Whitcomb: Put Solar Farms in Brownfields; Staggering Commuters; New Hoover Commissions

Monday, May 11, 2020

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? --
If design govern in a thing so small.

“Design,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

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“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”’

-- Isaac Asimov (1920-92), American writer and biochemist

 

 

"The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold."

-- Barbara Tuchman  (1912-89), historian

 

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Solar energy

It was good to hear that Rhode Island’s state Renewable Energy Fund has announced that solar-energy companies can apply for part of  $1 million set aside to encourage the firms to install their projects on contaminated former industrial space instead of in forests (we need those trees to help fight global warming) and other undeveloped space. It’s a small but commendable start.

As I’ve often written, as much as is economically practical, solar companies ought to put their panels at such places as parking lots, rooftops, landfills, sand-and-gravel pits, etc.  God knows that as COVID-19 accelerates the destruction of big box retailers and shopping malls surrounded by windswept parking lots there will be more and more space available for solar-energy farms! And the more of them, the less we must depend on fossil fuel from outside New England.

 

 

New England Council’s Fine Work

For near-daily updates on New England’s response to the pandemic look at the New England Council’s Web site – newenglandcouncil.com. It’s superb.

 

 

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Walmart

Keep Local Stores in Business

I drove by the Walmart in Providence last Tuesday afternoon. It looked as if you’d need at least 40 minutes waiting in line to get into that depressing establishment. I wish that more people would try to keep their money in our area by patronizing locally owned stores instead of the Arkansas-based behemoth, some of whose stores, by the way, have been COVID-19 hotspots, such as one in Worcester.

I suspect that pandemic-caused unemployment is freeing up time for many more people to shop during what had been their workdays at places like Walmart that offer cheap goods. (I’m an Ocean State Job Lot fan myself. Much friendlier and calmer than Walmart, though, of course, less stuff.)

 

 

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Varied commuting times

More Will Work Staggered Hours

I wouldn’t be surprised if the pandemic leads to a big move --  especially, in our region, in Greater Boston --  toward staggered work hours for those who must work away from home, which will remain most workers for a long time to come. State transportation officials seeking to revive traffic on subway routes, commuter trains, and buses will push employers on this.  Their very justified fear is that many virus-fearful commuters will avoid public transport and return to car commuting. That could turn already hellish pre-pandemic traffic into total gridlock, with terrible economic effects. Staggering work hours would reduce crowding on trains and buses and so permit rigorous social distancing on them.

Still, how long, anyway, can society follow rules that order people to stay at least six feet away from each other in public? Can you indefinitely police that?

That so many people in America live paycheck to paycheck, and so are economically and psychologically traumatized by COVID-19 lockdowns, bespeaks the country’s widening socio-economic inequities and a harshness that long predate the pandemic, which has only made them clearer. No wonder that there’s such a demand, especially in poorer Red States, to ditch controls meant to reduce COVID-19’s death toll.

 

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The mandate in Rhode Island and Massachusetts that more people wear face masks outside will add to the generalized lack of trust that has been growing in America at least since the ’90s. People whose faces are partly covered can seem less trustworthy than people you can really see. (And criminals will find them very helpful in their projects.) I hope that these rules don’t last long. They do psychological damage.

They’re also uncomfortable – and will become more so as the weather warms (assuming it finally does this spring!) -- and can make it hard to breathe, especially for people who have asthma or other respiratory problems.

Let’s not lecture people we encounter outdoors for not wearing masks, lest the lectures end in altercations or worse in our armed-to-the-teeth country.  Most people are at least superficially nice, but there are plenty of people on the edge….

 

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Former Providence Journal Editorial writer Ed Achorn

Au Revoir, Mr. Achorn

I was saddened to learn that Providence Journal editorial page editor Edward Achorn has been laid off. The Journal’s editorial/commentary pages for many decades were a very important public square for our region.
 

 

New ‘Hoover Commissions’ Needed

It will not happen in our current Banana Republic, but when the pandemic fades, public- and private-sector leaders should create new “Hoover Commissions’’ to make government work better to prevent or at least better alleviate future disasters. Among other things, their recommendations could help reverse the long decline in the effectiveness of some federal agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, which have been hurt by, among other things, Republican pressure on them to please corporate lobbyists.

The original Hoover Commission, officially the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, was created in 1947, during the Truman administration, to recommend administrative changes in the federal government. It took its nickname from former President  Hoover, who was appointed by Truman to chair it.

A Second Hoover Commission was created 1953, during the  Eisenhower administration, and was also headed by Mr. Hoover.
 

The commissions made numerous proposals whose enactment made the federal government more effective even as it continued to grow.

 

And as argues my old friend Philip K. Howard, who runs the nonpartisan reform group Common Good, state governments, too, should use the crisis to make their operations faster, more economical and more reliable in serving the public good. This includes jettisoning rigid, antiquated work rules and reforming public-employee pension systems – changes that will face much opposition, especially from Democrats.


Mr. Howard proposes that Congress create a “recovery commission’’ to encourage government:

 

“{T}o become disciplined again, just as in wartime. It must be adaptable, and encourage private initiative without unnecessary frictions. Dense codes should be replaced with simpler goal-oriented frameworks.…Red tape should be replaced with accountability.  Excess baggage should be tossed overboard. We’re in a storm, and can’t get out while wallowing under the heavyweight of legacy practices and special privileges. ‘’  

“The only practical approach is for Congress to authorize an independent recovery commission with a broad mandate to relieve red tape and recommend ways to clean out unnecessary costs and entitlements. This is the model of ‘base-closing commissions’ that make politically difficult choices of which states lose military bases.’’

However, given the frequent gridlock in Washington, D.C., and that, especially since the  Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, in  2010, the  federal government more and more favors plutocratic special interests, reform increasingly must come from the states, what Louis Brandeis famously called “the laboratories of  {American} democracy.’’
 

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Red States and Blue States

That reminds me that the widening differences in cultural, political and economic attitudes between the Blue States (net givers to the Treasury) and Red States (net takers) may someday lead to a breakup of the Union. For one thing, people in Blue States are tiring of being subject to a federal government mostly representing a minority of the population because of the structure of the Electoral College and the Senate, in which small Red States, such as Moscow Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky, have disproportionate power, and extreme gerrymandering.

In this Dec.

Higher-tax, traditionally Democratic states (Blue), subsidize low-tax, traditionally Republican states (Red). The Democratic states have higher taxes because they generally provide more and better services than do Red States.  And the Blue States create more wealth.

 

No nation is forever.

 

The Trump administration has accelerated a coming apart of America that was already well underway. And some attitudes of the Confederacy remain alive in parts of Red State America.

 

 

Need More Slack in Our Supply Chains

Just-in-time manufacturing and inventory systems make some businesses more profitable. But they also make for trouble when a crisis hits and there are not enough critical items, such as face masks. Trump and others, in both parties, are right that more manufacturing of crucial items needs to be brought back to the United States, and fast. And we need bigger inventories of medical and other critical supplies.

 That will, however, probably also mean higher prices for these things.

For that matter, the increased deglobalization and xenophobia that’s likely because of the pandemic will raise prices generally, even as American wages generally stay low or even fall, if not nearly as low as in the cheap-labor Third World nations where a lot of the stuff we buy is made.

We also need more “slack’’ in some federal agencies so they don’t get overwhelmed by utterly unexpected “black swan’’ disasters.  More efficiency is generally a good idea (see Mr. Howard above) but we need spare capacity more than more efficiency in some places.

 

Pandemic Pals

The people who helped oversee the Trump administration’s COVID-19 supply-chain task force were encouraged to favor The Leader’s political allies and other associates as prioritized on a “VIP Update” spreadsheet that listed GOP members of Congress and others in his pocket. This operation has been run by the president’s real chief of staff, son-in-law Jared Kushner.

 

Prepare for Tax Hikes

The huge 2017 tax cuts weighted to corporations and the very rich were already pouring vast quantities of new red ink onto a federal government already swimming in it. Now the pandemic stimulus, relief or whatever you want to call it, threatens to drown the government. So I think that next year taxes will be raised,  on corporations and individuals,  to address the exploding national debt while (partially) financing services that citizens demand even as many assiduously seek to avoid helping to pay for them.

 

As Ray Dalio, the founder and co-chairman of the huge hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, said last year, well before the pandemic:

 

“We’re dealing with almost a currency issue, longer-term, in terms of what is the value of currency when those liabilities – not only the debt liabilities, but the pension liabilities and the health-care liabilities, which are like debt. They are promises that have to be paid – they will either be paid by higher taxes or they’ll be not paid and defaulted on. I don’t think that they’ll be defaulted on.’’
 

Americans have long been living in fiscal fantasyland.

 

 

Google and Fake Ads         

Facebook, Google and Twitter  and some other social media have done great damage to democracy and civic culture by publishing, very profitably, vast quantities of lie-filled propaganda, much of it from Russian and other foreign actors. Only under great public pressure have they started to accept their responsibility for what they’ve done.

Google, for one, is now belatedly trying to require all advertisers to show who they are and where they’re operating from. This could help decrease the number of fraudulent, misleading and malicious ads – particularly important during the current pandemic, in which many bogus conspiracy theories and fraudulent “cures’’ are being circulated.  But of course, many of these very smart bad actors will be able to continue to hide their identities.

For some very interesting context on this mess, read Lee Huebner’s book The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: Reflections on Globalization, Democracy, and the Media.

 

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Pay ‘Student-Athletes’ as the Employees They Are

The NCAA’s board has proposed new rules that would let college “student-athletes” sign endorsement deals. But let’s cut the hypocrisy and let them also be paid salaries for their work in college fundraising. After all, their coaches are paid astronomical salaries to do the same thing.

An exception, I suppose, would be made for Ivy League and other colleges that ban athletic scholarships.

But what happens to the financing of big-time college sports in the COVID-19 era?

 

Two Regimes Expert in Cover-Ups

Trump on Jan. 24:

“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

On Jan. 29:

“And, honestly, I think, as tough as this negotiation was, I think our relationship with China now might be the best it's been in a long, long time. And now it's reciprocal. Before, we were being ripped off badly. Now we have a reciprocal relationship, maybe even better than reciprocal for us.”

On Feb. 10:

"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control. I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."

Trump’s regime is quite right in asserting that the Chinese dictatorship works hard to cover up bad new; witness the COVID-19 outbreak. But then, Trump and his servants are predictably doing everything they can to divert attention from their own massive failures and incompetence.

 

Indeed, speaking of cover-ups: Look at our ruler’s fired inspectors general and other whistleblowers and that he hides documents and prevents government experts from testifying to Congress! And lies, lies, lies.

 

 

An Evil Emperor Still Lives!

 

"I’ve had a very good relationship with him {Kim Jong Un}. I can only say this: I wish him well.’’

 

-- Trump last month 

 

 

It’s sad news, especially for his brutalized subjects, that North Korean dictator/mass murderer Kim remains alive after the weeks he remained mysteriously missing from public view. Now he’s back in business to kill thousands more.

 

Continental chronicle

An April Across America, by Matthew Stevenson, is the sort of slim journal that many people would get much pleasure writing (even if their work is never published) and reading. As he moves across the country from east to west by train, car and plane Mr. Stevenson weaves a colorful fabric that combines memoir, history, acutely observant (of people and places) travel writing and sports stuff. Among his observations:

On Crawford, Texas, where George W. Bush has a spread: “I confess I was stunned by the nothingness of it.’’ And on Hollywood: “Friends told me that Hollywood was seedy and full of tourists, but I found that was part of the appeal.’’

 

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