Posted on 07/30/2019 2:53:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ever since President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to chide Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) about the state of Baltimore, which sits in the heart of his district, political pundits have debated just how bad the city truly is.
CNN's Victor Blackwell got emotional when he heard Trump's comments about his hometown. A current Baltimore resident, however, confirmed one thing: the city really is rodent infested and Cummings has done nothing to help residents out over the last 20+ years he's been in office.
Turning Point USA's Chief Content Creator, Benny Johnson, hit the streets of Baltimore to talk to residents about their experiences and to set the record straight.
I am in Baltimore. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ district. I spent all day speaking with dozens of people who live in Rep. Cummings’ district. Some have lived here +60 years.
I learned so much.
Before continuing, ask yourself: Do you want to know the truth?
Here it is…
*thread @tpusa* pic.twitter.com/dLrMXJlsWk— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
First off, Rep. Cummings has represented this district for +20 years. Everyone I spoke with knew him & was aware that he was beefing with @realDonaldTrump.
I did not ask about politics - I asked about living conditions in this district.
That is all.
Here is what they said… pic.twitter.com/ZJQTpaSRVp— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
On being 'Rat Infested':
- *Every* person I spoke with *confirmed* that the district was rat infested
- This man told me that rats the “size of cats” run through his house regularly
- One woman told me rats have “taken over” her neighborhood
- One called it a "plague of rats" pic.twitter.com/Sccxl2qRjh— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
One of the most interesting things to come out of Johnson's trip: a resident showing him a flyer from the city of Baltimore asking residents to pick up trash to keep rats away. The kicker? This flyer was handed out in the last week.
"The best way to prevent rats is to cut off their food source and not provide hiding places for them," the flyer clearly stated.
Rodents are such an issue in Baltimore that the city has a dedicated "Rat Rubout Program."
In fact, the Baltimore County website has an entire section dedicated to "Rat Attack."
"Rats are a community problem that must be addressed by all residents. When a rat infestation exists at one location it may easily spread to adjacent properties," the website states. "To help alleviate this problem, Baltimore County has hired a licensed exterminator to treat areas affected by this issue. We will be treating homes with alley access. Notification signs of when treatment will begin will be placed at the main street entrances of your community."
One of Rep. Elijah Cummings’ constituents went inside their home and returned with this flyer from the city begging them to help with the rat infestation.
The flyer said that the trash & "animal feces" in the neighborhood attract the rats.
The flyer was delivered *this week* pic.twitter.com/G5bGUCUJoc— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
Trash plays into the rat infestation that's plaguing Baltimore. The County provided residents with these tips to help control the issue:
The following steps provide the basis for effective residential rodent control:
- Know your enemy. Review the Rat Facts.
- Be Aware. Inspect your property regularly for signs of rodent activity.
- Be neat. Keep your yard free of trash, debris, high grass or accumulations of building supplies. If you must store materials or equipment outside do so neatly. Organizing and/or elevating stored items helps to reduce harborage and allows you to inspect under and around them more easily.
- Don’t feed the Rats. You may not realize that pet food, dog manure, open garbage cans or cans without tight fitting lids or bags of garbage, bird seed or other food scraps left outside are an open invitation for rats to visit you and establish a home in your yard. Never put household garbage or food scraps in compost piles.
- Cut off their water supply. Dump pails, unused flower pots, toys or equipment in which water can accumulate (standing water also provides a breeding area for mosquitos during the summer months).
- Protect your home. Close any holes you find in the foundation of your house, eliminate cavities under steps, sidewalks, or porches. Close threshold gaps at exterior doors. Provide a heavy one fourth inch mesh screen over sump pump outlets or a tight fitting lid on your sump pump well.
- Think about your own activities. Be sure to clean up any outside eating areas. Minimize spillage around the Bar- B-Q. Greasy residue on a patio or porch or food residue allowed to build up on cooking equipment may attract rodents for extended periods of time. The feeding of wild animals such as birds and squirrels must cease and vegetable gardens or even fruit trees may have to be removed for rodent abatement measures to be effective.
- Don’t build in problems. Try to utilize construction methods that minimize or eliminate crawl spaces under decks or sheds. If building low to the ground is unavoidable utilize heavy one fourth inch wire mesh to close perimeter gaps. Remember rats can slip through spaces of one half an inch and are energetic diggers. Wire mesh should extend below ground at least 1 foot to deter tunneling.
- Communicate. Talk to your family and your neighbors. They may not realize that a problem exists. Rodent infestations must be addressed by everyone if they are to be successfully controlled or eliminated.
- Fight the Rat. When you see a rat, rat run, or rat burrow, take action immediately. The problem won’t just go away. Fill in the burrow to see if it is reopened, indicating an on going infestation. You should take measures to exterminate the existing population. Many bait station or trap products are available at local hardware and lawn and garden stores. You may wish to utilize a certified professional pest control operator. Just remember, any abatement must be accompanied by a continuing effort on your part to use The Rat Control Tips.
There's even a section in their county codes and ordinances which talk about "rodent control." if Baltimore County finds a rodent infestation, abatement can occur.
"If the Code Official, the County Health Officer or the Director finds that a public health emergency exists because the infestation of a building, structure, dump, or other premises by rodents or other vermin is likely to cause disease to be spread to human beings, the Code Official, the County Health Officer or the Director may summarily abate the condition of infestation without prior notice to owners or occupants," the county code says.
And no one can say this is a new problem. The website was last updated May 9, 2016. This has been on-going.
On trash in Rep. Cummings’ district:
- There is trash everywhere
- Filth & garbage piled up high in the street
- One building had a big sign that begged ‘DO NOT PUT TRASH HERE’ - below the signs were piles of rotting refuse
- Constituents blamed the trash for the rat infestation pic.twitter.com/UpIqJSCWsC— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
Constituents say the trash is why rats are infesting the city. Based on Baltimore County's guidelines, everyone's in agreement.
On crime in Rep. Cummings’ district:
- Every constituent said that murders, shootings, drugs run rampant.
- Many told me they were scared & do not go outside after dark.
- One elderly man, “It did not used to be this way. Now we kill each other. Why? Because no one has a job." pic.twitter.com/h221SnGXpd— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
On the abandoned houses in Rep. Cummings’ district:
- Constituents tell me crime, rats, trash, drugs, killings & crumbling infrastructure has forced many out.
- One woman told me she wished the city would just “demolish” her block
- Parts of the district look like a ghost town pic.twitter.com/EqOlei0KEl— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
One home had a 30 foot tree growing from the basement right through the roof. You could see it from the street. How long has this home been abandoned for a tree to take over the entire house and add *another* story?
It was very sad. pic.twitter.com/gwAqpS4gko— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
Parts of Rep. Cummings’ district look like a foreign war zone. Many homes are so decrepit, they are just crumbling to pieces. Every block I walked had a home with no roof. Some blocks have multiple homes that look like they had been through the battle of Leningrad. pic.twitter.com/rLTtpqfitV— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
Other blocks were just eerie. Row after row of abandoned shells of houses. No signs of life or occupancy anywhere. Just like the people who lived there had vanished. In a way - they have. pic.twitter.com/of2EvLZvEk— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
I want to end with this:
Every person I spoke with in @RepCummings district was deeply kind to my crew & me.
Wonderful, beautiful people.
Here is what they all had in common: They feel abandoned by their politicians.
With a district like this - can you really blame them? pic.twitter.com/aLexSb8zQo— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2019
Why is this even up for debate? Baltimore residents have said their city is filled with trash and, as a result, rodents are infesting their city. The county has guidelines on their website to urge residents to take an active role in preventing the very infestations that are becoming so controversial. The county has hired an exterminator that does nothing but respond to rat infestations.
Nothing has changed in Baltimore. How many more residents need to step forward and say there's a problem before the mainstream media takes them seriously? How many more residents need to call out Cummings for being a failure before the mainstream media takes note and agrees with them?
This is not unusual at all. Pick the name of any senior member of the CBC, past or present, out of a hat at random, and you’ll find a neglected district that keeps reelecting him.
Correction: Baltimore County is not Baltimore City. Baltimore City is not a county. It is a city. Baltimore is not part of Baltimore county. Baltimore county lies outside and adjacent to Baltimore city. They are different municipalities.
That’s so true; they should be grateful (and I believe many are) that Trump is shining a spotlight on the misery to which they’ve been consigned by their Dem “leaders”.
If Trump didn’t point out the squalor of Baltimore, they’d continue living in unseen, invisible misery.
Possibly Cummings is not neglecting his constituents.
Possibly he has a 3rd world mentality and thinks rats and filth are part of the good life.
I recall after the floods a company came in...very professional...workers in white suits and cleaned up
Sidney Torres is making garbage hip in New Orleans. The 33-year-old is president of the company that bears his initials — SDT Waste and Debris.
He's so popular, fans ask for his autograph. He was honored as grand marshal of a Mardi Gras parade.
Here's why he's a local hero: After Katrina, when other companies were pulling out of New Orleans, Torres jumped in.
Pretty soon, his upstart company had won a $9 million a year contract to clean up the French Quarter and downtown. People in New Orleans say it has never been cleaner.
Torres is obsessed with details, from the hip black-and-white uniforms his workers wear to the scented spray they use to hose down the stinky streets of the French Quarter. He's named his lemony signature scent Superfresh.
The spray sanitizes the streets and the occasional partier.
"We had a guy two mornings ago ask us to keep the sprayers on," Torres says. "He wanted to shower down. He said he'd been out all night partying, didn't want to go home smelling like he was smelling. So we did. He went home smelling like a lemon. No charge!"
Torres is an unlikely titan of trash. He started out as a personal assistant to musician Lenny Kravitz in the 1990s. Then he came home and made money in real estate. Now, with his rapidly expanding garbage business, he's part of a new generation of New Orleanians who are shaking up the old way of doing business and helping to bring the city back.
"I love where I'm from," Torres says, "and the resiliency of the people. They will repopulate and get back in the area if they see someone else helping make a change and trying to help bring it back."
“Every person I spoke with in @RepCummings district was deeply kind to my crew & me.
Wonderful, beautiful people.”
Omar comin’.
I'm NOT kidding.
Cummings’ constituents know their city is a rat-infested hellhole, they feel abandoned by him and other politicians, they feel completely unrepresented, yet.... Cummings will once again be re-elected by a margin of 20+%. Because it’s just what those people do.
Spot on! But not to worry ... reparations gonna be fix'n all dat. /s
“...Because they don’t use their brains....”
One has to actually have one in order to use it.
If the city charges for trash removal, some of these people (esp. the elderly) just can’t afford it or find a way to remove it on their own. And if they can’t afford that, they certainly can’t afford to buy and install heavy wire mesh (dug in at least a foot underground!), materials for repair, caulk or sealants, shelving for elevated storage or sump pump covers. This is what the 1.8 Billion dollars should have gone to, instead who knows where it went?
In the course of my job, I sometimes must drive through less desirable areas of Philadelphia. And those pictures could easily have been taken there, houses boarded up and burnt out, roofs missing, trash piled high and strung-out street people slumping or sleeping on stoops, benches and even the park lawns around the Art Museum.
Well, it is the baddest part of town.
We have a rat problem that bad here in Iowa. They flood in every 4 years and infest the state before the caucuses.
I traveled to the West Bank a couple of years ago and was shocked by the garbage strewn everywhere. I had a hard time believing that the land there is precious to the Palestinians when they couldn’t bother to not throw trash across it. Want me to believe in your cause? Show me how much you care about it. That applies to Baltimore too.
Real, boots on the ground, reporting.
Fantastic story!
Where can Baltimore find People like this?
Go to a Trump rally. There will be no trash on the ground. Zero. If you actually litter, someone else will pick it up.
Go to any leftist rally. What will you see? Large sections of Baltimore have so few conservatives that no one picks up after the slobs. They throw trash, garbage, and worse on the ground routinely, and they don't care. You cannot hire enough people to clean up after the 50% of the population that actively trashes the city.
It's not the sanitation department, which is overpaid and underworked but mostly does their assigned job of emptying trash cans. It is everyone else who makes sure too little of the trash and garbage gets into the trash cans. Note: I live close to Baltimore. I see the residents messing up their own city all the time.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cleaning+up+new+orleans+after+the+mardi+gras&t=ffnt&atb=v153-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=QLo2kld-zkA
and
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cleaning+up+new+orleans+after+the+mardi+gras&t=ffnt&atb=v153-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=c398_BYs57k
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