Whitcomb: Inhaling Hypocrisy; Our Blue Economy Corridor; Fane’s Final Innings; Bribe to Move West

Monday, September 30, 2019

“I thought he ran the country. We also believed

In crystal balls and cul de sacs, in sexual secrets.

A few cascades and a couple going over the falls in a barrel.

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But no one followed them to the bottom.

And we were disappointed when the danger passed.’’

-- From “I Like Ike,’’ by Ira Sadoff, a poet who teaches literature at Colby College, in Maine

 

“Warm days, cool nights, and glorious autumn foliage are the normal delightful fare in New England {in October}. The number of clear days reaches its annual maximum, winds tend to be light, the horizon is dulled by a blue-gray haze….’’

-- From New England Weather Book, by David Ludlum

 

"I love the fall. I love it because of the smells that you speak of; and also because things are dying, things that you don't have to take care of anymore, and the grass stops growing."

- - Mark Van Doren (1894-1972, poet , critic and professor at Columbia University and long-time resident of Cornwall, Conn.) I first used this quote in GoLocal on Sept. 29, 2016

A dairy, fruit and vegetable farmer in East Randolph, Vt., Mick Whalen, told me he always looked forward to winter: “You don’t have to work so hard.’’

 

Giving Us the Vapors

Considering the delicious hypocrisy involved in such things, I got a chuckle out of the debate over whether to stop the sale of vaping products because of illnesses associated with the stuff. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has imposed a four-month ban on the sale of these products in the commonwealth, during which time the health hazards associated with them will be studied. A little late, eh? And Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo has directed the state Department of Health to prohibit the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.

 

Governor Baker said: “The use of e-cigarettes and marijuana vaping products is exploding, and we are seeing reports of serious lung illnesses, particularly in our young people.’’

 

There’s no sense of irony, despite the fact that regular tobacco cigarettes are perfectly legal for adults to buy and far more dangerous than e-cigarettes! Can I buy you a pack of lung cancer and emphysema? But then, the states want the tax money from the sale of the old-fashioned cigs.

 

Likewise, most states take in vast quantities of money from lotteries and, increasingly, casino operations. Politicians love gambling-related revenue, as they love cigarette taxes, because it helps them avoid raising broad-based taxes. But I suspect that the full social costs of state-promoted gambling in crime, family breakups, bankruptcies, etc., far, far outweigh the revenue benefits of states getting into bed with casino operators and companies such as IGT that serve the gambling industry. And the entire sector is, by the nature of its services and relations with government, intrinsically corrupt. It’s also highly regressive since desperate poorer people tend to gamble far more than the affluent do.

 

And poorer people tend to smoke more than richer ones, in part to treat the anxiety associated with economic insecurity and low status.

 

Blue Economy Corridor?

The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth is leading a regional effort to grow a marine-technology corridor that spans I-195 from Rhode Island through the urban centers of New Bedford and Fall River, and across the Cape Cod Canal. I doubt that it would ever be as big as the Greater Boston tech behemoth, but it could get pretty big. Robert E. Johnson, the university’s chancellor, suggested in a piece in The New England Journal of Higher Education that these factors would be crucial:

 

“Commuter rail service from Boston to the South Coast begins in 2023.
“The area is home to world-class public and independent higher education and research institutions.
“New Bedford, the top commercial fishing port in the nation {mostly because of scallops}, is an emerging leader in offshore wind development, and a cargo-shipping powerhouse.
“Fall River is re-engineering its waterfront and attracting commercial and residential development related to offshore wind and expanded commuter rail service.
“Vibrant marine technology companies, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Ocean Server, Teradyne and Aquabotix, have a presence in the region.
“A vibrant cultural scene leverages our connection to the sea (think the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Fall River’s Battleship Cove, Cape Cod’s National Seashore and Newport for starters).’’

 

It will be interesting to see how such a tech corridor might address the rapid sea level rise and ocean acidification caused by burning fossil fuel. And the corridor should also include southeastern Connecticut –- Mystic Aquarium, submarine base, Electric Boat, Coast Guard Academy, etc.

 

Final Innings for Fane Tower

If the proposed Fane Tower, in Providence, doesn’t soon get final approvals, and construction begun, the land that it would be built on will likely lie empty for years. The next recession will probably start next year and financing will dry up.

 

Boffo Buildings

What a neat idea to give tours yesterday of the interior and exterior wonders of some old Central Falls and Pawtucket buildings in the Doors Open Pawtucket + Central Falls project! I hope such tours can be extended to other communities. Few folks know how unusual and beautiful are some of the buildings we pass by daily without glancing at.

 

More Pay ‘Em to Move

Massachusetts state Sen.  Eric Lesser, of Longmeadow, has filed a bill in the legislature to reimburse people up to $10,000 for costs associated with moving to one of four counties in the western Bay State and, The Boston Globe reports, “work from home or in a co-working space there.’’ The idea is to get energetic and educated people from prosperous Greater Boston to move to poorer western Massachusetts -- poorer in part because of the long decline in the region’s once thriving manufacturing sector. Senator Lesser hopes that his proposal could help reinvigorate the area, many of whose residents see state government as far too dominated by rich and densely populated Greater Boston.

 

Senator Lesser got the idea from a similar program now in effect in Vermont, which has so far paid out a modest $125,000 to reimburse folks to move to the thinly populated Green Mountain State. Mr. Lesser’s scheme calls for spending no more than $1 million over three years.

 

I think that governmental financial incentives, such as special tax breaks or even the aforementioned “bribes’’ to move, have less effect than you might think. Proximity to family, friends and desirable jobs is paramount.

Meanwhile, we’re still at only the start of the climate-refugee era. As scientists discuss regions, such as New England and the Upper Midwest, that will suffer less from accelerating global warming, a few people are leaving such places as Florida’s ever more frequently flooded low-lying coast and Houston’s inundated plains and heading north to live. Their numbers will surge after hurricanes.

 

To read The Globe’s story on Senator Lesser’s idea, please hit this link:

 

 

Ride Buses for Free

Poor old Lawrence, Mass., has ended fares on three public bus routes. Some other Massachusetts jurisdictions are considering such a move, including Worcester, the state’s second-largest city. I think that the idea has some merit. Losses on fare revenue might be more than offset by the benefits of less car congestion and higher work productivity for businesses and residents (thus boosting their ability to pay local taxes).

 

Obituary: Thomas Cook

In other travel news, I was saddened to learn of the demise of the great old (founded in 1841) British travel company Thomas Cook, associated with the more formal – but romantic – travel of decades ago. Hearing the name recalls European Grand Tours, steamer trunks and traveler’s checks. Its heyday was before the current epoch of mass tourism on the one side, and the hyper-exclusive luxury travel of today’s very rich on the other.

 

Wood Woes

The Public’s Radio recently ran a story of the damage done to the New England hardwood-lumber industry by Trump’s trade war with China, which has, it is true, long been cheating America right and left in trade, most importantly in theft of U.S. firms’ intellectual property. China has imposed hefty retaliatory tariffs on such important species as red oak, ash and cherry. The bombastic Trump was right to challenge the Chinese on trade but is too ignorant to know how to do it.

 

Unlike some big agribusiness operations in the politically important Midwest (the Iowa caucuses!), the hardwood industry has received little offsetting compensation from the federal government.

 

You don’t think of New England as a big grower of crops but our densely wooded region grows an important amount of high-value trees not growable in most of the world. Trump offers partial reimbursement  (from our taxes) of the losses suffered by Midwest agribusiness because of his tariffs; he should do the same for folks in the hardwood business.

 

Meanwhile, I wonder how the warming climate will affect the mix of trees in New England. Palmettos in Newport in 2050?
 

To read the Public’s Radio report, please hit this link:

 

 

AI Anxiety

My friend Jonathan Gage, former publisher of Institutional Investor,  as well as a former senior editor at Bloomberg News, the International Herald Tribune and the Boston Consulting Group, among other big jobs, is giving a talk Oct. 2 at the Providence Committee on  Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; [email protected]) on international news media in the digital age. He told me the other day he’s particularly worried about how corrupt regimes and other bad actors will use artificial intelligence to step up their misinformation campaigns, by, among other ways, manipulating video. Indeed, Putin’s folks are already hard at work in the AI universe to try to keep their boy in the Oval Office.

 

 

Repasts From Rooftops

There’s lots of wasted space on the flat roofs of some big buildings, such as hospitals and old factories. They can be put to use for such things as solar panels -- or rooftop farms. That’s what the Boston Medical Center has been doing for the past three years. EcoWatch reports that the hospital’s rooftop farm produces about 6,000 pounds of food a year, with 3,500 pounds slated for its Preventive Food Pantry, which provides free food to low-income patients. The rest goes to Boston Medical’s other patients, its cafeteria, a “teaching kitchen and an in-house portable farmers market,” the publication reports.

 

More than 25 crops grow in the 2,658-square-foot rooftop garden, said to be the biggest in Boston.

 

The hospital even offers some courses to patients, employees and their families in how to grow their own healthy food.

 

I love it when previously wasted space – rooftops, parking lots of closed stores and factories, etc. --  is used so productively.

 

To learn more, please hit this link:

 

 

Trump’s Tribe of Traitors

“Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders.’’

-- Psychology Today, Jan. 22, 2017

 

“Trump trades on something psychologists and political scientists have known for years — that people don’t necessarily make decisions based on facts.

“Instead, we are often guided by our emotions and deeply held biases. Humans are also very adept at ignoring facts so that we can continue to see the world in a way that conforms to our preconceived notions. And simply stating factual information that contradicts those deeply held beliefs is often not enough to combat the spread of misinformation. ‘’

-- Brian Resnick and Julia Belluz, in Vox. To read their piece, please hit this link:

 

Trump's Frauds

Trump, as a master of business and political fraud, is an expert in the use of gaslighting and smoke machines to divert attention from his crimes, as witness his lies about Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine. Neither has been implicated in any illegality, though they can be accused of stupidity. Hunter should have avoided doing any business in Ukraine, especially while his father was vice president.  Bad optics! If you want to see real Ukraine corruption, google Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, now in the slammer.

 

Trump, as usual, is making up stuff to try to save himself.

 

He reminds me of writer Mary McCarthy’s famous line about the odious Stalinist playwright Lillian Hellman: “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and the.”’

 

I doubt that anything but an economic crash would substantially dilute the support of Trump’s followers, a predictable majority of whom –with older, somewhat affluent white men dominating -- have long dominated the Facebook comments you can find, for example, at the bottom of this column. The caudillo seems to be their vessel for expressing their bitterness about what they feel is their loss of a status/privilege in a changing America. If you go back to Watergate, when I worked as a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, you’ll see how much support from much the same sort of cohort as Trump’s that Nixon continued to keep until almost the end.

 

To read about Nixon’s polls numbers during Watergate, please hit this link:

 

Trump’s criminality, including treason, has been obvious for a long time. It’s no surprise to those who know him best -- New Yorkers -- who include many people he has defrauded. But the corrupt and cowardly Republican leadership in Congress, who fear Trump’s ability to rile up his followers in his Hitler-style rallies, and are almost entirely motivated by the desire for political position and the money to be gained from it, will strive to avoid taking any patriotic action to protect America from further damage by the thug. These people are in effect traitors, too.

 

Some Republicans during Watergate showed much more courage in facing the implications of Nixon’s assault on the law, and of course in the end GOP leaders went to the White House and told Nixon to go.

 

And please don’t call the present gang “conservatives’’. They have worked with Trump to give huge tax cuts to the already hyper-rich, thus rapidly swelling the already vast federal deficit.  They follow the orders of a regime that has attacked the states’ rights to establish policies traditionally left to the states and that has taken money appropriated for certain functions and illegally diverted it to other things favored by their leader. They have supported Trump as he has gravely undermined the Western Alliance, which has helped protect America since World War II, and cozied up to murderous dictators, some of whom he wants to do personal deals with.

 

And last Thursday, he seemed to threaten the life of a patriot who gave information to the whistleblower about Trump’s traitorous phone call or calls in the Ukraine case.

 

How is this “conservative?’’ Well, it isn’t. Rather it’s a wanna-be quasi-fascist regime. America needs a new, patriotic and thoughtful center-right party.  The national Republican Party is now irreparably sunk into moral squalor, although there are some good GOP governors, though usually cowards when it comes to confronting Trump.

 

Regarding the “transcripts’’ provided by the Trump regime in the Ukraine scandal and other material sought by congressional investigators and others dealing with Trump corruption, be leery. Back during Watergate, Richard Nixon and his minions doctored and destroyed evidence to try to stay in office. Given modern computer technology, and that Trump is far more crooked and ruthless than Nixon, we have to assume that anything that his regime hands over has been fooled with and that much other stuff – computer files, paper, etc. -- has been hidden or destroyed, as it was during the Russia probe.

The White House’s alleged (and doctored) “transcript” of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump tries get Ukraine to go after the Biden contains several dubious ellipses, but this one is particularly intriguing:

 “The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me.”

Of course, we have no way of knowing how much other stuff has been deleted or reworded.

Meanwhile, Trump’s would-be fixer in Ukraine matters, Rudy Giuliani, once a tough and respected New York mayor, seems to be reverting to family habits. His father, Harold Giuliani, was convicted of felony assault and robbery,  and served time in Sing Sing.  After his release he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who ran an organized crime operation involved in loan sharking and gambling at a restaurant in Brooklyn.  But then, The Donald’s father marched with the KKK and was a notably crooked, racist – and successful – real estate operator.

 

Nobody’s perfect!

Trump also has the sleazoid Washington fixer/GOP operative “Attorney General’’ William Barr, also a relentless liar, to help protect him. Of course, Trump would not have picked the man whom he calls “my attorney general’’ unless Barr were corrupt. In a less lawless time, Barr and Trump would be sharing soap in a federal pen.

 

Nixon himself, who was a far more competent manager than Trump, except not nearly as relentless and successful a liar and demagogue, like Trump engaged in what many people would call treason. In his 1968 election campaign, he secretly promised our ally South Vietnam that its interests would be better protected by his administration than under the peace talks then being conducted by the outgoing administration of Lyndon Johnson, whose vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was the Democratic candidate in the close presidential race that year. So the peace talks failed, which helped elect Nixon, and the war ground on until May 1975. (Ronald Reagan also -- inadvertently? -- engaged in treason, in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1985-86, but he didn’t seem politically motivated: He wasn’t running for re-election and he may have already been in the early stages of dementia.)

 

A range of Nixon outrages, lumped under the term “Watergate,’’ brought him down. But making it easier to show him the door was that the economy started to tank in 1973, in part because of an Arab oil embargo, the effects of his wage-price controls; his decision to have the U.S. leave what had been the post-World War II -- and stabilizing --  Bretton Woods international economic system and his successful pressure on Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, to fuel the economy before the 1972 election with easy money – all followed by deep recession and high inflation. (The last item may sound familiar….)

 

Still, one thing we can give Trump credit for is not yet embroiling us in another Mideast war – yet!

 

 

Reporting Can Be Very Boring!

Working, biographer Robert A. Caro’s new -- and little -- book about how he does reporting, most notably for The Power Broker, his epic work on New York’s most important and controversial city planner/builder, the late Robert Moses, and The Years of Lyndon Johnson, has considerable self-deprecating personal charm, many journalistic tips and much of the same sort of narrative drive his books have. And yet, as he makes clear, much important reporting is tedious and dry -- e.g., for obscure documents in dusty files and long interviews that all too often come up dry.  It reminds me of what The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team had to do to show the extent of the sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and its massive coverup, in the Archdiocese of Boston. A sense of the hard, frustrating work comes across in Spotlight, the movie about that scandal. And of course it takes courage to look into the lives of powerful people.

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