Questions

Questions

When Amazon announced plans in 2017 to open a second headquarters (“HQ2”), it encouraged “local and state government leaders” to compete for the project. After receiving several multibillion-dollar offers, Amazon chose Arlington—directly adjacent to Washington, D.C. The state offered as much as $750 million in conditional grants for Amazon to build its campus in Virginia, and in April 2023, the company requested its first tranche of taxpayer funds—over $152 million. While phase one of the project was completed in May 2023, construction is paused indefinitely on phase two.--Lancaster

***

Anthony Fauci – who wielded tremendous power over many decades – funded dangerous research, lied to Congress and the American people, flip-flopped on many of his prognostications, issued edicts that defied science, and attacked and smeared his scientific critics. His reprehensible behavior reminded me of nothing so much as C.S. Lewis’s description of the moral busybody: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. . . . [T]hose who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”--Paul

***

Economic illiteracy, mixed with foggy nostalgia and unseemly xenophobia, is a familiar populist cocktail served by demagogues to the gullible. Do you remember the 1989 angst when Mitsubishi’s purchase of Rockefeller Center supposedly somehow signaled Japan’s ascendancy over a declining America?In 2000, a U.S. company bought Rockefeller Center. So, politicians manning the nation’s ramparts to fend off foreign investors can breathe a bit easier.--Will, on the 'threat' of Japan buying U.S. Steel

***

Norway in the late 1800s:
Women doing laundry through a hole in the ice. Painting by Jahn Ekenæs, 1891.
Before capitalism and technology destroyed the beautiful simplicity of indigenous life. 😎 (Hicks)