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Rats!
Rats and violence in Baltimore, as in other cities, are indicators of basic civil society and local government breakdown. President Trump, as a developer between New York and New Jersey, has a long memory of stories that fed his tweets about Congressman Elijah Cummings’ hometown. This is not dinner-time viewing, but it is a fair sampling of local Baltimore stories since 2013. If you find the following a bit much, I note that cats chase rats, and you can chase the images here with a wonderful cat tale: “The Mother.”
The Atlantic had this 2014 story of an independent photojournalist documenting neglect of entire blocks of empty buildings:
Here is a 2013 local television news story about the city government of Baltimore trying to respond to increased numbers of citizen complaints about rats:
That effort apparently failed, because here is a 2015 local television news report about residents being terrorized by rats:
And that was not the only 2015 local rat problem story:
Residents of Baltimore public housing, in 2015, said it was more than just rats and pinned the blame on corrupt public workers.
From the Baltimore Sun in 2016:
Here is an AP story from 2018, just last year, in which a rat was so bold as to climb into a pastry case and nibble with a crowd of customers watching. No, it wasn’t Ratatouille:
Also in 2018, a local television station reported the cell phone video of a rat in a Baltimore 7/11 convenience store.
Here is the Baltimore mayor in 2018 talking about rats and smelling dead animals, presented in a local Fox45 report on both murders and urban blight:
Here is the current mayor, Mayor Jack Young recently touring a neighborhood and ordering city workers to clean up the trash:
Rats are always present in town or country, but they become obvious when basic public sanitation enforcement and services break down, as is the case with street crime surging with loss of basic community order and law enforcement. President Trump should make Baltimore and Chicago his two top priorities for application of every tool in the administration’s belt: DOJ, HUD, HHS, SBA, and more. HUD Secretary Carson should probably lead the interagency effort.
Published in Domestic Policy
This should not be happening in a first-world country. Unbelievable.
Completely disagree.
It ain’t the federal government’s responsibility. The Citizens are responsible. If the Citizens are so concerned, then They can vote others in, move, or wallow in the filth.
There are already massive overlaps of federal law, regulations, and dollars with the local government. Make them count.
Hell, no. The local politicians should make Their own count. Many other cities do.
If President Trump is to do anything with Baltimore, He should use Yer post in an ad, “You really want democrats running things?”
Which does nothing. You want the same playbook used by every modern Republican candidate, with predictable results. I suggest we try actually changing hearts and minds and take away the guaranteed voter bloc from the Democrats.
Really? My playbook is for people to live with consequences of Their votes. Not bailing Them out.
You are the one Who stated,”There are already massive overlaps of federal law, regulations, and dollars with the local government. Make them count.” Throw more money at it. That is what’s called “same playbook.”
Unless you are ready to limit state elections to residents for x amount of years, for x >= 10, then your way advocates spread of the disease, as they will move out before cleaning it up.
Sad and troubling post.
The vacant property problem is huge all across the country. Even on Cape Cod, we have an occasional building that becomes vacant and then an eye-sore. I don’t know how the real estate laws work exactly and how property owners can be held to some decent property maintenance standard, but there must be a way.
Cities and towns that don’t fix this problem create places that become over time, as the photographer said in the Atlantic video, nests of crime. It is terrible.
I find the decay of these cities almost as reprehensible as the political “leaders” who make excuses for such conditions and turn blind eyes to the hard work of rehabilitation. It’s not the fault of police but the refusal of mayors & governors to support them; it’s not ignoring homelessness & rampant drug use but the choice to accept these problems as inevitable & open homeless camps and open-use drug programs. It’s taking funding from basic school curriculum and start new-wave multicultural culture studies. So I agree with @cliffordbrown about the desperation, but as @jimmycarter argues, it’s a community problem to solve. A very good documentary on Detroit is worth viewing “Requiem for Detroit” from 2010.
Trump managed to hit Cummings where it hurts and in so doing he again did the thing that is the chief function of the Presidency for decades; he focused attention and energy on a problem.
solutionsThat said, the reason American’s eastern states are plagued with rats is that they were built over a long time with jury-rigged and jerry-built constructions of ill-meshing materials. These rats have been there a looong time and they are good at what they do.There’s a great story about the women in Boston who set out to rid the city of rats in the early 1900s. Here’s an excerpt:
That is excellent additional context. I sought to cover the ubiquity of rats with the last paragraph. My claim is that, beyond the base population in town and country, population will vary with food supply, read poor public sanitation in urban areas. So, we should expect to see numbers and size go up with more edible garbage left out for them.
We don’t want the Federal government directly involved in cities. That, in fact is part of the problem. Some cities will be run by crooks and, as we’re seeing, those cities gradually die. If the Feds do it, we’ll gradually lose power in cities that are well run, and we won’t learn what works best over time. Indeed the worst run cities tend to focus on national matters, ideological matters, etc. and not their cities because the big bucks and the big corruption are there. The Federal government is too big and too remote, its employees are removed from daily local reality. Their corruption is just good pay and indifference, or at best ill informed inappropriate focus. We could have some demonstration projects, individual grants, limited of course as Washington and local politicians will abuse it. We should have more finger pointing, attention, focus on the crooks and that is what Trump is doing in spite of our media’s dishonest indifference to real issues.
OTOH it would be pretty fun to send out a Federal Eradication of Rodents and Roaches Environmental Team.
Bingo! Great acronym.
I demand furry costumes.
Set-aside programs for Furry-Americans will be one of the first things I will enact if elected President.
My mother served in the Philadelphia Public Health Service in the 1950s, before the national and then transnational drug gangs cranked up the level of violence from knives, chains, and zip guns to effective late 19th century, early 20th century firearms (double action revolvers, eventually superseded by semi-auto pistols). The old men sat on their tenement stoops keeping watch. Young nurses, women, often white, walked alone because they were under community protection.
And. She treated small children in their apartments with rat bites.
Read this partial transcript from Tom Skinner at Urbana 1970 (then go read the rest if you identify as Christian):
This conversation is begging for a PIT worthy photo to dissuade you on that…
The PIT and Vegas have one simple rule.
Of course, we could see President Trump as the Nutcracker prince battling the Rat King, the Maurice Sendek version of course:
Perhaps the rats are a necessary step in the eventual gentrification of Baltimore.