Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

Twice: First, Jazz Shaw at Haut Hair, NAACP asks for National Guard to be deployed in Baltimore

The city of Baltimore has now recorded more than 230 murders this year and we haven’t even reached the end of August. If the pace doesn’t slacken, Charm City is on track to reach 300 murders by November, setting up the possibility that they will break their all-time record for killings in a single year. Other categories of crime are up nearly across the board as well. Mayor Brandon Scott promised the city a five-year plan to significantly reduce murders and other crimes, but there’s no sign of that happening thus far. In fact, things are only getting worse and there are large portions of the city where the gangs clearly control the streets far more than law enforcement does. The mayor has tried blaming the media and gun manufacturers, but even his staunchest supporters aren’t buying it. So just how bad has it gotten? The NAACP has petitioned the Governor to declare a public state of emergency in Baltimore and deploy the National Guard to get the violence under control. (Zerohedge)

Democrats have controlled Baltimore for more than half a century. The failure of Baltimore as a city should be directed at those with progressive policies and ideas about policing and operating a city.

But there is a glimmer of hope for the city: Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby, who aligned herself with radical criminal justice reformers, just lost in the Democratic primary. She acknowledged a federal investigation into her finances cost her the election.

[Mayor Brandon] Scott might need to tweak his crime reduction plan or face the wrath of Hogan or even voters. This comes as a civil rights organization (Randallstown’s chapter of the NAACP) in a suburb in Baltimore County requested the governor to declare a “public emergency” and deploy the National Guard to the city to quell out-of-control violent crime.

As Tyler Durden points out in the linked article, there is a glimmer of hope showing up in Baltimore that we’ve covered here before. The city’s soft-on-crime, anti-police State’s Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby was recently defeated in a primary challenge. Unfortunately, she will just be replaced by a different Democrat and most of the opposition against her stemmed from the many corruption charges she’s facing, but it does seem to demonstrate that the voters do have a limit as to how much failure they will tolerate.

The move by the NAACP is remarkable as well. Traditionally, both the Democrats in Baltimore and civil rights activists have shied away from blaming the failed policies of Democratic administrations for the city’s enormous murder problem. Similarly, it’s been considered impolite to point to the fact that the gangs are responsible for nearly all of it. Placing blame on the largely minority membership gangs or the city’s majority Black municipal leadership was considered racist, so other scapegoats had to be found.

But now even the NAACP is raising the flag of surrender and asking for the National Guard to ride to the rescue. That’s as close as we’re likely to get to an admission that the policies of Baltimore’s government have failed and the people are effectively living in a war zone. If the NAACP is willing to speak up, perhaps others will as well.

They've been voting poorly so long it's hard to imagine a way back to sanity. 

Second, WMAR Baltimore, Mail-in ballots from 2020 discovered in Baltimore USPS facility

Some Baltimore City voters just received their mail-in ballots from 2020. The Baltimore City Board of Elections is now trying to understand how this happened.

Mail-in ballots are supposed to be prioritized, but for a block of homes in Southeast Baltimore theirs came nearly two years after they were supposed to be delivered.

“I received my 2020 General Election ballot on August 6, 2022,” said Nick Frisone, who contacted WMAR-2 News after receiving his ballot. His neighbors in Highlandtown recently received theirs as well.

Frisone knew his ballot had gone missing. On September 29, 2020 an Informed Delivery email notified him that his ballot would be delivered that day.

“And then it just never came, so then I had to call the Board of Elections and then I had to go in-person to get a replacement,” said Frisone.

USPS declined WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii’s interview request. In an email, USPS spokesperson Tom Ouellette wrote:

“Regarding ballots seen in photographs from a customer’s email, the Postal Service discovered a tray of undelivered mail in a Baltimore facility on Friday, Aug. 5. The tray’s mail was from year 2020 and contained what appeared to be 26 blank ballots mailed from the Baltimore City Board of Election to addresses with a Baltimore ZIP Code. Those mailpieces were delivered Saturday, Aug. 6.

We deeply regret the late delivery of these mailpieces. The Postal Service takes these issues very seriously and is working to help avoid issues like this by going over our processes and procedures with all employees ahead of the general elections. The U.S. Postal Service is fully committed to the secure, timely delivery of the nation’s Election Mail. We are in close communication with the Baltimore City Election Board and look forward to a successful election in November.”

“It would’ve been nice if they could’ve contacted us, so the voters wouldn’t have been confused,” said Baltimore City Election Director Armstead Jones, who learned about the mishap from some of those voters.