Whitcomb: Campus Expansionism; Measuring Pot Intoxication; East Bay Trains; Walmart Job Cuts
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Campus Expansionism; Measuring Pot Intoxication; East Bay Trains; Walmart Job Cuts
-- Theodore Roszak (1933-2011), American historian
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“Time can say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you, I would let you know.’’
-- From “Villanelle,’’ by W.H. Auden (1907-73)
Brown University wants to build two dorms, housing a total of 375 undergraduate students, at the southern end of its main campus, on Providence’s College Hill. This would require tearing down three undistinguished houses, a small commercial strip and a police substation, all properties owned by Brown.
Presumably, there would be some pushback from neighbors concerned about, for example, even tighter parking on neighborhood streets, which are increasingly monopolized by Brown-connected people, but I’d be very surprised if the project didn’t happen. Colleges and universities, especially rich “elite’’ ones such as Brown, are constantly trying to expand and they usually get their way.
Despite the complaints that Brown doesn’t pay property taxes (it does fork over some payments in lieu of taxes to the city -- $6.7 million a year at last count) and more generalized complaints about its power and huge footprint, the fact is that its presence, along with that of the Rhode Island School of Design, are key factors in making the College Hill/East Side of Providence so attractive. Brown has some facilities and activities that local residents can enjoy; it ensures that there are many physicians and other health-care professionals (and the Brown teaching hospitals they help staff) and other useful experts close by, and includes a large, generally beautiful, almost parklike campus – a lovely amenity to have near the middle of a city. Indeed, some of those complaining all the time about Brown live on the East Side/College Hill because Brown is there, whether or not they work there.
An old joke is that “Providence is Fall River with Brown.’’ Well, as a state capital and former industrial and foreign-trade center, it was always much more than that, but certainly Brown has had something to do with keeping Providence viable as a mid-size city as its old industrial base shrank. Brown’s expansion is, all in all, good for the city, though taxpayers would like it to chip in more money in lieu of taxes. And no, I didn’t go to Brown.
In general, having a college or university brings wealth and energy to their hosting communities, albeit with some irritations and costs.
To read more about Brown’s latest expansion plans, please hit this link:
With the rapid spread of the marijuana business, states remain unprepared to handle the increasing number of people driving after, or while, using pot. Witness Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini’s doubts about the adequacy of the use of a “drug recognition evaluator’’ (DRE) in determining whether Marshall Howard was impaired by marijuana when the car he was driving struck and killed a pedestrian, David Bustin, in May 2017. (The judge did find Howard guilty of heroin and fentanyl possession.)
The judge concluded:
“This court is constrained to conclude that the DRE protocol administered to the defendant required an application of knowledge, experience and judgment in the fields of science and medicine beyond what is presently included in a police officer’s DRE certification.”
While Breathalyzers and some other testing devices/techniques can quite accurately determine whether someone is impaired by alcohol, and blood and other tests can find out if someone is under the influence of opiates and some other drugs, measuring pot-caused impairment lacks their precision. Even as states’ marijuana decriminalization and the rise of “medical marijuana’’ have put many more people than before on the roads with the active ingredient of marijuana in their systems, we neither have precise enough ways of knowing for sure if these drivers are impaired nor laws adequate for prosecuting them.
These deficits should be addressed – and fast – before the state legalizes “recreational marijuana.’’
By the way, it’s still a federal crime to possess, buy or sell marijuana! Last time I looked, federal law supersedes state law but the Feds have generally looked the other way. Maybe they’ll toughen up if there’s a big increase in traffic fatalities linked to pot use.
I can understand the sound legal reasons that the Rhode Island Supreme Court refused to force the release of the 38 Studios grand jury documents (such docs are generally sealed) but, like many Rhode Islanders, would have much liked to have seen in the documents the interactions among state political leaders, 38 Studios people and others before, during and after the state’s ill-fated $75 million investment in the failed video-game company. We might have learned stuff that would prevent a future disaster of this kind.
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On The Station nightclub fire back in 2003: If officials had just enforced the rules and laws already on the books….
Architectural historian and critic William Morgan’s recent entertaining GoLocal column with zany ideas (ski jump!) on what to do with the abandoned railroad bridge over the Seekonk River at the head of Narragansett Bay served to remind many of us that a light-rail line from Providence down through East Providence, Barrington, Warren and Bristol would make a lot of sense. And maybe it could eventually be extended across to Aquidneck Island via a railroad bridge next to the Mount Hope Bridge.
After all, it’s a densely populated strip with distinct town centers (for stations). It would make a lot of environmental and economic sense to lay down the line even if that meant putting it where the East Bay Bike Path (formerly a rail route!) is now. You can move a lot more people by train than by bike, and do it in all weather.
In any event, we need to better knit together the improving post-industrial waterfront of East Providence with Providence’s eastern shore.
To read Mr. Morgan’s column, please hit this link:
Maybe Mr. Morgan could do another essay on Providence’s “Superman Building,’’ this one with some fantastical suggestions – e.g., hanging gardens, a recirculating waterfall, an aviary at the top….
Hit this link to read his last column on that Art Deco skyscraper:
Andrew Yang, a former candidate for the Democratic presidential candidate, made a centerpiece of his campaign the need for America to prepare for mass layoffs to be caused by automation (especially with the coming juggernaut of artificial intelligence). I thought of that the other day when reading about the apparent big layoffs coming at Walmart, which, with about 1.2 million employees, is America’s largest private-sector employer. Its “Great Workplace’’ project includes eliminating many positions, including at the supervisory/management level, and replacing them with a smaller number of people with more work but often at the same pay. Some of the folks will be asked to apply for lower-paying jobs.
Drew Holler, senior vice president of associate experience, (what a job title!) cited the role of technology in taking over “mundane and repetitive’’ tasks, The Washington Post reported. He said: “We can take the tasks that are left and bundle them together to get great new jobs.’’ Translation: Big layoffs coming at a company that has long been a backstop for low-skilled people seeking work. Those “mundane’’ tasks are the only ones some employees are capable of.
No word yet on how stores in our region might be affected by the “Great Workplace.’’
To read The Post’s story, please hit this link:
Michael Bloomberg’s money and experience won’t be enough to win him the Democratic presidential nomination, as his weak and halting debate performance last Wednesday reminded us. (I’ve heard him speak in person; he can do speeches fairly well, but seems an amateur in debate, even though he owns a huge news media company.) Indeed, his experience includes lots of stuff that has come back to haunt him, especially the sexism that used to be a lot more pervasive in many big companies than it is now.
As for “stop and frisk”: That’s a procedure that cities around America have long used. And by the way, the procedure in New York City under then-Mayor Bloomberg was “stop, question, and frisk.’’
If he does, by some chance, get the nomination, it will be two oligarchs – one self-made, the other bailed out by Daddy’s big bucks -- battling it out in the fall. The incumbent is a sociopathic would-be tyrant and one who talks like a tough-talking Average Joe – a political asset. While someone like Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a moderate Democrat, would be a strong general-election candidate (especially if Mr. Bloomberg helped fund her!) any Democrat running would be a safer president than Trump for those worried about America’s rapidly eroding democracy. That even includes Bernie Sanders, whose economic fantasies would be constrained by Congress, and he is not a creature of untrammeled power lust and greed. He’s a moralist – to a fault! Mr. Bloomberg probably ought to bow out early, then pledge to spend as much as he can to block a second term for our mobster-in-chief. The Koch Brothers and some other plutocrats will pull out all the stops to keep their man in the Oval Office.
Both Mr. Sanders and Trump are leading what have become cults. Trump’s is likely to win in November, and then farewell U.S. Constitution.
Meanwhile, watch for a heavy load of the sort of “whataboutism’’ that helped (along with the Kremlin) to bring down Hillary Clinton in 2016, in which the negative baggage of one candidate is given the false equivalence with the much, much worse behavior of the other one.
Here’s the Merriam Webster definition:
“Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?") to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.’’
“The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time. Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.
“Whataboutism adds a twist to tu quoque by directing its energies into establishing an equivalence between two or more disparate actions, thereby defaming the accuser with the insinuation that their priorities are backwards.’’
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It is absolutely appropriate that Trump last week pardoned a bunch of his fellow white-collar crooks. Solidarity forever! As for the 13,000 other felons seeking clemency at the Justice Department, have a nice day.
Among those who Trump took care of:
Disgraced (for asking for bribes, including trying to shake down the CEO of a children’s hospital) former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich; junk-bond king Michael Milken, convicted of securities-law violations; former New York City Police Commissioner (and pal of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani) Bernard Kerik, convicted of tax evasion, among other federal charges; Edward DeBartolo Jr., the billionaire former owner of the San Francisco 49ers, who pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in a corruption case against former Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, and my favorite: Paul Pogue, a construction company owner who pleaded guilty to underpaying his taxes by $473,000 and received three years probation. His family has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct contributions and in-kind air travel to the Trump Victory Committee.
And now we have lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange telling a London court that they would provide evidence that Trump was prepared to offer Assange a pardon if he “played ball” about hacks of Democratic National Committee emails and said that Russia had nothing to do with these leaks, which helped put Trump into office.
Justice for sale in our glorious market economy!
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It’s frustrating that people in high-level government jobs who resign on principle and/or are fired usually fail to promptly tell the public in as much detail as possible what happened. More typical are the likes of former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, who left with little comment and then started to promote his still-to-be released book about working for the crook (which Trump is trying to censor) and former Trump chief of staff Gen. John Kelly, who quit and is now, many months later, making a pile in lecture fees dishing on his former boss’s behavior. Both of them should have held press conferences right after they left the White House and detailed, in chapter and verse, why they resigned and/or were pushed out. They’re both smart people and more than competent to avoid releasing any real national-security secrets in the process.
Hey, You Down There! Where’s Your Mask?
The Chinese government is using drones with loudspeakers and facial-recognition tech to spot, warn and even haul off those who might be seen as violating protocols meant to slow the spread of the Coronavirus. All very creepy but this is the world we’re in and will have to put up with. For that matter, most Americans are being tracked all the time now by their own cellphones. And, in the case, say, of a global pandemic, most of us would probably be quite tolerant of drones with facial-recognition capability spotting people who should be quarantined, and dictators would be very happy to have these control tools.
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Illnesses sweeping through big cruise ships are nothing new. That’s why many people won’t get on them. Will the Coronavirus carry enough bad news to cut into the cruise business, which is heavily patronized by older people, many of them retired, who are among the most vulnerable to such illnesses?
For a Less Plastic Amazon
It would be nice if Amazon, as now the world’s largest retailer, offered plastic-free-packaging options. Plastic pollution is a growing threat, especially to the oceans, where so much plastic ends up. Take a walk on the shore of Narragansett Bay and you’ll see plenty of plastic pollution.
Reducing Agony in the Air
Good suggestion of the week! The Boston Globe’s Christopher Muther suggests doing away with reclining seats in those dangerously cramped economy class sections of airlines. He writes:
“Getting rid of reclining seats in economy class will level the playing field. It’s one less stress to face. Never again will someone eating, drinking, or working on their laptop worry about the seat in front of them flying back. Recliners who argue that they paid for their space will always have the same space. Get rid of the recline, or just pre-recline all seats. When the variable is removed, the fighting will go away.”
I’m a rather small man but still find economy seats painfully tight –- too tight for reclining seats.
To read Mr. Muther’s piece, please hit this link:
Packing Up
The latest U.S. talks with the Taliban are probably a way station on the road to the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the victory of the Taliban, which sheltered the al-Qaeda terrorists who brought us 9/11. Trump, in election-campaign mode, is rightfully eager to show signs we’re clearing out. Thus will end our longest war, which was a vast waste of lives and wealth. Our main success: killing al-Qaeda leader and, for a time, Afghan resident Osama bin Laden – in Pakistan, in 2011. But “nation building’’ didn’t work, and never will, in a tribal place like Afghanistan. It’s all a reminder of our catastrophic mistakes in how we responded to 9/11.
Bookseller on the Run
A Bookshop in Berlin, by the late Francoise Frenkel, is the harrowing memoir of a Jewish lady who ran a French language bookstore in Berlin for years and then had to flee Nazi Germany. She got to France, but then had to flee again, as the Nazi invaders and their French collaborators closed in on exiles like her. She moved from one (briefly) safe house to another in the South of France to try to get to Switzerland before she could be deported to be murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. It’s a surprisingly calm and taut tale of intense suspense, vast cruelty and the kindness and courage of the strangers who helped her.