Things fall apart over time — even great cities

June 26, 2009

Years ago, I was introduced to former Baltimore County Police Chief Cornelius Behan by my friend Alan Walden. He said, "Chief, I want you to meet Ron Smith, a man who believes in the law of entropy." After shaking hands with the top cop, I said in reflexive defense mode, "I also believe in the law of gravity."

Recent columns

• No surprise to see ABC give platform to Obama — but not to his critics

  June 19, 2009

  What former CBS news correspondent Bernard Goldberg identified in the title of his recent book, A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media, has not cooled in the slightest.

• Crime problem is dragging city down

  June 12, 2009

  It's difficult to find much mention of the city of Baltimore these days without reference to crime. There is open argument, in the pages of this newspaper and its online edition, on radio talk shows and in private conversation, about the relative danger of working in or visiting "Charm City." Is it really charming these days, or a place to be avoided because of random acts of violence that appear increasingly directed toward people in neighborhoods that once seemed safe?

• Is a value-added tax around the corner?

  May 29, 2009

  The biggest question facing all of us right now - not to mention our children, their children and all those yet unborn - is how in the world we're going to get out from under the mountains of debt that we have piled up over the years. We owe, as a nation, somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 trillion, and that is a conservative figure. Using generally accepted accounting standards that consider our gigantic unfunded liabilities, the national debt is several times that. We can no longer count on the people of other nations to lend us money that they now know will never be repaid in other than nominal ways, i.e., with vastly cheapened dollars.

• Baltimore pension dispute illuminates public/private divide

  May 22, 2009

  Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has withdrawn a pension reform measure that by any logic should have been carried out. Baltimore, like countless municipalities (and states), is faced with a growing gap between pension obligations to its multitude of retired workers and the ability to pay for them. TheBaltimore Sun's Annie Linskey tells us that the legislation that would have eliminated a provision giving all retired fire and police workers a permanent boost in their pension payments in years when the pension fund performs well was withdrawn because, in the words of the mayor's spokesman, "We're looking for a bigger fix to the system."

• Viewpoint: The high cost of climate fear-mongering

  May 15, 2009

  After all the climate change fear-mongering to which we've been subjected in recent years, after all the accolades and awards lavished on Al Gore for leading the fight against the presumed horrors to come from manmade greenhouse gas emissions, public sentiment has shifted dramatically against the doomsayers. A lot of this has to do with the public's increasing awareness that the cap-and-trade bill currently being considered in Congress is actually a cap-and-tax bill that would spell economic disaster for Americans while doing nothing to affect the Earth's climate.

• Don't expect scrutiny of Wall St. high jinks

  May 8, 2009

  Here's something to keep an eye on: If Congress and the Justice Department don't thoroughly investigate how Goldman Sachs has managed to turn chicken stuff into chicken salad in the midst of the credit meltdown that savaged some of its competitors, well, we'll know the fix is in. If I were a betting man (and I am), I'd give you long odds on that happening and be very confident of winning the wager.

• Will chickens be coming home to roost in financial crisis?

  May 1, 2009

  The evidence mounts that the current economic troubles were set in motion because of systemic fraud. I keep thinking about Bernard L. Madoff's comment when F.B.I. agents were about to arrest him. Asked if he could explain what he had done in his Ponzi scheme, he replied, "There is no innocent explanation."

• Proponents of gun control shooting blanks

  April 24, 2009

  Every so often I find myself stepping into the minefield that is public discussion of guns, gun violence, gun control and how these things relate to the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Because of misleading public statements by the president of the United States and his secretary of state, it's now time to do so again.

• Under state's one-party rule, taxpayer beware

  April 17, 2009

  When we survey what lawmakers accomplish in their annual ransacking of the taxpayer, we see that they always succeed in two major things: increasing the reach of the government in question and paying back investments made in their political careers by those who fund them. As Mencken pointed out decades ago, "The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. ... If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of chiropractic, astrology or cannibalism."

• A fraud that makes Madoff look small time

  April 10, 2009

  Since Bernard L. Madoff was handcuffed and taken from his office by FBI agents, we have been made well aware of the nature of Ponzi schemes, fraudulent investment opportunities that pay off early participants with money from newcomers, not from returns on legitimate stock or bond holdings. Mr. Madoff, once a highly respected member of the Wall Street establishment, has admitted to defrauding investors of as much as $50 billion in such a manner. When asked by the agents who arrested him if he could explain what he'd done, he reportedly said, "There is no innocent explanation."

• Short attention spans and short memories

  August 20, 2008

  Nicholas Carr thinks that Google is making us "stoopid." In a recent piece in The Atlantic, he says those of us who constantly surf the Net can't concentrate properly anymore -- that instant access to virtually all information reduces our attention span. Mr. Carr says he can no longer immerse himself in a book or a long article, something that used to be easy for him. Has this happened to you? I thought so. It's happened to me as well.