On January 6, 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy.
In 1912 on this date, New Mexico became the 47th state of America’s United States, and in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” State of the Union speech, emphasizing vague “freedoms” that enabled government to usurp definable freedoms.
The week’s stories were so big you have to wonder: can we take it?
On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company announced an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day’s labor.
What is the biggest story of 2019? There is some competition.
Men must stop being jealous of their power and generously allow freedom and responsibility to others. The reward is harmonious families and society.
On Jan. 4, 1642, King Charles I of England sent soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, beginning England’s slide into civil war.
On Jan. 4, 1649, the English “Rump Parliament,” having purged those members willing to restore Charles I to the throne, voted to put Charles I on trial for high treason. Before the month was over, the king had been executed.
“Jacking up your prices on people trying to celebrate the holidays? Classy, @dominos,” tweeted former presidential aspirant and current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“To the thousands who came to Times Square last night to ring in 2020,” continued Hizzoner’s New Year’s Day message from his official city Twitter account, “I’m sorry this corporate chain exploited you — stick it to them by patronizing one of our fantastic LOCAL pizzerias.”
Were you standing there in the Big Apple on New Year’s Eve getting “exploited”?
For the last 15 years, a Midtown Manhattan Domino’s franchise has been delivering hot pepperoni, cheese and onion pizzas for $30 each — “more than twice the regular $14.49 price of a large cheese pie” — to the “hungry tourists waiting in holding pens for the ball drop,” The New York Post reported.
“I have a lot of orders. I’m very busy,” remarked Ratan Banik, the Domino’s delivery man. The paper explained that he was “mobbed by starving tourists . . . many having camped out overnight.”
“He is our Santa,” offered one New Jersey man, who had not thought to bring any food with him into the city. “It’s absolutely worth it. It was hot. It seems like it just came out of the oven.
“If he comes back,” he added. “I will buy some more.”
“How is this different to a million other things? Airlines, Uber, property,” noted one of many tweets mocking the mayor’s. “It’s called supply and demand.”
If this be exploitation, make the most of it — with or without the extra toppings.
Just hold the snipes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Socialism is essentially inimical to family life, which it regards as a bourgeois institution — to use its own favorite anathema. Socialism would make motherhood a State business or profession, would pay women for this sexual function, and deprive fathers of all status or recognition.
On January 3, 1933, Minnie D. Craig became the first woman elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.
On the third of January in 1777, American General George Washington defeats British General Lord Cornwallis’s forces in the Battle of Princeton.
On the same date in 1977, Apple Computer was incorporated.
January 3rd birthdays include that of Cicero (106 BC), Roman philosopher and theorist of republicanism, and J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 AD), English philologist and author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Both were deeply concerned about the problem of absolute power.
On Tuesday, I seconded George F. Will’s judgment that the biggest story of 2019 was the Hong Kong protest movement.
In America, though, 2019’s top news story must be how the anti-Trump movement morphed from Russiagate, which fizzled upon release of the Mueller Report, to the quasi-impeachment bit over the most yawn-inducing scandal of all time, Trump’s Ukraine Phone Call.
It is certainly a strange story, but there are stranger big stories from last year. I am tempted to assert that the year’s biggest news is actually the Biggest Non-Story: trillion-dollar deficits and ever-increasing debt.
No protest over that enormity. Getting anyone to talk about it is like getting the government to come clean on . . . UFOs.
Which brings us to the absolutely weirdest story of 2019. During this last swing ‘round the sun, multiple sources associated with (and inside) the federal government, admitted that, within the corridors of our un-beloved Deep State, artifacts from crashed ‘and landed’ UFOs were being studied.
After decades and decades of ridicule, eye-rolls, stonewalling, lying, and disinformation about ‘flying saucers,’ several important government bodies — including the Army and Navy — now admit that they almost regularly encounter astounding . . . crafts . . . that are not part of our nation’s official sea and air technology inventory.
These admissions amount to ‘disclosure.’ But it is not an information dump — disclosure is just a trickle, so far.*
Why? Perhaps the idea is that we cannot handle the truth.
Or perhaps they can’t.
Which isn’t really unlike ever-increasing deficits and debt, now that I think about it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Still, even with a mere handful of official and near-official admissions of retrieved UFO tech, the story looms large indeed.
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