Whitcomb: Growing Cranberries and Electricity; 5G vs. Weather Forecasts; Kennedy Renaissance?

Monday, September 09, 2019

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

“As long as we look forward, all seems free,

Uncertain, subject to the Laws of Chance,

Though strange that chance should lie subject to laws,

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But looking back on life it is as if

Our Book of Changes never let us change.’’

-- From “The Western Approaches,’’ by Howard Nemerov (1920-1991), who twice served as U.S. poet laureate.

 

 

“It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.”

From The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (Thanks to The Week magazine for a reminder of the charm and integrity of Silent Cal’s writing.)

 

In the Moment - Splashing with Joy

I took a youngish couple and their children -- one who is three, the other six -- to a beautiful beach on Buzzards Bay last weekend and watched the family play on the sand and in the almost-lukewarm water. The children were oblivious to time and unstressed by worrying about such things as the looming school year and the coming of colder weather. They were, as people say, “in the moment’’ -- in a kind of paradise of beauty and safety. Would both remember the day, if hazily, decades hence?

 

An old friend of mine, who lives near the beach, happened to be there staring out toward Cuttyhunk. His wife recently died. We talked a lot about the passage of time as clouds moved in from the west to obscure the blue skies we had enjoyed for the first couple of hours on the beach and the kids shouted and splashed with joy.

 

Love of Fall Webworm

I love New England’s quirky seasonal signs, such as the Fall Webworm, a moth that in its larval stage creates bizarre webbed nests on tree limbs in the late summer and early fall. Some people hate them but they don’t hurt trees and look very pretty when dew and raindrops are on them. They’re like acorns on the sidewalk, goldenrod along the roads and asters in the gardens – a first course of autumn before the leaves begin turning colors.

 

Solar Bogs

Cranberry bogs, which produce Massachusetts’s largest crop by revenue, are obviously open to full sun. And so, a new Massachusetts state solar-energy incentive program is getting a lot of attention from financially struggling cranberry farmers anxious to diversify their revenue.

The Solar Massachusetts Renewable Energy Target (SMART) program pays growers a stipend for the electricity, to be sold to utilities, from solar panels put up on their farmland. While some farmers worry that somehow installation of the panels might hurt their crops, others see the plan as a savior in a time of sharply falling prices for cranberries, which are mostly used for juice.

The program requires growers to continue producing food on the same land as the panels to get the stipend. The mission is to simultaneously promote farmland preservation in a mostly urban and suburban state while boosting locally generated renewable energy. Would the small amount of shading from the solar panels hurt the crop? Probably not, but it will probably take a year or two of observation to know for sure.

We ought to follow the general principle that already existing open space, such as parking lots at dead shopping malls and on rooftops, should be used for solar farms, instead of cutting down trees to make space for the panels.

To learn more, please hit this link:

 

 

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Some experts, including Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are warning that the introduction of the much anticipated 5G wireless cellular network could slash weather forecasting accuracy by interfering with data transmission from weather satellites. This could have perilous effects, particularly with hurricane forecasting and especially for New England because hurricanes striking our region tend to move north very fast after they go by Cape Hatteras, N.C. (The infamous New England Hurricane of Sept. 21, 1938 moved more than 50 miles an hour into our region.)

 

Mr. Jacobs testified to the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment on May 16 that 5G wireless signals could cut forecast accuracy by 30 percent!

 

The telecommunications industry, which sees 5G as a vast bonanza, has so far done little to address this challenge.

 

To read more, please hit this link:

 

 

The Rise of Another Kennedy

 "If your name was Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a farce."

 

-- The bitter comment of then-Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Edward McCormick in 1962 while debating 30-year-old Edward (“Ted”) Kennedy in the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat, which of course Mr. Kennedy won. At the time, his brother John was president and his brother Robert U.S. attorney general.

 

Given how long ago was the political golden age (around 1946-1990) of the Kennedy family, I was surprised that Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III, 38, leads Sen. Edward Markey, 73, by double digits in a possible primary fight for Mr. Markey’s seat. Mr. Kennedy, with his famously red hair, is certainly well-spoken, intelligent and good-looking and beats the cadaverous-looking Ed Markey in the charisma department. But ideologically they’re pretty much the same and Mr. Markey has been an effective senator for his constituents. There does seem to be a movement by energized (especially by hatred of Trump) younger Democrats to erode the gerontocracy that currently runs Washington to the primary benefit of the old and affluent.

 

Tobacco and Insurance

Woonsocket-based CVS used to make a lot of money selling tobacco products in its drugstores, something it stopped doing in 2014. Last year it bought Aetna, the huge Hartford-based insurer (including health insurance). Health insurers, of course, do better when people don’t smoke. Anyway, CVS is now expanding its national campaign against smoking and vaping. So maybe what CVS has lost in tobacco sales will be more than offset by fewer and smaller insurance claims.

 

Bad Bets, Redux

Even the new huge and shimmering Encore casino, in Everett, Mass., is not doing as well as it had projected to state regulators back in 2014, when the company had forecast more than $800 million in gross revenue in its first year. Estimable Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto now reports that data suggest Encore that “will be lucky to clear $600 million’’ in its first year, even as it continues to divert a lot of money from other New England casinos, at least until customer curiosity fades a bit. Bay State officials’ hopes for a tax bonanza from Encore may have been a bit premature.
 

To read Mr. Chesto’s article, please hit this link:

 

 

Will Hampshire College Be a Rescue Model?

More than a few of New England’s small private colleges are in deep trouble because of changing demographics and economics. Perhaps the most famous one is Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass. Hampshire is well known nationally for its intimacy and for its experimental, innovative and, as they say, “student-driven’’ system. It opened in 1970 and still has a bit of its original quasi-hippie vibe from that era.

 

It looked as if the college would die in the academic year that ended in May but its board has managed to keep it going, under its new president, Ed Wingenbach. There was talk of merging Hampshire into a neighboring college in the Connecticut River Valley but the school, after some agonizing, decided otherwise. “That debate (over a merger) has been resolved. We will now do the hard work to have an independent Hampshire – or we will close.’’ Mr. Wigenbach came to Hampshire from the very well-respected Ripon College, in Wisconsin, where he was vice president and dean of the faculty.

 

Other colleges should carefully watch as Hampshire first tries to stay afloat through this academic year, and then to regain the strength it once had despite its small endowment.

 

 

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The emphasis in recent years has been on persuading as many undergraduates as possible to concentrate on technology and science courses. However, many potential employers continue to favor a broader, liberal arts approach. Have hope, English and history majors!

 

George Anders, who was a technology reporter for Forbes in 2012-2016, wrote a useful book called You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a “Useless’’ Liberal Arts Education. He told the BBC:

“I realized that the ability to communicate and get along with people, and understand what’s on other people’s minds, and do full-strength critical thinking – all of these things were valued and appreciated by everyone as important job skills, except the media.”

 

As an old history major (but who also took a lot of college science and some math),  I’ve found that history was a big help in getting through the ups and downs of life. A study of history provides innumerable lessons in human nature, and how to deal with it, along with the usually applicable lesson that “this too will pass.’’

 

Put it on Paper

I’m starting to think that there should be a paper backup for all important records that are now only in the Internet. At the least, bring back paper ballots for all voting places lest the likes of Vladimir Putin try to throw another U.S. election, and have paper backup for other important government operations, too. Consider that the computers of agencies in 22 Texas communities were recently hacked and held for ransom and that New Bedford was hit by a ransomware attacker demanding $5.3 million in July; the city offered $400,000 from its insurance, which the attacker refused.  The New York Times reported that more than 40 cities and towns have been hit by cyberattacks so far this year.

 

The attack in New Bedford disabled many city computers. These attacks – on agencies, businesses, schools and other networks -- are increasingly coordinated.

 

 

A Private Matter

If America goes into a recession next year, we’d be in better long-term shape if the rebuilding-infrastructure program  (think the WPA and the Interstate Highway System) that Trump had repeatedly promised in the 2016 campaign were underway, to both help put a floor under unemployment and to make the nation more economically competitive and efficient.

 

Instead, Trump and his GOP minions have focused on such ideas as huge tax credits for infrastructure developers and in effect privatizing parts of our transportation system, such as some roads and bridges.  And as economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman also noted in a Sept. 2 New York Times column, “Tax scams are the tribute policy vice pays to policy virtue,’’ much ballyhooed “opportunity zones’’  -- tax deals that Trump, et al., prefer to direct public spending -- have been delightful for rich developers  (including the family of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) and Wall Street investors using them to build luxury hotels and apartment and condo buildings but not much for the low-income people that such zones have purportedly been invented for.
 

To read Mr. Krugman’s column, please hit this link:

 

 

Glimmerings of Reason on Guns

Kudos to behemoth Walmart for finally deciding to stop selling ammunition for handguns and military-style rifles, the latter the favorite weapon in mass murders, most of which are committed by young white men in Red States, where gun laws are weak. Especially in Red States, Walmart has done a land-office business selling this ammo. Of course, the company is responding to public outrage following the most recent mass shootings.  (Many more coming up!) If only the NRA-controlled Trump and U.S. Senate had the courage to take seriously the adjectival phrase I have italicized in the Second Amendment, written when the mass-murder firepower we now have wasn’t available.

 

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

 

Even the avidly pro-gun U.S. Supreme Court, in its Heller ruling, in 2008, did not endorse the sort of virtually unlimited right to the possession and use of guns that the NRA (the lobbying wing of the gun-making industry) espouses. The ruling said, for instance, that curbs can be placed on “the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.’’ Assault rifles would seem to fall under that description.
 

By the way, a prime argument of those opposing gun-control laws is that their stance discourages tyrannical government. But do the gun lovers really think that even with their beloved assault rifles they can defeat the U.S. military?

 

 

Show Your Face!

Massachusetts state Sen. Dean Tran, of Fitchburg, wants to ban face-covering by protesters/demonstrators. He’s right but he should go further.  All face coverings in public (okay, exceptions for kids in Halloween masks) undermine law enforcement by often making identification of lawbreakers nearly impossible. That’s the major reason that 16 nations, including some Muslim ones, have banned the wearing of the Muslim women’s garment called the burqa, which covers a woman completely except for a thin screen to let them see. They are: Tunisia, Austria, Denmark, France, Belgium, Tajikistan, Latvia, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, The Netherlands, China, Morocco and Sri Lanka.

 

In this case, public safety must overrule privacy or fear or timidity or whatever other reason for hiding your face.

 

 

What Friedman Said

The late libertarian economist Milton Friedman is often somewhat misunderstood as having said “shareholder value’’ is more important than everything else for public companies. This has come up with The Business Roundtable (a bunch of CEOs of big public companies) recently declaring that companies’ responsibilities include obligations to society besides making as much money as possible (and by implication as fast as possible) for shareholders. In fact, this is what Mr. Friedman wrote (italics mine): Senior management’s “responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.”

 

Muggeridge’s March through the 20th Century

I recently reread much of Chronicles of Wasted Time, the two-volume autobiography of the English journalist and satirist Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990). The two volumes – The Green Stick and The Infernal Grove – contain some of the finest writing in English of the 20th Century – in my humble opinion. While I didn’t fully understand his unlikely journey into  Christian faith, his narrative of his adventurous (sometimes dangerous), hilarious, lustful, self-lacerating and sad episodes is riveting. His description of his geographical, intellectual, political and spiritual wanderings comprise an unforgettable personal journey, as he gradually loses his faith in human schemes and is drawn to the numinous.

 

 

Abroad at Home

Below are the currently scheduled speakers for 2019-2020 Providence Committee on Foreign Relations meetings. Please check thepcfr.org or email [email protected] for membership and other information.

 

The first speaker comes Wednesday, Oct, 2, with Jonathan Gage, who will talk about how coverage of such international economic stories as trade wars has changed over the years, in part because of new technology, and how that coverage itself changes events.

 

Mr. Gage has had a very distinguished career in publishing and international journalism. He has served as publisher and CEO of Institutional Investor magazine, as publisher of strategy+business magazine, as a director at Booz Allen Hamilton and Booz & Company, as enterprise editor for Bloomberg News and finance editor of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune.

 

He is a trustee, and former vice-chairman, of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

 

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On Wednesday, Oct.  23, comes Ambassador Patrick Duddy, who will talk about Venezuelan internal political and economic conditions and relations with the U.S., Cuba, Russia and other nations.  Mr. Duddy, currently director of Duke University’s center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, served as American ambassador to Venezuela during some of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. The late President Hugo Chavez expelled him but eight months later he resumed his ambassadorship. He finished that assignment in 2010.

Before his ambassadorships, Mr.Duddy served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (DAS) for the Western Hemisphere, responsible for the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination, which included the hemispheric energy portfolio, as well for the Offices of Brazil/ Southern Cone Affairs and of Caribbean Affairs. During his tenure as DAS, he played a lead role in coordinating U.S. support for the restoration of democracy in Haiti.

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On Wednesday, Nov. 6, comes Tweed Roosevelt, president of the Theodore Roosevelt Association and great-grandson of that president. He’ll talk about how TR’s foreign policy, which was developed as the U.S. became truly a world power, affected subsequent presidents’ foreign policies. Mr. Roosevelt is also chairman of Roosevelt China Investments, a Boston firm.

 

In 1992,  Mr. Roosevelt rafted down the 1,000-mile Rio Roosevelt in Brazil—a river previously explored by his great-grandfather in 1914 in the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition and then called the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt. The former president almost died on that legendary and dangerous trip.

 

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On Thursday, Dec.  5, comes Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou, who directs the Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy, and is visiting associate professor of conflict resolution at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.  She titles her talk "God, Soft Power, and Geopolitics: Religion as a Tool for Conflict Prevention/Generation".

Dr. Prodromou is also a non-resident senior fellow and co-chair of the Working Group on Christians and Religious Pluralism, at the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, and is also non-resident fellow at The Hedayah International Center of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism, based in Abu Dhabi.

She is former vice chair and commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and was a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Religion & Foreign Policy Working Group. Her research focuses on geopolitics and religion, with particular focus on the intersection of religion, democracy, and security in the Middle East and Southeastern Europe. Her current research project focuses on Orthodox Christianity and geopolitics, as well as on religion and migration in Greece.

 

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On  Wednesday, Jan. 8, comes Michael Fine, M.D., who will talk about his novel Abundance, set in West Africa, and the challenges of providing health care in the Developing World. He will speak on: “Plagues and Pestilence: What we learned (or didn't) from Ebola about Foreign Policy and International Collaboration in the face of epidemics and outbreaks.’’

 

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On Wednesday, Feb. 5, comes Cornelia Dean, book author, science writer and former science editor of The New York Times and internationally known expert on coastal conditions. She’ll talk how rising seas threaten coastal cities around the world and what they can do about it.

 

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On Wednesday, March 18, comes Stephen Wellmeier, managing director of Poseidon Expeditions. He’ll talk about the future of adventure travel and especially about Antarctica, and its strange legal status.

 

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On Wednesday, April 29, comes Trita Parsi,  a native of Iran and founder and current president of the National Iranian American Council and author of Treacherous Alliance and A Single Roll of the Dice. He regularly writes articles and appears on TV to comment on foreign policy. He, of course, has a lot to say about U.S- Iranian relations and a lot more.

 

Mr. Parsi is a co-founder of a new think tank, financed by an unlikely partnership of the right-wing Koch Brothers and the left-of-center George Soros. It’s called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and dedicated to helping craft a new U.S. foreign policy that would be far less interventionist and put an end to America’s “endless foreign wars.’’

 

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On Wednesday, May 6,  comes Serenella Sferza, a political scientist and co-director of the program on Italy at MIT’s Center for International Studies, who will talk about the rise of right-wing populism and other developments in her native land.

She has taught at several US and European universities, and published numerous articles on European politics. Serenella's an affiliate at the Harvard De Gunzburg Center for European Studies and holds the title of Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia conferred by decree of the President of the Republic for the preservation and promotion of national prestige abroad.

 

June: Keeping open for now but probably something on China.

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