Whitcomb: Defending Liberal Democracy; Regulated R.I. Brothels; Realty News
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Defending Liberal Democracy; Regulated R.I. Brothels; Realty News
“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTYou shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.”
From “The Man He Killed,’’ by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), English poet and novelist
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“….He slowly stroked
a thick cup and described the nights
when, a theology teacher in Boston, he’d fly
a tiny plane alone out over the ocean,
each time pressing farther into the dark
until the last moment, when he’d turn
toward the coast’s bright spine, how he loved
the way the city glittered beneath him
as he glided gracefully toward it….’’
-- From “Flying Lesson,’’ by Julia Kasdorf (born 1962), American poet
“Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door.’’
--Jeanette Winterson (born 1959), English novelist
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Or are we, as Putin assumes, too decadent and cowardly to push back to defend the rules-based system led by America since World War II and that has produced unprecedented prosperity and protection of human rights. That’s why the masses of people fleeing tyranny, war and poverty do not flee to dictatorships but to The West, for all its flaws.
Note that Freedom House reports that liberal governance declined in 60 nations last year, with only 25 nations becoming more democratic.
Changing demographics, the complexities and anxieties of modern life and the ease with which lies are distributed on mass media make many millions of people susceptible to the temptations of authoritarian demagogues. This is what’s been happening in Hungary, under thief and quasi-dictator Victor Orban, pal of Putin. Orban has steadily increased his power by suppressing media that challenge his increasingly corrupt rule. His mostly “Christian conservative’’ rural followers who hate Gays and new immigrants bear an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump’s. Hungary, which is heavily subsidized by the European Union, should be kicked out of the E.U. because a requirement of membership is democracy.
And please avoid the false equivalence of American-led wars and what dictators like Putin do. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, however awful, were, unlike Putin’s, against ruthless dictatorships. And again ask yourself: Where do people flee to?
See:
The FT's shameful false equivalence on America and China
What do we mean by liberal democracy? We mean a system in which individuals decide in free and fair elections who should govern them; in which there’s (roughly) equal treatment under law, not under the will and whim of a dictator and his lackeys; where individual rights are clearly defined and protected by law, and where there is freedom of expression and the media aren’t controlled by the government.
In tyrannies like Russia, the leadership isn’t accountable to the people, opponents are suppressed or killed and much of the nation’s wealth is stolen by the leadership and those connected to them. Once a government becomes fully dictatorial, citizens often have little leverage to change policies other than by violently overthrowing the tyrant.
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I’m sure you’ve noticed how much Ukraine looks eerily like New England at this time of year.
The United Kingdom will nationalize part of London-based National Grid to better secure the country’s electricity system in light of Russian aggression and to accelerate the move to non-fossil-fuel-based electricity generation.
National Grid runs the electricity and natural gas system in Rhode Island, though it’s been trying to sell it to PPL.
In this wartime, look for more moves like Britain’s.
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Every little bit helps. There’s a campaign to make and deliver to Europe by the fall millions of U.S. heat pumps – those air conditioners that also take ambient heat from outside to heat homes and offices. This would help reduce the use of Russian natural gas for heating as winter comes on. Revenue from that gas is used to murder people.
President Biden could use the Defense Production Act to get American factories to greatly increase their production of heat pumps.
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It’s irritating that so many people leave their car and truck engines running and polluting while they’re away shopping, etc. because they want the heater or air conditioner to keep their vehicles at exactly the temperature they had while driving. What a waste. There is such massive energy waste in this country!
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Will anything make intensely rapacious far-right-run Koch Industries, a pal of Hitler, Stalin, and Putin, pull out of Russia?
New Addition to the Hospitality Sector?
Legalizing prostitution is a perennial issue in Rhode Island. My view is: Go ahead and legalize it but only in tightly regulated brothels were everyone is monitored for disease and violence. After all, prostitution, like death and taxes, will always be with us. Regulated brothels would cut down on the health and safety dangers.
Of course, many customers wouldn’t want to be seen entering such establishments. Those cellphone photos! But regulated brothels would be an improvement over the current dangerous chaos.
Brown University’s 2003 and 2012 agreements with Providence in which it pledged to make voluntary (under political pressure) annual payments to the city -- totaling more than $4.3 million in fiscal 2021 -- expire next year. Brown’s endowment was $6.9 billion as of last year and the median parental income of Brown students’ was more than $204,000 in 2019, the highest in the Ivy League.
The city says that if the nonprofit institution paid full property taxes on all properties, it would owe $49 million a year, reports The Brown Daily Herald. The university did pay about $1.9 million in taxes on its commercial properties in fiscal 2021. Reminder: In deals with the city in return for payments in lieu of taxes, Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design have taken over many public street-side parking places for hours a day.
So what will the new deals be?
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Republican legislation in generally far-right, QAnon-infected Tennessee would eliminate minimum-age requirements for marriage; it’s now 17 with parental consent. Ah, the Sun Belt!
Gross.
$20 Million for RWU Realty
I suppose, that given the (perilously excessive?) role that the real estate industry plays in the American economy, the Woburn, Mass.-based Cummings Foundation’s pledge of at least $20 million to Roger Williams University, in Bristol, to, in part, create a real-estate-education program, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, makes a lot of sense. It’s bound to lure a lot of students to courses that I hope will include ethics and not encouragement of Trumpian-style development schemes.
Of course, we’ve been in a housing bubble for the past several years, produced by inadequate housing construction, cheap money and pent-up demand by Millennials. But the bubble may already have begun to deflate. The Fed is raising interest rates to fight inflation and there’s a widening gap between what people can pay and housing prices.
The most effective way to make good housing affordable to the millions who need it is to change zoning and other state and local regulations to allow more housing construction, especially of multi-family structures.
Let us hope that there are enough safeguards in place to prevent the recurrence of something like the disastrous housing-finance crash of 2007-2008, which was the proximate cause of the Great Recession.
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So eager are some people to move into houses in neighborhoods that they find desirable that they’re buying some houses that are falling apart, with windows boarded up, and unoccupied for years, and rebuilding them, including adding a floor.
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A good way to fight inflation is: Break up oligopolies to reduce the pricing power of those who run and own them.
Middle Class and Unions
The victory of unionization at a huge Amazon distribution center on Staten Island may or may not presage union victories elsewhere, though it was good to see in itself. Huge companies are willing to be ruthless in their efforts to keep out unions. The victory reminds some of us that the heyday of the American middle class coincided with the maximum period of private-sector unionization. But as I’ve said many times, public-sector unions are a bad idea because of the conflict of interest with politicians. Civil service protections are enough.
The voters of Dartmouth, Mass., have backed – 4,048 to 969 -- the retention of the almost-abstract face of a Native American brave as the logo for the town’s high school.
Some members of the locally dominant Wampanoag Tribe wanted it gone. But other members find it a dignified and respectful reminder of the original inhabitants of what became Dartmouth. The logo was designed by Wampanoag Tribe member Clyde Andrews.
Taking offense can be an unpredictable and highly individual thing.