Whitcomb: Factories on Mall Parking Lots? Fane vs. High Rates; New Party Needed
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Factories on Mall Parking Lots? Fane vs. High Rates; New Party Needed
As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store:
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
That I in thy abundance am sufficed,
And by a part of all thy glory live.
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee:
This wish I have; then ten times happy me!
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST-- “Sonnet XXXVII,’’ by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
“Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.’’
-- Terry Pratchett (1948-2015), English writer and satirist
Think of the pictures taken by NASA’s James Webb telescope
“Unseen, in the background, fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove.’’
-- P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), Anglo-American author and humorist
There’s a state program called Rhode Island Ready that helps prepare sites across the state for industrial use. Let’s hope that this includes a lot of those now-closed malls, big-box stores and their wind-swept parking lots going to waste.
Hit this link:
It explains:
“The RI Ready program is a statewide industrial site readiness initiative designed to prepare sites to achieve pre-permitted status. This program will provide access to an array of ‘wrap around’ services designed to create an inventory of pre-permitted properties ready for industrial development throughout the State.
With the support of their host city or town, representatives of eligible projects will work with state agencies and other regulators to become “RI READY”. State investment will be recaptured to the extent possible to make the initiative self-sustaining and extend the life of RI Ready funds.’’
New York developer Jason Fane has apparently overcome the last major legal challenge to his proposed 46-story luxury residential tower in downtown Providence. Inevitably, it’s been a long bumpy road so far for a proposal that goes back at least as far as December 2016. He and his colleagues hope to start construction in nine months. But with interest rates rising, and an international recession probably in the offing, can he get financing for it?
Who knows? The Empire State Building was put up in the Great Depression.
Mr. Fane’s group, to market the building, would presumably have to offer recreational amenities such as a health club and a swimming pool as well as office space (maybe just for residents) and high-end retail. Maybe even a library and a small movie theater.
And what sort of features would be on the roof, with its spectacular views? Could the general public go up there? (For a fee?)
I’d be surprised, if the tower actually goes up, if the rental apartments didn’t eventually become condos, as often happens in such projects.
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More than a few Rhode Island firefighters retire rich and early because of massive overtime payments. Then some move to low-tax (except sales taxes), low-public-services states, where Rhode Island taxpayers supplement the former firefighters’ investment income with very generous pensions.
The magic of the market!
Bring ‘Em In
The H-1B immigration program needs to be rapidly expanded to bring into America many more highly trained people, especially in science and technology. The annual cap is now set at 65,000 visas, with an additional 20,000 slots for workers with U.S. graduate degrees, much fewer than the cap 20 years ago of 195,000.
The slowing of these admissions explains some of the slowdown in American innovation in recent years as evidenced by such things as new U.S. patents, and it has a chilling effect on economic growth. That’s particularly so in regions, such as New England, with a long tradition of fostering technological advances.
Consider Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna, creator of the most effective COVID-19 vaccine so far. Immigrants have played a major role in its creation and vast bio-medical and financial success. It’s one of many such cutting-edge technology companies in our region, especially in Greater Boston, the home of many highly skilled people who came to America in the H-1B program. The world-famous universities in New England have also played a key role in luring these people. They work in synergy with the companies.
America needs to expand the H-1B program with all deliberate speed.
Summertime
I suspect that many year-round residents of, say, Newport and Cape Cod are already impatiently counting the days until the summer residents and vacationers leave, despite all the money they bring in.
Despite some brief thunderstorm-spawned downpours, much of New England is in a moderate drought. But there can be a good side to this: Fruits such as apples, grapes (ask wine makers) and peaches are a little smaller than usual but tastier in dry (but not too dry) summers.
Meanwhile, New Englanders should be thankful that its big sources of publicly owned fresh water, such as the Quabbin and Scituate reservoirs, are in no danger of drying up, unlike the water disaster Out West, which may well eventually lead to massive migration to wetter and cooler places.
And now the lilies are wilting along the roads. While global warming is extending our summers, if you’re over a certain age they still seem to go by a bit faster every year.
With New England’s hurricane season coming (mostly August and September), people in such low-lying places as Barrington and Warren, R.I. and the head of Buzzards Bay might want to consult a book I’ve mentioned here before that tells of how some of us will have to learn how to live not only along the water but over the water as seas continue to rise with global warming. The book, again, is More Water Less Land New Architecture: Sea Level Rise and the Future of Coastal Urbanism, by architect Weston Wright.
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The campaign signs for Rhode Island Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former major business executive Helena Foulkes carefully have her full name – Helena Buonanno Foulkes. Ethnic signaling still plays a part, albeit diminishing, in the Ocean State. And, of course, the Buonanno family is well respected.
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A New Party We Need
Watch what’s happening in New Jersey, where the new Moderate Party seeks to encourage “fusion voting,’’ in which practical, solutions-oriented Republicans and Democrats vote for a GOP or Democratic candidate endorsed by the new party. Now that much of the national Republican Party has become a Fascist cult of personality, the Moderate Party, along with such reforms as open primaries, can help make government work again by giving centrists much more influence after years of increasing extremism in national politics, mostly on the right, with some politically suicidal “wokeism’’ on the left to add to the paralyzing polarization.
New Jersey Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski described in a New York Times essay the voters that such fusion candidates would attract:
“They support the police, whether it’s protecting our homes from criminals or our Capitol from insurrectionists. They think that we should enforce our immigration laws but that our economy needs — and our nation should welcome — legal immigrants. They are pro-business but think that corporations should pay taxes and that the success of American business depends on leading the world to clean energy. They support the Second Amendment but with reasonable restrictions like background checks and red flag laws.’’
Mr. Malinowski has accepted the Moderate Party’s nomination for the general election.
To read The Times piece, hit this link:
Similar approaches to electoral reform are being discussed in Rhode Island and some other states.
One of the innumerable dismaying things about Trump’s attempted coup and other criminality is the cowardice of those who worked for him. Most of his inner circle who were privy to his actions leading up to his order to his far-right cultists to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 didn’t say a word during the impeachment proceedings that followed soon thereafter.
Now the House committee investigating his treason has been able to pressure/convince some key insiders to finally tell the public alarming details of the legal and moral squalor of Trump and his lackeys as he struggled to hold on to power -- for power’s sake, to continue to make millions of taxpayer dollars off that power for his sleazy company and as protection from the lawsuits against him (remember the statute of limitations). Of course, you wouldn’t expect a high level of ethics and morality among people eager to work for a creature with a half-century of gangsterism….
But what an example for young people!
‘Sanctity of life’ -- Up to Birth
Will the Red States, which are generally banning abortion, be willing to provide more social services to help those mothers now forced to give birth and for their children? Red States have the worst social services, in large part because they’re unwilling to impose adequate taxes on rich people to help pay for them. And much of the social services they do have are subsidized by federal tax revenues from Blue States. Red State politicians, much more than Blue State ones, follow the commands of millionaire and billionaire political donors – the Kochs, etc. -- for ever-lower taxes for the very wealthy and fewer environmental and other regulations.
That won’t change much as the leaders of these states continue to successfully distract their generally very poorly educated electorates with such bogus issues as Critical Race Theory as they wrap themselves in evangelical rhetoric and further lure anxious voters by making it ever easier to add to their gun and ammo supplies – for self-defense, of course. Thus they continue to con the voters into voting against their own socio-economic interests.
OTC Birth Control?
The Biden administration seems likely to back legalizing the sale of over-the-counter birth-control pills, which should help cool the legal and political battles over abortion, though some crazies would ban all forms of birth control. (Like we don’t have enough people in the world?)
HRA Pharma has asked the Federal Drug Administration for the right to sell its Opill, which would be the first daily hormonal birth-control pill to be sold over the counter in the United States, good news for the many who have found it difficult to get a prescription for and/or to afford birth-control pills. Let’s hope that the agency moves as fast as possible to approve it.
I assume, meanwhile, that condom sales are booming in Red States.
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It’s much better public policy to extend, for example, federal subsidies for consumers to buy used, as well as new, electric vehicles to reduce our use of climate-ravaging and dictator-supporting gasoline and help less affluent people who might want to buy electric vehicles but can’t afford new ones.
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How silly to have thought that Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia “Democrat,” might irritate the coal industry, which has made him a very rich man, and back Biden’s climate legislation. It’s all over now: Manchin has deep-sixed the bill.
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It’s good to read that many people are canceling their summer flight plans and delaying long-distance vacations until the airlines get their disastrous staff and equipment problems under control. More and more travelers are deciding the misery of trying to get to and from alluring far-away places more than offsets the brief pleasure of being there.
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Hit this link for the article:
Boris Johnson, like Trump, has been a highly effective demagogue, brazenly lying about almost everything and pushing the buttons of the aggrieved, as well as being a grossly incompetent manager. But Johnson, of course, is much wittier and more knowledgeable than our former would-be dictator. I’ll miss the highly entertaining aspects of his public persona, which is partly that of a stand-up comedian. Not that he’ll disappear. He’ll return to the media world whence he sprang and make a lot of money doing so.
Still, Johnson deserves credit for his eloquent and practical support of Ukraine in the face of Russian barbarism. He has had his Churchill moment, with Putin in the role of a latter-day Hitler.
Meanwhile, Brexit, the endorsement of which was Johnson’s main demagogic campaign tool, continues to weaken Britain’s economy much more than I thought it would.
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By human rights and some other measures, Saudi Arabia is a nastier country than Iran, which would be a much more natural ally (culturally, sociologically, economically and geopolitically) of the U.S. than the Saudis. And yet successive U.S. administrations, including Biden’s, keep addictively presenting Iran as our main Mideast enemy. Dangerously myopic.