Jack Abramoff became a household name for bribing Congressmen in DC, now he’ll be a household name in Baltimore for his pizza! That’s a spicy meatball! Wait, that’s a spaghetti reference. Anyway, more recently you may have heard his name in connection with a movie featuring Kevin Spacey as the now pie chef himself. I smell Oscar! No wait, that’s just this delicious pizza ol’ Jackyboy made for me a few minutes ago. Mmmmm, corruption tastes delicious.

Via political blog Talking Points Memo:

Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, mere months after serving his debt to society for bribing Congressmen and related shenanigans, is making mad dough these days in his new job.

That job, according to The Baltimore Jewish Times, is at kosher pizzeria Tov Pizza (6313 Reisterstown Road, Glen).

Tov, which bills itself as “Baltimore’s Best Kosher Pizza,” reportedly hired Abramoff to work with owner Ron Rosenbluth on “all aspects of the restaurant” as Abramoff completes his transition back to society at a Baltimore-based halfway house. In addition to his investment in the now-defunct Republican hangout Signatures in D.C., Abramoff once owned the kosher deli Stacks Delicatessen in the D.C. suburbs.

Speaking of documentaries about Abramoff, here’s a saucy related item tenuously linking Ehrlich with Abramoff by MD democrats:

The impetus is “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” an acclaimed documentary about Abramoff’s fall from grace opening in theaters Friday. Toward the end, the trailer includes an ever-so-briefly-seen snapshot of Abramoff attending a Hanukkah party in Annapolis while Ehrlich was governor.

So cheesy.

Via Baltimore Slumlord Watch, Baltimore has a new law governing vacant city buildings.

For more on this legislation, or other budget matters, you can read this article from the Baltimore Sun.

A bit of time has passed since the whole “Walmart might be coming to Remington” debacle began; it would seem that every media outlet, blog, dog, dog blog and log log has covered it in some way, ranging from the usual copy/paste anti-or-pro statement seen thousands of places around the internet to the truly well thought out criticism.
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Now that the complaints regarding Baltimore City’s budget horrors are behind us, I’d like to explore some of the very realistic, very awesome and totally doable strategies that can be implemented almost immediately (as immediately as government can function), and will serve to aid in the patching of our enormous deficit, while paving the way for a semblance of hope for growth in our city’s future.

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This is a two part rant; Part 1 is mostly complaining. If you don’t like constructive complaining, just wait for part 2!

A few weeks ago after the announcement of the mayor’s proposal to levy multiple fees and fine hikes city wide in an effort to close the most catastrophic budget gap the city has ever seen, I made a brilliant set of suggestions as to how we might avoid such fees and fines, and possibly get Baltimore off of its collective knees for the time being. Welp, those suggestions were not addressed by the mayor or the city council. So I’d like to address these proposals head on.
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