Whitcomb: Price of Delay; Old College Try; What Gazans Think; Canadian Housing; Holy Relic

Sunday, December 17, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

 

“All debts were settled on Christmas Eve,
Fail to do so, and there’d be no reprieve….’’
 

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- From “Dying Hours,’’ by Stewart Stafford (born 1971), Irish-American author

To read the whole poem, hit this link:

 

 

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."

-- Shirley Temple  (1928-2014), an American actress, singer, dancer and diplomat. She was best known for her work as a child movie star in the 1930’s.

 

 

“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.’’

- David Mamet (born 1947), American playwright and filmmaker

 

 

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The winter solstice comes this Thursday. But when do we start noticing that our afternoons are staying light longer? Fairly soon.

 

The days get longer by an average of 75  seconds every day after Dec. 21, and by Jan. 31 a total of  51 minutes, accompanied,  maybe, by New England’s “January Thaw,’’ which global warming may make redundant.

 

To see the progression, hit this link:

 

 

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The massive mess created by the closure of most of the Washington Bridge, built in the late 60’s as part of Route 195, recalls America’s old problem of delayed maintenance. That stems from, among other reasons (see below), the serial decisions to not properly fund transportation and other public infrastructure via enough taxes to expeditiously monitor, repair and, when necessary, replace it.  And we tend to just let things deteriorate until they’re on the brink of collapse, or actually do collapse.

 

Note that the federal gasoline tax (whose revenue is directed to transportation projects) of 18.4 cents per gallon has not been increased since 1993, even as more fuel-efficient vehicles, and in recent years, a big increase in electric vehicles, cuts into the revenue it can raise by that tax!

 

We’re lucky that a young engineer spotted the dangerous bridge deterioration before the  Washington Bridge could collapse, which would send God knows how many people to their deaths or maiming. But it seems that an inspection in 2018 spotted some serious structural decay in this contractor-lawsuit-tangled-and-slowed project.  If so, why no faster follow-up by Gov. Dan McKee’s administration? And what were the contractors doing in all this?

 

In interesting timing, Cardi Corp., which had unsuccessfully sought to do the current Washington Bridge repairs, announced last week it was going out of business. In 2020, an engineer hired by Cardi outlined that the approach RIDOT was taking could cause a failure. A joint venture of Barletta Heavy Division (infamous for the 6/10 Connector scandal) and Aetna Bridge Co. got the job.

 

I assume someone will put together a timeline.

 

A few things would have alleviated the disruption and gridlock right after the closure.  It would have been nice if there had been year-round ferry service up and down Narragansett Bay, of the sort they have in many coastal European and Asian cities, and much more bus service, shuttle and otherwise, to reduce the number of cars on our roads.

 

As we crawl through the weeks ahead, policymakers might consider the lessons of the Washington Bridge crisis, as they look forward to more money from the Democrats’ infrastructure law being spent in the state, to, among other things, fix or replace bridges.
 

Here’s a summary of the bridge status in watery Rhode Island: CLICK HERE

 

Below are reasons highway projects take so long in the United States, and it’s much worse in America than in most other developed nations. Too many regulatory layers!

 

https://www.dronegenuity.com/why-do-construction-projects-take-so-long/

 

Meanwhile, many of us will have to refresh our Zoom skills, and accept that, as much as most people like to live near water views, there are drawbacks.

 

 

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If it means the Democrats giving the GOP/QAnon pretty much everything it wants on “border security’’ (to please its base)  in order to get more U.S. aid to Ukraine so that it can continue to defend itself and the West from Russian barbarism, so be it.  And whatever the new laws and regulations, the migrants won’t stop pushing up against our southern border.

 

 

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John Harvard statue PHOTO: File

Summons to a Grilling

In Schenck v. United States (1919), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously wrote of free speech that “no one has the right to {falsely} shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.’’

 

What about shouting “kill all the ----"?

There was something creepy about the congressional grandstanding (mostly by Republicans, of course) in grilling the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania about anti-Semitism, alleged and real, on their elite campuses.  Of course, those leaders’ robotic and evasive, or at least equivocal, responses, crafted by a law firm, didn’t do them any good in facing those on Capitol Hill set on appealing to their always-angry-and-envious base and funders by sticking it to the trio, portrayed as  Ivy-covered swells.
 

The authoritarian-minded inquisitors were basically telling the private universities’ leaders how to run their institutions. But even small colleges, let alone the big elite ones above, are complex enough to be compared to little countries, with sometimes warring constituencies – students,  trustees, faculty, funders (including very rich and sometimes arrogant and bossy donors, more and more of whom are oft-amoral hedge fund and private-equity moguls),  and residents of the schools’ host communities.  These institutions can’t be run as dictatorships.

 

Further complicating things is that colleges and universities are, more than most other parts of American society, supposed to be dedicated to freedom of speech and inquiry. That’s bound to lead to angry encounters. Finally, universities are increasingly ethnically and otherwise diverse, thus leading to tensions between, say, people of Jewish and Palestinian backgrounds on campuses.

 

As for speech codes for students: They may make things more toxic by bottling up anger. But I’d leave decisions on codes to each university and its officials’ sense of the danger of violence on their own campuses. And if students don’t like the codes, they can transfer to a school more suitable for their feelings and opinions.

 

Of course, the threat to yank federal money always hangs over congressional hearings. But we should bear in mind that colleges and universities get federal money for good reasons  -- to educate future leaders and other citizens,  to underwrite scientific and other research and otherwise enrich society. In short,  for the national self-interest.

 

Thus, while I think the three presidents above generally did a bad job in explaining their universities’ evasive “official” positions on confronting anti-Semitism in the current fraught climate, I have some sympathy for them, even if they are trained, as are many leaders dealing with crises, to prevaricate.

 

Meanwhile, now that Harvard President Claudine Gay has been raked over the coals in Congress, her career in the distant past is being exhumed, raising allegations she’s a plagiarist, and certainly some of her scholarly work has that aroma.  So I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s soon no longer leader of America’s richest university. Once you’re in hot water for one problem, you’re apt to find yourself in it for something else as your enemies continue digging.

 

Hit this link:

 

 

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“Electeds of color” only. Holiday identity politics runs amok in Boston:

 

 

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Protest in Washington, D.C. Nov 2023, PHOTO: GoLocal

And the War Goes on

When Israel’s war against Hamas ends, or before,  corrupt and authoritarian Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lose his job, mostly because of the disastrous security failures under his watch that allowed the massacres of Oct. 7.  A big question is whether his successors will continue his support of far-right Jews’ illegal seizure of Arab properties on the West Bank – seizures that of course have enraged many Palestinians, and rightly so.

 

By the way, the Hamas logo shows a map on which all of the region called Palestine  -- including, of course, Israel – is green – meaning one Arab and Muslim nation. How would such a place be run? Well, take a look at the rest of the Arab world…..

 

Meanwhile, many exhausted Gazans are, of course, enraged at Israel and terrified as its attacks continue, but many are also infuriated that Hamas put them in this position. Speaking out could get them killed by that corrupt and brutal dictatorship but some are going ahead anyway.

 

 

Going More Modular

One of Canada’s approaches to its housing-shortage problem might resonate here.

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is developing a catalog of pre-approved housing designs to cut the cost and time to put up new housing. Such an approach can be traced back to Canada’s severe housing shortage after World War II ended.

 Bloomberg News reports that the government seeks designs that “add density, such as multiplexes, mid-rises, seniors’ homes and student housing. The catalog will feature multiple designs in each category to give communities flexibility.’’

Think modular and Levittowns, with their cookie-cutter little houses that could be easily expanded.

 

 

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The U.S. House GOP/QAnon is hard at work trying to impeach Biden for alleged illegal profiteering in foreign deals.  After six years of trying, no evidence has been found that Biden did anything illegal.  Can we expect the House to look into the $2 billion that the Saudis invested with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the tens of millions that Jared and his wife, Ivanka, made from foreign interests while they were members of the conflict-of-interest cesspool that was the Trump regime – Jan. 20, 2017-Jan. 20, 2021?

 

Nope.

 

 

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There seems to be virtually nothing that deadbeat con man and multiple-bankruptcy Trump won’t try to sell,  including now pieces of the suit he wore during his arrest for alleged election fraud in Georgia. Given his cultists’ adulation, this latest sale should be boffo!

 

They can turn up Handel’s Messiah to maximum volume as they place their orders.

Hit this link:

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal,  and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.


 

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