Good summation. Mikulski was the “pride of the Polish” in Baltimore re politics (except for “American Joe”. However, the City Council she served on was still liberal, significantly anti-business (re taxes, regulations, etc) and caved in to the Black Political Machine too often.
I go back in Baltimore to the 40’s and can tell you neighborhood by neighborhood what happened. I can also tell you what helped destroy a significant part of the white middle class businesses - Pelosi’s brother, the Mayor, D’Alessandro, during the 1968 riots, gave into them and their black political supporters instead of suppressing it, putting the out of state rioters in jail, and given the order to “Shoot to kill” for arsonists and looters.
He let the small businesses of the Jewish working/middle class get looted and burned to the ground, which not only put many of these white businessmen (including people I knew) out of work, but also their black workers, many of whom had been with the businesses for decades (like our top man had been - 50 years).
The first black mayor of Baltimore, Curt Schmoke, was the president of my largely white boys club and my high school. He was being trained by some very good people to be the “New Black Hope” but he was compromised by the Black Political Machine (communists, liberals, crooks, etc - Murphys, Little Willie Adams, the Mitchell Communist/Crime family, and others, aided by a slowly declining white political machine that had helped keep the city running.
Literally all the businesses we knew and dealt with from the 1950’s thru the 80’s are gone (and not replaced). So too were the jobs associated with them as well as many of the services they provided. The tragedy was that young black men were not encouraged to get an education so that they could either buy an ongoing business when the owners retired, or start their own. No black business; no black middle class.
Drugs, corruption, incompetence, uncaring, stupid, and greedy politicians, mainly black, destroyed what white Mayor Schaeffer tried to do to save a lot of inner-city Baltimore. If it weren’t for the Wharf area, most white businesses would have fled for Owings Mills, Towson, or Hunt Valley in greater numbers than they did.
Baltimore gave us Sen. Mikulski, stupid Sen. Cardin, Communist Parren Mitchell (there is more to him than is publicly known), Rep. Cummings, and a couple of other clowns.
They sure did a lot to keep the city in good shape - NOT!
End of story.
A once beautiful and economically sound city has been, like Detroit, parts of Chicago, NY before Guliani/Bloomberg, Cleveland, Philadelphia (what a shithole it has become since I lived there, where even the slums were in better condition than now), San Fransicko, Oakland, and now Seattle and Portland, turned into a near economic basketcase.
If you want to know why this happened, just look at which political party ruled and ruined them. I can guarantee it wasn’t the Liberatians.
Nice summation. But don’t forget to give ol du burns credit for
destroying many of the great east balmer neighborhoods with sec. 8
vouchers.