Status Quo

City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. unveiled yesterday the first part of his plan to improve the Baltimore school system, proposing to pay teachers who work in the toughest schools up to 15 percent more and demanding efficiency audits as he promised that education would be the issue to differentiate him from his main competitor in the mayoral race. Appearing at Thurgood Marshall High School in Northeast Baltimore, Mitchell reiterated that the cornerstone of his education plan is to dissolve the current city-state partnership and return control of the school system to the mayor.

Status quo candidates offer little real hope for Baltimore's poorThe media have decided there are only three realistic candidates for mayor of Baltimore. So we've been treated to televised debates involving just three men.We want systemic change. Poor people need radical change. We watched the debates hoping against hope that a real candidate would emerge.It didn't happen. There will be no change. That's the stark reality. Each of the three candidates is capable of re-arranging the furniture, but they are not interested in building a new house.

Change in tort law would add to the load of clogged courtsAs highlighted in recent articles in The Sun, Baltimore courts have an overcrowding crisis that led to the dismissals of several serious criminal cases. I commend Gov. Parris N. Glendening and the other public officials who are working to add courtrooms, prosecutors and public offenders.Now is not the time to pass bills that would increase the burden on Baltimore's Circuit Court. But a bill in the House that would adopt "comparative fault," a legal liability system to replace Maryland's "contributory negligence" rule -- which has been in effect for more than 150 years -- would do just that.

At least four villages will elect new representatives Saturday to serve on the Columbia Council during the session beginning in May, ensuring a fresh cast of leaders in a 31-year-old community that many believe is at a crossroads.Although Columbia's elections aren't expected to draw big crowds, they will bring significant change: Four incumbents on the 10-member board, including Chairwoman Norma Rose and Vice Chairmen David W. Berson and Alex Hekimian, are not seeking re-election.Another two, Cecilia Januszkiewicz of Long Reach and Jean S. Friedberg Jr. of Hickory Ridge, have challengers, meaning as many as six seats could change hands.

IT'S A NEW year and a new term for members of the General Assembly preparing to open their 90-day session in Annapolis on Wednesday.An unusual convergence of issues and dollars gives them a chance to do something different this year: plan ahead.Too often, this state's lawmakers are confronted with immediate crises that need a quick fix. That's especially true of financial proposals that often clash with insufficient tax revenue.This year, though, no emergencies are looming, and the state's treasury has a fat surplus.

MOUNT AIRY -- In 1966, when the population of this old railroad-stop town was just 600, a young lumber store owner and his friend entered a council race as a joke.His friend lost the race. But R. Delaine Hobbs had the last laugh -- he had won his first public office.He successfully defended his seat in 1970 and again in 1974. And he has not stopped since.For 32 years, long enough for the nation to switch presidents six times and watch bell bottoms go in and out of style more than once, Mount Airy residents have kept Hobbs in office.

An excerpt from a recent Orange County Register editorial:RECKLESSNESS, apparently, is in the eye of the beholder. President Clinton, for instance, professed Monday to see recklessness in a GOP congressional proposal to sunset the current federal tax code as of the final day of 2001 -- so as to force work to begin soon on a replacement.Mr. Clinton denounced the idea without qualification, charging that the plan could disrupt the economy by creating a crippling uncertainty about future tax policies.

WHAT A difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, tough-talking former Gen. Alexander I. Lebed was a nightly attraction on Russian television. Newspapers carried his populist pronouncements daily. Now he has disappeared from center stage. So has Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist hothead renowned for his anti-Semitic buffoonery."I was born a winner. Sooner or later, victory will be mine," says Mr. Lebed, 47, who hopes to be a factor in 2000 when Russians elect a successor to President Boris N. Yeltsin.

WEATHER REPORTS may call for bright and sunny skies, but Baltimore continues to be plagued by dark, threatening storm clouds. For every positive development in the city, there seem to be a couple of negatives. Without strong, enlightened political leadership, the city's malaise persists.Take some recent examples.Bethel A.M.E. Church, one of the oldest, largest and most important black religious organizations in the city, buys land in Baltimore County for a giant house of worship and support facilities.

ISRAEL'S ORTHODOX Jews are portrayed by the American press as religious fanatics who impose their will on an unsupportive non-religious populace. The image of the average Israeli as being crushed beneath the burden of the powerful religious Knesset members is misleading and indeed is pure partisan propaganda.According to a 1993 survey by the respected Guttman Institute for Applied Social Research, aside from the approximately 25 percent of Israel's population that practices Orthodoxy, a full 54 percent of the country's Jews define themselves as ''traditional,'' professing adherence to the defining beliefs of what here in the U.S. is called Orthodox Judaism.

Herbert Stein, a White House economic adviser in the 1970s, liked to say that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. The country might have reached its Herb Stein moment in regard to health care. No, the spiraling growth in medical spending shows no sign of slowing, let alone stopping. But the wrangling over President Barack Obama's plan to extend health coverage is having the salutary effect of educating America about Stein's law. The moon is not made of cheese. There is no pot of gold over the rainbow.

In the protracted debate over whether and how to build the transit project known as the Red Line, one compelling issue has been all but lost: the miserable status quo. For decades, the main transportation corridor through West Baltimore has been six-lane U.S. 40, known for much of its length as Edmondson Avenue. Each weekday morning, hordes of commuters from Catonsville, Ellicott City and other places to the west invade West Baltimore on their way downtown. Each weekday evening, they alternately race and crawl through the same neighborhoods, leaving nothing behind but their exhaust fumes.

Scramble shakes up status quo WWE decided to get more creative with the Smackdown version of the Championship Scramble, which is for the WWE title. Rather than being hand-picked, the participants had to win qualifying matches on Friday night's show. And instead of putting together the usual suspects, WWE made the bold move to include MVP, Shelton Benjamin and The Brain Kendrick in the contest along with champion Triple H and the ever-popular Jeff Hardy. (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts.

When it became known in late 1976 that the Plains Baptist Church had a 12-year-old policy on its books that excluded "blacks and other civil rights agitators" from worshiping there, its most prominent member - soon-to-be-president Jimmy Carter - rejected calls that he resign from the parish. "I can't resign as an American citizen because there's still discrimination," he said at the time. "And I don't intend to resign from my own church because there's discrimination." Thirty-two years later, a string of incidents involving presidential contenders, pastors and churches illustrates how tricky the navigation of religious terrain continues to be for political candidates.

I'd like to think it was the sangria talking. But the plain truth is, when Anna said she doesn't find this country to be especially free, it was Anna talking. Granted, her complaint is hardly new. People often grouse about the lack of freedom in the land of the free. But you see, Anna - a friend's fiancee - is from Estonia, a former republic of the old Soviet Union. As in the Evil Empire, world's leading exporter of communism. So when Anna says she feels less free in the United States, where she now lives, than in the once-totalitarian regime where she was born, well ... it gets your attention.

The leaders of four school systems told the state school board yesterday to hold firm in its plan to require students in the class of 2009 to pass the High School Assessments, but also to give those who fail the option of doing a project instead. With 3,700 students in Baltimore and 1,700 students in Prince George's County still needing to pass at least one high school test before graduation, the leaders in those districts said they have some of the greatest challenges. But when they were asked by a board member whether superintendents would like to take away the graduation requirement, their response was consistent.

Well, we're not getting Bloomberg. Fuhgedaboutit. He's mayor of New York and, while he's donated a ton of money to the Johns Hopkins University, his alma mater, he's not about to pull up stakes, establish residency in Baltimore and run for mayor here. He's far more likely to run for the White House. So we're not getting Bloomberg. (And the Orioles probably won't be getting A-Rod if he opts out of his Yankees contract, either.) Day after tomorrow, there's an election in the City of Baltimore, where Democrats rule and the winner of the party's ho-hum 2007 primary will be the next mayor.

HONG KONG -- On the day this longtime British colony returned to Chinese rule 10 years ago, even the sky seemed to be crying over the territory's uncertain future. The heavens opened as the colonial masters waved their farewells and sailed away on the ship Britannia. At daybreak, another downpour drenched the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army as they crossed the border. By that wet summer, half a million people had fled Hong Kong in search of safer harbors and foreign passports.

WASHINGTON -- Employers, a major force in the national debate over immigration, say their discontent with the bill shaping up in the Senate has deepened in the past week because of changes that could make it more difficult for them to hire foreign workers. High-tech companies, such as Microsoft and Oracle, and employers of lesser-skilled workers, such as restaurants and construction contractors, already had qualms about the original version of the legislation, forged in three months of talks between the White House and a dozen senators.

City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. unveiled yesterday the first part of his plan to improve the Baltimore school system, proposing to pay teachers who work in the toughest schools up to 15 percent more and demanding efficiency audits as he promised that education would be the issue to differentiate him from his main competitor in the mayoral race. Appearing at Thurgood Marshall High School in Northeast Baltimore, Mitchell reiterated that the cornerstone of his education plan is to dissolve the current city-state partnership and return control of the school system to the mayor.