Commentary

Thomas Jefferson famously declared: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson knew that local papers were vital to a thriving democracy, and that notion is as true today as it was at our nation’s beginning. Americans know it, too. They trust their local news outlets, even in this highly fractured and partisan time. Compared to national news, six in 10 Americans have more trust in local news to report on stories that affect their daily lives, and they are about twice as likely to trust local news to report on the information they need to vote in elections, like the primary held in Maryland on Tuesday.

For business owners and entrepreneurs, the world today feels particularly uncertain. We’re living in an environment, where volatile, external factors seem out of control. It is natural that business owners would primarily focus their efforts on directing what they know and what they can control — their operating company. But in a business owner’s efforts to pivot operating business, cut costs, or secure new sources of supply, there is risk they might be overlooking — the safety of their assets and ways to protect them.

About the only consolation pro-choice advocates could take in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, removing federal protection of abortion access, is that politicians and establishment pro-life groups were almost universal in saying that women choosing to have abortions will not be prosecuted in states where the procedure is now illegal. Take the words of the anti-abortion governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who told “ABC News” that when her state’s trigger law making abortions illegal takes effect she didn’t “believe that mothers in this situation [should] ever be prosecuted. Now doctors who knowingly violate the law, they should be prosecuted.”

Dear Maryland voters, Should you have confidence in casting your ballot and having it counted correctly when you go to the polls for Tuesday’s primary election – and in November? Yes! Storming State Capitols, a new study from the Democracy Initiative Education Fund, ranks Maryland as second out of 51 jurisdictions across a comprehensive set of indices which assess the voting experience. These include voter registration, early voting, absentee and in-person voting, ballot acceptance, election administration, and other measures.

Everyone deserves a safe place to live, work and play. But a recent decision has endangered that right in our Baltimore community. The Baltimore City Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals (BMZA) recently decided to allow a human crematorium to be built on the property of Vaughn Greene Funeral Home on York Road, importing bodies from around the region to be cremated, putting the health and safety of area residents at risk.

When Tom Tugendhat was about 20, he felt he needed a better understanding of North Africa. So he traveled overland from Morocco to Israel, skipping only Libya because it wouldn’t let him in. Much of the journey he did on foot. “Why North Africa?” I asked when we spoke by phone Sunday. “Because it’s … there?” he replied half-jokingly, an echo of George Mallory’s line about climbing Mount Everest. Unlike Mallory, Mr. Tugendhat survived the trip. He mastered Arabic in Yemen and worked as a journalist in Lebanon before turning to soldiery a few years later.

As native Baltimoreans, my brother Shawn and I had a dream of starting a business that would create a positive impact in the city that we love. In 2016 we launched Connie’s Chicken and Waffles at Lexington Market, here in Baltimore. Our goal was simple: to use food as a medium to create community, and to share the love that our mom (affectionately known as Miss Connie), has shared with our family for decades. With the dedication of our team members and the support of our Baltimore community, Connie’s has been fortunate to grow to serve the needs of our customers by expanding into new Baltimore locations in Charles Plaza, Broadway Market and into an out of state location, DECO, which is located in Wilmington, Delaware.

The monkeypox outbreak is spreading with alarming speed. Ideally, it should have been nipped in the bud when the first cases appeared in May and June outside West and Central Africa, where monkeypox has been endemic for decades. Now the caseload has expanded to more than 11,000, including 1,470 in the United States, and is expected to increase in the weeks ahead. The lessons of the coronavirus pandemic should be taken to heart and should result in a more rapid response.