Baltimore Seeking Federal Bailout

Baltimore’s citizens took to the streets in riotous protest over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, and they wound up costing the city at least $20 million in damages. That steep figure, mind you, is only the bill for damage to city property and staff overtime. It doesn’t begin to touch the financial wreck caused to more than 400 private businesses.

Now Baltimore wants a bailout. While city officials have said they can cover the damages with their “rainy day fund” in the short term, they are asking FEMA to reimburse them for up to 75 percent of the expenditures. Requests for financial aid have come from both Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

In addition to concerns about cleaning up the damage, Baltimore is facing its highest murder rate in 40 years. 43 people were killed in May, leading many to suggest that police are hesitant to do their jobs while under increased media scrutiny. Others have noted that by rewarding the rioters with police indictments, the city’s officials have sided with criminals over law enforcement.

A Destruction of Their Own Making

Why should the American taxpayer come to Baltimore’s rescue? This destruction is of their own design, and their efforts to “fix” the city will bring us more of the same. If we’re going to hand $20 million to Baltimore, we should demand that they try something different. If they are going to continue on the liberal path they’ve been on since the 1960s, we’re just throwing good money after bad.

Let us not forget that Mayor Rawlings-Blake said they were giving “those who wish to destroy the space to do so” in the wake of the riots. Fine. Then you can find the money to clean up the damage. Raise taxes. Regulate the economy. Hike up the minimum wage. Those are the Democrat solutions to everything, so go ahead and see how your progressive policies can turn things around. It will be a huge victory for Democrats, after all, to show their platforms in action.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. Baltimore has been under Democrat rule since 1967, and it has led us directly to this point. Maybe it’s time we stop giving liberals the “space to destroy” our nation’s biggest and best cities. Democrats have ruined Baltimore’s economy, its police force, its schools, and its culture. If Democrats could have made Baltimore a shining example of liberalism in action, they would have done so by now. Instead, they have done just the opposite. Cities governed by Democrats become wastelands of economic strife, unemployment, and crime.

Of course, they will get the money. They will get the money, and then they will re-elect all of the usual suspects. And things will only get worse. Baltimore needs a bailout, all right. An ideological bailout.