Whitcomb: Downtown Delirium; Tax-Exempt Newport; Autism, Neronha, Vaccines, Hepatitis
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Downtown Delirium; Tax-Exempt Newport; Autism, Neronha, Vaccines, Hepatitis
“Although a tide turns in the trees
the moon doesn't turn the leaves,
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTthough chimneys smoke and blue concedes
to bluer home-time dark.’
-- From “October,’’ by British poet Jacob Polley (born 1975)
“Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.’’
-- Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French essayist and philosopher
“The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.’’
-- Henry Fielding (1707-1754), English writer and judge. He’s considered one of the founders of the English novel
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The heavy rain last week in our part of drought-ridden New England was much welcomed. We don’t want to end up like Pacific Palisades. Meanwhile, as the leaves drift to the ground, we see vistas we haven’t seen since last spring., A stiff wind will open up wide, multicolored views in the hills in five minutes.
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Now that school is well underway and we approach the central annual event of the American year – Halloween – I think back to those blue books in which we wrote our gibberish for exams. (As a way of decreasing the cheating encouraged by artificial intelligence, blue books are making a comeback.) I felt sorry for teachers trying to decipher our writing. But at least by the late ‘50’s ballpoint pens had superseded the mess of fountain pens.
For municipal or state jurisdictions to buy big privately owned properties often raises suspicions. Such is the case with Providence Mayor Brett Smiley’s negotiated deal with downtown developer and former Mayor Joseph Paolino. This would involve the city buying 444 Westminster St. for $18.5 million, even though the building, which houses some city offices, is only assessed at $7 million, reports GoLocalProv.com.
Mr. Paolino is a long-time political backer of Mr. Smiley.
But wait, there’s more! Mr. Smiley would help pay for this by borrowing $25 million via using the Providence Building Authority’s borrowing authority. More debt!
The Smiley administration defends the plan by saying, “The city’s offer amount …is based on the financial realities of continuing as a tenant compared with the long-term value of ownership.’’ This is at a time when remote work continues to undermine the business model of downtown office buildings….Too bad. I like busy downtowns and people mingling together in offices. It can be creative.
To save money, could more city employees have offices in some of the city’s abandoned, but possible to renovate, industrial properties; closed school buildings, and vacant or half-empty shopping centers? How about parts of the Providence Place mall?
One wonders how many more Newport mansions being bought up and made ever more extravagant by the gargantuan egos, or at least ambitions, of some of today’s billionaires (mostly finance and tech) will end up going off the property-tax rolls. The best example of what can happen might be 77-year-old Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman’s plan to leave his Miramar estate after his and his wife’s deaths to a private, nonprofit foundation to be run as a museum, in a city thick with them.
What will happen to the Bellevue Avenue properties, including the famous Beechwood mansion, owned by Oracle mogul Larry Ellison, 81? His “Summerwind’’ project there is a wonder of the world. As the old joke from the 1920s on Long Island’s Gold Coast goes: “It’s what God would have if he had the money.’’
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Finally! The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council has voted to direct its legal counsel to pursue enforcement actions against the notably arrogant Quidnessett Country Club, in North Kingstown, two years after the club built an illegal 600-foot-long seawall to protect the 14th hole. The seawall is causing erosion in front of it. (And I wonder how much pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer pollution drains into the Bay from the club.)
As I’ve said for three decades, the CRMC should be abolished and all its functions handed over to the state Department of Environmental Management.
Another example of why localities and states will have to depend more on themselves, and much less on the Feds, in promoting environmentally and sociologically friendly projects: The Trump regime has canceled grants for street-safety measures, pedestrian trails and bike lanes in communities around America because it has deemed them unfriendly to autos. Boston will be among the hardest-hit places.
The regime’s favorite vehicles: limos, private jets, helicopters, and of course Air Force 1 and 2l
The articulate and forceful Rhode Island attorney general, Peter Neronha, seems close to announcing that he’ll run for governor, setting up an exciting Democratic primary race against former CVS executive Helena Foulkes, incumbent Dan McKee, and maybe others.
The Washington Bridge fiasco and other bad news, and his age – he’s 74 -- would seem to make Mr. McKee a very unlikely victor. Still, the unexpected can often be expected in a primary with more than two candidates.
Anyway, having at least two competent rivals, such as Neronha and Foulkes, duking it out exposes voters to a broader range of plausible answers to such state problems as job creation, housing affordability, transportation infrastructure, and dealing with the very, er, bizarre regime in Washington, D.C.
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Why is housing so expensive in southern New England? I think the main causes are limited land, thick zoning, and other regulations, and the region’s many affluent people bidding up prices.
Help Tiny Moldova
Besides attacking Europe with sabotage, invading NATO members’ airspace, and nonstop cyberwar, etc., Russia is trying to take over tiny Moldova, sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. (The Kremlin has long told Belarus what to do.)
Let’s hope that the European Union and NATO (minus Putin stooges Hungary and Slovakia) do what they can to defend Moldova and its democracy. A Kremlin takeover would step up the menace to the Balkans.
And Call Us in the Morning
(Sorry about writing about Trump in this column. Events led me to violate last week’s pledge.)
It’s interesting how few women are visible when the Trump regime bloviates about medical matters involving women. Instead, we hear from witch doctors Trump, Kennedy, and quack (green coffee!) con man Mehmet Oz, M.D.
What about what they say about acetaminophen (Tylenol, etc.), autism and vaccines? The nonpartisan PolitiFact service, which everyone should subscribe to, reviewed the regime’s assertions:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/sep/23/autism-tylenol-announcement-vaccine-claims/
It also reviewed the panorama of Trump’s lies, exaggerations, and narcissism in his U.N. speech last Tuesday:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/sep/23/trump-un-general-assembly-speech/
Here’s an entertaining take on the speech from Mary Trump, who both detests her uncle and is a clinical psychologist: SEE HERE
Trump is right when he says that the world body is usually a paper tiger when it comes to responding to security crises. But that’s partly because the U.S. often undermines the U.N.’s peacekeeping and other services by failing to pay its full dues. It now owes at least $1.5 billion.
Meanwhile, we’re bailing out Argentina, run by libertarian or right-wing (?) President Javier Milei, a pal of you know who.
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Kudos to U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Sen. Ted Cruz, and a few other brave (in this case) Republican souls for opposing the Trump administration’s attempt to use the FCC (and other federal) power to suppress free speech it doesn’t like. Given the terror the regime evokes among many in his party, this is refreshing.
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It will take several years of data to fully understand the impact of Trump’s crackdown on H-1B visas for highly skilled workers brought from abroad to work in the U.S.
Employers will be charged $100,000 for each visa. A typical H-1B visa costs companies about $10,000. Obviously, some companies have been undermining wages of American workers by bringing in these relatively cheap and highly skilled foreign workers. But some of these very bright and ambitious people have added to our technological and economic vitality, whether or not they find a way to become citizens.
Many will now seek jobs in other places, such as Western Europe and Canada, because many American companies can’t afford the new visa cost. And, of course, as The Wall Street Journal noted, U.S. companies that can’t get enough affordable help at home will employ them abroad.
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How much will the lure of Canada’s generally friendly society offset their winters in drawing tech and other highly trained people to leave the increasingly harsh culture of the U.S., or never come here, and go north. But there are plenty of guns up there, too.
Those who want to better understand the 20th Century, and indeed today’s world, would do well to read military historian Robert Cowley’s riveting book The Killing Season: The Autumn of 1914, Ypres and the Afternoon That Cost Germany a War.
These battles in Flanders set the tone and pace of an increasingly industrialized war that wouldn’t end until Nov. 11, 1918, and would kill millions of soldiers. Among other things, the fighting in Flanders helped create the trench warfare and “no man’s land’’ that we associate so much with World War I.
Along with his keen understanding of grand and often failed strategies, and sometimes surprisingly successful, sometimes disastrously failed local tactics in the war zone, Mr. Cowley presents the human stories of those from all ranks who died in, or survived (with physical and/or psychic wounds), this conflict.
The Western World has not yet fully recovered from the vast trauma of the war that started in August 1914 and killed so many and ended empires. (A history teacher of mine called the period between the world wars “the 20-year armistice.’’)
The book, enriched by decades of research and novelistic techniques, gives both the big regional picture and granular detail from what were often chaotic local scenes. The law of unintended consequences often rears its head. Mr. Cowley’s mile-by-mile knowledge of the geography in which the fighting took place greatly strengthens his narrative.
“The final months of 1914 were the bloodiest interval in a famously bloody war, a killing season. They ended with the First Battle of Ypres, a struggle in West Flanders, Belgium, whose importance has been too long overlooked—until now. Robert Cowley’s fresh, novelistic account of this crucial period describes how German armies in France were poised to sweep north to capture the Channel ports and knock England out of the war—and were only held back by a brilliant improvisation from a cobbled-together handful of desperate British, French, and Belgian troops….
“Cowley combines a wide array of source materials with sharp portrayals both of military leaders and of the men they led. We follow Albert of Belgium, the world’s last warrior king; French General Ferdinand Foch, a former professor of military science; and Hendrik Geeraert, an alcoholic barge keeper, who pulled off Albert’s literal last-ditch effort. Many other memorable characters emerge, including Sir John French, a British commander, who displayed his greatest talent for maneuver in the bedroom; along with both a young Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.
“The vast brawl of four armies in Flanders was a turning point that irrevocably changed the nature of modern warfare.’’
Indeed.