A 1975 meeting of advertisers seeking to improve the city’s reputation, chose the nickname “Charm City” for Baltimore. Recently people have suggested dropping the ‘C’ and the city call itself “Harm City.” Harm in the form of violent crime which is ubiquitous here. This from pjmedia.com.
The “Baltimore sage” H. L. Mencken said “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” And so it was with defunding the police and its ideological companion, critical race theory. Defunding police was a simple-minded attempt to grapple with complex problems, not all of which are real and not all of which have government solutions. Critical race theory is just as simple-minded, and as toxic as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor occasionally becomes.
The last thing Baltimore needed was to have its police defunded. But the mayor and city council followed the far-left activist agitators off that cliff in 2020, and homicide in Harm City shot up.
Businesses in historic and trendy Fells Point are feeling the effects directly, and after the city has failed to listen and do its job, they’re fighting back with a tax revolt according to WBAL.
Call it the Baltimore Tea Party.
More than three dozen Fells Point business owners have sent a letter to Baltimore leadership including Mayor Brandon Scott, City Council President Nick Mosby, Councilman Zeke Cohen, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.
“What is happening in our front yard — the chaos and lawlessness that escalated this weekend into another night of tragic, unspeakable gun violence — has been going on for far too long,” a portion of the letter says.
The letter demands that city leaders restore “basic and essential municipal services” including trach pickup, enforcement of traffic and parking laws through tickets and towing, stopping illegal open-air alcohol and drug sales and empowerment of police to responsibly do their jobs.
The business owners threaten to withhold tax and permit payments, placing those funds into an escrow account, if the city doesn’t respond to their request.
City officials are hired by voters to do their jobs. Businesses pay taxes to fund the city’s provision of services. But if the city is failing in its most fundamental duties, it doesn’t deserve the taxes. The business leaders can better spend that money on security and other services they can depend on, or something else. The city’s failure can’t and won’t go without some reaction.
Mencken had another quote that the business leaders may appreciate: “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
A peaceful tax revolt to object to taxation without representation is Baltimore’s hoisting of the black flag. Hopefully the slitting of throats won’t be required.
Now think about the phrase, ‘taxation without representation.’ There is a great deal of American patriotic history in that phrase. Did the democrat malfeasance not see this response by Baltimore business owners coming? Of course not. That’s why they’re called democrats. Democrats will do what democrats do.
God speed with this initiative Fells Point business owners. Any success you achieve will be an example for other democrat mismanaged cities across America.
