Whitcomb: Don’t Burden the Responsible; Backyard ‘Little Houses’ and Other State Stuff

Sunday, December 26, 2021

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

What can be said in New Year rhymes, 

That’s not been said a thousand times? 

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The new years come, the old years go, 

We know we dream, we dream we know. 

 

We rise up laughing with the light, 

We lie down weeping with the night. 

 

We hug the world until it stings, 

We curse it then and sigh for wings. 

 

We live, we love, we woo, we wed, 

We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead. 

 

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear, 

And that’s the burden of a year.

 

-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919), American poet and journalist

 

 

“Posterity is just around the corner.’’

-- George S. Kaufman (1889-1961), American playwright, director, producer and critic.

 

 

“All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.’’

-- Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English novelist and critic

 

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The days are getting longer!

 

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RI has realized more than 3,000 death PHOTO: Aaron Cohen CC: 2.0

The only safe general prediction one can make about any year is that it will be unpredictable. As of this writing, we can still guess that COVID-19 will be the top topic for at least part of 2022. But that might fade if many more anti-vax Americans become more patriotic and get jabbed and many more vaccines get to people in poor countries, thus reducing opportunities for more (and possibly more lethal) variants to develop.

 

One of the best things I’ve read about the current situation is an email I got from a very distinguished retired political scientist in a private email group that I’m a member of. 

 

He’s letting me quote him:

 

“In some parts of the Mountain States, the Midwest and New England (and now New York and New Jersey), hospitals are now rationing care. Some hospitals are deluged with COVID-related cases and have postponed all but emergency surgeries. Yes, it varies from one place to another, but in some areas, COVID affects people who are not ill, because of what is happening in their local hospitals rationing care.

“In principle, I don’t have a problem with folks who decide not to get vaccinated, provided it doesn’t affect my health care or my Medicare insurance rates. Just as I don’t have a problem with folks who would rather not wear seatbelts, provided it doesn’t affect my car-insurance rates. Unfortunately, these folks do create a burden for others.

“Just as chronic alcoholics and smokers are rated lower for eligibility for organ transplants, so too those who are willing to forego vaccine shots should be willing to accept similar consequences when it comes to rationing ICU care (ventilators, oxygen) if there is a scarcity.

“Most masks are totemic rather than effective. But in certain locations (closed in spaces for hours with strangers) it makes sense to use the highest-quality N-95 or equivalents. I don’t see the usefulness of masks for children and teens in school, or for closing down the schools and going to Zoom, provided the current extremely low rates of hospitalization remain that way.

“How any of the virus benefits ‘The Left’ is beyond me, other than noting that COVID mortality rates in the most extreme ‘Red’ counties are three times those in the most extreme ‘Blue’ counties. Like the Oxycontin overdoses, it is a case of replacement theory coming true, but mostly because of self-own goals….

 

{“Replacement theory’’: A white nationalist conspiracy theory, that whites are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-European peoples.}

“The {general} health metrics for many deep Red counties are a lot worse than for deep Blue, and the availability of first-rate ICUs is much less in deep Red rural areas than in deep Blue urban and suburban counties, which also may explain some of the mortality disparities.’’

 

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GRAPHIC: CDC

No one can predict with any precision how and when this pandemic will end, though at this point one could guess that the virus will become endemic by sometime later in 2022 and then we’ll get used to occasional eruptions of whatever new, mutated versions come down the road, but they’re unlikely to be as bad as what we’ve experienced in 2020 and 2021.

 

Americans must get used to a disease that will probably always be around, like some others, and get back as soon as possible to some semblance of normal life, with its assorted risks. We’re all gonna die of something anyway.

 

However terrible the pandemic has been, it has also impressively advanced the prevention and treatment of viruses. (It recalls how the horror of World War II jump-started the use of antibiotics, probably saving hundreds of millions of lives over the decades.) These advances will continue into 2022. Something to think about when you start getting your annual combined anti-COVID and flu shots.

 

Meanwhile, COVID-19 will have permanently changed aspects of how many of us live, from the workplace to travel to shopping to entertainment. Some of these changes were well underway before the pandemic, mostly because of technology.

 

I suppose that the next two elections  -- local, state and national -- will be substantially driven by the pandemic and the economic and policy responses to it. Public officials and healthcare people will continue to have a brutal time trying to constantly adjust to the challenge. We should show them patience and sympathy, especially given the level of willful scientific ignorance (and very toxic conspiracy theories, mostly among the Trumpist far-right and used by cynics who manipulate them for political and economic advantage) in the general population.

 

Of course, who knew in November 2019 we’d be dealing with a pandemic soon thereafter? There will be innumerable surprises in 2022, maybe involving the extent of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Or maybe a big ice shelf in Antarctica will collapse, quickly sending sea levels several feet higher. Watch out Warren, R.I.!

 

Or maybe there will be a breakthrough in treatments, if not cures, for cancer and Alzheimer’s. And there might be fewer hurricanes than expected.

 

 

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PHOTO: file

State Stuff

There’s a bad “affordable housing” problem in Rhode Island, as in many other states, most famously in California. But the state does have some assets, for example, hotels that are closing because of what appears to be a permanent drop in business travel. Most of these could be converted to temporary and/or permanent housing.

 

Consider the former Cru Hotel at T.F. Greene International Airport. It’s being converted to a 181-unit building for workforce housing.

 

Closed schools, though more challenging to retrofit, also offer space for housing.

 

Meanwhile, zoning laws need to be revised to allow more and denser housing to be constructed, boosting supply and thus reducing cost pressures. This might include letting people put up “little houses” in backyards for family members in places where zoning now forbids it. And loosening some local rules mandating a large number of parking spaces as a requirement with housing construction would help, too.

 

Rhode Island remains the second-most-densely populated state, after New Jersey, another reminder of its housing challenges.

 

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Rhode Island seems poised to legalize recreational marijuana. Oh great! More folks stoned on the road. This will improve society about as much as the state’s getting in bed with the casino industry.

 

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And the plan is to give drivers’ licenses (which are the main source of identification for most people) to “illegal aliens.’’ Couldn’t this turn out to be problematical for law enforcement and other government functions?

 

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Folks on the left side of the Democratic Party in Rhode Island want to raise state income-tax rates on the rich. Well, federal taxes should be raised to pay for the services and physical infrastructure that the majority of citizens say they want and need. But many, perhaps most, don’t want to honestly pay for them. So the federal debt continues to explode.

 

BUT, individual states have to be competitive with neighboring ones. Thus, the tiny Ocean State must keep its taxes in line with its neighbors and especially with New England’s giant – Massachusetts.  After all, Greater Providence has effectively become part of Greater Boston.

 

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U.S. Senator Joe Manchin PHOTO: U.S. Senate

BBB’s Crucial Green-Energy Push

The Build Back Better program may or may not be dead,  depending on what West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, aka King Coal, is willing to settle for in new negotiations. There are some very good and a few problematical (fiscally and culturally) social programs in the bill.

 

But the best part to me – at least in terms of the long-term benefits to the nation -- is the plan’s promotion of green energy through tax and other incentives. This is crucial because of the need to slow and eventually halt the catastrophe of global warming.

 

But it’s also crucial because American global economic competitiveness will depend in no small part on it. China and some other hyper-competitive nations, eager to get off fossil fuel as much to be less reliant on fuel from unstable and/or unfriendly places (like the United States) as to stem pollution and global warming, are running ahead of us as they move to innovative decarbonized energy systems.

 

New England, with its big science and engineering sectors, much of them closely connected with its world-famous colleges and universities, would of course benefit greatly from the green-energy programs speeded by  Build Back Better.

 

 

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The old calming advice is to take things “one day at a time.’’ Communication has speeded so much in recent years that we feel we must take things an hour at a time.  What would make most of us happier is taking more time away from the news, and the frenzy of our all-too computer-driven lives, and go for more quiet walks without electronic devices. Outdoor light is healthier than indoor light.

 

In any event, happy new year to the inhabitants of our ravaged and beautiful Earth! Two New Year’s resolutions on offer: Always remember that nothing lasts in human affairs and that most “solutions’’ to big problems contain the seeds of new ones.

 

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