Whitcomb: Experimental Providence; Mid-Summer Local Eating; Training Problem; Insidious Invitations

Whitcomb: Experimental Providence; Mid-Summer Local Eating; Training Problem; Insidious Invitations

 

I did not think that I should find them there

When I came back again; but there they stood,

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As in the days they dreamed of when young blood

Was in their cheeks and women called them fair.

Be sure, they met me with an ancient air,—

And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhood

About them; but the men were just as good,

And just as human as they ever were.

 

And you that ache so much to be sublime,

And you that feed yourselves with your descent,

What comes of all your visions and your fears?

Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time,

Tiering the same dull webs of discontent,

Clipping the same sad alnage {measurement of cloth by the yard} of the years.

 

“The Clerks,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), American poet and playwright

 

 

 

“I ride rough waters and shall sink with no one to save me.’’

– Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), English novelist. She drowned herself.

 

 

“Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.’’

– Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005), the first Black congresswoman
 

 

 

“I know nothing about sex, because I was always married.’’ 

-- Zsa Zsa Gabor (1917-2016),  Hungarian-American actress and socialite. She was married nine times.

 

 

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Tomatoes, tomatoes – multi-colored! Heirloom! New England has a shorter vegetable-growing season than much of the country  (though it’s getting longer), but those plants we do grow are particularly delicious, and many of them are ready to eat now. Next stop: sweet corn.

 

Some people may see a certain beauty in air pollution:  When it wasn’t gray, the sky was sometimes tinted a golden cast last week by smoke (which you could taste) from wildfires in Minnesota and Ontario. While it lowered temperatures from what had been predicted, it was quite creepy. As man-made global warming continues, we can expect much more of this stuff. Forests dry more quickly in the heat.

 

So ozone pollution, the main ingredient in smog, will increase. It’s very bad for your lungs. All this as the regime tries to gut the EPA in association with campaign donations from certain industries.

 

Hydrangeas, with their huge flower heads, seem exuberant emblems of New England in the summer, particularly along the coast. Looking at their vibrant blues, purples and pinks can raise our spirits, even on the hottest, most humid days. 

 

Hear Tom Lehrer sing his song “Pollution”

 

 

Turning a City Into an Experiment

David Morales, who’s running in Providence’s Democratic mayoral primary against the stolid incumbent Brett Smiley, says he wants to turn the city into “a laboratory for municipal socialism.’’ Well, most of us would settle for honest and efficient government.

 

While some elements of that too often vaguely defined system called “socialism’’ are admirable – consider public works, Social Security and Medicare -- anxious America will remain mostly a (too?) mildly regulated capitalist country, with the dynamism, innovation, and, yes, inequities and “creative destruction,’’ that go along with that. How do you set up a city as a lab for “municipal socialism’’ in a capitalist country?

 

But does Mr. Morales really mean by “socialism’’ such highly economically and socially successful “social democracies” as in Scandinavia?

 

Here’s a pretty solid definition from Wikipedia:

 

“Social democracy is a center-left political ideology that operates within a capitalist framework. It aims to tame the free market and reduce inequality through state intervention, progressive taxation, and robust social welfare programs, such as universal healthcare, public education, and strong labor rights.’’

As independent gubernatorial candidate Ken Block noted, in response to Mr. Morales’s idea: “Government exists to solve problems—not to {try to} prove political theories.’’

 

The brilliant systems expert, Mr. Block, wisely says the key questions to ask about  public policy are:

 

“Does it make sense? Does it work? Is it cost-effective? Is it easy for the people who use it?’’

 

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A 90-room luxury hotel will be built at Newport’s Bellevue Gardens Shopping Plaza, at 181 Bellevue Ave. The developers, Procaccianti Companies and TPG Hotels & Resorts, plan to open it by 2028.  The site, right across the avenue from the International Tennis Hall of Fame, means even longer traffic jams at the traffic lights where Memorial Boulevard intersects with storied Bellevue, that Gilded Age housing development for the hyper-rich. Rent a helicopter?

 

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Owners of the estates along the storied Cliff Walk, in Newport, must be increasingly worried as the sea threatens to erode the walkway so much that it threatens to send thousands of tourists a year onto the owners’ lovely lawns.

But electrified barbed-wire fencing will have to wait.

 

Trained to Traumatize

More killings by ICE again raise not only policy questions, but, as with the rest of the Trump regime, issues of competence. ICE  agents are often badly trained, and some of those too quickly hired have a penchant for undisciplined violence or even sadism.

Of course, much of the higher echelons of Trump’s government are staffed by people of staggering incompetence and ignorance, along with gargantuan grifting and occasional cruelty. Indeed, you could say that the regime is run like a  Mafia-style racket,  ruled by a sociopath emailing threats from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. daily.

 

 

Not What You Might Think

Ah, the always powerful law of unintended consequences!

 

One is how the massive use of biofuels, promoted as a way to reduce planet-heating fossil fuel emissions, probably makes global warming worse by requiring the clearing away of forests and other wild vegetation that absorbs carbon dioxide. (Planting such massive tracts for soybeans (for soybean-based biodiesel) and corn (for ethanol) also devastates habitats for many animal species. )

 

(Raising livestock is also a promoter of global warming, generating an estimated 12-15 percent of global greenhouse gases. That’s from methane produced during animal digestion, nitrous oxide from manure and fertilizers, and massive deforestation to create grazing land.)

 

The Feds heavily subsidize the biofuels industry,  based in Republican-run states, in the form of tax credits, production grants, infrastructure funding, and market guarantees. This huge agribusiness has formidable lobbying operations in Washington, D.C. It often asserts that it offers a kind of “renewable energy,’’ but looking at its real effects can quickly change your mind. We don’t have to depend on it forever, if we ever did.

 

Eventually, all motor vehicles will run on electricity generated by solar, wind, geothermal energy, hydrogen, and other renewable sources, some of which are currently unknown; nuclear fusion may also become available. Meanwhile, let’s press policymakers to move away faster from biofuels.

 

By the way, why not put more solar panels over shallow water – another way to take up less land for solar farms, too many being created by cutting down trees?

 

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And then there’s how raising the amount of earned income (wages, salaries, payments to vendors, etc.) to be taxed to help keep Social Security solvent would  increase after-tax income inequality. That’s because the biggest source of personal wealth in America is not from earned income but from investments, the capital gains from which are only taxed when sold, and at a lower rate than on earned income.

 

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Many people love to send “Paperless Posts” invitations instead of by email or, better, by snail mail on attractive cards.  But spending 82 cents on a stamp is too scary?
 

 

BUT,  beware! Internet scammers, whose numbers continue to surge, are increasingly using Paperless Post to steal personal data or install malware. These fake invites often originate from a hacked friend’s account to bypass spam filters. Don’t open these invites without first asking by other means – phone, verified email or even letter -- of the alleged sender if the message is legit. Bring back telegrams!

 

Everyone on the Internet must be assumed guilty until proven otherwise. And if you suddenly hear a harsh noise from your computer, unplug it immediately. It’s probably some crook trying to get in to steal your money.
 

Paper is looking better and better these days.

 

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Troubled, intense “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth continues on his mighty way to make our military more manly (and, when possible, whiter) and so more aggressive. The Pentagon will now screen service members, including women, for testosterone levels and offer replacement therapy. What next? Prizes for war crimes?

We’ll need such tough customers when we invade Greenland and/or Canada, with the help of well-muscled drone operators.
 

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Many in the U.S. Senate hearing on Todd Blanche’s nomination to  be attorney general felt like taking a shower after being in the same room with this oily and evasive liar and Trump valet. If he’s confirmed, he’ll be a general in his leader’s task force, ordered to steal the mid-term elections.

 

Lindsey Graham (1955-2026)

Good ole affable Southern boy, first a very harsh critic of Trump and then a slavish suckup.  Usually predictably right-wing, but capable of the occasional opportunistic and/or hypocritical policy contortions. His one major redeeming role was as a supporter of the Western Alliance and Ukraine in the face of the Orange Oligarch’s envy of and fear of offending Putin, who helped put him in office. But it’s not at all clear how much Graham really helped.
 

We don’t know much about his personal life (which is fine), but all in all, he was a pretty good representative of our political culture of cynicism and self-dealing.