Whitcomb: Those Pinko Professors; Shekarchi Has No Experience, Bench Bathos; Trying to Leave
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Those Pinko Professors; Shekarchi Has No Experience, Bench Bathos; Trying to Leave
“I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
“I want a peek at the back
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
“A girl gets sick of a rose.’’
-- From “a song in the front yard,’’ by Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), American poet
“A fair complexion is unbecoming to a sailor: He ought to be swarthy from the waters of the sea and the rays of the sun.’’
-- Ovid (43 B.C. to 17 A.D.) Roman poet
“The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.’’
-- Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), Swiss German author and poet
“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.’’
-- Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), U.S. president, 1929-1933
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Those samaras that fall from maple trees at this time of year have wonderful aerodynamics for propagating trees.
You get the feeling now that everyone is catching up with events after winter’s weather inconveniences. Jam-packed. In New England, that’s so in part because many memorial services are put off until late spring for people who died in the cold months. It’s a time of green renewal and reminders of mortality.
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Of course, these events include school commencements/graduations, which get me thinking about why college professors tend to be “liberal,’’ which, like “conservative,’’ can have rather plastic meanings.
I think it’s partly because these academics tend to respect critical thinking, to seek new ideas, and to be skeptical about traditional concepts more than many conservatives, and, all in all, tend to have more openness to new ideas -- in other words, qualities you’d presumably want in an academic institution. Consider that most scientists, many or even most of whom are connected with colleges and universities, and who are charged with seeking discoveries, by exploring evidence from research, under rigorous peer-review processes, are a tad left of center.
“Liberals’’ also tend to favor policies aimed at ameliorating conditions of the general public, while conservatives are leery of what they might call “social engineering,’’ and, ignoring wide socio-economic differences, tend to imply that it should be pretty much everyone for themselves.
Of course, there’s a rich tradition of conservative thinkers, however we might define the term. Think of Edmund Burke, David Hume, and Adam Smith, though I’m not sure how they’d react to today’s political/economic/social situation. I share such thinkers’ distrust of utopian schemes, favoring slow, “organic’’ reforms and trying to always be aware of the law of unintended consequences of new policies. At my college, Dartmouth, we read them all, and people there still do. My main mentor there, English Prof. Jeffrey Hart, was a national conservative columnist, an editor at National Review, a founder of the very right-wing Dartmouth Review and speechwriter for Ronald Reagan.
But Mr. Hart voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, arguing that Obama represented a "true conservative" approach, in contrast to what he considered the extremism taking over the Republican Party. The populist, big-government, fascistic GOP of today is anything but “conservative’’. (They’ll try to steal the mid-term elections, via up to and including the threat of official violence.)
Of course, colleges should be places for wide and open discourse on all matters, but the nature of colleges’ basic mission – to impart current knowledge and create new knowledge -- seems more likely to draw liberal than conservative faculty.
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Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is already having a massive impact on academia – revolutionizing teaching and writing, opening up vast new areas for scientific and other research and encouraging both intellectual-property creation and theft. Because of AI, higher education will soon look very different than our traditional idea of it.
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The practice of hiring commencement speakers from pop culture – comedians, movie stars, country & western singers, talk-show hosts, etc. – instead of the likes of, say, historians, scientists and diplomats – continues to pick up speed. We’re amusing ourselves to death.
On the Bench
In looking at the current right-wing, precedent-ignoring U.S. Supreme Court, it’s good to remember how corrupt at least three of the justices are: Billionaire Republican donors give goodies to Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Then there’s smoothy Chief Justice John Roberts, wallowing in conflicts of interest stemming from his wife Jane Roberts's career as a high-end legal recruiter: She’s earned millions in commissions by placing lawyers at top law firms that then argue cases before the Supreme Court.
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Not as bad, but depressing is that K. Joseph Shekarchi, a lawyer, who just stepped down as the generally successful speaker of the Rhode Island House, is trying to get a fast lifetime appointment as a justice on the state Supreme Court. He has no experience as a judge.
Watch the revolving door whirl!
Becoming a Rhode Island Supreme Court justice involves the governor selecting a nominee from a shortlist provided by the Judicial Nominating Commission. The nominee must then be confirmed by both houses of the General Assembly. In practice, it usually ends up as political deal-making.
Getting Mr. Shekarchi the job through political quid pro quos, public or private, would demean the state judicial system. Oh yes, and lifetime appointments for judges (as in Rhode Island) are bad. I’d say have a mandatory retirement of 70.
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Kudos to Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Peter Neronha for suing North Kingstown’s Quidnesset Country Club for brazenly violating state regulators’ orders to remove its illegal seawall (which causes erosion on either side). They have gotten away with this far too long.
Ah, golf clubs, pretty to look at, and heavy polluters from fertilizers, pesticides and targeted herbicides.
Newport News
A story in Newport This Week reports that the city’s School Department pays about $65,000 a month for utility costs at Rogers High School, or, the news publication projects, $780,000 a year for heating and electricity at current rates, which can’t take into full consideration the effects of Trump’s war against Iran.
So it’s been wisely suggested that solar panels be put on the school’s roof, in a “a green space next to the school or above cars in the parking lot, ‘’ and save a lot of money over the next few years.
Great idea. Utility costs connected with fossil fuel will mostly continue to rise, and sometimes suddenly, with little warning. Clean, renewable energy is where the world is heading, whatever MAGA says. The current energy crisis should give a push.
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I wonder how The City by the Sea will react as those giant Petri dishes called cruise ships appear this summer in the wake of yet more news about disease outbreaks on these ships – this time the hantavirus. Many residents of such popular touristy ports of call as Newport and Bar Harbor dislike these ships anyway because they take up so much room, produce pollution, and residents complain that their customers don’t spend enough ashore. Of course, some grouchy Newporters don’t want to see them at all as they crowd the waterfront and the mansions! Might they patronize a hot-dog stand on Ocean Drive?
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What a laughable idea! Russian dictator Putin has suggested that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder represent the European Union in talks with Putin’s homicidal and sadistic regime on ending the war in Ukraine and addressing other security issues.
The deeply corrupt Schroeder has done so much business with Putin’s Russia that he’s virtually a Russian oligarch himself.
Anyway, E.U. people promptly rejected the idea.
Yeah, They’d Pay More
I wonder what a similar poll would look like in the U.S., where taxes on the rich have been cut. The Guardian reports:
“Nine in 10 U.K. millionaires are proud to live in Britain, and three-quarters would be willing to pay more tax to ensure public assets get the funding they need, according to research.
“Despite widely reported concerns that the wealthy are choosing to leave the country owing to higher taxes, the survey found that millionaires were much more concerned about medical workers moving away than wealthy people emigrating.
“The research was carried out on behalf of Patriotic Millionaires UK, a nonpartisan network of rich people which campaigns for higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy.’’
More Americans, worried about the increasingly harsh and corrupt political and social climate here, seasoned with chaos, are looking to emigrate. But it’s tough, even if a country will let you move there: Most of us have tight family and other ties here.
Still, there’s good news for many Americans. It’s easier to get Canadian citizenship than you might think. For example, having a great-grandparent who was born there might get you citizenship there, albeit via an arduous process. Out of curiosity, I checked into this because I have maternal great-grandparents who lived in Nova Scotia for a time, but I got bad news: They were born in Scotland, so that gambit won’t work!
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The silence of George W. Bush on public affairs is weird for a man who served two terms as president. Is it that he feels shame, but would never publicly admit, that his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the financial deregulation that helped cause the Great Recession, led to the rise of the Tea Party and then the catastrophe of Trump/MAGA?