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Jun 17, 2023

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Sunday, June 04, 2023 Robert Whitcomb, Columnist View Larger + Robert Whitcomb,

Sunday, June 04, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

"We must touch the earth, must seek a mortal solace,

must find ourselves, our own, our known, in the crowd,

before we can face the old inhuman spaces

above, before we can turn toward sky and cloud.’’

-- From "The Prospect Before Us,’’ by Constance Carrier (1908-1991), Connecticut-based poet and high-school teacher

"How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.’’

--- Philip Larkin (1922-1985), English poet, novelist and librarian

"If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.’’

-- Warren Buffett (born 1930), American investment mogul

"Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind."

-- Siddhartha Gautama (circa 563- 483 BCE), most commonly referred to as The Buddha -- "the enlightened"), a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia.

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Those "backdoor cold fronts’’ from the north and east that often bring cool weather (and sometimes smoke from fires in Nova Scotia) to eastern New England in late spring are reminders of our curious mix through the year of maritime and continental weather. I can remember these backdoor fronts lowering the temperature at a Sox game at Fenway Park by 15 degrees in 20 minutes.

Can It Be More Competitive?

As the Rhode Island General Assembly moves into the final weeks of this session, it will be interesting to see how it responds to tax changes in Massachusetts. Last fall, the Bay State's voters narrowly approved a new "millionaires’ tax’’ but then concern that this would drive too many wealthy people out of state-led new Gov. Maura Healey to propose rich-person-friendly tax legislation to try to offset some of the effects, practical, political and psychological, of the "millionaires’ (in terms of annual income) tax’’.

Rhode Island legislators and the governor must always closely watch what's going on up on Beacon Hill as they strive to nurture a competitive state economy. Reasonable things to consider include revising the list of things covered by the state sales tax and further raising the estate-tax exemption.

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IMAGE: File

As I’ve written, probably too much, over the years, there's been much hype about migration from the Northeast to the Sun Belt. But nothing in human affairs lasts, as the report below reminds us. While we can expect the flow of people to the Sunbelt, most importantly, Texas and Florida, to continue for a while, that will slow sharply as housing, insurance, regressive sales taxes and local levies and other costs continue to jump in those states, making them less "competitive.’’ Storms, floods and droughts associated with global warming; sky-high levels of gun violence, weak public services and quasi-fascistic efforts to take away personal rights will also be driving an increasing number of people from these deep-Red states. Gradually.

Read these:

https://www.rent.com/research/migration-nation/

https://cobylefko.medium.com/whats-new-may-soon-be-old-c87448b7213

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/climate/arizona-phoenix-permits-housing-water.html

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LOGO: Harvard

I wonder how the admissions offices of New England's many colleges and universities will deal with the Supreme Court's probable banning this month of affirmative action that considers race and ethnicity. (It would be delightful if the deeply corrupt Justice Clarence Thomas, who benefited from affirmative-action when he applied to Yale Law School, writes the majority report.)

In any case, look for an increase in affirmative action for students from rich families who pay full freight on tuition and might make big future donations; kids from families that include alumni (who tend to be affluent) of the schools being applied to ("legacies"), and athletes. Over time, this will probably tend to widen income inequality.

Of course, higher-education institutions can try to support racial diversity by such workarounds as encouraging, through marketing, more poor and middle-class kids to apply, with the promise of generous financial aid. But that would mostly be confined to rich colleges, such as members of the Ivy League, of which there are four in New England.

And more colleges may drop the requirement for applicants to take standardized tests, which tend to favor students from affluent families, mostly white and Asian-American, who can afford to put their offspring into expensive exam practice and summer programs, hire tutors and otherwise get a jump on other students.

Reportedly, only six American schools are fully need-blind for all applicants, U.S. and foreign: Amherst College, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, MIT and Dartmouth. These institutions promise students from low-income households and many middle-class applicants that all their direct college costs would be covered if they’re admitted.

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PHOTO: File

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Offshore WindShaun Dakin, Unsplash

Some members of the International Longshoremen's Association Local 1413 recently blocked the main entrance to the Port of New Bedford for almost a week. They have since gone back to work. The protesters were accusing Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind-power developer, of not keeping its promises to hire more minority-group members.

The project would provide electricity to 400,000 customers, a big step in increasing New England's energy independence. These offshore-wind projects are delayed enough by relentless regulatory gum-ups and litigation. Let's hope that disputes like the one above don't further threaten economic and environmental common sense. Vineyard Wind's project would be a boon to pretty much everyone in southeastern New England.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to reading the memoirs of former New Bedford Mayor John Bullard, long a very smart and dynamic leader in economic development and in protecting the environment, especially the coastal and marine ones. Hit this link to read an interview with Mr. Bullard:

https://newbedfordlight.org/bullards-guiding-light-throughout-his-career-improving-his-hometown/

Fending off Downtown Deluges

A consulting firm's study recommends that a huge, $877 million flood barrier be built to protect downtown Boston from the increased coastal flooding associated with global warming. Of course, there would be big cost overruns in something as complicated as this project; it would probably cost several billion.

Meanwhile, Boston can stock up on lifeboats, wet suits and swimming lessons. But sadly the threat is too episodic for gondolas.

Hit this link:

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PHOTO: File

I love the inventiveness of New England's scientists and engineers. They give us much hope. Consider that scientists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have created a device with which to draw electricity from the air!

Hit this link:

An air-powered generator, called an "Air-gen," would offer continuous clean electricity because it uses the energy from humidity, always present in the air, said Jun Yao, an engineering professor at UMass and the senior author of the study with this project (see below). Indeed, the air has a tremendous amount of electricity; think of lightning.

The Washington Post reported:

"The research … builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material, such as wood or silicon, can be used, as long as it can be smashed into small particles and remade with microscopic pores.’’

Of course, research and development on this have a long way to go before it would have a big effect. Still, as Professor Yao noted to The Post:

"The entire earth is covered with a thick layer of humidity. It's an enormous source of clean energy. This is just the beginning in making use of that."

Hit this link:

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PHOTO: File

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.’’

-- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

But I’m with Winston Churchill (1874-1965) on this:

"Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.’’

In the sometimes absurdist debt-ceiling faceoff in Congress, one thing that's been very clear is that the GOP/QAnon side favors the old, the well-off, the white, the rural/exurban and campaign donors. (That isn't to say that many Democratic members of Congress don't pay inordinate attention to their donors, just not with as much loyalty.) The GOP caucus didn't dare to try to cut Social Security and Medicare, but has little problem cutting programs that help the young, the poor and racial/ethnic minorities. Some of those programs actually work.

The right-wingers pleased their big donors with such goodies as cutting by $20 billion, from $80 billion, the funds that had been allocated to the IRS to make the agency more effective in, among other things, going after tax evaders, who tend to be rich. This cut, of course, will increase budget deficits compared to what they would be had the agency been allowed to keep the full $80 billion. Hundreds of billions of dollars of owed taxes are evaded each year.

Especially with Russia's assault on Ukraine, both parties also wanted to boost defense spending. Such support has a political/cultural element, too, by wrapping politicians in the flag. Then there are those big defense contracts going to various states, some of which include spending for stuff that the military itself doesn't need or want.

With massive and often hidden right-wing donor money, and rigorous and inventive gerrymandering, House Republicans punch well over their weight.

But the poor, the young and ethnic minorities are, to some extent, authors of their own relative weakness in getting government goods: They vote much less frequently than old, affluent white folks and then whine about the results.

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"There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember what the second one is."

Mark Hanna (1837-1904), U.S. senator from Ohio and chairman of the Republican National Committee

Far too much was made of the purported political fallout from the comedy of technical errors in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's presidential-campaign announcement on his ally Elon Musk's Twitter. Most people will soon forget it, and, anyway, most voters haven't really focused on presidential politics yet.

As the late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously noted: "A week is a long time in politics,’’ and DeSantis has the fundamentals to be a formidable candidate, including mountains of money from well-heeled donors, his "anti-wokeism" (which means what you want it to mean) and public fatigue with identity politics.

Bloody Balkans

It seems that ethnic/nationalist/religious tensions in the Balkans never die, as the recent fighting between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo reminds us. One incendiary problem is that Russia has long supported Serbia, quietly and not so quietly.

In 1944-1980, tough Communist dictator Josip Broz, a Croatian known as Tito, ran the agglomeration of groups then called Yugoslavia. That was a rare stretch of relative calm. The region has for ages often been a cauldron of internecine conflict that sometimes spills further farther afield. Consider that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian Empire's heir to the throne, by Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip, helped start World War I (which led to World War II, etc.).

NATO must do what it can to keep the region from boiling over, especially given Russia's horrific war against Ukraine.

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In last week's item about booze-ridden business lunches, I neglected to mention the time, about 40 years ago, when one of my bosses, after imbibing enthusiastically at lunch, fell asleep at his desk with a lit cigarette in his mouth, which dropped to light his tie on fire. Luckily there were a couple of people around with newspapers, which were rolled up and used to beat the blaze into submission. Ah, those were exciting times.

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IMAGE: Rau's new book

Ruminative, humorous, nostalgic, happy, sad and sardonic, Elizabeth Rau's collection of essays called The Good Slope will especially lure Rhode Islanders, most notably residents of Providence's East Side, who know the geography where much of the life in her essays happens. But there are universal themes here about families, children growing up, adults aging, pets and other markers of the passage of time and, especially, poignant observations about the idea of home. For Ms. Rau her home is not only Providence, to which she moved for work many years ago, but also her beloved home in the St. Louis suburb where she grew up.

I liked this quote from her introduction:

"Home, precious home. We leave it and want to go back and discover that we cannot, ever. We build our own home --- and we’re happy in it –and yet we still long for the one we left. And then the home we created changes, and we miss that one and the one we left, long ago. An ancient angst, dizzying, but part of being alive.’’ Her childhood sounds idyllic, or is that mostly just in retrospect?

Well, like many people, I don't have very happy memories of my first home. But they still have a hold because one is so raw and open to the good and bad of life when young. So it remains, in a sense, a psychic home.

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.