Whitcomb: Their Past Servility Wasn’t Enough; Inspector Loughlin? Booze and Pedicabs; Barney Frank
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Their Past Servility Wasn’t Enough; Inspector Loughlin? Booze and Pedicabs; Barney Frank
“It is easily forgotten, year to
year, exactly where the plot is,
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTthough the place is entirely familiar—
a willow tree by a curving roadway
sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves….’’
From “Memorial Day,’ by Michael Anania (born 1939), American poet, novelist and essayist
“I was born without knowing why; I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.”
– Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), French philosopher
“The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic. ‘’
– Dai Vernon (1894-1992), Canadian magician
“Will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament.’’
– Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), American dancer
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The irises are starting to bloom; some grasses are now going to seed – spring is ending. And thyme sure spreads fast. And, yes, having a tough winter makes this time of year particularly exuberant.
We were recently in New York City for a fundraiser for a nonprofit. When I turned on a local TV news broadcast, I saw the near-gridlock on the Long Island “Expressway’’. Of course, it’s always bad during the morning and evening commutes, but this time it was worse because of a since-settled strike on the Long Island Rail Road, which serves about 200,000 people a day.
It recalled to me why I have always tried to avoid being a commuter from a suburb. Consider the vast stretches of time during which millions are stuck daily in a car (maybe in a big, mostly car-loan-financed gas-guzzling SUV), with mounting fuel and other expenses. And yet, many, perhaps most Americans, put up with it to get more space in the suburban sprawl.
Commuter jams sometimes remind me of my father, forced to drive or take a bus to work in downtown Boston in a trip that often took more than an hour. He lived in a town about 25 miles away and train service there had been stopped in 1959. He had a heart attack in 1975 while driving on the fearsome Southeast Expressway in a heat wave. He managed to drive himself to a hospital in Weymouth but died a few days later. Train service has since been restored.
So Much for That
It’s hard to summon up much sympathy for the Republican officeholders “primaried’’ by Trump and the big-money thugs who support him in return for federal favors from this gargantuan grifter. The mass of the GOP has become a toxic tribe sucking up to a 24/7 con man. Many millions of feckless Americans who voted for him still seem oblivious to the fact that they’re being looted and their country poisoned.
Anyway, almost all of the very few major Republican politicians who finally made a few peeps against a Trump outrage or two had long enabled him. That is despite his 55-year record of near-bottomless corruption.
But now they’re betrayed, as have been virtually everyone else who tried to curry favor with Trump and his mobster family and wider entourage before nervously and mildly criticizing him. We can assume that they’ll show a little courage now that they have nothing to show for their servility and abandonment of decency, which has probably irreparably damaged America.
Meanwhile, the deadbeat Trumps and pals, famous for decades of corrupt “tax avoidance,’’ seek to have the taxpayers further protect and expand their wealth, much of it ill-gotten through assorted investment and other scams; most recently that includes their world-historical insider trading and market manipulation and crypto schemes. The Justice Department, operating as Trump’s personal lawyer (like the infamous Roy Cohn), is granting the Orange Oligarch, his family and businesses immunity from investigations into their infamous tax returns.
There must be even worse pollution there than we thought!
Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, an oily, principle-less character who has long prostituted himself for Trump, is also trying to slide in a taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion slush fund to benefit Trump’s allies. Some are violent.
Apparently, this was too much even for much of the thin and usually amoral Republican majority on Capitol Hill. And it was good to see that two police officers who helped to try to defend the Capitol from Trump rioters during his attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, are suing to block the payouts. Let’s hope that many more people sue to stop this larcenous self-dealing.
These latest Trump tax maneuvers are illegal, but, hey, a plurality of voters, ignoring history (if they even bothered to look into it) and common sense, returned this crowd to power. Suckers!
Inspect ‘Em!
John Loughlin, a Republican candidate for the usually near-meaningless office of Rhode Island lieutenant governor, has proposed that the job take on the duties of an inspector general, which would review state spending to promote efficiency and combat fraud. Mr. Loughlin, an Army veteran and former radio talk-show host, does not appear to be a Trumper, though he has generally avoided criticizing the regime.
If elected, Mr. Loughlin said, he would transform the often maligned, as usually unneeded, office into “an aggressive, independent watchdog operation dedicated to government accountability and transparency.” The experience of a lieutenant governor whose office was monitoring state operations as inspector general might help give him or her a hefty head start when succeeding to the top job after a governor suddenly left office through resignation or death.
BUT could such an operation run from an elected official’s office be truly transparent, fair and objective, or would it be tempted to mostly go after people associated with a certain political party? Inspectors general obviously should be as independent as possible.
But wait! The state already has an office that is supposed to do pretty much what an inspector general would do!
“(i) The auditor general shall supervise, coordinate, and/or conduct investigations and inspections or oversight reviews with the purpose of preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in the expenditure of public funds,” states the Rhode Island General Law creating this other agency."
And there is actually a real human being doing that – er, mysterious? – job: David A. Bergantino, a CPA. A Wizard of Oz? The auditor general is chosen by the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS), a bipartisan committee made up of legislative leaders from the Rhode Island General Assembly
Anyway, I got a chuckle last week when new Rhode Island House Speaker Christopher Blazejewski introduced legislation to create an office of inspector general that exempts the legislature from review by the office.
The speaker explained:
“The inspector general’s office would be able to initiate investigations into state and quasi-state agencies, as well as municipal governments utilizing state funds. It would be an administrative agency of the executive branch, and therefore the legislative branch and the judicial branch are not included due to the constitutional requirement of separation of powers. This concept is not novel to Rhode Island.”
But, as GoLocal noted, “The legislature may not be able to create an apparatus to investigate the judiciary, but creating a framework for investigations into the legislature is not prohibited by the separation of powers.’’
In any case, the House legislation has some good stuff: Candidates for inspector general would be vetted by an independent commission -- not by legislators —made up of the state attorney general, secretary of state, general treasurer, Ethics Commission, and a member of the national Association of Inspector Generals.
I suggest abolishing the office of lieutenant governor and having the Rhode Island secretary of state be the successor to a governor who leaves office before his or her term is finished, with a deputy secretary of state taking over that department.
Quaint, Quiet, and No Manure
I think pedicabs (I prefer the more exotic name “rickshaw’’) are charming (sort of like horse-drawn carriages without excrement) especially in a dense tourist place like the southern part of Newport. But young entrepreneur Remy Kritter says, in a GoLocal piece, that the fact that people aren’t drinking as much these days is hurting his pedicab business.
Less drinking means less revenue from alcohol ads on pedicabs.
Yes, pedicabs run ads for booze and the establishments that sell it, which in a tourist town like Newport means a lot of joints. And less drinking means that there may be fewer people on the streets who can’t or don’t want to drive because they’ve had a few drinks, along with fewer people with alcohol-induced euphoria that makes them want a little adventure in a pedicab. Pedicabs are out on the streets in prime drinking hours – from around 3 p.m. on.
Anyway, that pedicabs, which don’t require gasoline (some are purely muscle-powered and some have electric assist), can reduce by a little the number of cars on The City-by-The Sea’s narrow streets makes them commendable, assuming they are driven carefully.
Hydrogen Hope
Work goes on to replace fossil fuel, before our use of it does catastrophic damage.
Watch a start-up called Vema Hydrogen, which has drilled two test wells 1,000 feet deep into the bedrock at Thetford Mines, Quebec, and is injecting treated water into the iron-rich rocks below. As The New York Times reports, “the goal is to trigger a special type of chemical reaction that could eventually produce large quantities of hydrogen,’’ whose combustion emits only water and heat rather than the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and so might become an important source of clean energy.
You can get energy from hydrogen through an electrochemical process in a fuel cell. This converts the chemical energy of hydrogen and oxygen into electricity. Or you can directly burn the gas.
BUT, the climate impact – good and bad -- of using hydrogen to create energy depends on the production process.
See:
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-clean-green-hydrogen
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/climate/geologic-hydrogen-clean-energy-underground.html
What is clear is that we’ll never have energy security until we divorce ourselves from the global fossil-fuel sector and get our energy from renewable sources close at hand.
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Sort of a paradox or irony: AI is brilliant and will probably make most of us more stupid. What will happen to individuals’ ability to develop a thought?
RIP Barney Frank
Tough, funny, very, very smart and a liberal Democratic realist, former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, who died last week at 86, will be remembered for many years to come. He could have become House speaker if he hadn’t come out as gay. I usually enjoyed his terse, to-the-point and amusingly acerbic phone calls.
Four of his better-known quotes:
"I think there's a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy."
"I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority."
"From their {would-be abortion banners} perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth."
“There are no moderate Republicans left, with the exception of a few who would vote with us when it doesn't make any difference. It's the most rigid ideological party since before the Civil War. [...] The bumper sticker I'm going to have printed up for Democrats this year is, ‘We're not perfect, but they're nuts."’