Whitcomb: Baker Had Enough; Affordable-Housing Challenge: Cuomo Crash; Fusion Factories; Fauci Abuse
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Whitcomb: Baker Had Enough; Affordable-Housing Challenge: Cuomo Crash; Fusion Factories; Fauci Abuse
“Hark the Herald Tribune sings
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God rest ye merry merchants
May ye make the Yuletide pay
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and – buy!”
From “A Christmas Carol,’’ by Tom Lehrer (born 1928)
“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.’’
-- Henry Adams (1838-1918), American historian, in The Education of Henry Adams
“Epidemics have often been more influential than statesmen and soldiers in shaping the course of political history, and diseases may also color the moods of civilizations.’’
-- Rene Dubos (1901-1982), in The White Plague, about tuberculosis
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Of course, he’s made mistakes, especially in the chaos of COVID-19, which has required fast decision-making on closures and other mandates based on inadequate and constantly changing information. Still, overall he's been a highly successful governor, taking careful, incremental steps to improving life in the commonwealth, which remains one of the two or three richest states.
Mr. Baker has been a model of an old-fashioned moderate Republican, more than willing to reach across the aisle to do practical deals with Democrats (who dominate the Bay State legislature) for the public good. And as a former businessman, he understands better than many politicians how to help keep the state economically vibrant while maintaining a high level of social and other services.
As much of the national Republican Party wallows in demagoguery, fascism and lie-filled conspiracy theories, Charlie Baker’s tenure has been edifying. It seems likely that this very popular governor would have easily won a third term – if he could have made it through the Republican primary. However, at age 65, it’s no wonder that he’s had enough.
If he had decided to run, I suspect it would have been as an independent.
Meanwhile, let’s think about the need in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and most other states to reform primary-election systems to allow “open primaries,’’ in which voters are not required to declare party affiliations to vote. The current systems favor those candidates who mostly just appeal to the party “base,’’ whose members have the most extreme views. This can make it much harder to elect practical, problem-solving candidates, and leads to policy-making and implementation gridlock.
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It's often close to impossible to put affordable housing in an affluent town. For example, I just came across a Portland Press Herald story of how foes of a project called Dunham Court, in toney Cape Elizabeth, Maine, have killed the project, which was to include a 46-unit apartment building near Cape Elizabeth’s town hall and within walking distance of a supermarket, pharmacy, public schools, community center, police and fire station and the Thomas Memorial Library. The proximity to these services would have decreased the need for the low-income renters to take on the expense of cars. Oh, well.
Affordable housing is scarce in Greater Portland, as it is in many places. Well-off people don’t want poorer people near them. This is part of the reason for “snob zoning,’’ which includes such things as high minimum acreage requirements. Of course, this limits the construction of new housing, which raises prices and makes housing even less affordable for moderate and low-income people.
To read about the Rhode Island plan, please hit this link:
To read about the Dunham Court collapse, please hit this link:
Fusion Funding
Happiest news of the week:
Commonwealth Fusion Systems LLC has just gotten $1.8 billion in private funding to build and operate the world's first commercial fusion-energy machine at its facility in Devens, Mass. The company, based in Cambridge, thus is moving faster toward what may bring about a revolution in electricity generation. It could eliminate the scary problem of trying to find safe places to store the radioactive waste that’s produced by nuclear fission, which is what nuclear-power plants use now.
Commonwealth Fusion hopes that it can prove, by 2025, that its fusion reaction creates more energy than it uses and then build a commercial-scale power plant by 2030.
What an environmental and economic boon for the world – massive amounts of clean, noncarbon-based energy -- and a boon for New England to have such an enterprise growing in its midst.
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Last month, Maine voters, by a 59 percent margin, passed a law to block a power line from Hydro Quebec that would have carried electricity mostly via the backwoods of The Pine Tree State to Massachusetts, which needs a lot more green energy to power its big and booming economy. But wait! The vote might be overturned in the courts and construction resumed.
Abortion Back to the States
If the right-wing-controlled U.S. Supreme Court effectively ends federal protection of abortion rights, the somewhat ironical effect will be to help the Democrats. For one thing, of course, many people, and especially women, will be angered. For another, by defederalizing abortion rights and sending the issue back to the individual states, it will much minimize a cultural issue (along with guns, etc.) that Republican Party leaders have long used to stir up “cultural conservatives’’ to distract them from Democratic socio-economic policies that polls show are very popular. This distraction has helped the GOP’s big donors, who want more tax cuts for themselves and less environmental and other regulation.
I’ve often wondered why abortion, as protected in Roe v. Wade, became a federal matter in the first place. It would seem to belong more in the realm of domestic law, which is mostly a state matter.
There’s been much in the news lately about people quitting their jobs to take time off to relax and then look for another job at a company or create one as a freelancer and/or owner of a new small enterprise.
But beware. Many big companies are dealing with the employee exodus by replacing those who left with more highly qualified people at higher wages. Many people who start their own outfits will be hard-pressed to compete with them, even assuming that they can handle the innumerable administrative hassles of running a small business.
And artificial intelligence and automation have been speeded up by COVID-19 and will continue to kill jobs. Many who quit during the pandemic with the assistance of federal relief aid may soon be pounding on doors for a job, any job.
The more I think about it, the more free public transit seems a good idea. It would get many drivers off the road, with considerable environmental advantages, such as reducing gasoline consumption – taking a bite out of global warming -- and reduce the stress of commuting and the wear and tear on highways and bridges. Transportation is the biggest source of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.
Worcester’s bus system has been fare-free since the start of the pandemic and has maintained a high level of usage. Some lessons there?
Depending on everyone getting an electric car is no panacea. And then there’s “road pricing’’ -- charging motorists to use busy roads at certain times and using the money to improve train and bus service -- to relieve congestion in urban/suburban areas. The idea may be politically impossible to impose. For that reason, Charlie Baker has opposed it, though it would probably make a lot of sense in the jammed roads in and around Boston. Still, now that he’s a lame duck, maybe he’ll pull a 180 and promote the concept.
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Remarkably little-noticed good news: The slowing of population growth around the world should help efforts to combat global warming and other man-made environmental damage. God knows, there are far too many people for the Earth to handle now.
Scary Pricing Power
Amazon has huge pricing power, which it can use at will. That will only grow unless and until the Feds step in to break it up. And the likes of Walmart, too. But the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has been in hiding for decades.
Hit this link to see how Amazon squeezes sellers:
But how nice the octopus is creating a brick-and-mortar store in Providence Place, which could sure use such a destination retailer in these pandemic-ravaged times.
I wonder if other predominately online retailers may follow Amazon into the huge building.
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Did anyone here notice that Lara Long, the increasingly unhinged (and/or publicity hound) commentator on Trump & Co. propaganda organ Fox “News,” compared Anthony Fauci, M.D., the physician-scientist and immunologist who’s director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to Josef Mengele, the SS officer and physician during World War II. He’s mostly remembered for what he did at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers and was one of the doctors who administered the gas.
"What you see on Dr. Fauci - this is what people say to me: that he doesn't represent science to them. He represents Josef Mengele". She doesn’t like Fauci’s role in pushing for mask wearing, social distancing and vaccinations.
With garbage like this from Fox, no wonder Dr. Fauci gets death threats and needs 24/7 police protection.
She made her remarks in a segment in which a Fox host, far-right Republican activist Pete Hegseth (with, er, a complex personal history), who denounces mandates for vaccinations and masking, accused the Biden administration of hyping the new Omicron variant. (Isn’t it a little early to know whether it’s hyped? We’ll know more by Christmas.) Reminder: Mandates for vaccinations, testing and masking go back many decades. They are standard public-health provisions in pandemics in all developed countries.
Fox has no shame. I’m sure that Rupert Murdoch’s company got higher ratings – good for ad revenue! – from Long’s hideous remarks.
The Auschwitz Museum responded: “Exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic, and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful. It is disrespectful to victims and a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.’’
It was Ronald Reagan, by the way, who named Dr. Fauci to his NIAID post in 1984. President G.W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.
In other broadcast news, it was good to see that CNN is doing the sort of thing that almost never happens on Fox: First taking a star off the air, in this case, Chris Cuomo and then firing him for his efforts to help his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in his defense against sexual-abuse allegations.
For more about the exciting Mr. Hegseth, please hit this link: