On April 11, 1945, the American Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that would later be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners.
Among those in the camp saved by the American soldiers was Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
Shown in photograph: German citizens ushered to the camp by American soldiers, post-conquest.
Last week, Maryland’s Legislature enacted an $8.5 billion package of tax breaks and infrastructure improvements to lure Amazon into building its second corporate headquarters in Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C.
State Senator Roger Manno, the only legislator from the county to vote against the subsidy, dubbed it “a $5 billion tax break for the richest man in the world. . . .”*
Today, the Montgomery County Council will consider a further proposal to streamline its zoning process, cutting in half the time the county takes to review a proposed development.
“We are trying to make sure our processes are consistent with everybody else,” County Executive Ike Leggett explained, adding that the county now “sometimes takes 100 to 120 days, while many other jurisdictions are much less than that.”
Did Leggett say “consistent with everybody else”? Well, the new zoning rules won’t apply to every business, just those planning to hire 25,000 workers. Or more.
“It’s neutral to the employer,” County Council President Hans Riemer slyly suggested. “It’s a proposal that would allow any really large employer to come in and build under certain terms.”
But only Amazon would be large enough.
“Really what it does is it creates predictability, reliability,” offered Riemer. But wouldn’t every other business also benefit from “predictability” and “reliability”?
“I think the Amazon proposal made the county realize . . . that it needed to look at some of its practices and where it has been criticized,” noted Bob Buchanan, chairman of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation. “We were more process versus results.”
And the county intends to remain that way . . . for “every” current business.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* He was referring, of course, to Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos.
On the hundredth day of 1998, the Northern Ireland peace talks ended with an historic agreement, dubbed the Belfast, or Good Friday Agreement. The accord was reached after nearly two years of talks and 30 years of conflict — 19 years ago today.
Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?
Philosopher Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), first sentence.
Neither stretching the truth nor ignoring it helps beat back implicit or explicit racism. Yesterday, my Townhall.com column took the Washington Post to task for misstating the results of a recent GAO report.
The GAO noted wide discrepancies between the percentage of students facing disciplinary actions who are black, male and disabled and the relative percentages of these groups in the overall student population. Yet, the report also specifically stated: “Our analyses of these data, taken alone, do not establish whether unlawful discrimination has occurred.”
Nonetheless, the Post headline told readers: “Implicit racial bias causes black boys to be disciplined at school more than whites, federal report finds.” The article claimed that “a government analysis of data . . . said implicit racial bias was the likely cause of these continuing disparities.”
The same discrepancies regarding boys of all races? And students with disabilities? Even the crickets had no comment.
In the Post’s Outlook section, yesterday, readers were treated to further edification on race — this time via C. Nicole Mason with the Center for Research and Policy in the Public Interest. “I feel alienated and slightly betrayed by the reboot” of the sitcom Roseanne,” she writes.
The title of her piece proclaims why: “‘Roseanne’ was about a white family, but it was for all working people. Not anymore.”
The “not anymore” refers to Roseanne’s support of (and Mason’s derangement syndrome over) President Trump. Interestingly, a more legitimate “not anymore” angle was completely missed — or ignored. The Connors now have a black granddaughter. The new show isn’t “about a white family,” but a racially mixed family.
When racism is finally extinguished from this planet, someone remember to tell the race-hustlers.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
We’re not earning any money by ‘saving.’ The government is manipulating the economy for nobody’s good but its own. Republicans and Democrats both do this; probably Democrats do it for worse purposes than Republicans.
But it’s about time that we all learned what’s going on. Call it a lesson in economic reality.
It would be very helpful if our professional reporters and journalists would just state the truth, and not mislead us with evasions and misdirection.
Click on over to Townhall.com for a recent and quite significant example.
Photograph by Wes Peck, Creative Commons rights reserved.
The artist may doubt his own work, but he is bitterly disappointed if other people doubt it also.
On April 8, 1913, the 17th amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was ratified.
An interesting approach to reporting on American opinion:
https://youtu.be/ivDNsf4LcyY
The interviewer interviewed: