Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

This blog had 5,001 visits during August, which is an average of 161.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 160.7.

To the Editor:

Re “Georgetown Confronts Its Ugly Past” (editorial, Sept. 2), about the university’s recent apology for its involvement with slavery:

I agree that Georgetown needs to do more in offering reparations to the descendants of the slaves it owned and sold. Georgetown states that it has meticulous records of each slave’s name, age, dates bought and sold, and so on. Descendants who wish assistance with college expenses could be offered additional financial aid, or free tuition.

For those who would not benefit from such help, Georgetown could reimburse members of each slave’s family for the value of what their ancestors were sold for, in today’s dollars. This would offer some measure of justice to all, not just those who are college bound.

CRAIG W. SNYDER

Jamesville, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Georgetown, Yale, Harvard, the University of Virginia and Princeton are among those universities with documented ties to slavery. As slavery reparations, 1 percent of a university’s annual endowment should be dedicated to scholarships, programs and investments to benefit slavery’s descendants.

In Georgetown’s case, the current endowment is $1.5 billion, of which $15 million could be available as a reparations fund. We have a pathway to 40 acres and a mule if we resolve to take it.

PHILIP S. HART

Los Angeles

The writer is one of the creators of “Dark Passages,” a film about the Atlantic slave trade.

I revised my essay. It's written for my students.

Pat Buchanan nails it. He has been right from the beginning.

Beauty Stab (1983). A great album.

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The Texas Rangers have a beautiful, state-of-the-art ballpark. It's only 22 years old. Guess what? The owners want to tear it down and build a new one, ostensibly because of the awful Texas heat. (The proposed ballpark will have a retractable roof.) This will require keeping the sales-tax increment that would otherwise go away, which means it's a tax increase. Why is this happening? You know why. Money. The existing ballpark made millionaires of many people. So will the new one. It's about redistributing wealth from the poor and working classes to the rich. See here for details.

Addendum: If a new ballpark is built at taxpayer expense, I will not enter it, even to see my beloved Rangers. I am sick to death of the wealthy using government to increase their wealth.

Addendum 2: Here is the website of those who support building a new ballpark. Notice the dishonesty of the slogan: "Keep the Rangers With No New Taxes." The first part, "Keep the Rangers," implies that, if voters turn down the tax increase, the team will move out of Arlington, perhaps to Dallas or another suburb. I don't take kindly to threats, and I doubt that many people do. Second, "With No New Taxes" is misleading. As I said in the post above, the old tax is about to expire. If the new ballpark is built, this tax will continue. How is that not a new tax? When rich people resort to manipulative rhetoric, you know they're desperate to increase their wealth at everyone else's expense.

To the Editor:

I read with interest “Clinton Piles Up Research in Bid to Needle Trump” (front page, Aug. 30), highlighting the startling contrast between the two presidential candidates’ preparations for their debate. Although I have little hope that we’ll get a real discussion of policy proposals in September, since Donald Trump doesn’t have any, what I do fervently wish for is a crawl at the bottom of my TV screen displaying the results of real-time fact-checking for every statement either candidate makes.

It’s all well and good to find out the next day that someone lied a lot or a little, but the people who most need to know how few truths are coming out of the G.O.P. campaign aren’t going to follow up later to find out. How much more powerful—for all of us—to find out immediately as the debate unfolds.

ELISA ADAMS

New Hyde Park, N.Y.

Note from KBJ: Politics isn't about facts; it's about values and character. Who cares whether Donald Trump has command of the facts? He has a vision of where he wants to take the country. If people like his vision, they will vote for him; otherwise, not. I can see why supporters of Hillary Clinton such as Elisa Adams want to emphasize facts. Their candidate's vision of where she wants to take the country is deeply unattractive to most Americans, and her character is abominable. She's a liar; she's corrupt; and she's arrogant.