On Mfume: mayor's race, his voting record and more
As a community association vice president in the Ashburton area, I have taken an interest in the upcoming mayoral race.
We have reached a turning point for Baltimore's neighborhoods, a moment when the economic progress and community development plans that have been made in partnership with Mayor Kurt Schmoke may bear fruit or be lost forever.
Baltimore's next mayor must be a visible, activist leader with the experience to make the most of our strengths, the profile to represent Baltimore nationally upon taking office and a history of giving every citizen a place at the table.
Of all the possible candidates mentioned, only one has these qualities: Kweisi Mfume. It is my hope that he will run and become our next mayor.
Shawn Tarrant, Baltimore
As an advocate for children, an early childhood educator and a mother who has raised her children in Baltimore, I know how much we need activist leadership in City Hall.
We can review statistics and hold press conferences to announce a new task force, or we can take action.
We can debate what strategy will meet our children's needs for safety and educational opportunity, or we can take action.
We can choose a future of passive city government, unmet commitments and lost children, or we can take action.
We are a city whose children need a powerful advocate at its helm. As citizens we are taking action. We ask Kweisi Mfume to answer the call.
Anana Kambon, Baltimore
Everyone is saying Kweisi Mfume is the savior of the city; three former mayors are saying he should enter the mayoral race.
But Mr. Mfume should continue to lead the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where he has done a great job. This city needs a leader picked by its citizens, not someone three former mayors say is the savior.
To save this city, you need jobs that put people to work making wages that will support a family.
Legislators have been changing the rules to allow Mr. Mfume to run, but we don't even know what his agenda for the city would be. And if we change the rules for him, will we change the rules every time someone wants to run?
Horace T. Alston, Catonsville
After all these machinations to get Kweisi Mfume to run for mayor, I have just one question: What, exactly, would a Mayor Mfume do to bring Baltimore back to life?
Michael Holden, Chestertown
Wally Orlinsky and three ex-mayors have called with almost unseemly urgency for Kwiesi Mfume to run for mayor. They say Baltimore needs him desperately.
They portray Baltimore as a faded, fragile beauty who needs a handsome gentleman caller to squire her around.
What the city really needs is an honest, unpretentious leader whose gaze is squarely focused on solving its deep-rooted problems.
This means dealing with our high murder rate, rotted public education system and especially the hemorrhaging of young middle-class families who move from the city to the county when the children arrive.
Be warned, Baltimore: Squires don't like to get their hands messy with such matters. They prefer making speeches, hobnobbing and pondering future conquests.
J. D. Goodyear, Baltimore
Barry Rascovar's May 5 Opinion Commentary column, "Mfume's time is now," did an excellent job of pushing Kweisi Mfume to declare his mayoral candidacy, but I believe Mr. Mfume has a right to announce his decision at the time he feels is best.
One important advantage Mr. Mfume has is the great number of talented, enthusiastic supporters who have publicly supported him. I'd expect they would be willing to lend their talents and expertise to the administration of the man they drafted for mayor.
Whether our next mayor is Mr. Mfume or someone else, it will be the people chosen for the city's new Cabinet, and those behind the scenes who help manage the city's affairs, who will determine the mayor's success.
In fact, we citizens might insist that any candidate for mayor let us know in advance who he will put in charge of the city's day-to-day business.
Like countless others, I will support whoever becomes our next mayor. But I hope and pray that mayor has the most competent people available for key positions in the new administration.
The Rev. Frederick J. Hanna, Baltimore
Well, it turns out Ellen Sauerbrey was right about one thing: There was at least one noncity resident casting a fraudulent vote in the last few elections. His name? Kweisi Mfume.
What is most outrageous about this revelation is the blase attitude about it of most of Baltimore's "leaders." Since when has ballot box stuffing not been a crime?
William Smith, Baltimore
I don't see how any objective person can question that Kweisi Mfume knows full well that it is improper for anyone whose primary residence is in Baltimore County to vote in Baltimore City.
John White, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's spokesman, said, "He has always considered himself a city resident."
This misses the point: What Mr. Mfume considers himself is not the issue. Where he lives is.
National political events over the past 18 months have shown that there is a correlation between personal integrity and political leadership. We don't expect St. Francis of Assisi to be the standard for mayor of Baltimore, but leaders in all fields should be role models for their constituents.
If the NAACP believes Mr. Mfume is a qualified leader, that is their decision. The residents of Baltimore should expect more.
We do not need a mayor who puts personal expediency over objective truth.
Thomas M. Neale, Baltimore
Kweisi Mfume is the perfect candidate for mayor of Baltimore. He has voted fraudulently in a city that cannot control voter fraud. He should be a shoo-in.
Larry Leone, Edgemere
Getting on track with racing
I am writing in response to Barry Rascovar's April 18 Opinion Commentary column, "Glendening paves way for slots at racetrack."
The column suggested that the governor's support of an amendment to a horse-racing bill that would license a thoroughbred racetrack in Allegany County opens the floodgates to expanded gambling in Maryland.
Presumably this is because the track's prospective owner is William Rickman, a Marylander who owns Delaware Park in Stanton, Del. -- home to horse racing for more than 50 years and slot machines for just over three years. It is no accident that those last three have been the track's most profitable years, by a margin of many furlongs.
Yet, to presume that the "Rickman amendment" is the key to the slots kingdom in Maryland is a superficial judgment. Even if he follows through on this track, Mr. Rickman would not be the first slots operator to own a Maryland track.
Bally's, the largest gambling company in the world, became the lender to the group owning the Rosecroft Raceway and Ocean Downs harness tracks in 1994 and has owned and operated Ocean Downs for two years.
The governor did not bring Bally's to Maryland, nor has he encouraged the sporadic talk about legalized casino gambling on Marylands waterways or in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
He has certainly not been part of the efforts by the state's racetracks to promote slot machines at their facilities, which included tactics intended to unseat him.
The slots at tracks in Delaware and West Virginia are not going to disappear; they will put continued pressure on Marylands racing industry, as will any expansion of gambling in nearby states.
Racing is a unique industry in that it is the only regulated business in the state in competition with its own regulator. The governor and the legislature have recognized this the last three years and have supported state assistance to boost the industry while seeking longer-term solutions.
The decision on gambling expansion in Maryland is in front of us. The ultimate decision-makers will be the people of Maryland, through their elected officials, or perhaps by referendum, and horse racing and the state's tracks will only be one player in the process.
If expanded gambling comes to Maryland it won't be because of racing, or because Bill Rickman does or does not build a racetrack in Allegany County.
The issue was on the table before the present governor was elected, and it will still be there when he leaves office.
Timothy T. Capps, Timonium
The writer is executive vice president of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association Inc.
Consider a different legal route for traffic offenses
One solution to the logjam in the Baltimore City criminal courts could be the administrative adjudication of traffic offenses. This proposal has been before the General Assembly on and off for over twenty years, repeatedly sponsored by former Sen. F. Vernon Boozer of Baltimore County.
It would expedite handling of minor traffic offenses and motor vehicle licensing sanctions and free judges to hear more criminal matters. It would also mean more police officers would be on the street instead of waiting for speeding tickets to be tried in the district courts.
Presently, all small traffic offenses (speeding, running red lights and stop signs) are criminal misdemeanors. These cases would be de-criminalized and categorized as "minor traffic offenses." They would be heard by officers of the Motor Vehicle Administration, who are experienced in highway safety.
These hearing officers would not only impose fines, if the driver is guilty, but could at the same time assess points or suspend the license if warranted.
The hearings could be held in the evenings or on Saturdays in courtrooms of the various district courts, which are otherwise vacant at that time.
Police officers would not need to appear unless this was requested by the driver, just as is now the procedure in parking citation cases.
Under the current system, drivers must first attend a judicial hearing and are then summoned to a motor vehicle hearing for sanctions applied to their licenses. This process involves an unnecessary extra step and expense. It delays imposition of the licensing action -- so that many times drivers can scarcely recall what the original offense was.
Serious traffic offenses, such as drunk driving, leaving the scene of an accident or eluding a police officer would remain crimes tried in the district courts.
To fill the void in their docket left by the loss of so many cases, district courts would be assigned juvenile cases, now heard by intake officers and social workers.
Juvenile appearances in front of robed judges in a courtroom would make a greater impression on kids, who now appear in an office before clerical employees. Kids know the present juvenile system and how to (ab)use it.
Administrative adjudication of minor traffic offenses has been used successfully in New York City for more than thirty years.
It's an idea whose time has come in Maryland.
William T. S. Bricker, Baltimore
The writer, a defense attorney, is a former state motor vehicle administrator and assistant attorney general.
Sargent undeserving of merely faint praise
May my voice augment the chorus of congratulations to Glenn McNatt on his elevation to art critic. He's a worthy and qualified writer.
But I have some concerns about his April 25 review of the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art ("Success gained, greatness lost").
While I could write a rebuttal perhaps longer than the original article, I say only that it serves no reader to hear what art is not.
Sargent was not a "victim of his own success." The exhibition is not "a meditation on unrealized potential."
It is absolutely not, as Mr. McNatt suggested, "certain that Sargent simply did not possess the moral fortitude to seize the greater possibilities open to him -- or endure their consequences."
Sargent matured in the richest cultural milieu imaginable. He studied the great masters and fell rapturously in love with the realism and glorious light of the 17th century -- especially the transcendent light of Velazquez which embraces the very darkness it seeks to comprehend.
Sargent gloried in light -- the sunny glare of Capri in 1878, a dark alcove in the Boit home in 1882, the aqueous reflections of Venice in the 1880s and '90s and smear of pure white on a chair arm in the portrait of Mrs. Fiske Warren and her daughter Rachel in 1903.
He used it to craft space, texture and color but also to assert in utterly modern terms the flat surface of the canvas.
Sargent did flatter his sitters. He also portrayed his experience with the sitter as much as the sitter's face.
Look at his 1881 portrait of the Pailleron Children. Look at Edouard's ennui and Marie-Louise's barely contained hostility. Or consider the bald crown of Ambrogio Raffele (1904) which we see only once our eyes have worked past the rumpled bedclothes on which is propped the landscape he is painting.
Do not damn these paintings with faint praise, or begrudge us the pleasure of beauty.
If there is one thing I learned from this show, that I had not learned in 20 years of art history study, it is this: Sargent was a very great painter who truly knew how to make a painting from the inside out.
There is not tragedy in this body of work; it stands secure on its own, an essential, original and lasting contribution.
Ellen B. Cutler, Aberdeen
The writer is the director of the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum. The Sargent show will be at the National Gallery of Art in Washington through the end of May.
Two-faced approach to violence
I was impressed by Colman McCarthy's May 2 Perspective section article, "Thou shalt not kill."
He made a very good argument that our president, our national leaders and we ourselves are two-faced when it comes to violence in our lives and by our government.
I believe, however, that the hypocrisy goes deeper. As Robert Bellah's wonderful book "Habits of the Heart" pointed out, we are becoming an increasingly self-centered society.
"I" and my desires are the highest value. There is no God, no higher moral authority. The larger community has no rights over me and I have no obligations to it.
If I want it, I have to have it -- now. If I want to do it, I have a right to do it now.
If you are in my way, I have the right to eliminate you. My choice is the ultimate authority over life and death.
This selfish worldview is played out every day in the large and small events of life and death.
If my buddies and I want to walk down the center of the sidewalk and run everyone else off, that's OK, because I want it. If I want to blow away a hostage in a carjacking, I do it just because I want to. Tough for them.
If I want to abort an innocent life because it disrupts my lifestyle, it's OK.
In the light of this religion of the great "me," why are we surprised when young people decide to blow up their school and shoot those they perceived were in their way. Tough for them.
The boys just wanted to do it. It was only a choice.
Death will come from that selfish world view again and again.
The reversal of this great false religion of "me" is the only hope of an end of violence. Taking guns off the street will not end it. Putting a police officer in every classroom will not stop it.
Only when we learn and teach our children that each of us individually is not the be-all and end-all of decision-making will we advance toward a gentler nation.
The Rev. Michael T. Buttner, Pasadena
The writer is pastor of Our Lady of the Chesapeake Roman Catholic Church in Pasadena.