Whitcomb: Time for Tossing; Linc Almond; Europe’s Heat Wave; State Lottery Losers
Sunday, January 08, 2023
“Like January weather,
The years will bite and smart,
And pull your bones together
To wrap your chattering heart.’’
- From “Braggart,’’ by Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), American poet, short-story writer and critic
“Pictures made in childhood are painted in bright hues.’’
- Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923), American educator and author, best known for her 1903 children’s novel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, set in Maine.
“I like the scientific spirit - the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine – it always keeps the way beyond open.’’
- Walt Whitman (1819-1892), American poet, essayist and journalist
In a couple of weeks, most people will start noticing that the days are getting brighter.
Every January, like many older people, I think of editing out stuff, physical and otherwise, as the sense of endings grows. That especially means tossing very old things, some from back when our children were young. This might be a piece of unused furniture or some superannuated electronic devices, even an old picture or two. And I’ve been deleting some yellowing newspaper and magazine articles that I wrote starting 50 years ago. No one is going to write my biography (thank God!), and so these clips are close to useless. I will hang on to some books I had a hand in writing and/or editing.
I’m divesting myself of most of the paperback books I’ve bought over the years, many at airports and train stations, as my survivors would do soon after my demise.
I find it much harder to get rid of hardcover books, which seem an integral part of our house. That includes such old ones as my Yankee ancestors’ Puritan tracts and Shakespeare collections (which, despite their great age, aren’t worth much; too many were printed) and the books that my Scottish immigrant relatives brought to America after the Civil War; there’s lots of Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns.
I also have the works of Alphonse Daudet, a French novelist few read anymore; I certainly don’t. The beautifully bound set was owned by a murdered great uncle of mine (from the Scottish side) who probably got them as a graduation present, and so is grist for a little florid anecdote telling.
Throwing away and giving things away feels better and better as you age.
And narrowing down who your real friends are, as opposed to just friendly acquaintances or work colleagues, is also refreshing. It’s a reminder of the old adage that if you’re friends with everybody you’re friends with no one. But of course it’s important as you get older to make and keep friends who are younger than you are; otherwise you could end up very lonely indeed.
Joseph Epstein’s amusing and realistic book Friendship: An Expose might provide some guidance on this – or just make you too suspicious of everyone.
The aches and pains of aging reminds me of the line from Ernest Hemingway’s (mostly autobiographical) 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, when a character is asked how he went bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.’’
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The recent stretch of clammy, rainy days has been depressing. On the other hand, such frequent New England weather ensures that we’ll have lots of fresh water when it gets warm again. Consider the Southwest, facing increasingly disastrous drought (interspersed with flash floods) and far too populated for a region much of which is desert.
Walking in a cold rain from South Station on my way to meet a friend last Tuesday in Chinatown, I thought of the great detective novelist Raymond Chandler’s 1949 remark “I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.’’
There are few manmade things as melancholically beautiful as the reflection of street lamps on straight roads on a rainy night.
Check out pictures of the huge expansion plans for South Station.
Principle and Pragmatism
RIP indeed, Lincoln Almond (1936-2023), the old-fashioned New England-style moderate Republican who calmly served the citizenry with integrity and competence, most notably as Rhode Island’s governor and U.S. attorney. And he had stronger political antennae than most pollsters. He was a refreshing mix of the practical (he knew when compromise was needed) and the principled, and he had a wry sense of humor. I always looked forward to chatting with him when I was editorial page editor for many years at The Providence Journal. Mr. Almond, in and out of office, often steered me to rich mines of useful information. If only the crazy and corrupt GOP/QAnon folks in Congress were replaced by people like him.
Not surprisingly, the tributes to Linc Almond were bipartisan. I particularly liked his work building up his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Rhode Island, which has paid off economically and otherwise for the state.
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Meanwhile, most of us will miss the very competent, unflappable and honest Charlie Baker, whose just-ended Republican governorship of Massachusetts was a model of practical politics for the public good. The Bay State remains the best state in the nation, at least as seen in some key social and economic indices.
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There have been complaints that Providence Mayor Brett Smiley shouldn’t have named businessman George Matouk — the CEO of John Matouk & Co. — a Fall River-based manufacturer – to the Providence School Board because he’s white and his kids have attended private school. But there’s a strong argument to be made that the very civic-minded and thoughtful Mr. Matouk’s managerial expertise and deep concern for the city would benefit the city’s schools, many of which have been mismanaged. (Mr. Matouk’s Syrian immigrant grandfather founded the company in 1929.)
You have to be a masochist to sit on a school board these days. A deeply thankless task. Anyway, here’s a revolutionary idea: Politicians should pick the most able people they can persuade to serve on such boards.
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It was sad to learn of the closing of the famed Wayland Bakery, in Providence’s Wayland Square neighborhood, which had been open since 1928. It served average people and celebs with creativity and courtesy. Will such purely small stores ever have a big revival as more people seek truly personal service in our cold, computer-driven, automated world?
I think that there’s still a craving for that human touch in retailing, as you can see in some stores as people push back against job-killing automated checkouts (which often take longer to deal with than humans). And many miss, for example, the better service and range of products that used to be offered in the once locally owned Eastside Marketplace, a supermarket near the Wayland Bakery. Now the Stop & Shop chain, itself owned by the Dutch company Ahold, owns that market. The company’s share price rules.
Onshore Juice, too
Diversification in energy is good. While most of New England’s windpower interest has been focused on (far too delayed) big offshore wind projects, big onshore projects can also help get our electricity grid away from heavy dependence on burning oil and natural gas over the next couple of decades.
For instance, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) is working with Maine to write contracts to finance a wind farm with around 170 turbines in the Pine Tree State’s very rural Aroostook County that could provide electricity to perhaps 180,000 Massachusetts customers (an estimated 40 percent of the project’s projected total customers).
The agency said:
“To support the viability of the projects, Massachusetts will direct the Massachusetts [electric distribution companies] to enter into long-term contracts for up to 40 percent of the Generation Project’s electric generation and [renewable energy credit] production and up to 40 percent of the Transmission Project’s transmission service payments for 20 years or less.’’ DOER added that Massachusetts ratepayers would cover project costs “in general proportion to the expected regional benefit to Massachusetts.”
This would not only provide lots of cleanly generated electricity it would also boost the regional grid’s reliability and independence in times of intense demand, mostly in cold and heat waves, when natural-gas supplies are under stress.
Aroostook County has very few affluent, and so few politically powerful, people – indeed it has few people, period -- so the project is less likely to fall victim to America’s BANANA syndrome -- for “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone”. This syndrome, coupled with our hyper-litigious tradition, has made it more difficult than in other major industrialized nations to get big projects done.
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Wouldn’t it be nice if there were year-round, not just seasonal, ferry service up and down Narragansett Bay between Providence and Newport so that more people could avoid having to take ugly and crowded commercial-strip roads to get to the City by the Sea?
Free Fares in D.C.
Washington, D.C., seems to be well on its way to making buses free to all riders, in what might be the most watched experiment yet in the international “free fare” movement.
The District city council has voted unanimously to eliminate fares on all buses within city limits and extend bus service overnight within D.C. Depending on, among other things, what Mayor Muriel Bowser decides to do with the bill, it could go into effect as early as next July.
Bloomberg News reports that in the first year, the program will cost “an estimated $32 million to make buses free and another $8.5 million to run them overnight {good for night events, restaurants, etc.}. The bill also gives D.C. residents a $100 stipend for other modes of public transit that would go into effect by October 2024, and earmarks a total of $146.6 million over four years to fund the entire initiative.’’
Since D.C. area suburbanites in Maryland and Virginia, especially daily commuters in and out of the city, would also benefit from the bill, it would be fair that taxpayers in those states and/or local communities help defray the costs along with the District’s taxpayers. This could be well worth it because, among other things, the program would be a big economic stimulus that would produce new tax revenues, in part by reducing business-hurting traffic jams. And of course it would reduce air pollution and make it easier for low-and-moderate-income people to go to work and otherwise live their lives. That would help address local labor shortages.
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The West and, obviously, Ukraine would have been much better off if the response to Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, had been met much more firmly – with truly tough sanctions and a rapid increase in military and other security aid to Ukraine, which desperately wants to be part of the West.
In any event, the case for supporting Ukraine remains urgent: We are helping Ukraine fight with great courage and ingenuity a cruel and barbaric foe in order to defend the Free World from aggression that, if successful, could destroy the U.S.-and-NATO-led rules-based order. That order is the basis of our national security and, yes, our prosperity.
While the cost in money is huge, by helping Ukraine, we’re degrading Russian military strength and giving pause to other vicious dictatorships.
Heat Wave’s Good and Bad
The record-shattering warmth in Europe so far this winter has drawn conflicting responses. On the one hand, it means that there’s less need for natural gas from Russia, thus giving Putin’s regime fewer funds to use to massacre civilians. On the other hand, it’s an unsettling sign that global warning may be accelerating.
The ski industry in the Alps is taking a huge hit, and the lack of snow available to melt in the spring may lead to such low water that, as during last summer and fall, much commercial traffic in the Rhine and other rivers will have to halt.
Reporting to….
“Wouldn’t it be great for America if a block of Republicans and Democrats work together to pick a Speaker to run a coalition-style government? A coalition allows the House to create policy from the middle out rather than the extremes in.’’
-- Former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich
Quite a circus last week as House Republicans tried to elect a speaker who’s extreme right-wing enough to please the so-called Freedom Caucus! This radical (not “conservative’’ but fascist) group claims to be deeply disturbed by the federal debt, though they all supported Trump’s big tax cuts. These reductions especially favor the very rich, and, often hidden from public view, campaign donors who, besides more tax cuts, also want to kill environmental, financial and other regulations that might make billionaires a tad less rich and powerful. And the GOP/QAnon contributors, with their highly creative, indeed inventive, tax lawyers and CPAs, want to slash the number of IRS agents who could audit the donors and find cheaters.
It should be noted, though, that some far-right donors are not rich but rather are folks stirred up by GOP/QAnon lies aimed in part at raising money. The Freedom Caucus crowd is adept at pushing their buttons by appealing to their social resentments and hatreds.
That a major part of the Congressional Republican Party seems uninterested in seriously governing but rather mostly wants to demagogically show off to willfully ignorant followers while pleasing the legislators’ donors is a national menace.
The top personal-income-tax rate in 1980 was 70 percent. Now it’s 37 percent.
The tricky thing is that if polls are to be believed, most Americans want the Democrats’ pricey health-care, infrastructure and other big programs that the likes of the misnamed Freedom Caucus oppose as “socialism,’’ whether out of principle and/or to please their funders. (Freedom Caucus folks love big federal projects in their own districts.) But how many Democrats themselves would happily pay for their favored programs responsibly, with higher taxes?
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For a guide to what has happened in much of the Republican Party (especially its congressional section) since the ‘60s – and what to do about it – read Andy Borowitz’s new book Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber. Hint: The public got dumber and civically lazier, abetted by cable “news” lies and the dismal swamps of social media.
And worse than ignorant – e.g., glance at the backgrounds of leading far-right Congressmen Jim “Gym” Jordan and Byron Donalds, both leading figures in last week’s speaker-election melodrama.
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Look at this correlation between ethnicity and the percentage of unwed mothers. There’s an impressive connection between “illegitimacy” (now a toxic term) and poverty, among other socio-economic problems:
Jonathan D. Cohen’s new book – For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America – suggests to me anyway that states should never have gotten into the gambling business, because it’s economically and socially corrosive, fiscally dishonest and sets a bad example. First came state lotteries. Then in recent years, many states have gotten into bed with casinos and embraced sports betting, which are all susceptible to sleaze (though casinos’ kitschy interior designs can be fun!) and can infect their communities with crime and other pathologies. And now states are in the marijuana biz, very corruptible and a threat to public health and safety.
The publisher calls the book “the first comprehensive history of America’s lottery obsession {as it} explores the spread of state lotteries and how players and policymakers alike got hooked on wishful dreams of an elusive jackpot
“Every week, one in eight Americans place a bet on the dream of a life-changing lottery jackpot. Americans spend more on lottery tickets {almost $100 billion a year} annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets, books, and movie tickets combined.’’
It acts as a regressive tax since the poor, in the Western country with the most income inequality, are naturally more desperate to go after the vanishingly tiny chance of a windfall than the better off. They’re also much more likely to be poorly educated and thus more open to dubious lottery marketing.
Where does the money go from states’ lottery revenue, which is less than you might think? Well, there are lots of fiscal sleights of hand.
Listen to Mr. Cohen’s interview on WBUR:
Okay, if people want to gamble, that’s their business, but they ought to know more about what happens when state governments seek to avoid tax increases by encouraging gambling, to the point of addiction for some consumers.
Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal, and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.
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