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Commentary

Maryland agriculture’s ‘triple aim’: food, environmental and social justice

Governor Wes Moore has committed to ending child poverty. Maryland agriculture has a crucial role to play if the state is to achieve this audacious goal. Eliminating food insecurity for the state’s children is vital to the solution. Doing so in a way that restores functioning ecosystems and eliminates disparities should become the driving force for all agriculture policies and practices. Maryland will only end child poverty if it pursues these linked goals concurrently. Food, environmental and social justice thus form agriculture’s “triple aim.”

Read More: Baltimore Sun
grocery store, market, supermarket
Maryland must fill the SNAP void

No one who regularly shops for groceries has failed to notice the sharply rising prices of basic commodities including milk, bread and eggs, and how food costs have outpaced the overall inflation rate, which was bad to start with. costs have outpaced the overall inflation rate, which was bad to start with. Yet this month, the enhanced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits (more generically known as food stamps) provided by the federal government as part of the overall COVID-19 emergency response were allowed to expire.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Ted Rouse: Baltimore must get Inner Harbor redevelopment right

Baltimore has a wonderful opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons, as my father, James Rouse, used to say. He also used to say, ” Every problem is but a challenge, and a challenge is an opportunity in disguise. And when confronting a problem, start by thinking first of what things would be like if they worked and let reality compromise you later.”

Dan Rodricks: Maryland starting to see fewer deaths of despair

Nobody asked me, but I think we — that is, the Maryland news media — missed a story over the last few months, being distracted by the November election, the Angelos family feud, the future of Lamar Jackson and the Ravens (such mishegoss), having a new governor and the new governor having a new puppy.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Opinion: More than consumer choice

Maryland, for years, has been at the forefront of environmental stewardship. That is the direct result of engaged stakeholders from every industry and the product of thoughtful, measured approaches to the state’s energy policies. Recently, however, some groups are pushing very hard towards a sole source energy policy — electricity. Such a policy is not only costly but it’s dangerous.

 

Old prison jail cells
The Hispanic experience in jail looks more like the White one now

Many politicians, activists and academics have long characterized the criminal justice system as biased against Black and Brown people, with the catchall term “Brown” usually referring to Hispanics. But the latest data shows that Hispanics’ experience of criminal justice and law enforcement is becoming increasingly similar to that of Whites, not Blacks. This little-noticed trend has major implications for the future of criminal justice reform.

Dan Rodricks: ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ visits Baltimore: ‘We still need this story.’

As right-wing censors in several states wage their foolish war against teaching the full scope of American history — racism and all — here comes “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the Aaron Sorkin play based on the Harper Lee novel that people have tried (and mostly failed) to ban from public schools since the book’s publication in 1960.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Setting the record straight on Redfield, racism and the origins of COVID-19

“I think the most upsetting thing to me was The Baltimore Sun calling me a racist because I said this came from a Wuhan lab.” Those words came out of the mouth of Dr. Robert Redfield, the former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, toward the end of a three-hour hearing conducted Wednesday morning by the select House subcommittee investigating the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Opinion: More than consumer choice

Maryland, for years, has been at the forefront of environmental stewardship. That is the direct result of engaged stakeholders from every industry and the product of thoughtful, measured approaches to the state’s energy policies. Recently, however, some groups are pushing very hard towards a sole source energy policy — electricity.

 

The United States has a debt problem. Biden’s budget won’t solve it.

An unfortunate mind-set has grown among our nation’s leaders. It is that the United States can overspend by more than $1 trillion a year indefinitely. Lawmakers assured the country that spending increases — for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then for economic support during the Great Recession and the pandemic — would be temporary. But, with few exceptions, the fatter budget items stuck around.

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