned in May and has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, seven counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and two counts of tax evasion.
>Pugh was originally caught in a scheme allegedly involving kickbacks for selling her children’s books to hospitals, in which she was able to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Baltimore Has Decided To “Fix” Something Else

Rather than addressing these serious problems, Baltimore’s politicians have opted for empty virtue-signaling. The residents of Baltimore are the ones left holding the bag, literally and figuratively because their leaders have decided to look right past all the above terrible and growing real problems and have Banned Plastic Bags.

That ought to do it…Or ought it do it?

This Blog Posting could end here but the Late Paul Harvey happens to be visiting Fella today and he is shouting at me to tell you the Rest of the Story.

The problem Ole Paul is shouting at me about is the fact that Bag Bans are not just annoying and inconvenient but they also add up to little more than Virtue-Signaling of being “Environmentally Conscious” but not actually Helping or Saving the Environment but only Brushing by it. There’s even evidence that such bans end up doing harm to the Environment.

A study by University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor in Australia found that banning plastic bags certainly caused customers to use fewer plastic shopping bags.

Warning: Some “Scientific Analysis” might stop right here and take solace in the Use Fewer Bags as Case Closed and Mission Accomplished.

Plastic Bag Bans Just Might Do More Harm Than Good…

Ø People begin to use other kinds of plastic bags to make up for the lost supply of the Banned Bags.

Ø The study found that in areas that had plastic Bag Bans, there was a surge in the use of the thicker 4-gallon bags, which use more plastic.

Ø Many customers actually reuse plastic bags for lining wastebaskets, among many other secondary uses but now they have to find something else to do these jobs.

Ø The laws also create a huge uptick in the use of Paper Bags, which—according to some research—are actually worse for the environment than Plastic Bags.

In the meantime, all the Baltimore Problems described in the 4 Bullet Points at the beginning of this Blog Posting are continuing to continue.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe: In the Warning above I put “Scientific Analysis” in quotes. Not all things out of the world of science are carved in stone. Science is always evolving. It’s called Progress. It should not be called Mistakes.

I am presently reading a book by Mike Rowe named The Way I Heard It. It is like the next iteration of The Rest of the Story.

I know you are tired of me by now, so I’ll try and be quick…

Ø One of the shows Mike Rowe hosts for the Science Channel is How the Universe Works.

Ø He is sometimes called into the studio to re-record a piece of a show already recorded because new information has been received that corrects/contradicts the Prior Recorded Science.

Ø One of the quotes that needed to be corrected was that there were “approximately one hundred billion galaxies in the known universe”.

Ø Within a week a new method of measuring the cosmos had led astronomers to revise the number of galaxies from 100 Billion (that’s 100 Thousand Million) to 2 Trillion (that’s 2 Thousand Billion).

No matter how you look at it, the first estimate was not close but it was Scientific Fact at some point in time.